(MUSIC: "DANSE MACABRE" BY SAINT-SAËNS)
(CREAKING)
Mother!
Are you going to let him go ahead with this?
For God's sake!
(CHURCH BELLS PEAL)
Taxi!
Department of Cytology, London University.
(DRILL WHIRRS)
So we keep the trousers from the opening.
For the shirt, I'm thinking of something in shot silk. Maybe in charcoal.
Or we could go for the sable, if you prefer. Or the ebony.
- Ebony's nice. - Ebony could work very well.
I can lift out your masculinity. Shall we go with that, then?
No problem. That's very good.
Morning, Adam.
Managed to get the video pen working?
Yes. Just some minor glitch with the fibre-optics.
OK, Elsa, my angel.
- We're all done... - Jack the Ripper?
Oh, yes. Monday night, I'm going to need some sort of frock coat and top hat.
A frock coat for Monday.
What is this Jack the Ripper?
Don't sully her mind with it. The innocence is too beguiling.
Is that a dream ticket, Jonathan? 29 years old and still whiter than white.
- I don't mean her laundry. - Makes a change.
She's still physically intact, in every sense.
She's never felt a man's tongue on her epiglottis.
- You know that for a fact? - I've done my research.
Born in a conservative region of Austria - known locally as the Chastity Belt -
a delicate Alpine flower for whom sex and alcohol are off-limits.
Maybe if I switched drinks?
That's the closest you'll get to an exchange of fluids.
We've got a lot to get through.
I've gone for a word. Please God it's in there.
Open up the Bard.
Start fanning pages and stop anywhere.
- Stab the pen down... - Twirl it, Adam.
- Or we can't mix to the pre-record. - Right.
Hold the pen up, spin it round and around...
- and... - Coming to playback now.
Hit it. "Stratagem."
Which, in a triumph of extra-sensory acuity, is...
Oh! Aaagh.
(PHONE RINGS)
- Hello? - Hi. Is Jonathan around at all?
I'll see if I can find him. Who's calling? Hang on a second.
These gallstones of yours are going to drag us all right down the Swanee if we're not careful.
- Get them seen to. - Because I have a small problem with hospitals, Jonathan.
Satire begins to pall after a while.
"Can't you make them disappear by magic, Mr. Klaus?"
"Watch that proctoscope, he's got a rabbit up there."
Every other asinine quip known to man.
I didn't tell you who I nearly bumped into this morning.
Remember Marella Carney - the Black Canary? Retired about 15 years ago.
- I was in the front row at her final performance.
I always had this fantasy that when the guillotine fell, her head would fall into my lap...
It wasn't her I saw, it was her daughter, Charlotte.
- Who, if you remember... - Oh, that's right. Was the great lust of your life at one time.
- You were walking around like some kind of zombie for weeks. - Till it came to grief.
After I got round to asking her out.
We went for a meal - all lovely - taxi back to her place in Kensington.
She asked me in for coffee and I said no. That was the last I saw of her.
Sorry. You lost me towards the end there.
Charlotte Carney - who I desired more than oxygen -
asked me into her flat at one in the morning? There's got to be a catch.
"Have you met my fiancé Crispin? He's got two penises and his own airline."
Or I whisper "I love you" and she attacks me with a fire extinguisher.
I can do without that kind of humiliation.
Your love life would make a fine play by Samuel Beckett.
It's the nihilistic quality it has.
She never called me again afterwards, which only proves my point...
(PHONE RINGS)
- Hello? - Jonathan.
Do you want to pop over this evening? I'll cook something.
No. Why should there be a reason? I'm just...
Look. All right. I need you tonight. Here in my bedroom.
There are certain things I don't like staring at in bed.
Anything less than two inches long... Don't bring it near me! Get rid of it!
It's a cockroach. It's very friendly.
Just have sex with it, you thoroughly revolting person!
Oh, dispose of it, please! Not down the toilet!
Take it to the garden and kill it with a spade.
Kill it with a spade? Am I Jack the Hat McVitie?
Just do it! God Almighty! And don't be such a doily.
That's the third one this week. I don't know where they're coming from.
(MOBILE PHONE RINGS)
- Yeah. Hello. - Hello? Is that?
Sorry. I'm trying to reach Jonathan Creek.
Yeah. He's popped out for a second. Who's calling?
- Charlotte Carney. - OK. Just a sec...
Just one second, Charlotte.
I'll probably go to hell for that - snuffing out a living thing.
Call for you. A Charlotte Carney.
- Hello. - Jonathan?
It was you I passed this morning.
- Sorry? - You wouldn't have noticed me.
Three years ago. Changed beyond all recognition, probably.
I'm sorry...
This is the worst day of my life.
What happened?
Remember something you said to me once?
There's no such thing as magic. Real magic.
