Charity Begins At Home (Part 1)

Debbie Yates has left Texas Rangers to get married. Harry has sold The Coaching Inn and bought a ballroom called the Plaza Suite in Edgbaston, taking Linda and Glynis with him. Ken, who was shot in “A Once Fluid Man”, has now returned to work after convalescing. Texas Rangers has moved into a seedy office in Smethwick.

Richard Jay, Harry’s first customer, organises a charity event at the Plaza Suite, compèred by real-life celebrity Matthew Kelly. But a journalist discovers that Jay and Harry are making a large profit out of the charity event. The Plaza Suite is besieged by television reporters and Harry is forced to admit that the reporter’s allegations are true and that the money belongs, morally at least, to the charity. Worse than that, Jay has now absconded with all the money. Harry offers to pay out of his own pocket.

Ken meets Margaret again and learns that she has now left the police force. She had faced disciplinary action after rushing into The Coaching Inn to rescue Ken (“A Once Fluid Man”). She is now running an investigation agency but is finding it difficult to work from home. When Ken happens to meet her, she is entertaining a client, Jonathan Hillary.

Texas Rangers are employed to transport artwork for an advertising agency but then are suddenly sacked by the agency’s managing director, Gerry Pascall, after being accused of stealing the agency’s ideas and passing them to a rival. Because the reputation of Texas Rangers is being blackened, Ken is determined to find out what is behind these accusations. It is Rocky who unwittingly solves the mystery. In a private arrangement with the agency, not involving Texas Rangers, he is paid to transport some Beaujolais Nouveau to a restaurant for a publicity stunt. But when he turns up at the restaurant and gives it to Langford who employed him, it turns out that Langford, while apparently employed by Pascall’s agency, is secretly working for the rival firm run by John Edwards and is passing Pascall’s commercial secrets to Edwards.

[The story continues in the following episode, “Charity Begins At Home (Part 2)”.]

Notes and episode list © Martin Underwood, 1998

Page last modified: 13 May 2009, 20:06