# GLRI #
Good morning, it's GLR Breakfast on 94.9 FM...
Wha...?!
Oh, no!
Don't go back to sleep, you lazy sowI It's 8 o'clockI
You've got three seconds before the saucepan lidsI
Oh, yes! All right!
God Almighty!
Miss Magellan? I'm Stephen Claithorne. I believe you're a collector of mysteries.
What? Look, I'm sorry, I've only just this second woken up.
We'll get into a tangle if we play questions and answers
so I'll just begin at the beginning.
If this is some tale about a missing hymn book...
It's murder, Miss Magellan.
Cold, clinical and calculated.
And it took place last night at my home in Oxfordshire.
The midday papers will be full of it.
What they won't explain, what no one can, is how the killer evaporated into thin air...
.. right in front of everyone's eyes.
Some miracles you don't want to believe in.
I'll get some coffee on.
Are you familiar with the popular novelist Emma Lazarus,
referred to in publishing circles as the Queen of Horror?
Did she write those pukey stories about towns in Arizona
where everyone gets their flesh ripped off after the Devil has sex with a lawnmower?
My mother-in-law. A lady of rather florid style and ghoulish imagination.
Traits not shared by her daughter Lorna, as sweet and sensitive a soul mate...
I never knew Lorna's father. He died in his 30s.
Her mother remarried - an American hairstylist named Tom Terici.
They moved to California. We barely saw them from one year to the next.
Till one morning two weeks ago, we found ourselves with three guests.
Emma, Tom and this minder character of theirs...
.. Mr Drucker.
I won't say we got on like a house on fire. I avoided her company, which wasn't hard.
My parish makes considerable demands on my time.
Your god is no more a reality than the tooth fairy we believed in as children.
Excuse me. I have some work to catch up on.
The only gods that exist are ourselves! We are the gods of our...
Plus my absence last night of all nights... All Hallows Eve.
I'd been summoned to the Bishop's for a pep talk.
Lorna, her mother and stepfather were returning home from a costume party and dance
about ten miles down the road.
It was just gone midnight.
- How's the migraine? - Zigging and zagging.
Like a rat's chewing on my optic nerve.
I hope your friends weren't offended that we left early.
Four hours of dancing skeletons and I was just about spooked out for the...
- What is it? - He's still there!
Can you believe the staying power?
It's not enough he's on our tail back home, he follows you halfway round the world.
That's not a fan, that's a serious piece of brain damage.
Because he sends me love letters that tell me I'm a goddess?
The poor wretch is harmless. What'll he do? Serenade me to death?
Come on. You gonna do the honours before we all turn in?
Tom... Tom, come on.
Souvenir for the album, hm?
One more for the hell of it.
- Oh! - It's OK, I've got it.
Check every door and window. Something's brewin' out there.
Tom?
- Jesus! - Drop it!
Drop it!
Ahhh!
Bring the car to the door. Leave the keys in the ignition.
Do it!
Get out and back away!
What in the name of God...?!
OK, put her down!
Put her down!
The killer was trapped.
It was assumed he'd try to buy his freedom using Lorna as hostage,
but then, once the door had come down, it all went strangely quiet.
I phoned. There's an armed man inside with a woman who's unconscious. You armed?
The building was surrounded. There was no other possible way in or out.
After 15 minutes, fearing the worst... they re-opened the door...
.. to discover, to everyone's utter amazement,
the skeleton had gone.
I needn't say what effect this had on me when I got back around one o'clock.
By any definition of hell, this had to be it.
Thank God Laura was OK.
Beyond that, the scale of the atrocity...
Forgive me. I've come here, a perfect stranger, to burden you with my grief.
On the face of it, the whole thing's insoluble.
Can a body pass through a solid stone wall or are we all losing our minds?
Do me a favour! I grew out of vanishing skeletons before I was in long trousers.
On Hallowe'en, you'd think they'd do something more original.
He's probably not a even real vicar. Probably wears rubber underwearI
If he asks you to pray, don't kneel with your eyes closed!
Right... several intriguing features. I thought so.
