Original subtitles

The gangland savages who redefined the word "evil."

Tonight, underworld associates promise reprisals will be swift and bloody.

And the man who condemned them, Judge Forrest Sweetland,

is placed under armed guard,

as Chinese assassins declare he'll be dead by morning.

Good evening. A massive security operation has been launched

at the home of the High Court judge in the so-called Bamboo Mafia trial...

Okay. They very helpfully sent one set of these,

so you'll have to pass them round.

This is a character they'll probably use on a major hit,

sometimes known as the Invisible Man,

which I don't take to mean he'll be wearing bandages round his face.

You see this one, take special care.

He's one of these martial-art types.

He'll break your spine in half with his foot as soon as look at you.

However, if this merchant turns up, it's a whole different ball game.

He's a suicide bomber.

One tap on the shoulder, it could be goodnight, Vienna.

Chief Inspector? - Yes, sir.

My wife and I rather hoping to have an early night.

I have to be up at six on the dot tomorrow.

No problem Mrs. Sweetland.

The lads will do one final sweep of your room,

then we won't disturb you again until morning.

I'm sorry, Ken.

I can do you "what" and "where", but

"how" is going to take a better brain than mine.

It appears to have gone pretty much through the centre of the heart.

The wound's barely a millimetre in diameter,

as if he'd been stabbed by... I don't know...

a rapier or something.

How about "when"?

Well, if you're saying they heard it happen at six o'clock,

any earlier, you wouldn't have seen this carpet for blood.

Barred windows, solid walls, nothing that comes close to a murder weapon.

What the hell are we looking at here?

Hello?

Who's been cutting their nails?

If they have, it was a very blunt pair of scissors.

This looks as if it's been ripped off someone's finger.

You would not believe, Jonathan, how boring my life is at the moment.

I've had bugger all of any interest for five weeks.

Hardly the in-tray of a thriving crime writer.

Who's Jason Tippet? - God knows.

I got as far as he's an estate agent and fell into a narcoleptic trance.

"I wonder if you'd be interested in collaborating with me

"on a rather fascinating history I'm compiling

"of a London hostelry called the Mother Redcap.

"If convenient, I should very much like to ring you Monday evening..."

I'd better put this answerphone on quick...

3810546. - I'm dead. I've just been cremated.

Yep. She's standing right next to me, Mr. Tippet.

Hang on while I pass you over.

Hello, Mr. Tippet. Yes, I did. I was just...

Well, that's all right.

Don't be silly.

Why would I think that?

Well, it pays to be careful.

There are some odd people about.

Forgive my scrappy letter.

I'm not a writer, as you'll have gathered.

That's why I'd love it if you'll help me out on this project.

It's actually the most macabre mystery that goes back almost 50 years.

And for my money,

you're the one person in the country who can do it justice.

You reckon?

No, nothing I can't stay back in the freezer.

What a nice idea.

So, where are you thinking of going?

Great.

Okay. See you there, then.

Bye.

You're not serious? - What's your problem?

Can't stand the competition?

Excuse me, I need to run a bath.

Competition?

You don't know anything about him. He could be some sort of weirdo.

Jonathan Creek? - Yeah.

Fortunately, Jonathan, not everyone in life is a weirdo.

We don't all live in windmills, thinking up ways to saw women in ha...

Toodle-oo.

I'm starting with the assumption that you know nothing of this place

the Mother Redcap or what happened there in the mid 1940s.

I don't quite know where you place it,

under unsolved murders or very weird ghost stories.

Amazingly, no one has ever written a book about it,

which I rather hope the two of us, could put to rights.

Now, I know exactly what you're thinking this minute.

I suppose a fork's out the question, huh?

I beg your pardon? - Sorry?

Excuse me. Could you get me something with prongs?

Obviously, the copyright, royalties, everything would be yours.

The research I could help with. I've already done quite a bit.

As I said on the phone, the whole thing's so macabre.

I don't really know where you start.

At the beginning. Thanks.

Ever since the man who owned and ran this place died,

it was 1969, a man named William Ambergast,

the old Mother Redcap pub in Edmonton has been property market poison.

Whether it's superstition or what, but, I don't know.