You didn't believe in anything you couldn't touch or see.
This afternoon, at four o'clock...
my mother killed herself.
How she did, I defy anyone to explain.
It's like a kind of madness has taken over and there are no rules anymore about life!
Or death.
Charlotte?
I can't believe we're doing this
after one hysterical phone call from some floozy you met at a party.
There was never even anything between you.
Do you ever get this thing serviced?
How can anyone drive without a windscreen washer?
- It's got a windscreen washer. - But it's no use on the back seat!
The guy who was going to fit it did a runner.
A bit of fresh air won't harm you.
So what's the story on her mother?
Marella Carney, the Black Canary. Wasn't she big business?
Most of her tricks relied on the fact she had a twin sister.
- Don't be ridiculous. - Who did all the difficult bits.
Marella suffered from claustrophobia, so her sister went into all the cabinets.
Using a double isn't exactly a test of ingenuity.
- Two of them? They kept that quiet. - They'd hardly put it in the programme!
"Whilst escaping from a locked trunk,
"Miss Carney will be assisted by her twin, Beryl."
- That was before the accident. - What accident?
- It's a bit on the grisly side. - What accident?
- I don't know if you've got the stomach. - Don't give me that macho protective stuff.
At rehearsal one day, one of their big routines,
her sister Beryl's tied up to a bench with an electric buzz saw coming at her.
The mechanism jammed and she was sawn in half.
- Oh, my God! - Lengthways.
Lengthways?! Oh!
Careful! You'll have us off the road.
Sawn in half... What the hell did you have to tell me that for?
With an electric buzz saw? Oh! That's done it for me now.
I'll sleep with a saucepan between my legs.
- How far up do you think it went before? - Far enough.
They kept it quiet. Just said Marella was retiring "for personal reasons".
That is the most unutterably horrible story I have ever heard.
Accidents can happen. People don't realise...
What?
- What? - I suppose I'd never really...
Assuming it was an accident.
Can we move or they'll have to chip us out.
I'm sorry if I put the wind up you last night. It's just...
I think we're all in need of a cold hard cynical mind right now.
Take us through it.
15 years ago, my mother and her sister Beryl
were running through this new trick with an electric saw.
The blade that was meant to drop away jammed.
(AGONISED SCREAMS)
Yes! We've got a general picture of what happened.
So you'd have been about 12 at the time?
Fortunately, or not - depending how you look at it - Auntie Beryl had no one close.
She'd parted from her husband ten years before. He'd disappeared from the picture.
Her daughter, my cousin Hannah, had run away from home in her late teens -
as you did in the '70s -
with some keyboard player to Australia to find God in a sugar cube.
She sent back a poem in Aborigine.
The vicar read it at the funeral. It sounded like he was having a seizure.
No one expected to see her this side of the Equator ever again.
Until a couple of weeks ago, quite out of the blue...
this letter arrived.
From Hannah. She's coming to England.
Long-lost niece Hannah?
She say when?
You could understand her being nervous.
My cousin could come back with a grudge against the aunt
who was involved in her mother's death. But... I don't know.
There was something else.
Some kind of deeper unease which just took root and festered.
Then she turned up with this Vietnamese character, Pan Duc Lao.
(HANNAH) Most of it seems pretty unreal now. That's what's so wonderful.
She was older now and wiser - this was the story.
During her travels, she'd been converted to the wonders of Eastern mysticism,
which had been largely ignored by the West.
Lao was what they call a "psychic surgeon",
with "powers that went beyond the compass of known medical science. "
My father was up for all of that.
Anything to help his angina or crumbling bones.
You have to believe this, Jonathan.
The night before last, I watched it happen in front of me.
He put his fingers inside my father's chest, pulled out some kind of tissue...
and after, it was like he hadn't touched him - not a mark on the skin.
None of us got much sleep that night.
(SOBBING)
Least of all my mother.
The next morning, they were just leaving.
She said how pleased she was to have helped my father,
but now they had important work to do, so...
I'd hoped that would be an end to the horror...
but it was the beginning.
You work in the magic business too, then, Mr Creek?
- Yes, with... - What's that?
- With Adam Klaus, yes. - Jerry Bellinitus.
My hearing's not very good. I have to lipread.
- We're sorry... - What?
We were sorry to hear about your wife.
I gather you actually saw it happen.
Nothing wrong with my eyes. They're the one bit of me that still works.
Father and I left the house at about 10.30 yesterday.
I'd got a lecture at 12 and you were meeting someone for lunch.
Yes. When I got back, at about 2.30...
the weather seemed to be easing up finally.
Although, by that time, we'd had a good four or five inches of snow.
- How was Mr Deluth and his hairpiece? - On good form.
It's when he falls asleep and it slips over his eyes, you feel the game's up.
How have things been here? Any sign of improvement?