On the basis of striking while the iron's hot, it's only an hour's drive from your place.
I'm not at my place. I'm at Adam's.
I've had a very late night and I've got a 50-minute TV special to go through.
Just tell him to bugger off and stop sniffing the nail polish!
Right. No. That's... great, then. I'm onto it now.
If anything breaks, I'll give you a bell.
I use him now and again to bounce things off.
Bit of a sad character, actually. Ideas man to a conjuror.
OK.
While I'm in the shower, if you fancy a nibble...
.. be my guest.
Whatever time did we get back last night?
Last thing I remember, we were in a club watching a girl sing selections from Verdi
while two men from the audience removed her G-string with their teeth.
Thought you'd never shake the old slapper off. She was all over you like a rash...
Don't judge me too harshly, Jonathan.
That was a lethal brand of tequila they were serving last night.
HiyaI
Guess what! ATC are on 48-hour work-to-rule. Both my flights were grounded.
It means we get our weekend back. Are you pleased?
I'm salivating into a bucket! Come on up, treasure.
Three hours in that sweat-box at JFK!
No, no!
Just for two seconds, Jonathan.
I...
Adam?
Where are you? Don't I get a kiss any more?
Sweetheart, my angel-come-to-earth!
- Who's in there? - Oh... I'm sorry.
I don't think you've met my creative consultant Jonathan Creek and... er... Bridget?
Who, I think you were saying, had to be leaving very shortly.
I preferred this routine when Marcel Marceau did it.
Who is this person?
Don't be fooled by the scatty exterior. Her track record is formidable.
Ow!
Lucky there was no paint left in them.
So... if I could just run back over a couple of things.
Mr Terici, after the murderer had come in and closed the door...
About 30 seconds before anyone else went round the back of the building?
So that, if by any trickery, he'd managed to get out any other way...
He'd have set off sensor lights, which didn't come on till a police officer ran in front of them.
OK.
Mrs Claithorne...
.. I know how painful this is,
but you definitely remember nothing after you blacked out on the landing?
Nothing that happened in this garage? No sounds or images? Smells?
All I remember... was...
Right.
But when he grabbed you up in the bedroom,
was there anything about this person, about his body or voice...?
He just...
That's... been very helpful. I'm really sorry. Thanks.
This place holds too many horrors. Come on.
I'll go and put the kettle on.
If you want to join us once you've... completed your investigations.
Where the police dog peed on the floor.
They didn't find anything either.
Miss Magellan, right?
Hal Drucker. Security to Emma Lazarus for 13 years. Kinda funked it last night.
- No one's to blame... - I knew the guy was wacko.
Guy, Mr Drucker?
Started a year ago with fan mail. Three or four a week.
Just signed himself "Your devoted disciple always". Pretty soon it's getting unhealthy.
The guy's staking out her home. Just watching and staring.
I try to get near him, he's gone - like a jackrabbit. Next, he shows up here.
England. I mean, come on, this is sick!
You don't wanna know what this individual is capable of. Last night, we found out.
Want my opinion of what turns a man's brain like that?
If we're talking who's to blame for the murder of Emma Lazarus.
Sick breeds sick, Miss Magellan.
The sooner we face up to that, the sooner we can pull our society out of the sewer!
The frame's slightly warped at the top here.
I turned away to go and get a hammer. That's when he must've come in and...
I felt this sudden raw pain - like he'd sliced into a nerve.
- Sounds familiar. - Knocked me out cold.
I didn't even hear the gunshot.
There's no sign of anything in the background, but, then... it's not always obvious.
- Is it OK if I hang on to these? - No, it's not OK!
The last pictures of my mother alive - they don't leave this house.
Sorry, I-I shouldn't have...
To my dying day, I'll be haunted by a feeling of... irresponsibility...
.. as if somehow, I should have known, I should've been there to do something.
- He's a happy bunny. - It's Gary Lobo.
He was helping my wife with her new book.
I... um... thought she always wrote alone.
It wasn't a novel this time.
She was working on her autobiography or, more accurately, autobiographies.
- Say again? - An account of her many lives.
