"The Smile Behind the Veil" | |
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Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) episode | |
Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 26 |
Directed by | Jeremy Summers |
Written by | Gerald Kelsey |
Production code | 26 |
Original air date | 13 March 1970 |
Guest appearance(s) | |
Alex Scott
Hilary Tindall
Gary Watson
"The Smile Behind the Veil" is the final episode of the popular 1969 ITC British television series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), starring Mike Pratt, Kenneth Cope, and Annette Andre. The episode was first broadcast on 13 March 1970 on the ITV and was directed by Jeremy Summers.
Only a ghost would notice the smile behind the veil of a funeral mourner (Hilary Tindall) to complete the entire series. As Jeannie visits Marty's grave, Marty stumbles upon a hidden murder mystery as the funeral mourners in the next grave look highly suspicious. He visits Jeff and begs him to pursue the case, despite any physical evidence. Jeff refuses, due to ongoing financial difficulty; but by chance, he is on the way to visit a client in the vicinity of the perpetrators, near Goldehurst, and Marty is able to switch road signs to get him to visit their estate.
Jeff arrives innocently at their manor house, asking for directions, but the guilty funeral mourners, overlooking the will of their recently murdered friend, search him, realise he is a private eye, and lock him up. Soon enough, they dump him in a river (where he nearly encounters death by drowning) and is saved by a fisherman from becoming a permanent white-suited ghost, like his friend Marty Hopkirk. Again by chance, the fisherman, Donald Seaton, turns out to be a related to the murder case in that he believes his identity has been stolen by the funeral mourners whilst he was away in Australia. He hires Jeff for the case.
Jeff investigates the mansion, and in doing so, encounters the elderly housekeeper—who, like him, is looking for official information to prove that the man at the funeral is an imposter. Jeff also tracks down a lead to a man in a farm barn who was once an employee of Donald Seaton, but he is shot by one of the funeral mourners.