She's been up in her room with a migraine. I couldn't tempt her with lunch.
Some hormone thing, I expect.
There'll be an ovary at the back of it somewhere.
White pill and pink capsule for four o'clock, glass of water.
Alarm all set should you nod off, OK?
I'm off to the woodshed to do some whittling.
- You're a diamond, Lionel. - Sweet dreams, Jerry.
An hour must have gone by. When I opened my eyes,
out in the garden, my wife was having what appeared to be some sort of argument.
That was enough for this character, he just turned and left
as fast as his legs, and a nasty limp, would carry him.
(ALARM RINGS)
What happened next, nothing in the world could have prepared me for.
(GUNSHOT)
No!
Marella!
Please... Oh, God...
Jerry!
Dear God in heaven! What happened?
She just put the barrel in her mouth.
They were arguing. Some man. He ran off.
- Man? What man? - A man!
He was there just a couple of minutes ago.
Of course, that's when I saw it. The insanity of it staring me in the face.
The man - whoever he was, whatever he was - had left no footprints in the snow.
Charlotte... Charlotte.
I'm sorry.
Mr Bellinitus? Sorry.
- I'm a little confused. - What?
What you've said about what happened doesn't seem to make any sense.
He was out there. I saw him. As plainly as I see...
No. Your wife, sir, you said turned the gun on herself in the garden at four o'clock?
- Yes. Why? What? - Forgive me, but that's not possible.
The extent of rigor in the eyelids, face and jaw...
There's no way that lady took her life only 40 minutes ago.
It'll have to be confirmed but...
At the time you say your wife pulled that trigger,
I'd say she'd already been dead at least five hours.
We all saw what that man could do the other night.
Was this another example of his powers?
I'm afraid all that miracle healing is just a very clever confidence trick.
Those guys are ten a penny back home.
Some of them have false fingers that squash up as if they're penetrating your flesh.
They palm some animal tissue and a blood capsule
and the rest of it's in the performance.
I assume a small fee was involved?
Well...
A donation to their hospital, obviously.
But you can't write off the rest of it.
What kind of man leaves no footprints in the snow?
Mmm.
So before your cousin came, your mother was fine?
Which does make her death look a bit dodgy.
Well, except...
You've got the suicide note.
Presuming that's what it is. We found it last night in her room.
Do you want to take the lift?
- It'll be a squeeze. - May as well.
Your father, Charlotte, where do I know him from?
Jerry Bellinitus... Was he that wrestler with the long floppy hair?
- Pardon? - That was Jackie Pallo.
My father was a singer-songwriter, popular in the 1960s. "Surrender Your Arms to Mine"?
Yes. He did that act with an owl.
- An owl? - Who am I thinking of, then?
Forgive her? For what?
They got on all right together, did they?
Yes. It doesn't quite fit the script.
"Exploited assistant resents success of famous sister.
"Threatens to reveal all and has to be disposed of."
The truth is, they loved each other. Everything they earned, they shared 50-50.
- So as far as money was concerned... - Split down the middle.
Notice she signed this with a kiss.
Yes.
Hmm.
Bit of a poser, wouldn't you say? One way and another.
Adds a bit of spice to the otherwise humdrum routine of the Criminal Investigation Department.
Detective Inspector Gideon Pryke.
- Jonathan Creek. I'm a... - Friend of the family.
No mean theorist in your own right, they say.
No worries. I'm not so proud or proficient in this game I can't indulge the amateur from time to time.
So it keeps us on our toes.
How are you faring with this little puzzle?
- Well, I did notice... - Sergeant Richie.
Get Bob to run a spectrograph on this.
There's a suicide note that's been signed with a kiss.
Put them together and the results are rather suggestive.
I'm keen to hear what you make of the shortened lamp flex in the conservatory.
- Lamp flex?
It always reached before. I fail to see the rationale.
Why cut the lead of a lamp down by six inches?
- To... stop someone putting the light on in case they saw something they shouldn't?
- You'd just take the fuse out of the plug.
- Tiny detail, Mr Prekopp.
You said you knocked on Miss Carney's door at 1.30 to ask about lunch
and her response was, "I can't face anything now."
- Correct. - Those were her exact words?
- That is what she said. - Hmm.
A couple of hours later, she's outside,
having a barney with some phantom character who appears to be able to walk on air.
Mr Illusionist? How do we explain that?
If I weren't a rational man, I'd say there was devilry at work.
A mystic who removes organs without leaving a mark on the body.
Sleight of hand with a blood pellet and some pig's liver? No.
No, I don't think it's him. Is it, Mr Prekopp?
- I beg your pardon? - Back to base with him, Sergeant.
Back to base? You're joking? What sort of lamebrain logic is this?
Have you all gone stark raving mad?