From high priestess of the Aztec empire through her other existences,
as a courtesan to King Charles I, a Russian countess,
and a Zulu at Rorke's Drift, right up to present day.
So what are you telling me? Emma Lazarus believed in reincarnation?
A field in which Mr Lobo claimed to have specialist knowledge.
"Through a process of hypno-analysis, flotation therapy and sensory deprivation,
"I will penetrate the shell of your conscious mind
"to unlock the soul and all its secrets that reside within. "
We all look for ways to explain the unexplainable.
Emma's life, ideology, hardly met with my approval,
but... wherever she is now, let's trust she's at peace.
Definitely. Well, I think I have... everything I need.
I'll tell you what I'm gonna do: I'll run this past my associate
and be in touch first thing tomorrow morning.
I'll see myself out.
He steps inside the garage, drops her, closes the door.
They open the door. Where the hell's he gone?
Not through nine inches of Cotswold stone! Or a concrete floor!
Plus you've got sensor lights all the way round, so if he had got out, he'd have triggered them...
- Let me know if I'm boring you! - You're not boring me.
Jonathan, we're looking at a scenario for which there is no conceivable explanation.
There's always an explanation. You've just got to think round corners.
Don't only see what you're meant to see. Watch this trick.
A girl selected at random from the audience,
invited to have a go on the trampoline.
She starts bouncing up and down...
.. higher and higher.
Eventually explodes in a puff of smoke.
Where did she go?
She's not an audience member, she's a gymnast.
- Oh, great! That's a cheat for a start! - The whole thing's a cheat!
After she's been up and down a few times, another tab comes in downstage.
Black velvet to match the backdrop.
Tiny smoke charge set off to mask her as she disappears behind the drape.
She grabs hold of a bar and hangs on, as the bar...
.. and the tab... are thrown back up.
Adam Klaus gets a standing ovation.
What's this? The cabinet where she miraculously reappears?
No, that's my tea. Thank you.
- Tea? Who eats Weetabix for their tea? - Very effective. You should try it.
Oh, yeah,
I'll bet you're little Mr Regular, aren't you?
Like clockwork with you, is it?
Every morning on the dot at seven?
Between seven and seven-thirty.
I bet you do, too. Why doesn't that surprise me for a single second?
- If you've got a problem in that department... - Who's got a problem?!
It happens when it happens. I don't have to set my watch by it.
You've got no worries, then.
None whatsoever.
When this photo was taken, it's definitely her husband Terici inside the costume?
The killer got in through the French windows. Hit him from behind to switch places.
Hmm.
And I didn't come here for a lecture on bowel frequency, as it happens.
- But the paint tins were empty. - What?
The paint tins you knocked off that shelf were all virtually empty.
You'll be in the theatre all day tomorrow
in case I want to drop by after I've paid Mr Lobo a visit?
Right. And don't fall for any of his phoney sales talk.
- What's that supposed to mean? - Come on!
It's prime girlie material, isn't it, reincarnation?
Falls into the same category of persuasive bollocks as astrology.
He conned Emma Lazarus. Don't let him con you.
Thanks ever so much!
Do you think I'd swallow all that garbage about delving back into past lives?
Credit me with a bit of common sense.
As your body drifts deeper...
.. let yourself go deeper.
To the very nucleus of your being.
We're going to increase the temperatures now.
The waters will dissolve into a void of darkness,
as slowly you regress...
.. back to the soft, warm moistness of the womb...
.. beyond the moment of birth.
I won't be spending time in a tank of boiling hot ink again. I feel like a poached octopus.
I found her novels disturbing yet compelling.
When she writes of a mutant foetus
that strangles a young girl with its umbilical cord,
the metaphor is... er...
.. obvious.
To mine the vilest seams of obscenity to get to the core of the human condition.
And making wads of money selling loads of tacky books didn't really come into it?
- What the hell is this?! - Your order, madam. Poached octopus.
Poached oct...?! Have you gone stark, staring bonkers?!
If there's been a mistake, I'll return it. You can place another order.
No, all right.
Go on, then. You might as well leave it now that it's here, I suppose.
