The Devil You Know

Ken and Margaret are employed to watch a husband, Ronnie Hains, who is suspected of having an affair. They follow him and his girlfriend to a boating lake and take a series of incriminating photographs of the couple, then Ken uses up the remainder of the film taking pictures of Margaret. It all looks like an open-and-shut case.

But a robbery has been committed nearby and the chief suspect, who is none other than Ronnie Hains, claims to the police that he was elsewhere at the time – Ken and Margaret’s photographs and statements prove that he was on the lake. Ken and Margaret are questioned at length by two smug detectives, Joyman and Pelham, who are particularly hostile to Margaret because she used to be in the police herself. However when the BDI office at the Plaza Suite is broken into and only Ken’s photos of Margaret are stolen, they and the police become suspicious. Close examination of the negatives reveal that, in the background, a friend has taken Ronnie’s place at the crucial time, allowing Ronnie the opportunity to commit the robbery. To get conclusive proof, Ken and Margaret offer to sell the negatives to Ronnie and his wife. With the police recording every word, Ronnie eventually admits that the allegations of an affair were all a ploy to buy him the perfect alibi. He draws a gun but Margaret disarms him.

Meanwhile, Harry and a friend, Roger Evans, go for a gourmet weekend at a hotel owned by a restaurant critic, Gerald Neale. Roger used to own a restaurant, La Camargue, which went out of business after a series of very bad reviews by Neale. Now he runs a theme restaurant, Skool Mealz, which serves food that is reminiscent of school dinners and which employs waitresses in short skirts to scold and “punish” any punters who break the “school rules”. It is a great success but it is not exactly in the same league as La Camargue.

At the hotel, a whodunit murder weekend is being staged and a fussy, over-enthusiastic woman called Rose is probing everywhere for clues. Harry eventually learns that she is really a journalist, looking for evidence that Neale is not what he seems. She discovers that he has been giving glowing reviews to his own restaurant, owned in his wife’s maiden name. He is also caught red-handed passing off tinned food as his own creations. Neale is discredited (“He who lives by the tin will die by the tin”) and Roger decides that he will try again to open a similar restaurant to La Camargue.

Grafton Manor, Grafton Lane, Bromsgrove, and Penn Hall, Vicarage Road, Upper Penn, were used as locations in this episode.

Notes and episode list © Martin Underwood, 1999

Page last modified: 17 December 2008, 23:48