Saturday 24 March 2012

The Persuaders - Episode Eight - Take Seven (1971)


Real or fake? Danny and Brett find it explosively dangerous when trying to help a girl whose long-missing brother apparently has a rightful claim to the estate she has inherited. The outcome is surprising. The legal verdict is clear. Mark Lindley (Christian Roberts) is the man he claims to be - the long-missing brother of Jenny Lindley (Sinead Cusack), who has inherited the wealthy Lindley estate left a number of years back on the death of her parents. Now she has nothing. Under the terms of the will, Mark is the sole legate.

Judge Fulton (Laurence Naismith) is not so sure, though, that theverdict is right. He believes Jenny when she says her brother is dead. Is Markreal or fake? His own story is undoubtedly convincing. And when Danny Wilde(Tony Curtis) and Brett Sinclair (Roger Moore) are persuaded by the Judge toinvestigate, they are also inclined to side with the attractive Jenny - much totheir discomfort, as they soon discover when they meet her and shots are firedthrough the window at them.
Mark, it seems, is ready to use violence to protect his interests. Yet he has a cast-iron alibi for the night of the shooting. Taking it from there, Danny and Brett seek the assistance of a contact known as The Farmer (Victor Platt), who first of all warns them that they are being followed by a private eye named Peter Hayward (Garfield Morgan) and later takes them to the house occupied by the man they are seeking, a professional killer called "The Major" (Colin Vancao). They come close to being his next victim (sic) - then, without warning, he topples forward dead, shot in the back.
Jenny's lawyer David Conron (Richard Hurndall) is the next link in the chain when he 'phones a message to Brett asking him to go to a farm. The farmer is a nephew of the Lindley's former nurse and he has his diary, and although an attempt is made to kill Conron and destroy the diary, it fails.
Meanwhile, Danny has discovered that Jenny has gone to Mark's apartment. He gets this message through to Brett, and both make for the house to find Mark and Jenny engaged in a cat-and-mouse game of murder. By now, Brett knows the truth. The secret has been revealed in the nurse's diary.
But can he and Danny prevent another murder? They also have some reckoning to do with the double-crossing private detective, Peter Hayward.

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