Season 4, Episode 8: The Judas Tree
"Call Me" by Blondie
So talk to me then. What does it say?
You talk about the back of beyond. We could be absolutely anywhere by now. Well, it's not my fault, is it?
Give us it here, a sec. Think I could've picked a more rubbish navigator?
What was that last place we went through, Lower Squiddlyswick
or something. And that's got to be an hour ago.
Oh, God knows. I'm getting such a headache.
If it's all the same with you, I'm just going to get out and ask. What do you mean "ask"? Ask who?
I don't know, whoever lives in that house, there. Try my luck, at least.
What are you talking about? What house?
Have you...?
.. got the handbrake on or did we just...?
There was a house!
Like... a funny little cottage!
Oh, great. So now I'm seeing things.
Stay right where you are.
SHE SHRIEKS
MIAOW!
DISTANT SHRIEKING
SOBBING
She does our daily washing...
I hope I'm not breaking the flow.
So, regarding your duties outside, this is the main terrace area.
It just needs a bit of a sweep each morning to clear away any debris.
Right. And a good, thorough scrub-down three times a week with a fungicidal agent. Very good.
Paying special attention to the grouting.
OK. The drains I would only bother with every four days. Drains?
You've got slender arms. If there's anything nasty growing down there, I'm sure you'll catch it early.
Human excrement in the mail-box.
Used to be a dreadful problem, of course, years ago.
Intended for the previous owner, but...
Unfortunately he never left a forwarding address.
And then at six o'clock every night, if you could just make sure the log basket's full in the lounge.
It might need a couple of trips.
Any questions so far? No.
Well it's certainly quite a full schedule then, Mrs Gantry.
And underneath here would be, what, some sort of coal-hole, or...?
No longer used, of course, since Mr Dore and his wife moved in.
Carbon footprints and all that.
Oh, sorry. Is it all right if I just...? Whatever you need to do, Emily.
Oh, thanks. Two minutes, I'll be out of your hair.
Oh, God! Sorry, I'm so sorry.
Oh, this'll have to go back and be re-done. She'll kill me. Don't be silly. Here. What am I like?
I won't tell if you won't.
Thanks.
Otherwise I'll be out on my ear before I've even started.
You'll have me down as a right liability.
Nothing of the sort. Now come on, there we go. You got them?
Thank you. That's lovely.
No problem. There we go. So, another really late one for you then, was it, last night?
Beavering away out there, you were.
Oh, well, I'm afraid the creative impulse rarely keeps regular hours.
All these plots you come up with.
How do you even begin...
to get inside the mind of a murderer?
Well, the trick, of course, is to fool the reader into trusting all the wrong people.
And then, in the most apparently innocent and everyday details, slowly sow the seeds of terror.
Do me a favour and smell that mango.
Beeswax. Who polishes fruit, Hugo?
Next thing you know she'll be simonising the bananas.
One can take pride in one's kitchen a little too... Mrs Gantry, are you well?
Oh, just a word about the new recruit. I know it's only her second day, but, er...
If you could get something slightly more appropriate organised by way of her working wardrobe?
Just to give my husband a fighting chance with his deadline?
Leave it with me, Mrs Dore.
Is that a thumb-print on that mango?
How did I miss that?
That might be a better option for tomorrow.
I should hate to see history repeating itself. Sorry? History?
What are you talking about?
Oh, well, you see, the folly of unrequited lust has more than once
brought tragedy upon this house.
According to the story, in the late 1880s,
a young Egyptian woman of striking beauty
came to work here as a housekeeper.
Her name was Selima al-Sharad.
And scarcely had she joined the household of Dr Thadeus Northcote,
than she found herself attending to his needs by night as well as day.
Until finally, when his passion for her cooled, a strange demonic force
is said to have transformed her from seductress to sorceress.
And she put a curse on her former lover, predicting the exact date
and time of day that he would meet a dreadful, agonising death.
Well, as a man of science,
he had little time for any suggestion of witchcraft,
and simply went about his business in the normal way.
Until the appointed hour came round.
She afterwards claimed that through some divine faculty
she'd actually seen "Death" approaching.
And the vision had struck terror into her heart.
But the strange thing was, no creature or living being
had come within 20 yards of him when it happened.
Nor could any other method or means of his murder be found.
Not a mark or injury anywhere on his body, or any suggestion or possibility he'd taken poison.
So her act of vengeance, through whatever supernatural agency,
forever went unpunished.
And of course,
this is the very room in which she slept.
Some say, still sleeps.
If you believe in the power of a restless spirit
to take control of a person's soul.
OK, so we come in off the lighting change
with a whip-spot to find the table.
And bon appetit.
On the night, we can but hope, you'll be smiling.
Are you kidding? The heat I've been taking last seven days, we'll be lucky if it gets to air.
Oh, man, is my career really in the crapper.
Well, you will go out on these high-profile charity assignments to Africa.
You could choose your words more carefully in future.
Goddamn Magic Relief!
They got you by the nuts every time. Do you know how long it took
to get from the hotel to that Catholic mission station in the desert? Six hours.
Couple of nuns come out to greet me, what else am I going to say?
Anything, hopefully, but "Jesus, I'm starving".
It's not your biggest lapse in taste ever, I'll grant you,
but it's up there, would you say?
OK, go.
So now they've got to keep sticking it to me with this crud every day.
Here we go again.
"Not content with flaunting his sick humour in the famine zone,
"the egregious xenophobe was on more odious form as we travelled to a village on the Eritrean border,
"where he was heard to say, 'Let's hope we don't all get eaten alive',
"a reference, he later claimed, to the high incidence of locusts.
