| Director | Val Guest |
|---|
A woman (later explained as Joan Simpson) argues with an unseen man. She wants to marry him but he moves to attack her.
Her remains are found both dismembered and incinerated, together with a knife and a hacksaw in a small furnace in Saltdean, near Brighton. Two local detectives, following up a small but odd burglary of leases at an estate agent's office, discover the body and take on the investigation of the death. The dead woman cannot be identified but they initially think she is called Jean Sherman, since a suitcase with the initials JS had been left at the scene. The main suspect is an unidentified man who has used the false identity of John Campbell to rent the house in which the woman was found. The detectives methodically develop and follow up leads to identify both people, mostly in Brighton, but also further afield in Lewes and Greenwich.
DI Fellows goes to Jean Sherman's house and discovers that she is still alive. He tricks her into giving him a name and address to get a sample of her handwriting, which is the same as that found in the victim's house. Flashback scenes in her story specifically exclude the viewer from seeing the man John Campbell. Miss Sherman admits a one-night stand with Campbell.
They track down and arrest a suspect described by several persons as the man who occupied the house, but the case takes an unexpected turn when he admits that he was a door-to-door salesman who was with the victim but denies any involvement in her murder. His story checks out.
After the dead woman is positively identified, the veteran inspector leading the case has to tell the parents, then develops a "wild idea" about the identity of another suspect, and orders a standard procedure that confirms his theory in a non-standard fashion. This suspect (Tenby) admits knowledge of the death but his contention that it was accidental appears to be unshakeable until the detectives realise that he has lied about a crucial detail: claiming to have bought something on a Monday bank holiday, when shops would have been shut.