I can smell guilt on a man like dung on a donkey.
How he did it will take some ferreting.
Notice his slip? A dead woman can hardly call out from behind a door.
- A dead woman? - Oh, yes.
No sleep for the lab boys. How's your forensic pathology?
Just read the last paragraph.
She had a bullet in her, but also a bloodstream full of barbiturates.
It's a biochemical certainty.
Marella Carney had already departed this world by noon -
four hours before she shot herself.
If you can come up with a better trick than that, I'd like to see it.
OK. Mr Lionel Lemuel Prekopp.
- You've worked for this pair for 33 years? - Yes.
- Originally as a dresser to Miss Carney. - Yes.
- Then as a general assistant to them both. - Yes.
Did you kill her?
Marella Carney was the finest individual I was ever blessed to know.
She illuminated the lives of millions with her grace and beauty.
I loved, admired and respected her for what she was.
- What she ever more will be. - You haven't answered my question.
No.
This is roughly where he'd have come out - our mysterious limping man.
What do you think? Quick wander around?
And look for what? It's nearly 24 hours later. There's been more snow.
I know. It's hard to know where to start on this one.
He was a bit of a star turn, wasn't he? The old Detective Inspector.
I don't know. Perhaps you'd rather step aside this time.
Just let him get on with it. He did seem more than capable.
What's the betting on Lionel? He looked gobsmacked when she carted him off.
Are we supposed to think he's an accomplice to a deliberately baffling suicide?
- Hmm. "He" you mean. - Sorry?
- When he carted him off. You said she. - Yeah. A woman. The Detective Sergeant.
- You being funny? - What?
- That was a man. - Bugger off!
- It was. - Not in a month of Sundays.
- All right. - How much?
- Ten quid. - You're on.
Now that the obligatory two hours of pointless suspense has elapsed,
tell me about that business upstairs.
Sorry?
That little dot of blood on the wallpaper.
Not everything that's red and sticky has to be blood.
- Come again? - Who wore red nail varnish?
- You saw the bottles on her dressing table. - OK. So?
So Marella Carney - a lifelong claustrophobic...
It was a joke in the trade. That's why her sister went in the trunks and boxes.
...has been travelling in a tiny lift.
Maybe she's had hypnotherapy since then, but with the suicide note...
- She just put a kiss. - Why didn't she sign it?
Why didn't she put "Marella" or "Mother" at the bottom?
Maybe because at the end of her life - the moment of final accountability -
she couldn't bring herself to lie...
about who she really was.
Oh, you top man, Jonathan!
It wasn't Beryl at the end of the saw, it was her sister.
All these years, Marella Carney wasn't Marella Carney at all.
- That explains everything. - No. It explains nothing.
It doesn't explain how she was seen shooting herself when she was already dead.
Or how a man can run away through four inches of snow
and not have left a single footprint behind.
Come on. No point freezing our bollocks off out here.
Oh, hell's teeth! Look at this!
- Not only bastards, but weird ones. - What is it?
Left the radio and stereo and just taken the morning papers.
- Morning. How's Jack the Ripper looking? - Don't ask.
Jonathan, good morning.
How are the trains? Still one or two frozen points, they said.
Frozen? What in the name of hell is this? Am I in the right theatre?
Hard to believe what a gifted designer can pull together.
Elsa has surpassed herself.
I try not to give you any old frog coat. Always for Adam something a bit special.
Frog coat.
The flippers are not restricting? Show me.
Hey, listen. Almost like a floating sensation.
Maybe a tuck in the throat. Let me get my pins.
- Jonathan... - This is it, is it?
Through the fog of Victorian London, a girl is slashed to ribbons by Toad of Toad Hall?
What kind of cretins have you got here?
We'll work around it.
And if you value your position in my team, Jonathan,
you'd be advised to moderate your language when referring to the future Mrs Klaus!
Work round it? Are you mad? I just...
What did you just say?
(BOY) This man came running from over there. He slammed the door open and shouted, "R-rragh!"
So the kids came to play in their den and found him inside, gnawing on a bone.
He took one look at them and bolted down the lane.
With a pronounced limp.
Morning.
Woodpecker, if I'm not mistaken.
Here's one the tooth fairy missed.
Pre-molar crown with a Maryland bridge.
As individual as any fingerprint.
Someone made this, and they'll have a record of who they made it for.
A name, Sergeant. Don't spare the horses.
There comes a point in your life
when leaping into bed with every gorgeous girl seems suddenly... rather tawdry.
You're looking for permanence. Commitment.
Only you could marry a woman just to get your leg over and call it a learning curve!
View it how you will. Her moral probity and purity of spirit have won my heart.
Which prompts me to ask about how your reunion with Miss Carney went.
Well... obviously she was in a bit of a state with everything that had happened.
And highly vulnerable, so I hope you were there for her when she needed it.