Would you buy a 100-year-old building

where seven men were quite literally terrified to death?

The way it's told,

the first one, Mr. Clifford Jennings,

managing director of a big clothing firm,

was staying overnight with a lady friend

in a special guest room that was kept for visitors.

Round about midnight, he was preparing for bed.

The death certificate said it was his heart.

The truth was, no one knew what had killed him.

The girl was convinced he'd seen something outside.

"Something so utterly horrible, it set off the fatal seizure."

Between 1947 and '51, there were five other cases,

deaths which have never been explained from that day to this,

all in the same room,

all after they'd looked out of the window in the middle of the night.

Not a mark or scratch on any of the bodies.

No evidence they'd been poisoned or suffocated.

Four of them were found on the floor the next morning.

Three were actually seen at the moment of death,

collapsing in what appeared to be a fit of mortal terror.

So, what are you saying?

Something appeared outside a window

that frightened seven grown men to death?

Why am I getting this image of George Formby on a ladder?

Er, is there any chance at all you could tell me what this is all about?

Sorry!

Ken Speed, Chief Inspector. How do you do?

Um sorry about the Neanderthal tactics of my two constables.

They were under the impression they were bringing a suspect in.

So I gather. I confessed to two armed robberies

before we reached the first set of traffic lights.

Now, I was having a beer the other week with DCI Janet Masterson.

That locked-room business with Dr. Strange and the house of monkeys?

Work of bloody genius, man.

I thought, "If anyone could give us some pointers on this Sweetland thing,

well, let's get him in."

That Judge Sweetland? - That's right.

About six o'clock this morning, he was found stabbed...

God. Is that a lump coming up under there now?

Tell me, does that feel swollen to you?

Yeah.

Right. Thank you, sweetheart.

WPC Radnor, this is Mr. Creek, the chap I mentioned.

You'll want to pull up a chair,

and we'll take you through the grisly details.

You're kidding? It's been like this since the '50s.

Last year, we persuaded the brewery to let it go for a song at auction.

Didn't even reach the reserve price.

Lock's been forced again.

I'm afraid it's a bit of a haven for vagrants.

Be careful. - Yes.

This is the room.

Where seven men died of fright,

looking out of this very window.

Just kidding.

I suppose it's all been redeveloped since then, is it?

Just to make our lives even more diff..

Jason?

Jason?

Over here.

What's the problem?

Thing keeps cutting out.

Really, a connection needs re-soldering.

Now we come to the riddle of the torn-off nail found by the body.

Have you got the blow-ups here, Fay?

The question here being why would a self-respecting Chinese assassin

let his fingernails grow nearly half-inch long?

How are you feeling now?

Yes. Better, now my heart's back inside my ribcage.

I suppose it's right, what they say.

She was just some old bag lady with a lungful of tar,

but talk about turning up on cue.

Be worth keeping tabs on, at any rate.

In case it has a place in our story.

Listen, I feel, all of a sudden...

there's something about me you ought to know.

What're you gonna tell me?

You've got a month to live? Which is my sodding luck.

It's more in the way of...

I suppose you'd say an alternative lifestyle.

Myself and a few friends I share a house with...

Bit of a hippy on the quiet, are you?

No, nothing like that. It's just...

If you have any kind of problem with a man who practises nudism,

now would be the time to say.

Well, absolutely, I think it's wonderful.

Seriously?

Look, it's been a fascinating evening, one way and another,

and we must get together and talk some more.

Only I've just seen someone I know, so why don't you get off,

and I'll give you a buzz tomorrow?

Goodnight.

Bye, Madeline.

Yes, can I help you at all?

The bloke in this room.

What's he here for? What's going on?

Look, if you're from the press,

you'll have to go through the proper channels.

I'm not from the press.

My name's Madeline Creek and I'm that gentleman's wife.

And I quite like to know what this is all about.

So the deal, as I see it, is this.

If I come up with a solution that leads to the killer's arrest,

by next week, I'm highest new entry on the Tong's UK death list.

Not much of an incentive, really.

A couple of hours tomorrow morning, Jonathan, is all I asked.

Have a bit of your wisdom.