So how long had you known Emma Lazarus? 18 months?
Popping to her place in the States.
- The last time you saw her here was when? - Monday afternoon.
She came by to discuss the book, we talked about life, death. Mainly death.
As she left, I said I'd see her in a week's time.
She just turned... smiled a rather weak smile,
but said... nothing.
You're going to think it really odd that I say this...
- Say what? - I got the weirdest feeling.
She didn't expect to be alive in a week's time.
Spooky stuff.
You reckon she knew her days were numbered?
And I reckon she knew who it was that was planning to kill her.
The police are scouring the country for this stalker that kept following her around,
but, I don't know, it's too glaringly obvious for my money.
It gets us no further with the REAL question.
How did Mr Skeleton Suit disappear from that garage?
Oh, that's the easy bit.
Oh, give me a break.
You can't have worked that out. You haven't even been there.
If what you told me is correct, there's only one way it could've happened.
- The empty paint tins? - Precisely.
- And you said something about a hacksaw. - Right.
So?
Well... to get to the root of this problem...
.. turn your concept of what happened on its head.
Jonathan.
- Hi. How are you? - Oh, hi... um...?
- Bridget. - Bridget, that's right.
You don't remember, do you? You and me in the bath together yesterday.
Of course. Absolutely. How are you doing? You all right?
Is Adam in his dressing room?
Through that door. Just follow the signs.
A story and a half there.
She's got her claws into Adam, but he doesn't want to know because...
You want a word for it? Try extortion. She stitched me up, Jonathan.
Give her a bed for the night out of the kindness of your heart, next, she has you for breakfast.
When you say extortion, she doesn't want money.
Correct, Jonathan, she does not want money. It's far more blood-curdling than that.
She wants to sing... in MY show.
Her own spot. 15 minutes every night. Operatic arias.
- I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. - Understand this.
A nightclub dancer with less than zero talent wants me to showcase her work on our tour
or she'll give the papers details of our one-night stand.
In the absence of photographic evidence, she's proposing to give them drawings.
You're not serious?!
She's caught a certain essence of you!
- What are you gonna do? - Pay her off.
She'll have her price. Just don't bid too high too soon.
Oh, I see. It's down to me to clear up this mess, is it?
A simple dematerialisation, Jonathan.
I want her out of my life.
£5,000, Bridget.
- What, are you deaf or something? - 6,000.
I'm not interested.
Nathan, will you leave that and do your homework!
- He loves anything with revolving blades. - I'm authorised to go up to £10,000.
I know Adam. If you push him too far, he'll call your bluff.
You don't get it, do you? I don't want money. I want a chance.
To get out of the gutter. To perform the music that I love.
Now, where have those shoes gone? Where have THEY disappeared to?
Shoes.
- Absolutely right. Where did they go to? - What?
Nathan, come away from that!
Yes, I'm afraid I've rather lost the plot on this now.
Who breaks open a coffin in the night to remove the head of a dead body?
The service will go ahead tomorrow, but the funeral will now have to wait.
You say we just missed your wife?
I'm afraid she goes visiting parishioners on a Tuesday afternoon.
Hopefully get her mind off events here. I think you'll find her at Mr Snetterton's.
- Old chap's 91 and just out of hospital. - Snetterton?
Yes. See the bungalow that backs onto our garden?
Mrs Claithorne, I'm sorry if it's inconvenient to talk to you here...
No, no, do come in.
I hope we're not disturbing Mr Snetterton, only there were a couple of points...
You won't disturb Mr Snetterton, I'm afraid.
He passed away a few minutes ago.
Oh, dear.
He was over 90. His heart had been gradually running out of steam.
Hadn't he just come out of hospital?
Yes. For some other minor operation. They just kept him in overnight.
- Having a wart removed, it says here. - I-It's just...
Before he died, there was something he said about the other night when...
About half-past twelve, he heard a noise outside the window.
He looked out and saw... a skeleton...
.. climbing over the back fence into his garden.
He said it ran out onto the road and then away down towards the river.
So I wonder whether you've actually figured the whole thing out. While you were in the bath
Oh, no, you'd have had other things on your mind then.