- Well, I... - (KNOCKING)
Everyone decent? What a shame. How are the gallstones?
Looking up, thanks. I've found a new specialist
who's promised to keep me away from hospitals.
You two off to the Canaries again?
Yeah, but no rush. If you've got things to discuss, no sweat.
I'll grab a coffee and wait in the car.
- About Charlotte. You were saying? - Hang on a sec.
Yeah, well...
You can't make a move under those circumstances even if you wanted to.
Meaning what? Because you haven't resolved this thing between you and?
I don't know. I suppose Maddy's more like...
You know a comfy old sweatshirt that you're happy to put on day after day?
- Mmm. - It's not something you even think about.
I guess we say nothing to Charlotte about your switcheroo theory.
It'll do her head in.
I'll be picking crumbs of glass out of here for ever more.
150 quid for a new window's daylight robbery.
- Do you want a coke? - Black coffee.
OK.
- Why did you just do that? - Sorry?
- Lock your door when you saw me. - Er...
"Here's an ugly pile of shit, I'd better lock my door in case he tries anything."
I don't like the look of you either. Do you want to get out and discuss it?
I said, do you want to get out and discuss it?!
Get out, then!
That's it. And very gently... out you come.
- What's your game? - This. What's yours? Tiddlywinks?
Piss off before I nick you.
You've gotta be...
Not again.
So, Mr Creek, claustrophobic woman in lift, no signature on the suicide note.
What do we think? Marella was really Beryl?
Which may affect the motives if not the mechanics of this crime.
- You think it was a crime? - These are murky waters.
If I know anything about anything, Mr Prekopp's at the source of it.
We've had to release him for now, but he'll give himself away some time.
Oh, and a possible lead on the limping man.
Been squatting in some kiddies' den in the woods.
A bit of detective work, we should have a name in a day or two.
- What? - I'm telling you.
You've got half a windscreen down there.
Where are you now? City University?
Doing a postgraduate degree course in cytology.
Staring down microscopes, basically. Till I find a teaching job some...
- Hold still, there's some more bits. - It's amazing where they get to.
Just tip him upside down over the sink. It's what I do with my toaster.
(GUNSHOT)
What in hell's name?
It's OK. It's just Father firing off a few rounds.
I thought he'd have had enough of guns. Find something to do.
It's displacement activity, I suppose.
I think you said something about scrapbooks.
- Jonathan? - Oh.
Yeah. Those press cuttings of your mother's upstairs.
Sometimes these things can spark a thought.
Of course. You know your way around.
You've known him quite a few years now?
There was a time once, I thought...
"Definitely. It's going to happen."
We'd had this really fantastic evening together.
You know when you get a feeling about someone?
I virtually offered myself to him on a plate that night...
but then, for whatever reason, he just made a polite excuse and...
- There you go. I suppose I wasn't his type. - I suppose.
Charlotte, a couple more points. Do you mind?
# Darling be tender
# Tender to this poor guy
# A love that will never end
# A love that can never die... #
This was at number 23 in the hit parade... the day we first met.
People, whenever they hear it... say it makes them want to weep.
Yes. Take it off, would you? It's upsetting me.
Charlotte, that pot of Earl Grey you mentioned...
Oh. Sorry. I'll get the kettle on.
- Mr Bellinitus, I wonder... - What's that?
Sorry. This has nothing to do with your wife's death but...
Would you do me a favour?
"I suppose Maddy's more like..."
- It looks like "comfy old sweatshirt"? - Go on.
"...that you're happy to keep putting on day after day."
Thanks. That's been educational.
Hello. He's got that look we all know and love. What have you found?
Enough to suggest that someone's done something amazingly clever
but, at the same time, unutterably stupid.
Mr Bellinitus, the man you saw in the garden,
when he ran away, which leg did he limp on?
I think...
Yes. He was dragging the left leg.
- With the weight on the right. - That tells us what?
Nothing yet, but it could tell us everything.
Tea.
I wonder whether we're going too deep here.
Whether this whole thing isn't just a pack of lies dreamed up by Mr Bellinitus.
Can you take the word of a man named after an inflammation of the foreskin?
But then why invent a story that's so ridiculous, no one's going to believe it?
The lamp.
Sometimes, Sergeant, I can be such a ninny.
OK. Thanks for all your help again. We'll be back in touch before the...
What was that? A bat?
That's the second one. Why are they out in January?
I've had a thought. Why don't I run Jonathan home?
- It'll only take 40 minutes. - You reckon?
- Save you going to Timbuktu and back. - Right.
- Thanks, - I'll get my coat.
Aagh!
Two hours, 37.
Take off 1.56 for dinner at the pub.
That's exactly 41 minutes. You're slipping.
Yes, this is all very Jonathan.