If I could pick you up about ten o'clock.

What are you doing here?

Well, what do you think?

I'm worried sick about where you've got to.

Come on. We'll grab a coffee. You can tell me all about it.

Of course, technically, I'm retired. That's a joke!

After the third bypass, they put me behind a desk, told me,

"If you don't watch the stress levels, you could go at any moment."

Well, of course, they're so short-staffed...

You brainless little turd!

I'll nick your Brylcreemed arse!

Cor! Did you see that?

Came straight out, didn't even look.

On another planet, some of these people.

Still, we're in good time, wouldn't you say? No hurry.

Then you've got my daughter. Says she's gay.

What's that all about?

Expecting her first baby in a month, courtesy of the local sperm bank.

What are they going to put on the birth certificate?

"Father, some wanker"?

God only knows what the world's coming to.

Yes. Well...

In a minute or two, we'll be able to ask him.

Personally, I don't know what's left to look for.

We turned the place inside out before and after.

We've had body heat detectors, ultrasonics in here, the lot.

And two of your officers were posted outside that door the entire night?

From about 10.30 to 6am precisely.

When they heard a disturbance, came in, to find the body.

Which I think you said is what woke you up at the same time.

Normally, I'm a very heavy sleeper, but I...

The first thing I remember with any accuracy,

the door's been flung open, the police were in here...

And when I saw the blood... on her hand...

Um... Sorry, just to fix it,

he'd half-fallen out of bed about here...

with a load of stuff from his table on the floor.

If I remember from the photo, his clock, a glass of water,

some papers and a table lamp.

His clock, well there's another weird thing. The fact that when I...

except that I obviously was dreaming.

Dreaming, Mrs. Sweetland?

It's all the worry of that night.

It took me a while to drop off, and when I did, I kept waking.

The first time, I remember quite clearly.

I happened to open my eyes,

and the clock there by his bedside said 5.10.

I nodded off. I must have woken up again a while later,

and this time, you'll think I'm mad

it said 4.06.

At the time, I'd swear it was real, but then how could it have been?

Why are we all standing around pretending?

There are only two explanations for my husband's death.

Either somehow he did it to himself or I'm lying...

because I was the only person in the room.

I'm the only one who could possibly have killed him.

If we take the evidence at face value,

and fall into exactly the trap we're meant to fall into.

I know we're all buying the fact that he was stabbed at six o'clock

because that's when they heard the scuffle,

and the fact that he'd barely started bleeding

despite a wound through the middle of his heart.

But, even if he was killed earlier, the question remains,

how did the assassin get in here to do it, and then out again?

Sorry?

Er, no, I think you're missing the point.

I mean, that question remains, but it's largely irrelevant.

Implying what?

Implying...

there's a third explanation for what happened in this room

that's so ingenious, we're not within a mile of seeing it yet.

Morning.

Someone said you did the PM on that old lady they brought in last night.

I just wondered if you could say what she died of?

No to you. That information's confidential.

Of course it is. Shame.

I suppose I'll just have to put these photographs in the post, then.

Sorry about that. Bye.

Just a minute. What photographs?

Photographs, Mrs. Climpson,

that I think might be of considerable interest to your husband.

So, he's not really a Chelsea fan, then?

Get out.

Holy moley!

You're kidding? When did you find that out?

My God!

And we thought this case was already complicated!

What's that theory?

That absolutely everything that happens in the world

is somehow connected to everything else?

I read an article once,

that if a man breaks wind in Hounslow

it can affect a hurricane in Java.

In fact, I think I know the man they're talking about.

Travels on the Circle Line.

Did you tell that WPC you were my wife?

Certainly not.

Certainly NOT.

So, come on then. How does all this fit together?

Corpses with ripped-off fingernails.

I'm going to have to put a poultice on my brain.

You should never tumble-dry a cotton and linen mix.

She wasn't a bag lady at all.

She was Sweetland's cleaning woman, or someone with access to the house,

who the gangsters paid to do the deed for them.

And afterwards, to shut her up,

they kill her and dump the body, suitably disguised, in this old pub,

where no one'll find her till she's rotted beyond recognition.

Pardon?

Sorry?

