Cribb

- Season 2

(1981)

Parts of a dismembered female corpse have turned up in Brighton and Cribb and Thackeray are sent to investigate. They are approached by Albert Moscrop,a hat-maker taking a holiday in the resort. He has binoculars and a telescope which he uses to observe people and is something of a voyeur. He tells Cribb how he met the charming but nervous Zena Prothero, the second wife of a rather surly doctor,also on holiday with his son Guy. He believes that Zena was killed by her husband and certainly some anatomical knowledge was displayed in the cutting of the body. But was ...

The police are guarding Jumbo, the elephant that is one of the prime attractions at the London Zoo, because certain people are up in arms about his being sold to American show-man P. T. Barnum and scheduled to be shipped across the Atlantic. Despite being told that Jumbo has occasional attacks of musth (a hormonal condition in mature bull elephants characterized by highly aggressive behavior) which makes him periodically unsafe for giving visitors rides around the zoo, eccentric old Mrs. Pennycook leads a protest against the export - writing anthemic songs about Jumbo...

After a pram containing Queen Victoria's grandson Prince Alexander accidentally rolls away and nearly collides with the monarch the nursemaid is sacked, creating a vacancy. The child's parents want young, progressive Miss Temple but the queen is in favour of her daughter's old nurse, Mrs. Innocent, an austere, gin-swigging old dragon. The child's father Prince Henry asks Cribb to investigate Mrs. Innocent, currently employed in caring for the 2 children of an eccentric composer, for proof of unsuitability through senility. Cribb investigates and finds that the pram ...

Cribb and Thackeray go to the country to investigate the death of unpopular Captain Allbright who died as he was about to change his will in favour of birds' egg collectors to the detriment of his ward. The captain was running through woods at night and fell into a gravel pit. He sang in the local choir but the other members certainly aren't singing from the same hymn-sheet as far as Cribb is concerned. They claim to have been at choir practice but there are inconsistencies in their stories which lead Cribb to suspect a conspiracy.

Inspector Jowett is invited by florid ex-school fellow Russell Haygarth to attend a reunion weekend, where Jowett quickly tires of his old class-mates' japes. Discovering that Haygarth is a convicted swindler Cribb and Thackeray travel to warn Jowett and find that Haygarth is hoping to relieve the company of their money for a supposed donation to the school. That night he is found hanged - it is murder made to look like suicide. One of the party confesses that Haygarth seduced his wife and, given that none of the eminent men are what they seem, there is no shortage of...

Fenians intent on the independence of Ireland from Britain are perpetrating a number of bomb attacks around London, including at Scotland Yard. Cribb is sent on a course in the art of bomb-making and poses as an Irishman sympathetic to the Irish Republican Brotherhood in order to get to the heart of the society. However certain members of the brotherhood get hold of him to join them on a submarine where they want him to blow up a brand new British battle-ship to prove his allegiance to the cause.