Decor, I'm guessing, Victoriana?
With posters of Maskelyne and Cook on the walls.
Yeah.
- Maybe some other time. - Beg your pardon?
Sorry, Jonathan. Could I scrounge a bed for the night?
(BANGING AND CRASHING)
It's bad enough I've got the seven plagues of Egypt without you giving me a hard time!
I thought I could be useful here tonight.
What as? A contraceptive?
As a sounding board - in case you want to discuss stuff.
I suppose you'd have got into bed and been eaten alive!
Chance would be a fine thing! Talk about a winning line on the lottery.
There's skid marks out there where she left! What are you like?!
I don't know, Jonathan, what am I like?!
A comfy old sweatshirt you're happy to keep putting on day after day?
Or a pair of underpants you can't be bothered to change?
How did you?
Baffling, isn't it?
Now I've got your attention, tell me what you found in that scrapbook
that put a spring in your step.
It may have been nothing. I don't know.
A magazine piece about 16 years ago.
Guy went round to her house to do an interview
and was treated to an impromptu illusion
in which Miss Carney turned a Rolls Royce into a Porsche.
So?
There's the shape of something that's breathtakingly impressive but...
I need to sit down with it for a while.
So our current thinking is what?
It was premeditated? A murder made to look like a suicide?
Or a suicide made to look like a suicide.
What?
If you stop and think about the footprints -
there was only one set going up to the body.
But what's to stop someone carefully walking back the same way? Retracing their steps?
Nothing, but that's not what he said. The guy ran into the woods.
And there wasn't time. His eyes never left her from the moment she shot herself.
All right. How do we confirm her identity?
It'd help if we knew where Hannah and her friend had gone.
Probably found some gullible character who's got more money than sense...
Terrific new specialist who'll keep him away from hospitals. No. Even he wouldn't...
What? Who are we talking about now?
It's Sunday night. There's no show. I wonder if they do house calls.
Can anyone join in?
- What the hell? - Adam, you of all people.
Mr Lao, we've heard so much about you. We had to come and see.
Wow. Clock that, Adam.
Whipped out your gallstones before he's touched you. How do you do it?
Sorry, Hannah. We were rather anxious to catch up with you.
For a word about the death of Marella Carney.
My God. You hadn't heard?
They read about my condition, gave me a call...
There are many facets to science we don't fully comprehend.
I keep an open mind. Does that make me stupid?
I'll be in my room.
Setting aside your scheme of taking shallow showbusiness types to the cleaners,
what happened that night between you and your mother?
We are talking about your mother, aren't we?
You say taking them to the cleaners, but there's a life-affirming role to our work.
- If a patient believes he is cured... - You can skip the sales talk.
There was a profit motive to your visit.
Starting with going to see Auntie Marella and Uncle Jerry.
Only, when you got there, it wasn't Auntie Marella that you saw.
She fooled the rest of the world for 15 years.
She knew it wouldn't take me 15 seconds.
You can't describe what goes through your head at a moment like that.
Joy?
My mother had just come back from the dead. Joy would have been good.
But I didn't feel joy.
Hannah?
I felt... Maybe this is weird.
I'm sorry.
Maybe it isn't... cheated.
Why in the name of God?
How dare she put me through the wringer? Deny me her own existence all those years.
Oh, if you'd been there. What else was I going to do?
That's when she took me back to that morning.
The saw was real enough.
The trick relied upon a false blade taking over when it hit the harness,
but for whatever reason, that's not the way it happened.
For a minute, I couldn't speak... hear...
feel.
And then, through that explosion of horror...
I saw the horror that was still to come.
I had half a minute to make a decision that would last a lifetime.
I had the power to make her mother survive.
Was that so wrong?
To restore that life to them.
- You didn't think of me. - You gave me no reason to...
- The life that I'd lose. - Where were you?
Floating down a river with a needle in your arm!
- But I might grow up! - I didn't know I still had you.
- And you wouldn't be there. - All you can do is hate me.
For what you did... you can rot in hell.
Hannah!
Please...
Next day, I had to put some distance between us.
Try and get my head round it all.
Now you're saying she's dead?
I'm sorry if I can't...
You see, to me she was never alive.
(DOG BARKING)
I feel like I'm getting snow blindness on this. Where do we go from here?
That's a very good question...
which I suspect can only be answered by someone from the Wildlife Trust.
- Give me that again. - Why were there bats flying in winter?
When this is all over, I'm going to open a sweet shop.
With big jars of humbugs and barley sugars. It's got to be an easier life.
What is a hibernaculum anyway?
It's a place where animals hibernate.
In this case, a disused water reservoir which, if the directions are correct...
Yup.
Something or someone disturbed those bats and drove them out of their hidey hole.
Someone who was driven out of his own hidey hole earlier on.