"Although to this correspondent the words were clearly more redolent
"of cannibals and cooking pots. "
It's the press, Adam, it's what they do. Get over it.
Oh, why is this so stiff?
Just bear with me a sec.
Anyway, where's the rest of our cast got to today?
Hey! What's happening?
Is this a turn-up?
I've got a meeting down the road at six, and I suddenly remembered
it was round here somewhere you hold your top-secret rehearsals.
Of course, I didn't know the exact address. I had to ask a woman at the bus-stop, but...
So how's it all going? Feel free to acknowledge my presence. Is that...?
That's to stop him licking himself.
It's not something you want to watch.
Look, if you've come here looking for a job because you're had enough
of waitressing, sorry, you're out of luck. What's happened?
Has the bottom fallen out of the Paranormal Problem-Solving business?
Who said I was looking for work? And I don't know where you get the idea I've been waitressing.
The slight reddening of your fingertips is characteristic
of someone who's recently been handling hot plates.
The chafing on your knees almost certainly the result of cleaning floors.
Both consistent with nightly work in a restaurant.
While the absence of shopping appears to suggest you've recently fallen on hard times.
Add to this the faint imprint of the letters "Cavsnoit" on your forearm
where you've been leaning on the words "Situations vacant" in the small ads,
the conclusion is a simple one.
Well, here's another fine mess.
She just quit. Who did?
Who did? Sunitri, our uniquely gifted Bengali showgirl.
Said she couldn't in all conscience continue to work with a barefaced, racist bigot.
Three hours to curtain up, Jonathan.
Who the hell's going to do the Indian Basket Trick?
Oh, shut your row. Come on, how hard can it be?
Just poke them through and I'll get out the way.
Just poke them through?
Have you any idea of the immense physical precision required here?
It takes years of training to perfect the complex curvature of the joints.
Not even close. Got any more? She'll end up like a pin cushion.
Hey, little star, you're doing great in there! Any problems, just holler!
Nope. It's all easy peasy so far, just keep them coming.
This is amazing. Very last one now, on its way.
I'm still cool in here. I reckon you could easily get another one in.
Down, through the top. Are you serious? Just need to squeeze my shoulders back
another half an inch, and I need to suck myself in.
Perfect.
Oh, man! Will you look at that? Where did you find this girl? She's a natural.
You're going to slay them out there,
big time. Come on. I'll see you on the ice. Yeah, see you later.
Look, what is it?
That she's good, that she's young?
That she's every bit as smart as you are?
I tell you, 27 years,
I've never known anyone pick up a trick that fast. We'll see.
OK, what is it?
The old Magic Johnson not making the net enough lately?
So listen, get to work! You're on your own in town for the night.
I tell you, it's out there, man, on every street corner.
You just got to know how to reel it in.
And the way you do that...
It's with the eyes. That's how you communicate your intentions.
Check it out. See what I'm saying with my eyes?
"Come to me tonight, entrust me with your body,
"and I will pleasure every inch of it, until you scream for mercy. "
Yeah, forgive me if I don't rush out and buy your latest manual
on gender politics any time soon.
In the same series, I think wasn't it, as "Dot Cotton on Super-String Theory"?
You know I'm right, Jonathan. On every street corner.
You've just got to make it happen.
APPLAUSE
So, shall I...? Whatever... go first?
It's funny, isn't it, how you can spend months and years
getting to know someone and then, still never get to know them.
Ha, tell me about it.
When I actually think,
all you really need to know about someone you know in the first five minutes.
So you think our life stories'll keep for another time?
Give us something to talk about in our old age. There's just two things you should know about me, actually.
I don't do tongues in ears.
Always found it a bit disgusting, for some reason.
And don't be alarmed
if I suddenly wake up screaming in the middle of the night.
It's just, when I was 17,
I had this completely strange thing happen to me.
There was this woman I was sharing a flat with at the time...
That's another story. And the two of us were out in the country,
one day, middle of nowhere, and there was this cottage,
in a field,
that was there one minute,
and then - so bizarre -
just completely vanished into thin air.
And when I went over to look around,
there was this horrible old man
slithering about on the ground.
Scared me half to death.
To say that weird stuff keeps following me around!
Like one day I'm working in this shoe shop and this guy comes in,
says he's looking for an assistant for his housekeeper. And serious money, so...
And I get there, and it turns out that 100 years ago,
there was like this really bizarre murder, which no-one could explain.
Is that right? Sorry? Weird stuff? Like, unexplained, impossible things.
Bit of luck you ran into me then really, wasn't it? I have no idea what you're talking about.
Oh, you mean the only reason you wanted to come over here tonight was because you really liked me,
as a person who you just happened to bump into at a bus stop, just purely and totally by accident?
Look, I don't know
what y... Suddenly this all feels very strange.
I think... Maybe I'd better just...
CYCLE BELL RINGS
Morning.
Come in.
Your post. Thank you. I don't know if Mrs Gantry mentioned to you,
our neighbours round the corner are in New Zealand for the year. They've put the place into hibernation.
I said we'd keep an eye on the post for them.
Number 29, Ashwood House.
If you'd just pop along there every few days and have a sort through.
Anything that looks vaguely important, I'll get it forwarded.
What's this?
"You loathsome bitch. Do not think you can escape your fate. In three days, you will be dead. "
It's signed "Selima. " Wasn't she that woman...?
Perhaps you can explain why it's in your handwriting?
What? I never wrote that. I swear to God, someone must've just...
You believe me, surely?
All right.
Just go.
Good morning, good morning! How are we all this sunny day? Utterly brill house last night, didn't you think?!
The only thing, I've had an idea how we can make it look better when I go up the rope.
Cos I just worry they can tell I'm on a wire.