On the toilet? Seems to be a productive place for you!
I know! You told me!
It was all Adam's mad idea. You didn't enjoy being squashed up against her naked body!
- What man would? - The Weetabix didn't work, then?
- I beg your pardon? - How many days is it now? Three or four?
Pour the tea.
Anyway, look, come on. I've admitted defeat. Let's get on with it.
- The bit you enjoy. Treating me like a moron. - No.
The bit where YOU enjoy making me feel like I'm treating you like a moron.
You're capable of reasoning it out for yourself if only you'd stop taking things at face value.
What have we got?
Someone puts on a skeleton costume, goes upstairs, shoots Emma Lazarus.
Her daughter Lorna is grabbed by the killer and knocked unconscious.
All this is verified by our bodyguard, Mr Drucker.
Drucker gets the car out.
He and Terici watch as the skeleton carries Lorna into the garage and closes the door.
The police arrive and surround the garage - a solid, stone-walled garage.
No way could anyone possibly get out. What's our first conclusion?
That he didn't get out.
So when they opened the garage door, the skeleton...
- Must've still been in there. - Good.
But it wasn't in there! Where could it go in an empty room with absolutely no hiding place?
No hiding place except...
The paint tins?
I'm sorry, what level of surrealism are we operating on here?
This is where you and everyone else give up.
You're sticking to what's likely instead of what's logical.
How do you fit a body into paint tins?! Short of chopping it into bits, it's safe...
What? What are you telling me now?
- How many people walked into that garage? - Two.
WALKED into that garage.
One. With one over his shoulder.
And how much of the one over his shoulder did anyone see?
A body in a long black witch's dress,
a white waste-length wig hanging down so it covered her head.
But we KNOW it was Lorna because she was in there when they opened... You are jesting.
She was the skeleton? And the body was some sort of dummy?
To pull off a trick this good...
.. you'd have to go to a helluva lot of trouble.
Lorna Claithorne and the killer had to be in on it together.
When she made a break for it and he knocked her out, all choreographed,
she wasn't unconscious at all.
.. leave the keys in the ignition.
When the key witness, Mr Drucker, was ordered to go and get the car,
that's when they pulled the switch.
An electronic mouthpiece distorts the voice.
When the skeleton appears outside the front door, it's now Lorna inside.
What we thought was Lorna's body is a foam- rubber shape with her dress, shoes and wig on.
Once the door's closed, the costume comes off. She puts her own gear back on.
She's got a foam-rubber body and a skeleton suit to dispose of.
The hacksaw's handy. She cuts it up into bits.
Hides them all out of sight,
figuring, correctly, that people are hardly gonna open a paint tin
to look for a murderer.
Next morning, no one's about, the evidence is removed and disposed of,
leaving nothing behind but a few rubber crumbs.
They were in it together? Lorna and who?
It's a silly detail, but... I dunno, but if you actually examine it.
A person comes in from outside, knocks out Emma Lazarus's husband.
Puts on his costume. He could have put it on over his clothes, but what about his shoes?
The costume already has boots built into it.
You couldn't get them on over your shoes, so where did they go?
Still can't credit it. The way she manufactured all those tears, all that grief.
How do people do that? She certainly took me in.
Hmm.
Next question. How the hell do you nail her? She's obviously a very clever cookie.
Maybe. Maybe not as clever as we think.
- Meaning what? - That story she spun us this afternoon.
The bloke seeing the killer run away through his garden.
Obviously complete gobshite to keep us off the scent.
Old guy had just popped it. We've only got her word for what he said...
- Except, of course... - What?
I dunno, it might be worth you giving that hospital a ring in the morning.
Talk to the doctor who removed his wart.
She sorted out MY problem. Talk about putting Weetabix out of business.
What about the hospital? Did you get any joy with Mr Snetterton's wart?
Great. It's just as we thought.
Now, are you sitting down?
I've taken this thing apart, tried to put it back together and found it won't go.
And I think I've finally worked out why.
Very moving. Shame about memorial services, I suppose.
The deceased can't be there to hear just how much she was adored by family and friends.