Is that all I get, contemptuous silence?

Give me your mobile.

And she got in and out of the room how? Astral projection?

She was in one of the drawers under the bed.

I don't know. That's your department.

And if she was murdered, why does it says here she died of emphysema?

And how could she have killed Sweetland two night ago

when according to this, she'd been dead for at least a week.

And why would they pick a 70-year-old asthmatic...?

Yes, all right! You've made your point.

This Mother Redcap thing, how does it go again?

Seven men all died of fright?

While looking out the window, that's the story.

Hi, Jason. It's Maddy. I got your message.

I'd love to come round for coffee. That'll be great.

I'm sorry we keep missing each other.

There's been quite a few amazing developments

which I'll fill you in on tomorrow. Bye.

Look, it all happened 50 years ago, and it's probably apocryphal anyway.

One's fact, one's folklore. I don't see the relevance.

You don't, but obviously the killer did.

You're losing me, Jonathan.

Fifty years ago, Mother Redcap, seven baffling deaths in a bedroom.

This week, Judge Sweetland, baffling death in a bedroom.

What are you saying?

That the people there were all murdered

using some clever method that's now also been used to kill Sweetland?

Except their deaths couldn't be explained.

Your guy we know was stabbed through the heart.

A single, clean puncture, through the right auricle,

unaccompanied by any peripheral tearing or tissue damage...

which suggests there was no resistance.

And yet he brushed all that stuff off his table onto the floor.

No resistance?

Which means he must have been stabbed while he was asleep.

I've got a horrible feeling it doesn't mean that at all.

I just wish I could get a fix on that clock she said had gone backwards.

What are you on about?

When are you seeing your estate agent chum?

Tomorrow at 11. Why?

Get him to fill out the whole story,

as much as he knows, about the guy who ran the pub, the victims,

their backgrounds, the exact details of how each one died.

Somewhere in this place...

everything's telling me...

lies the truth behind Sweetland's murder.

And it's got sod all to do with a fingernail.

Hi. Welcome to our weird and wonderful world.

I've told everyone all about you,

but I know they're dying to see you in the flesh.

This is really, really nice.

God, aren't you lucky?

So long as...

I suppose there's a danger you could just chuck yourself off?

People call you a recluse because they love labels.

You know, I go into a shop or a pub or a restaurant,

and they're all pointing, going,

"There's that bloody recluse again. Fed up to serve him."

It's deeply disturbing.

What are they like? I don't know.

This looks smashing.

So, tell me about you, what made you become a copper?

Both of my brothers were already in the force.

They more or less twisted my arm.

Sound a right pair of bastards.

They were both killed on duty by an axe murderer.

There's some Parmesan there if you want it.

I was just saying to Gareth and Pauline,

the moment we first spoke on the phone

and I don't know if you sensed it, and it may be too strong a word

but a certain er... simpatica.

Most people, I think we find this, can be terribly judgemental

about a lifestyle they simply don't understand.

Yes.

Yes, right.

At the moment, you're being held on suspicion of murder,

so I think it'll be well- advised if you just...

Good. So can we take that as a confession?

Yes, right, well just make yourself at home

in there for a day or two and bear with us.

That'd be smashing.

And no miraculously disappearing through the walls this time,

if you wouldn't mind.

Our job's hard enough as it is.

I mean I'm sorry, but that is a serious turn-off,

if you can't keep your tongue in your mouth while you're eating.

Right out it came each time,

with it's revolting scooping action, like a giant iguana or something.

Listen, you're lucky you only had a tongue to look at.

Let's just put it down as nil-nil on the score sheet,

shall we, and move on?

What I have got is everything you ever wanted to know

about the Mother Redcap and the people who died here,

plus, he said the power should be on now.

So we can see what we're looking for.

What ARE we looking for?

Victim number five,

Mr. Gordon James Chapman, age 53.

A merchant banker.

Same as three and four, dead on the floor the next morning.

No evidence of any human intervention.

Found him lying there with just a towel around his waist.

As if he'd come out of the bath, gone over to the window and just

died of shock or whatever it was. Am I talking to myself?

Plenty of woodworm and a fair old bit of fungus.