But how about if I climb up the rope for real, if you put enough tension in it,
and then I could just secretly hook the harness through when I get to the top, just before the flash.
Cos when we did gym at school, I was actually pretty damned nif...
God, you look like death dug up. What's happened?
What happened is I went to bed last night in the real world and woke up this morning in a Kafka novel!
You show her, I can't bear to look.
That gaff he made on Magic Relief turns out to have been a bit of a gift to the internet satirists.
Witness first, the original clip on YouTube. Thanks for coming.
Hi, I'm Klaus. Congratulations.
And then witness the spoof version, currently riding rather higher on 600,000 hits.
Oh, that is incredible.
How've they done that?
Well, they'd have had to use a very sophisticated CG programme.
The shirt, you're probably looking at rotoscoping.
Could've been a frame by frame job, or sometimes with a moving image you can just tell
it to lock onto a certain key point, and then it'll just track that element for you as it goes...
Yes, thank you! Can you hear yourselves?
I'm up here planning Operation Barbarossa, and you're talking pixels!
I've got to get on to PA or something, lay down some sort
of formal apology before this whole thing goes thermo-nuclear.
Sweetheart, it's me...
Can you believe someone actually sat up all night creating that?
I mean, you've got to give them credit. PHONE RINGS
Yeah, hello?.. Oh, hi.
Listen, I am so sorry you didn't get my text last night.
It's just I had this amazing last-minute thing come up
and I had to dash off again, after you'd come in specially.
'It was a bit of an odd night in the end... '
I wound up with this guy I met at a bus stop, who was...
Well, not all I thought he'd be, and...
Oh, God, really? No, you want to be careful, there are some serious wack-jobs knocking about this town.
You could come a right cropper. Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about, what took me to your website,
it's like, all that stuff I told you on the phone,
about this woman and the doctor,
is starting to really freak me out now, cos the other day, right,
I was outside, near the wood shed...
I tell you, Joey, something's going on in this house.
Something frightening.
'Like a treasure map or something. '
And this was hidden away in the desk in his study?
Which she obviously didn't want me to see.
It doesn't take a genius to work out, does it? Someone's got it in for you round here, big time.
Dumbwoman's Lane?
Can't be many of them around.
Intriguing. And there was no sign of the soil being turned over, or anything being dug up or buried?
In which case, what the hell was she up to? I've been racking my brains.
Sounds as if you've got yourself a real little House of Mysteries there,
with this, what's it called, Green Lanterns place?
Should keep you busy for an hour or two.
Hang on, what's that strange smacking noise I can hear?
Couldn't be the sound of you licking your lips at the prospect of getting stuck into a case like this?
I had a dog like that once. Made you feel so guilty if
you didn't keep throwing this rubber ball at him all the while.
My trouble, I'm too good-natured for my own good. Is that right?
Though I don't suppose Emily'd have a problem if I brought in an office junior as a sounding board.
Oh, really. Well, you can just...
Emily? Do you know,
it's a bit old hat this, don't you reckon, flying round the stage as a fairy?
What if I was, I don't know, like a little imp or something, all in red.
And he could be dressed as maybe a wizard or something, like in that Mickey Mouse film.
Might run it past him, see what he thinks.
So when you were going to meet someone the other night, and then couldn't make it...
Sorry? Yes, I might have a bit of repair work to do there,
by the sound of things...
Oh dear.
How extremely unfortunate.
Oh, what've you found this time.
Hi, my name's Adam Klaus, and I just want to take a moment before I go onstage...
What on earth possessed him to record it in his dressing room?
.. and do what I love doing most of all, entertaining people of all races and creeds,
to register a big, heartfelt apology for what I now realise was a stupid
and unguarded remark on my recent trip for Magic Relief.
Anyone who really knows me, knows my stance on the issue
of race relations could not be more positive...
You can kind of see where it's going, I think... It was the legendary Stevie Wonder who said
"Ebony and Ivory
"live together in peaceful harmony. "
Man, I'm playing that piano.
So, this would be...?
Fairly simple colour key.
Amazing.
Oh, God. No!
Ow! Ow!
KNOCKING Emily? Emily, you OK in there?
What's happened?
What's the matter? Oh, you poor thing.
Shh, it's all right. It's all right.
It's all right. It was so real...
I was so frightened...
Mr Dore,
is everything all right? I heard such screams.
No, it's OK. It's OK.
A bulb must have blown, I think, that's all.
Watch where you're treading, there's glass everywhere.
Do you want to go and reset the fuses? Everything's fine.
I'm so sorry. It was just that picture on the wall
frightened me half to death.
Really? What about the picture?
Well, it was...
I don't know now.
Maybe I just... OK. Look, Harriet, she's probably just tired.
Come on, why don't we leave you in peace, sleep it off?
One second. What do we have here?
What am I supposed to make of this?
Morning. I think you've already met this person.
Emily, feel free to tell me to bugger off.
Obviously, you're going to be a mass of nerves.
Who wouldn't, with all the madness that's going on round here?
Insecurities can play havoc
with your mental health,
as I unfortunately managed to demonstrate, not very thoughtfully, the other night.
What he's trying to say is he's such an anally fixated big-head,
he thought the only reason you wanted him was for his world-famous powers of deduction.
As opposed to his charming personality and animal magnetism.
But look, come on, you've got to hang in here and not just go
imagining this woman's somehow taken over your mind, making you write those weird notes and whatever.
That's just horror story time, it's not real. Sometimes I think...
my whole life is a horror story.
That house that just disappeared.
The man in the grass.
It's like, maybe I can see things sometimes
that aren't there any more.
You know, the mystery of the vanishing cottage
may be the least challenging of this whole puzzle.