(BOTTLE CLINKS)
Point me to the sherbet lemons!
Thank you for letting me share that experience,
which has not advanced our cause one iota.
Quite the reverse, in fact.
We've just found out how the entire illusion was worked.
Didn't you see which leg he was limping on?
- E-mail from Guildford, sir. - Where?
Where? Where? Where? Yes.
ID trace on tooth crown. Here we go.
Shows what can be achieved with resources and legwork. "Re above inquiry.
"Have successfully managed to identify..." Got him.
The most elusive and significant figure in this entire cockeyed affair.
And his name is...
It's fair to say I wasn't expecting that.
(KNOCKING)
- Sorry, Inspector... - No, no. Come in.
- This is very fortuitous. - We've made a breakthrough.
Isn't it great when that happens?
Our lead on the limping man appears to have paid off.
- We know his name. - You're kidding?
Is this a joke?
No. I can't hear anyone laughing. I assume I'm serious.
Please.
The results suggest you are the owner of this crown,
found on the floor of that kiddies' den.
Yeah. Well... they would do.
You know when you gave me that toffee in the car? One bite lifted it clean out.
I stuck it in a matchbox and I thought I'd put it in my pocket.
When the guy broke in, he must have taken that
and then found there were no matches in it.
Sorry about that.
Could have saved your guys a lot of trouble... probably.
Probably.
We'll have to open up a second front on this gentleman.
Actually, I don't think that'll be necessary.
You're on the level about this.
Just popping to the loo.
OK. What you got?
Hello?
(FAINT VOICES)
- What are you trying to say? - It's the truth.
You're lying. You spend your life lying to people!
You lied before. You lied to my father. You're lying to me now!
- It's the truth. I'm sorry if it hurts. - Hurts?!
You're asking me to believe that half my life never existed! Wasn't real!
Ever since I was 12!
No.
You can't take her away from me like that. I'm sorry, no!
In death, at least, I think I have a right to reclaim my own mother.
If you'd like to come and wait, I think he's upstairs.
Jerry! Pro-am detective time.
Charlotte I'm not sure about. You haven't seen her on your travels?
She's in the back garden... collecting her thoughts.
We're leaving. I've said all I came to say.
You might be interested in what we've got to say if you can hang on.
- Something's wrong. - Sorry?
I've just got a feeling.
Somebody do something!
I suppose it's part of the ritual. We all have to sit through this?
My daughter should be in hospital.
I just...
It was like... what's the point anymore...
after that...
of going on?
There's a lot for people to come to terms with here.
A woman who for 15 years took on her sister's role as wife and mother.
Became that wife and mother for all practical purposes.
Did it matter what name she was born with?
Evidently, to one person in this room, it mattered enough to murder.
But how do you kill someone so it looks as if they'd done it themself?
Not once, but twice.
First in the morning with an overdose, then at 4 p.m. With a rifle.
And more bafflingly, why?
And what do we make of this mystery fellow - this limping man?
The last person, apparently, to speak to her before she died.
As it turns out, not a lot.
He was just some bloke living rough, with a nervous disposition and a dodgy leg.
A man who had nothing to do with anything,
but without whom we'd never have solved this case.
Yes, of all the details, the dodgy leg was the clincher.
Just slightly ahead of that lamp in the conservatory.
The flex hadn't been shortened at all.
The table had been moved further away.
That much I'd fathomed, though why was still beyond me.
No such thing as magic.
It's hard to hang onto that with this kind of stuff, even when you know it's a lie.
No one can perform invisible surgery with their hands.
No one can put a gun in their mouth when they're already dead.
And no one can run through four inches of snow without leaving any marks.
Then you realise we've been coming at it from the wrong angle.
The question's not, why weren't there any footprints?
But why couldn't you see them?
Answer - you weren't looking in the right place.
That trick with the car, performed for the benefit of a journalist and his readers,
had an echo of something.
The way he described it, she sat him in the conservatory, Roller outside the window,
flipped some blinds about, it's turned into a Porsche.
There's two or three ways to do that, but for speed only one that made any sense.
Once you've got the key to it -
that you're not looking through a pane of glass but at a mirror,
reflecting a different part of the garden entirely -
all things are possible.
Look at the almost perfect symmetry of the grounds. It must have worked a treat.
The observer has to be carefully placed for the eye line,
hence the hastily moved chair and table and the lamp that didn't reach the socket.
That could have been sorted, but the killer had only dreamed it up the night before.
I had the power to make her mother survive.
- You didn't think of me. - You gave me no reason...
- The life I would lose. - Where were you?
Floating down a river with a needle in your arm!
You can trash me from here to eternity, but you can't nail me for her death.
Not now. Not ever.
But I think we can pin a motive on you, Mr Prekopp.
When you learnt the truth, it went down like a cup of cold sick.