What the hell is it?

Yeah, sorry. Number six.

Number six. Yeah.

Got a picture of this one.

Sir Michael Pritchett QC. That was his last entry in the family album.

You'd think word would have got round by now, wouldn't you,

or you'd think the publican, Mr. Ambergast, would put a sign up.

"Caution. Do not gaze out..." What?

What have you spotted?

Shoes.

Over by the chest of drawers.

So?

The last guy you said, Chapman, had just come out the bath,

and all of them were getting ready for bed,

so it's a fair bet that when they died,

each one of them would have been...

Yes...

Clever. I'll give him that.

It wouldn't work every time, but...

Hang on. Who are we talking about?

Ambergast?

You think he'd deliberately lured people up here to bump them off?

And the amazing thing is, no one tumbled it,

because there's nothing to suggest a crime had been committed.

They would swallowed that tosh about dying of fright.

Bearing in mind, three of them were actually seen

convulsing with horror, supposedly, as they looked out.

Doesn't that point you in any definite direction?

Especially when you look at all the things it couldn't have been.

What was that Sherlock Holmes said to Watson?

"Get your kit off and give us a kiss"?

Exactly. Which leaves us with only one possibility.

Which is?

Why do you think there's no evidence

of any woodworm in this skirting board

when the floor here is riddled with it?

Pass.

Stay right where you are.

What are you looking for now?

I don't know till I've found it.

I still can't get over that other, you know?

If you were looking for the quickest way to destroy any sense of mystique,

I think opening the door stark bollock naked would do it every time.

Got you.

What if there been a wasp out there or something?

Mistaken it for a sprig of buddleia?

I can tell you, you wouldn't catch me dabbing on his Savlon.

Ooh, put me right off.

The things people get up to in pr...

Jonathan?

What are we doing in this sodding place?!

I think I'm ready to go home now, Jonathan.

Solution or no solution.

I'm afraid I draw the line at bubonic plague.

Don't go near the window!

I'm sorry.

God!

I could have killed you.

What the hell happened there?

The same thing as happened to those seven guys...

and nearly happened to you.

It's been electrocuted.

That's not woodworm in those boards...

They're the holes for a set of tiny metal pins,

just very slightly proud of the surface.

Can you see?

Step on those in your bare feet...

You're kidding?

For a 50-year-old booby trap, it still works surprisingly well.

Come on.

You've got a lever here, evidently,

which raises and lowers the pins...

and a switch here, on and off.

And that's how he did it?

Well, beats Sweeney Todd into a cocked hat.

But... how do we put this together

with the murder of Judge Sweetland?

That's the one.

He followed me up the road last Thursday,

and made himself scarce when he saw all the police cars outside the house.

Okay.

That's very useful, Mrs. Sweetland.

Have you got a moment and come and have a cup of tea?

I think Mr. Creek has got something to tell us.

Sorry to rake this all over yet again,

but last night, about 2:00 in the morning,

a load of stuff suddenly came into focus,

and I finally got

I don't know, a sense of the whole thing in context.

Are you okay? - Just get on with it.

Sometimes what looks really sinister to start with

turns out to be frighteningly normal.

Something like the time on the clock

that appears the wrong way around

with a glass of water in front of it.

It's pretty safe to assume, I think,

that the first time you opened your eyes that night and looked across,

the time was actually twenty past one.

Only, because you were seeing it through the water,

the display was reversed,

and it read ten past five.

Between then and the next time you look,

your husband has taken a sip of water and put the glass back,

only this time not in front of the clock,

so you see the correct time, 4.06.

So...

the clock had nothing to do with the murder at all.

Alternatively, Mrs. Sweetland,

it might have had everything to do with the murder.

God help us.

If I get through this one alive, it'll be a miracle.

Cutting to the quick, we face two questions.

How was your husband stabbed by an assailant

who appeared to have spirited himself into the bedroom like Dracula,

and then out again.

And what the hell has an old bag lady,

whose fingernail was found in the carpet,

got to do with the murder of a High Court judge.

According to the description in this report...

Mr. Sweetland put up no resistance...

to the blade or rapier or whatever it was when he was stabbed,

suggesting the attack took place when he was asleep.