And when you stop and think about it, the man in the grass
would be part of the only explanation that could possibly fit.
It's a bit of a flyer,
but the real clue to what you saw that night
will almost certainly be the weather.
Excuse me, I'm very sorry to interrupt. Jonathan Creek, is it? I'm Harriet. Joey Ross.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to steal your friend for a while. Top guest room, Emily, in five minutes.
Some of that bed linen from the other day really won't do, I'm afraid.
No, no, you jest. How could I object to a visit from Jonathan Creek?
I mean, we plough a similar furrow, don't we?
I plot them, you solve them. Murders.
I've not long been back here, of course. The family home, this where we all grew up.
My brother and I, well, it seems like ancient history now.
Till I took off overseas, earned a crust or two, and then a couple of years ago,
fresh marriage, fresh start,
something seemed to just beckon me back.
The lingering air perhaps, of Victorian mystery.
You'll be familiar, I imagine, with the nuts and bolts of the case?
An absolute classic of its kind, by all accounts.
Victim remotely positioned, under constant observation,
succumbs to his fate at a time precisely predicted.
The cause of his death never resolved from that day to this.
Unsurprisingly, this Egyptian femme fatale character
was not slow, after that,
to exploit her celebrity status.
I've ransacked her personal account of those years for some sort of clue, how she did it, but...
Em, yes, riveting as all this is, of course, to students of ancient history, there's a small matter
of unexplained death threats which I don't know if anyone's taking very seriously, but... No, no, no,
it's most alarming, particularly the one last night.
First of all, who could have put it there?
And more to the point, what the hell does it mean?
"Beware the approach of Isis. "
Isis being? An ancient Egyptian deity, fertility goddess if I remember.
Or a part of the River Thames in Oxfordshire depending on your preference.
Picked up some interesting pieces then, Mr Dore, on your travels.
Except for that one, funnily enough.
Discovered one day here in the attic.
It seems to date right back to the earliest owner.
Some sort of primitive reed instrument apparently.
Look, I'm going to have to love you and leave you for now.
One or two calls to make, so hopefully catch up with you later.
An Ellison Starberth Mystery.
You ever read any of these?
I'm afraid I have.
What?
No, it's just,
the way the dust in here's been disturbed, I'd say this has
been very recently removed, and then put back again.
So who's doing it?
Dodgy death threats and phoney photographs.
You've only got a choice of three.
Or four if we count the spirit of our Victorian witch, whatever she was,
who appears able to re-materialise in a pile of logs.
Ah, now, I've got a pretty good idea how that was done.
Father Alberic, how are you today?
I'm a bit earlier than I said, Mrs Gantry, I hope it's not inconvenient.
Now, you'll correct me if I'm wrong here, I've no doubt, but was there not a very old magic trick once
where you had this big sheet of glass on the stage, tipped over at an angle, and then
some bod in the orchestra pit, who'd be reflected upwards, to look all kind of eerie and translucent.
Pepper's Ghost. First patented February 1863.
Which means all they'd have to do would be to prop up their glass here
and then your ghostly actor, probably just with this woman's photo stuck
on their face or something, would take up position down below, underneath the open trapdoor.
HE SNEEZES
I should never make the mistake of stroking a long-hair, they always set me off.
I'm sorry about that. He'll settle down now, over there by the bird table.
Can I get you an antihistamine or...
I won't risk it with the blood-thinners.
Heaven knows, I'm a walking dispensary these days, Mrs Gantry.
They think there might be an early malignancy knocking about somewhere. But apart from that, you're well?
You're not going to do anything silly with that trap-door?
I know, but we don't want...
I suppose you're going to say this is all my fault? Yes!
I mean, she comes in here every day, at six, I think it is,
so it's not like we'll be stuck down here forever.
Just the 5½ hours then, imprisoned in an airless dungeon beneath half a hundredweight of tree stumps
Why we both had to come down in the first place, I'm not entirely sure!
Well, so we could check out that theory, see if there was a sheet of glass that they...
Fortunately, I like nothing better when trapped in a coal-hole,
than to curl up with a good book.
Might just help me to forget about the fact that...
Yes, all right. I know what you're going to say, so there's no need to say it, thank you.
What was I going to say? I know exactly what you were going to say.
You don't need to make things worse by saying it.
We should never have had those two cups of coffee. Just shut up and read!
It was cos it was linen, it was kind of hard to do.
Is that one, OK, though? I'm not sure.
No. And if I could just see this one. Same problem.
So you've recently acquired a new helper, I hear?
That'll all end in tears, the way things are going.
And why he thinks I can't manage on my own any more...?
I'm as fit as I ever was, Father Alberic.
Fit enough, I hope, to come and buff up my pews next Saturday at the usual time.
All right, I am now officially very bored.
And very uncomfortable. These cement bags are like rock.
Yes? I didn't say anything. Well, would you mind saying something,
before I go completely stir-crazy? What's that book told you so far?
So far, the victim was one Dr Thadeus Northcote,
a prominent neuro-surgeon and known associate of the eminent Victorian scientist Sir Francis Galton,
himself a close friend of Charles Darwin. Skipping the prologue? Significant facts?
I don't know,
there's a whole bunch of photos in there which may or may not tell us something.
Thing that keeps bugging me is this business of the blood-curdling scream.
The fact that she screamed and then he collapsed.
According to her, because the vision of Death approaching struck terror into her heart.
It's clearly bollocks.
It's almost as if...
No. What is very persuasive is his theory that she couldn't resist the idea of leaving some kind
of cryptic hint behind,
somewhere in the book, about how she pulled it off.
It may be nothing, but if you look at that dedication she's put in the front...
"With thanks to HCN, none but we may know. "
Northcote's wife was named Helen.