The truth? Well, of course, one had always suspected.
Many times over the years.
But still, the shock of hearing it confirmed.
Hearing the tears and the histrionics.
How the decision had been forced on her.
If you believe that, you'll believe anything.
Look at what she had to gain and tell me that was an accident.
Her life was a mess. Her marriage was a Greek tragedy. She'd lost her only daughter.
You can't seriously suggest?
What you're saying is just... pure evil.
Because you were blinded by her love - for you, for Charlotte.
Don't you see that was the secret to it?
That was the whole reason for it.
Whatever the truth, you'd decided.
Marella was murdered and it was time for justice.
When you remembered that mirror trick, it all fell into place.
The notion of using one of her own props against her seemed...
deliciously apt.
(JONATHAN) So you dig it out and install it.
A little adjustment with the chair.
Using one of Jerry's guns, you perform the deed.
Sort out a couple of coats that are a close match -
one for her, one for you.
Alarm all set should you nod off, OK?
I'm off to the woodshed to do some whittling.
The body's safely masked behind the mirror.
At four, when Jerry wakes up,
what he'll see is a distant hooded figure - yourself...
clearly taking her own life with a rifle.
He'll dash off to get help,
during which you're back into the house to remove the evidence.
Only now came the first of several unforeseen screw-ups.
Couple of minutes to four, the hobo appears...
What are you doing?
... trying to cadge a couple of quid or something,
and has to be scared off sharpish.
Get out! Go! Quickly.
But with luck, he didn't see him.
Your alarm hasn't gone off yet.
The act proceeds as planned.
(GUNSHOT)
No!
Oh...
Instead of disappearing back into the house, he goes outside.
The guy can hardly walk. That wasn't meant to happen either.
Still, he doesn't think to look behind him.
Even if he did, what's he going to make of footprints on the other side of the garden?
You manage to get round in time anyway. The mirror's removed
and, helpfully, it's starting to snow again.
Jerry!
You think you've pulled it off.
She's been seen committing suicide. You've got away with murder.
Then that one detail you could have done without.
You found out that your victim had already killed herself.
Not the first thing to cross your mind when you went in and she was taking a nap -
that the woman lying there was already dead.
(GUNSHOT)
What kind of guilt was it in the end...
drove her to it?
The shame of what she'd done to her daughter?
Or what she'd done to her sister?
What did she really want us to forgive her for?
Any time, pop in for a cuppa.
I'll be haunted forever now by limping men.
I knew it would seal it. If he was limping on the right leg when we saw him
and on the left leg before, it was a reflection.
Though you'd sniffed him out from the off. Well done.
Her calling through the door when she was dead.
Like I said, like dung on a donkey.
- What are you going to charge him with? - Possession of an offensive haircut?
We'll think of something.
Look after yourselves.
- All right. - Go on.
- What? - Adam's apple.
- She was swallowing. - Don't be ridiculous.
- I can see it now. It's as plain as day. - 20 quid says you're wrong.
- All right. - (MOBILE RINGS)
Jonathan Creek.
Oh, you are joking? You've got to be...
What?
- Adam has been rushed to hospital. - Gallstones?
His bride-to-be tried to beat him to death with a poker.
I never learned, Jonathan, to read those signs.
- What happened? - Our first prenuptial adventure.
She steps out of the shower, naked before me, and suddenly...
know what I'm staring at?
We've got a shrewd idea.
To find threaded through an intimate area of your fiancée's body a ring...
is challenging enough...
To find threaded upon that ring a small nickel-plated swastika...
- takes me somewhere I don't want to go. - You're joking?
The blonde blue-eyed Elsa was of more conservative stock than I'd imagined.
A Nazi.
And suddenly, all those black shirts were making sense.
At that point, things got ugly. Anti-fascist polemic does not make for great foreplay.
She began beating me with fireside equipment.
- We'd better make a move... - Okey-dokey, Mr Klaus.
Is this a conjuring trick that went wrong?
You stick swords into young ladies, they're bound to turn nasty.
We could strap him down. These magicians might start flying around the room.
Now, then... Got some gallstones as well, I see.
You'll be with us for a day or two.
There's something she said to me yesterday. Charlotte. When she was talking about you.
If I don't pass it on, it's going to be on my conscience forever.
She's never said this to you herself, in so many words, but...
you're really not her type. Sorry.
Probably as well.
Who needs all that latent hysteria? String yourself up from an oak tree?
You couldn't be doing with it.
Exactly.
- I suppose you've got nowhere to sleep. - Do you mind?
How long do the exterminators reckon it'll take? Days? Weeks?
We could be talking millennium.
- Really? - Would I lie to you?
And hey presto!
What went wrong? He's still here.
His powers have failed him. We'll have to use the lift.
(ADAM) Oh, God!