But then how do we explain the apparent struggle

and the way he'd knocked all that stuff off his table?

So let's run, for a minute, with a different hypothesis.

That he was stabbed through the heart after he'd been murdered.

And now we're looking for a different cause of death entirely,

something a bit less obvious,

that would be totally overlooked next to a knife wound in the chest.

Enter Mr. William Ambergast,

a thoroughly unpleasant character in the 1940s,

who electrocuted his victims at a London pub called the Mother Redcap.

Electrocuted?

I'd been lying there, trying to squeeze the mechanics of it out of my brain.

How do you put an electric current through someone in such a way

that no one would ever realised what happened?

You'd need to rig something up in his bedroom,

something you knew he was going to touch

that was connected to a power point,

that looked entirely harmless.

If it hadn't been for that thing about time going backwards,

I'd probably would never have latched on to it.

On to the frightening simplicity of a clock that had been carefully sabotaged

so the alarm button actually becomes live.

So that when he goes to hit it...

at 6am precisely...

And I'm afraid everything that follows,

follows directly from that one basic premise.

If Mr. Sweetland was killed by an electrified clock at 6am,

and less than 15 seconds later was found with a stab wound through his heart,

there was only one possible explanation...

and only possible killer.

God. Fay.

A quick trawl through the news services filled in the gaps.

The man who slaughtered both your brothers,

decapitating one with an axe,

and then himself being killed in a police shoot-out,

had previously been released on bail,

pending another charge for assault.

Their deaths would never have happened if that man had still been in custody.

It was a bum decision...

but did it really give you the right to murder the judge who made it?

Well, I couldn't believe it, could I?

When I found I'd been rota'd on the protection detail.

My first thought was, "To hell with it."

Just produce a gun.

Hang what they did to me.

That's how much I wanted to blow his trendy, progressive brains away.

Then something happened...

about a week beforehand...

showed me I could be more...

creative than that.

Okay. All right. Up you go.

My finger's caught.

Just caught.

There it goes.

I said I'd try and get her in a hostel somewhere,

but she wasn't interested.

This was her home.

I decided to stay with her for a few minutes,

during which I got her life story

and the story of that place, Mother Redcap.

It turned out as a young girl in the '40s, she'd actually worked there...

and not as a barmaid.

A room upstairs was basically a knocking shop.

Discreet service with professional gentlemen of the day...

with the additional grisly sideline you know about.

Seems several of these blokes' wives coughed up a lot of money

to have their husbands conveniently disposed of.

What it did... set me thinking.

If I was clever...

I could do this...

and get away with it.

Required some special expertise...

but of course I knew just who to go to for that.

The deal was done.

They fixed me up with a duplicate clock,

suitably modified.

And to throw everyone off, I was taught how to use one of their more...

sophisticated devices.

Earlier in the day, I'd made the switch,

knowing it would be easy enough to swap them back later.

At six o'clock, when we heard the noise...

My God, you're proud of what you did to him.

You murdering...!

My God.

Someone call an ambulance.

Chief Constable Peter Grisham paid tribute to what he called

Mr. Speed's incomparable intellect and powers of deductive analysis.

His window Marjorie could cherish with pride the memory of a husband

whose lasting memorial, he said, was the resolution

of one of the most complex and apparently baffling murders

in police history.

And now let's take a look at the weather.

No, I'm impressed, I must say.

'Cause it wouldn't have mattered a toss to him who got the credit,

but you, Mr. Self-Effacing Softie, knew what it would mean to her.

It almost makes up for you being such an anal-retentive smart-arse

who never gets absolutely anything wrong, not matter what he does.

Now... what have we here?

How is it? - Bliss.

Utter... pure... bliss.

I've finally found something you are crap at, food.

This is absolutely horrible!

The worst Caesar salad I have tasted in my life ever, bar none.

Urgh! - Maybe I overdid the raw egg.

Raw? You're supposed to wait until the chicken's laid it!

Didn't anyone ever tell you,

the first rule of preparing lettuce, take off the slugs?

What are you talking about, slugs? They're anchovies.

Look, get your coat. We'll go down to the chippie.