What, you think the two women might've been in cahoots somehow?
I don't know. What I do know is I'm absolutely going to burst in a minute if I don't...
Hang on a sec.
Light! Oh, I don't believe this, what are the chances?!
That's the very thing!
Cement bags indeed.
You know what you've got here, don't you? Do I? What?
Oh, you are jok.. Cat litter?
However long's this been here? Thank you, God.
You're not seriously going to use that?
"All-natural, instant-clumping clay formula. "
Just hold that steady is all I ask.
Try not to wobble.
We're running a bit dry here, Mrs Gantry. Any chance of a top-up?
Won't be two seconds. So you're managing to get some down time, I hope, Father.
Oh, yes. Still hanging in with the old carpentry?
I always say, if I have a vice, it's to be screwed on the edge of a bench.
And that's got me into trouble on more than one occasion.
Better?
You sure you don't want to...?
Much better, thank you.
There's plenty more there, if you should feel the need.
How long's that coffee had to percolate now?
A good 2½ hou...
Oh, God, no.
"Beware the approach of Isis. " What?
That just took me back to when we were in the kitchen.
Because what did that first note say?
"In three days you will be dead. " Isis.
I think I know now what it means.
It's not a river or an ancient Goddess. Well, what does it mean?
What it means, I've got a horrible feeling,
is that Harriet Dore has only got a minute left to live.
Thank you. Whoops. A drop more, Mr Dore?
What are you doing? Have you gone completely insane?! Get your hands off me! Get away from me!
Dear God above.
Mrs Dore! You're mad!
Help me!
Help me, somebody, help me! This isn't happening. Oh my God!
No! No!
Oh, my God, oh, my God!
Father, can you manage? Yes, yes.
Stay with me, my darling.
Oh, my God... All right, my darling.
Mr Dore, may God have mercy on us!
For God's sake, call for a doctor, an ambulance!
Yes, yes. Absolutely. Oh, my precious...
In the name of God, who did this?
I couldn't stop her. She dragged me across the room,
grabbed me by the throat and pushed me.
No!
I wasn't even there!
I'd just gone round to put out the bins out,
ready for the... Oh, God!
She did it.
Emily! She murdered me.
For God's sake, just get her away from here. Just leave us!
Officer, the young girl, she can't have gone far. Find her!
Help! Is there anyone out there?!
HIGH-PITCHED NOISE
They had one of those, like, police shrinks in here this morning.
Reckons I'm distorting things in my mind,
blocking out what happened, cos I can't bear to face it.
What do you think, Jonathan?
You believe I killed her?
I think it's what someone wants us to believe. And they've gone to a hell of a lot of trouble
to put this case together very convincingly. And somehow, we've got to prise it apart.
And it's not impossible.
The weirdest things sometimes, that don't add up, once they're explained...
That cottage you saw and then didn't see, we've had a thought.
Never mind how unlikely the thought, just run with the sheer, cold analysis.
A building cannot disappear.
It can't even seem to disappear.
But what looks like a building, that can seem to disappear,
that could have been placed in that field deliberately, in the middle of nowhere,
for a purpose that's unlikely to occur to any of us.
These days, probably, no-one'd go to the trouble of building the facade
of a fairytale cottage on location for a scene in a movie now long forgotten,
pending the arrival of a film unit in a few days' time.
When you first spot it, during a lull in the wind, the illusion's complete.
A second later, our "night watchman" character, there to keep an eye on the site
takes a nasty tumble.
One of those things, I suppose.
We'll never know now, will we?
But it does just show that...
No, I don't suppose we ever will.
We are all of us unique and blessed before God,
and the tragedy of any loss touches us all.
But while Harriet Dore today is no longer flesh,
her spirit, I know, walks among us still.
Quite a fair turn-out then, you'd say, on the day.
Considering she was hardly famous outside her publishing circles.
I doubt there's anyone round here would have known her from a bar of soap.
But how prophetic were your words, Mrs Gantry - "It'll all end in tears. " Yes.
Excuse me for a moment.
So you'll be staying on, will you, at the house?
Of course, he's talking now about selling up and going back to the Far East to live.
So much to come to terms with.
And with this latest development, one wonders if he'll ever get over it.
Latest development? Oh, you haven't heard?
The coroner's report has been knocking about for days.
Though if you want my opinion, it was definitely news to him.
At the time of her murder, Harriet Dore was eight weeks pregnant.
Morning! I was just trying it for size and I seem to have broadened out a bit around the gills.
Sorry to disturb you. You need a hand?
It may seem macabre, but I always say, if you want a job doing...
And listen, I must tell you, Miss Ross, I'm such a devotee of your work.
The way you put that case to bed last year, the painting in the haunted attic.
Master-class in ratiocination.
I think some of these screws'll have to come out. Right, of course.
If your Dr Watson chap is acquainted with drills... Intimately.
No, just so we've got it right, Father, order of events that day.
You were all sitting there at the table, you heard all these
noises, and then you actually saw her pushed out of the window?
It's a dreadful business, to be sure.
And so Emily was the only other person around the house that day?
No way that looks good, does it? DUCKS QUACK
That's my personal copy.
Well thumbed, of course. Like yourselves, I find these things quite addictive.
Oh, and something interesting I found out the other day,
Helen Northcote's middle name was Catherine.
That's not in the book, of course.
Oh, really. But it pretty much nails it then?
HCN? And if you're looking for a weapon that could kill a man
in the middle of a lawn without being seen or heard,
how about that blowpipe we saw in his study?
What's-her-face screams, so he turns his head, and gets it in the neck from the wife.
Excellent! You have the mind of a true logician.
Though sadly, my dear, that object in the glass case is no blowpipe. Far too short.
