I admire it when the musical score by Patrick Gowers goes out of its way to execute variations on the mysterious violin theme that opens each episode. The variations under the end credits can sometimes get very tricky too and almost mask the theme itself. In this case, the last scene takes place in the dining room of a hotel patronized by the international set, and Gowers gives us an elegant waltz played on a flute. Nicely done, as usual.
Others might feel differently but I don't find the stories of missing papers or letters as interesting, generally, as stories involving murders. In this case, we have both missing papers and a bashed-in head. It's like finding a chocolate on your hotel room pillow.
The missing papers are the plans for the Bruce-Partingon submarine. The dead body belongs to a minor clerk in the foreign office or whatever it is who was found with some, but not all, of the plans tucked away in his pocket. The corpse is found next to the railway tracks but how did it get there? Among the effects, no tickets are found. There was no blood in any of the train's compartments. And of course no one noticed anything unusual going on.
Then, too, how did that mousy clerk get the plans in the first place. Whoever took them from the safe needed three keys and must have known what to look for, yet the clerk had not been issued any keys and may have been ignorant of the papers' importance. Circumstances get still more puzzling and the story more intricate when the head of the foreign office, the clerk's boss, drops dead of a heart attack.
The acting is up to par with no one standing out. Holmes pulls off no dazzling stunts of deduction. He does, however, commit a crime -- breaking and entering, along with his friend Watson. This incurs the ire and envy of Inspector Bradstreet who mutters darkly about its being no wonder that Holmes is so successful in solving his cases and adds that, "Some day you will go too far." Watson is uncomfortable but Holmes pays no attention.
Nice scene: When they visit the home of the head of the foreign office they are met by the dead man's brother who ushers them into a room that appears to be a library -- only it seems that all the impressive shelves of books on the walls are fake. One of the walls itself, showing dozens of phony volumes, is a door.
Others might feel differently but I don't find the stories of missing papers or letters as interesting, generally, as stories involving murders. In this case, we have both missing papers and a bashed-in head. It's like finding a chocolate on your hotel room pillow.
The missing papers are the plans for the Bruce-Partingon submarine. The dead body belongs to a minor clerk in the foreign office or whatever it is who was found with some, but not all, of the plans tucked away in his pocket. The corpse is found next to the railway tracks but how did it get there? Among the effects, no tickets are found. There was no blood in any of the train's compartments. And of course no one noticed anything unusual going on.
Then, too, how did that mousy clerk get the plans in the first place. Whoever took them from the safe needed three keys and must have known what to look for, yet the clerk had not been issued any keys and may have been ignorant of the papers' importance. Circumstances get still more puzzling and the story more intricate when the head of the foreign office, the clerk's boss, drops dead of a heart attack.
The acting is up to par with no one standing out. Holmes pulls off no dazzling stunts of deduction. He does, however, commit a crime -- breaking and entering, along with his friend Watson. This incurs the ire and envy of Inspector Bradstreet who mutters darkly about its being no wonder that Holmes is so successful in solving his cases and adds that, "Some day you will go too far." Watson is uncomfortable but Holmes pays no attention.
Nice scene: When they visit the home of the head of the foreign office they are met by the dead man's brother who ushers them into a room that appears to be a library -- only it seems that all the impressive shelves of books on the walls are fake. One of the walls itself, showing dozens of phony volumes, is a door.