Episode list

Cribb is called in when doubt emerges over the guilt of a murderess who is due to hang shortly

When Harriet Smith and two other lady students from the Elfrida Teacher Training College go for a midnight dip in the river they do not expect to see a woman's corpse being dumped over the side of a boat. After Harriet has informed the authorities Cribb and Thackeray are sent,undercover, as boating tourists,which Thackeray,who keeps falling overboard,detests and they link up with local bobby Constable Hardy. There is no shortage of suspects - men in the area at the time - a trio of Londoners re-tracing the journey of the 'Three Men In A Boat',the successful new comic novel, an Oxford professor whose uncle is a local prison governor,and two convicts who have just escaped from his prison. And then another body is discovered...

A sadistic practical joker is deliberately ruining acts at London music-halls, with stunts ranging from the mildly humiliating to the positively dangerous. Cribb receives a note to say that an accident is about to happen and turns up at the theatre just before a murder. His investigations lead to activities which certain people are keen to keep secret, involving after hours performances for the great and the good of a decidedly sexual nature.

When headless male corpses are found floating in the river the common link is scarred hands,which points to them having taken part in illegal bare-knuckle boxing. Strapping Constable Jago,the force's amateur boxing champion, poses as a boxer in search of a prize fight with Cribb as his manager. This leads to the alluring Mrs. Vibart who has a stable of fighters but when she is murdered Jago is a prime suspect. Cribb has to clear his name before he takes too many thrashings in the ring.

Joe Calhoun, a key player in London's vice world, is found dead in one of his own brothels. Unreliable witness Charlie Vokins, who had a score to settle with him, claims to know the murderer but wants to make a deal with the police. As well as the deceased's brother the other major suspect is Dr. Hepplewhite who owed gaming debts to the dead man. Const. Thackeray is due to have an operation and Sgt. Cribb arranges for him to be admitted to the same hospital where Charlie Vokins was taken to recuperate from a severe beating. Dr. Hepplewhite therefore becomes the surgeon due to operate on Const. Thackeray and Cribb is anxious to keep his constable safe - particularly as he is a bad patient, constantly exasperating the Matron, Sister Armstrong who is secretly in love with the surgeon.

The pedestrian Championship of the World is taking place in London, an indoor marathon lasting six days and the winner is the man who can be shown to have walked the greatest distance in that time in a style known as wobbling. Hot favourites are gentleman contender Captain Erskine Chadwick and professional athlete Charlie Darrell but when Darrell collapses,what first appears to have been cramp proves to be murder - he has been poisoned and later his trainer is also found dead. It looks like suicide but Cribb believes otherwise,suspecting Chadwick and his trainer,Charlie's wife or indeed any of the other competitors. He agrees that the marathon should be allowed to continue,providing him literally with a race against time to find the murderer.

Thackeray is to be the best man at the wedding of a friend of his father, elderly Henry Russell who is marrying a woman nearly fifty years his junior. The vicar is suspicious and, when Cribb investigates, it is discovered that both the bride and her sister have been married before to men very much their senior who died soon after the weddings. Something in the garden arouses Cribb's suspicions and he comes up with a neat compromise to try and save Henry's life.

Two robberies at the homes of patrons of a medium holding séances in their houses seem rather more than coincidence but Jowett belongs to a group investigating the honesty of the medium, who is wired electrically to a bell which will ring if he moves in such a way that suggests trickery. Unfortunately the wiring explodes and he is killed. Cribb is called to investigate a death that was certainly not perpetrated by somebody from the spirit world.