And there were no puncture marks or poison darts anywhere on the body.
Also, I'm afraid, it was Katherine spelt with a K.
Still, very interesting that you bring it up, because when I was
there last week, discussing the funeral arrangements...
I happened to notice that pipe was no longer there.
It was an odd meeting - he seemed to be burdened with the issue of man's accountability for his sins.
And the strangest request, he asked if he might come to the church and undergo confession.
At which point, I'm afraid I had to leave, when the cat came in.
Very low tolerance, you see, to our feline friends.
And once the nasal cavities start opening up...
And so, did he? Did he what?
Come to you for confession.
Oh, yes. The very next morning.
I can't tell you, obviously, what he said to me.
Confidentiality of the box.
That as well, but mainly because I fell asleep.
Most dreadful lapse on my part.
All the drugs one has to take,
at my age, I'm afraid it's just... PHONE RINGS
Oh, sounds like me. It must've dropped out. Oh, it's gone dead.
Oh, well, they'll call back.
Oh, that's interesting.
The Judas tree.
Come again? You recognise that?
Oh, yes, cercis siliquastrum?
Always seemed a misnomer for such a lovely specimen.
But according to legend, of course,
this was the tree from which Judas Iscariot hanged himself after betraying Our Lord.
Was there any reason, would you say,
Mrs Gantry, why Miss Somerton would want the deceased out of the way?
Let me rephrase that, was there any suggestion that she might have had
designs of her own on her employer?
I can't really recall.
Well, let me refresh your memory.
Was there an incident recently, in the night, when you had occasion
to visit the accused's bedroom when a light fused?
Well, yes.
And can you describe for us exactly what you saw when you reached the room?
Mr Dore was there,
and Miss Somerton, the accused,
had her arms around him
and her head on his shoulder.
She had...
only her underwear on.
She was squeezing him very tightly.
I couldn't hear what she was saying.
Well, no. I saw no-one push her exactly.
But you heard sounds of a violent struggle going on, and your wife screaming at someone.
Yes. We've heard that the shred of cloth that was in her hand,
it has now been confirmed, was torn from the accused's dress.
And before she died, Mr Alberic, can you tell us as precisely
as your memory will allow, what were her last words?
She said, "She did it.
"Emily. She murdered me. "
I'd be a lot closer to cracking this thing if I knew what it was I was trying to crack.
Obviously, a major fit-up, but I don't fancy her chances with that jury.
I don't know. Have you noticed there's a lot of dodgy echoes of creepy movies here?
Gaslight and The Shining spring to mind. And you wouldn't say the novels
of Hugo Dore were always noted for their original plotlines.
All right, so he's found out his wife's been playing around.
Decides to bump her off, but make it look like the work of his amorous young housekeeper.
He knows she still has nightmares about some weird experience that happened 20 years ago,
so he uses that back story about our Victorian friend
to try and spook her into believing she actually did it.
Question. Mmm?
What are we doing in this place?
The owners are in New Zealand, didn't she say? The whole thing happened weeks ago.
But a bit of re-staging and elucidating can sometimes just help to focus the mind.
OK, so you're coming up the stairs, like she did.
And from inside the bathroom you hear...
I push open the door
and go to the basin.
So whoever it was just tucked themselves in behind the door
while her back was turned, and then slipped out again while she was...
So that's no big deal.
The only problem being, how could they possibly know she was going
to come here in the first place, to set up a stunt like that? Well, fairly obviously, they couldn't.
Which can only mean there's something else going on in this house
that we've yet to get to the bottom of.
OK. More aimless foraging, I think. You want to take upstairs?
I'll go down.
LATCH CLICKS
DOOR SHUTS
All clear out here now, when you're ready.
Yeah, actually, I might need a bit of a hand.
Now, what do we suppose he came up here for? Hold on, I think I've got cramp or something, in my knee.
Makes sense, I suppose, he'd use this place for anything he wanted to hide.
Hello? Can you hear me out there?
I'm jammed solid! Hello?!
Ah! Aha!
Hidden, we can only assume, to prevent its true function from becoming apparent.
Jonathan! Awhh! Fascinating.
And at this stage, of course, the purest hypothesis,
but it would certainly all slot together very neatly.
The scream in the garden, the light bulb that blew in her room that night and...
.. HCN. I mean, is that obvious or what? We could have Googled it and got there quicker.
Jonathan, can I possibly have your attention?!
I am seriously stuck in here! And short of a ruddy Caesarean... Yes, hang on a sec.
What the hell have you got yourself into?
I didn't have any choice, did I, with the doors all locked.
Just pull. I'm going to have to put it on its side.
Oh, God, that's not helping one little bit.
Careful!
Pulling me arm out of it's socket. How is this going to work?
Rocking about all over the place. My bloody shoulder...
What's happening? Oh, oh, ah!
Oh, ow, ow! Ah ah ah! Oh, oh, aah!
SHE COUGHS
Hopefully it was insured.
Oh, give me some good news.
What was all that up there about screams and gardens and light bulbs?
"Significant facts," was it, you said?
And what did I say about our Victorian Dr Northcote?
That he was a close friend of the scientist, Sir Francis Galton,
who, among his many varied achievements, is widely credited as the inventor of the dog whistle.
120 years ago, thereabouts,
a previous housekeeper at Green Lanterns famously put a curse on her employer that caused him to die,
apparently without any physical explanation.
To an impressionable mind, the idea of that malign presence still in the house,
somehow controlling her actions, was fairly terrifying,
and may have had a direct bearing on the run-up to Harriet Dore's death.
The mechanics of that first crime, from all the evidence,
were pretty daunting.