You intimated you'd made some progress.
- What did you mean... - Yes...
Can we talk somewhere else? Don't want to turn this into a national press briefing.
If you've got anything stronger than Communion wine in there,
have it standing by.
I'm sorry, Mrs Claithorne, we know.
We know you and the killer planned it together.
That it was YOU in that costume coming out of the house.
The body was a lump of foam you cut up and hid away.
What kind of preposterous...?!
It's not easy listening, Mr Claithorne, I know.
We do have evidence that your wife has been lying to us.
The old gentleman you visited yesterday - Mr Snetterton.
You said, before he died,
he talked about a figure in a skeleton suit running away through his garden.
Are you saying I invented that?
You knew he'd been to hospital to have a wart removed.
I wonder if you knew which part of his anatomy that wart was on.
A glance at the letter on the table might've given you a clue.
It was on his vocal cords, Mrs Claithorne.
And according to the specialist I spoke to this morning,
there's no way he could've got his voice back
to be able to talk to you less than 24 hours after laser treatment.
He'd... already passed away...
.. before I got there.
I suppose, when I saw you coming up the path, I just thought...
.. maybe I could... Oh, God forgive me!
Forgive you both?
You and your step-father?
Tell me this is some baseless fabrication.
No one came through those windows.
No one knocked you out, no one else put on your costume.
Because it was you that went upstairs, shot your wife,
and staged this elaborate piece of theatre with your step-daughter.
Of course, the idea was for... Lorna to drive away in the car
so she'd eventually be found on her own in the back.
- When that all went wrong... - You had to improvise.
The problem was it left us with a impossible vanishing act,
which was never part of the plan.
In God's name, how could you conceive anything so monstrous?!
I suspect the answer to that is, they didn't.
A complex and grisly scenario spawned by the demonic brains of a vicar's wife
and a part-time hairdresser?
This has more in common with that bedtime story I was reading.
This entire nasty crime has the classic stamp of Emma Lazarus all over it.
And, if we're right about that... there's only one fairly dramatic interpretation
to be placed on what happened.
Which is where we get into a real ethical nightmare, when we talk about euthanasia.
She had no fear of death, a stepping stone to another existence.
And Gary Lobo was convinced she'd seen it coming.
I wonder why.
No one but Lorna and I knew...
.. just how ill she was.
How many months it would be, how much longer she could go on passing off the bad migraines.
A long, excruciating exit...
.. wasn't Emma's style.
She'd... lived her life in technicolour.
How could her death be anything less than... gloriously... tastelessly gothic?
Of course, there were considerable benefits to dressing it all up as a murder.
Life insurance, the advance on her next three novels.
No, Miss Magellan,
I can't look back with any pride on what we did.
To say that every last detail was her invention,
that she wore down our objections with the force of her titanic personality...
.. is no defence at all.
I simply thank God that her suffering's over.
Well, pick the ethical bones out of that one.
Sorry, my spiritual equanimity seems to have deserted me for some unfathomable reason.
Oh, Stephen...
.. I don't know... Oh, help me!
May I respectfully ask a question?
To what possibly end was the atrocity of the night before last committed? And by whom?
What do we think?
A final perverse act of "love"
by someone who couldn't bear never to set eyes on her again?
You were the one who said it, Mr Drucker. Sick breeds sick.
Excuse me, sir, can I just take your luggage for take-off? Sir?
Your luggage.
Just put it in here, sir.
Thank you.
Never mind your next book, I can smell movie rights.
If you're looking for names, I can put you in touch with Hollywood's finest.
I've had enough of Californian culture for a bit, thanks.
Oh, you arrogant little witch!
Not here. She can't do this to me.
- Jonathan? - I went as high as you said, then doubled it.
She won't be bought. You're gonna have to put her in the show.
She'll kill me. Either way, I'm dead.
One second.
What did you say?
Just that she'd been used. That all men are bastards.
It would do her singing career no good to be associated with such an odious slime-ball.
She'd be better screwing you for every penny and the cheque would be in the post.
Do you know what I love about her, Jonathan? She's such a terrific liar!