This episode which was a very good one in the Scotland Yard Series was on Talking Pictures this evening July 5th 2021 – Introduced by Edgar Lustgarten as always – who somehow added that touch of class to the proceedings

A seemingly respectable bookshop owner called Frederick Stafford (Ivan Craig) calls the police and confesses to accidentally killing his wife. He is duly arrested by the police at the scene of his Kensington mews flat and charged with manslaughter.

Scotland Yard’s Supt Daker (Kenneth Henry) and Detective Forbes (Frank Forsyth) question his neighbours who all confirm that Stafford is, on the whole, a respectable person; although he is rather furtive in his manner and has a slight temper. He was also devoted to his invalid wife and could not do enough for her – apparently.

However Supt Daker isn’t satisfied since if he knew that his wife was so ill why did her row with her so violently? In addition, Stafford seems remarkably calm and composed for a man who is potentially facing imprisonment for manslaughter. He further arouses suspicion when he asks his lawyer to renew the lease on this house because, after all, his future is far from certain and why on earth would anybody want to go back to such a place after what has occurred there?

Ivan Craig as Stafford ABOVE

They suspect that there is something or someone hidden in the house. With the help of a young undercover female police officer, Sgt Blake Patricia Driscoll – the days she found fame in Sherwood Forest with Richard Green in Robin Hood – Supt Daker is able to keep tabs on Stafford’s shop assistant Joan Price (Jean Lodge) whom, it transpires, is engaged to be married to a man called Roberts.

Her fiance is apparently away on business, but a description is obtained from a barman and it matches that of Stafford.

The barman is played by ‘Captain Peacock ( Frank Thornton) – I remember him playing a barman again in an episode of ‘Steptoe and Son’ when Harold took his father, Albert, out in the West End to celebrate his birthday – and we all remember Captain Peacock in ‘Are you being Served’ – brilliant !

Supt Daker and Detective Forbes are now convinced that Stafford cold bloodedly murdered his wife and arranged it to look like and accident before confessing in order to get a lighter sentence leaving him free to marry Joan when he gets out. Unfortunately, they do not have anything to make it stick before a jury. Then, suddenly, a lead presents itself from the most unlikely source: a discarded bicycle in the mews where Stafford lives. It has been there for days and it is traced to a window cleaner who has gone missing. ‘The Silent Witness’ is discovered in the form of the dead body of the window cleaner who had witnessed the murder – and who Stafford had the killed and transported his body to the house and upstairs in the loft

The direction is by Montgomery Tully, who was one of Britain’s most prolific makers of shorts and ‘B’ pictures throughout the 1950’s-60’s. He clocked up fourteen episodes of this series in total.

ABOVE – Frank Forsyth as Detective Forbes