A healthy man with a healthy heart, in the middle of a lawn,
suddenly keels over and dies.
No marks or wounds were detected, no food or drink that could have been poisoned,
there was no possible trigger that could have caused his death at exactly 3.15,
the moment it was predicted, just a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream that came from the bushes.
No significance to that, fairly obviously.
Unless that scream was not a reaction...
.. but the instrument of murder itself.
A scream that set in motion something so lethal
that it could kill within seconds, and then disappear,
quite literally, into thin air.
Hydrogen cyanide,
HCN,
could be pumped into a small airtight container...
.. and then sealed with a piece of glass known to shatter at a certain frequency.
SHE SCREAMS
Fair to say you'd need specialist skills to put something like that together,
but I think we can assume that she had the contacts,
and that her powers of persuasion were well up to it.
But where do we think the inspiration for something like that would come from?
A prototype ultrasonic whistle,
known to be in Northcote's possession at the time.
Too weak, certainly, to crack a watch at that distance,
but used on a custom-made replica light bulb,
just outside a bedroom door...
Lights are geared to go off all over the house and, in the dark,
the picture's easily switched back.
That creepy photo
and the forged letters...
.. and the apparition in the woodshed, from the moment she arrived in the house,
were all part of an orchestrated campaign to make Emily Somerton feel
and look like a woman out of control, who was capable of murder.
INAUDIBLE
So let me just see if I have this correct, Mr Creek.
Mr Dore, as a calculated ploy to frame the accused,
has deliberately orchestrated all the events you describe,
and then pushed his own wife out of the window.
How exactly, when he was sitting at a table
on the far side of the garden with two independent witnesses?
It wouldn't be the first case of this kind where an accomplice was involved.
An accomplice who appears to have borne
a miraculous resemblance to Miss Somerton, according to the deceased.
From her position in the room,
the way the light was coming in through that other window,
she'd have been virtually in silhouette.
Bearing in mind all the death threats,
the victim's already primed for her to try something.
The fact it was all over in seconds,
Harriet Dore saw exactly what she expected to see.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you now reached a verdict? We have.
Is it a unanimous verdict? It is.
On the charge of murdering Harriet Dore, do you find the defendant,
Emily Anne Somerton, guilty or not guilty?
Guilty.
"As she was led away to the cells, with a look of barely disguised resignation, and many long years
"to reflect on her crime, the defence team must have
"pondered the wisdom of fielding as their star witness the self-styled 'magic sleuth', Jonathan Creek,
"whose ludicrous musings and utterly improbable reasoning
"would have stretched any jury's credulity to breaking point. "
The thing is, they're right.
All that guff I cobbled together about an accomplice in silhouette
and "seeing what she expected to see",
doesn't get near to explaining what happened that day.
And the more you turn it all over, the more you realise that Hugo Dore
was a whole lot smarter than we gave him credit for.
To kill someone in such a way...
that the victim is going to accuse the wrong person seconds before they die,
it's bordering on psychopathic genius.
Of course, there is one other possibility,
which we both know is staring us in the face.
You know what I'm saying, Jonathan.
Cos I know what it is
to believe in someone that much, to build your whole future on someone,
because it's something you know and feel, deep down, is right,
with every instinct you ever trusted.
And, you know, that is absolutely the way,
the true and perfect way,
to get shat upon from a great height.
I know.
I know you know.
And it makes no difference, does it?
None whatsoever.
So, which of the many drawing boards do you want to go back to?
I suppose it's a lot to hope for, it's suddenly going to just fall into place.
Except somewhere here is the key to how it was all worked.
You just hope for some slight glimmer.
Teaspoon? Where he dropped his cup when it happened.
'Course...
Cos he's allergic to cats. Excuse me?
Cos they never made it clear, did they, in court,
which table they were sitting at.
But if the cat was over there, with the birds,
the only one they could have been sitting at...
Amazing.
It's only when you're actually here, you can see it -
the solution to the whole trick.
And it pretty much explains, I think, who was washing their hands in that bathroom.
OWL HOOTS
Darling, I'm afraid we've got company.
Actually, we were just passing.
So, I wonder what you've got to say about all this now then, Jonathan?
What would Ellison Starberth say at this point?
We know that between you, you've pulled off as cynical and staggering a deception as I've ever come across,
in order to incriminate an innocent young woman.
Convincing us all that you'd fallen to your death that day, impaled on a set of metal spikes.
Just a bit impressive.
Although we're still quite curious, it has to be said, what it is keeps bringing you back to this place,
to the Judas Tree.
An unnaturally deep concern, it would seem, for its welfare.
If it weren't for the location,
I'd almost be prepared to guess it was one of you that planted it.
You're angling for the truth, Jonathan.
I wonder if you've got the stomach for it?
Go on... Look, we don't have to play this game.
Let them work for it, they're so bloody smart.
Oh God, I just got that shiver.
This is like when people lay flowers at the side of the road.
Something happened here.
Something horrible.
Someone close to you?
It's the strangest thing, you know?
Growing up with an older brother,
who's younger than you.
Strange, but constantly fulfilling.
Today we call these people "special".
Well, Danny was certainly that.
A child at 27,
born into a world he couldn't possibly hope to understand.
Stop! Stop! Stop the car!
Please, get out! I don't know what to do. Can you help us?
Thank you so much. She's just there.
Straight ahead.
It's my ankle.
Shit!
SHE SCREAMS
DULL THUD
He survived just long enough to paint the picture.
Of course, when they finally picked them up, and took it to court,
two sweet young girls,
forced to defend themselves against a man of proven mental inadequacy.
Of course all the evidence went their way.
.. Not guilty. SHE EXCLAIMS
But you got past it.
