Last Judgement

Magistrate George Pender is found hanging in the woods, and everything about the scene says suicide. The note and the rope are there to make it convincing. Wycliffe knew Pender, and he does not believe it for a minute. His instincts tell him that someone helped the magistrate along, and the episode spends its time proving the instinct right.

There is a suspect early on: Jimmy Yates, a fisherman Pender once jailed, whose wife left him over it. A man with a grudge and a reason. But the team's attention keeps drifting back to the Pender household itself. Neil Pender, the son, is walking out with Jane Trethowan, and George was openly hostile to the relationship, which is odd enough. Then there is Pat, Jane's mother, who like Pender once lived in Plymouth, and who seems to know more about the family than she lets on. Pender's disapproval turns out to be the least of it. Buried in his past is a secret that puts the hanging in a different light entirely. And the more Wycliffe looks at the family, the more the grudge-holding fisherman starts to look like a distraction.

W.J. Burley and Carolyn Sally Jones wrote it, John Glenister directed. Aired in August 1996, it was the seventh episode of the third series. Tom Wisdom is Neil, Amanda Ryan is Jane, and Dave Atkins is Ken Luscombe. Lee Woods's P.C. Dando and David Belcher's Doctor Hawkins fill out the local ranks, with Jimmy Yuill's Kersey, Aaron Harris's Dixon, Helen Masters's Lane and Tim Wylton's Franks working around Jack Shepherd's Wycliffe.

It is satisfying in the way a good closed-room puzzle is, except the room is a family. Everyone knows everyone, nobody says everything, and the truth is hiding in plain sight behind the magistrates' bench. The episode trusts you to notice the small things, and it is repaid for that trust.