For 20 years,
left the country, changed your name when your career took off.
It's only since you got back,
something,
or someone, persuaded you it was time to settle that score.
It's not very fashionable, but...
sometimes I think you have to meet brutality with brutality.
So what happened?
You tracked them both down?
Decided they were going to pay for what they'd done, one with a jail sentence,
the other with her life.
Echoes of movies should really have got me there sooner.
Cos the way you did it was straight off a film set, wasn't it?
Only instead of using a stunt performer, who might just pass muster in the wide shot,
you did something quite barbaric.
.. OK.
As Emily leaves the bedroom,
your two independent witnesses are already taking up their positions,
in the one part of the garden where the illusion will work.
So at 3.15, as per your cryptic death threat...
Have you gone completely insane?! Get your hands off me!
Help me! Help me, somebody!
SHE SCREAMS
A matter of seconds, you're downstairs, behind the gate.
By the time the other two get there, the switch has been made.
So seamlessly no-one suspects a thing.
And, of course, you'd already been at that fringe on her dress beforehand.
After they've gone, you make the switch back.
Police, paramedics, undertakers,
all take the whole thing at face value. You've identified the body.
And as we heard the other week,
no-one round here knows Harriet Dore from a bar of soap.
When Emily took cover in that house,
she couldn't have known how close she was to the truth.
So that was the perfect hidey-hole for a week or two, till things blew over?
And since then, what? A hotel room somewhere,
sitting it out till a few months' time, you'd be back together, overseas.
That wooden pipe, it turned out, wasn't that much of a clue in the scheme of things.
If you hadn't made such a big deal about hiding it.
The curse of a crime writer, exploiting all those parallels.
Just seemed to knit it all together.
And that mess in the hall, I take it, was your handiwork...
.. the day I went back for those reading glasses.
It never flowered, you see,
that was always the beauty of it.
Splendid pink blossom
in early spring.
So what now?
If this were a detective novel...
You'd hang yourself from one of the branches, cloaked with shame,
I'd turn myself in and your friend would go free.
The real world, sadly, is not so neatly structured.
They didn't believe your story last time, you think they'll believe this one?
All right, her condition...
we had no idea about. Would it have made a difference? I don't know.
But I do know it was a lunatic idea, coming out here in the first place tonight.
Can I suggest, sweetheart, whatever we need to discuss at this stage of
the game, we discuss another time, another place? Of course.
But, of course, when I got your text, it seemed so urgent... My text? Hang on, it was you...
Oh, I can't believe it...
This was a setup?
Don't look at us.
Then, who?
I suppose it was a betrayal of trust and confidence, in a sense,
but when he found out, you see,
an innocent life had been lost in that whole gruesome business...
.. that's when he felt the need to declare his crime.
INDISTINCT
HE SNORES
And then my dilemma, of course, was no less.
That information was sacred, and not for me to pass on.
But when I spotted you out there last night, in the garden, it did occur to me.
A couple of urgent text messages would bring them and us together.
But as you say, it does all feel rather final somehow.
The hand of God, do we think,
balancing our lives?
Our sins are never forgotten.
Our punishments,
merely deferred.
DOOR LOCKED
Oh.
Oh, dear. Bad news?
It's from Mr Karswell, the deacon at St Patrick's.
Father Alberic.
They found him two nights ago.
He'd apparently made a DVD.
'We are all of us unique
'and blessed before God and the tragedy of any loss touches us all.
'But while I am, today, no longer flesh, my spirit, I know,
'walks among you still. '
As he said, if you want a job doing.
'It's a well-worn phrase, the Lord took him to early. But you know,
'I've had a long and fulfilling life in the service of our saviour.
'Even shared his interest in woodwork.
'An example of my efforts, as a matter of fact... '
Now I know I speak for most people here when I say I'm sick and tired of being lectured to by
white middle class intellectuals, about what I am and what I'm not meant to be offended by.
Believe it or not, we don't need to be patronised, we can think for ourselves.
And what I know about this guy is that he's real, he's sincere, and he's got it here.
And we're proud to have him on the roll call tonight,
working for The Race Against Racism, would you please give it up for Mr Adam Klaus.
CHEERING OK, folks, let the show commence!
HE STOPS CLIP
HE STARTS CLIP
How was lunch? Enrico Caruso could scarce have sung its praises.
And we had a fine and fertile discussion, did we not, on the future course of the act.
You could say my John Dore was drizzled with creative juices.
I don't think I'll bother.
And talking of Dores,
are you over the worst yet? Bless him.
Cos you've got to be gutted after all that?
But listen, you know what I've been thinking, that police shrink she said about
might've been onto something, when she talked about blocking out things that have happened?
It wouldn't surprise me if she had absolutely no recollection of that stuff with his brother.
Like she'd airbrushed it all out of her head, the court case, everything.
You read about all that bollocks, like a kind of denial.
And yet she remembered the man in the grass.
Well, selective maybe.
Who knows? Anyway, I'll just be a sec.
So, last night's gig. Did you log on yet, see whether we made it in one piece on to YouTube?
Er, yes. Yes, it's certainly on there.
It's very much as you'd expect.
Well, let me see.
Right.
There's one version.
Oh, what have we here?
Uh, yes, I think someone did also post something...
different.
What they've done there, it's quite interesting actually, they've used these straight lines up here...
Like the diagonals on the hat.
Basic reference points.
To make it easier to matte in the Klansman's hood over my face.
Exactly... HE STOPS PLAYBACK
Isn't that interesting?
Now, I just have to remind myself, whose idea was it to stage this
whole routine dressed as a "grand wizard" in the first place?
Cos I know it wasn't you.
Oh!
There's a coincidence. What?
Just coming up to 3.15.