'For the Girl Who Has Everything' by Donald James

While in his usual financial difficulty, Jeff is visited by ghost-hunter James McAllister, who explains he has been hired to investigate the haunting of Crake Castle by its owner, millionairess Kim Wentworth. McAllister doubts whether there really is a ghost, but Jeff agrees to share the £1,500 fee in return for helping to investigate. Kim is awoken at midnight by a sinister, chain-rattling figure at the foot of her bed, but by the time McAllister gets there, it has vanished; she is then unimpressed when her seventh - and latest - husband, Larry, tells her that he is going to his artist’s studio the following night, leaving her alone in the castle. At McAllister's suggestion, Jeff tails Larry Wentworth to a cottage where he sees him with another woman. Upon returning to the castle, Marty and Jeff find McAllister dead. Both Kim and her French manservant, Jean-Claude insist that nobody entered the castle, but Jeff and Marty come soon across a concealed priest-hole located behind a bookcase which is large enough to hide in. They then meet Mrs. Pleasance, who runs the village tea shop, who can see and communicate with Marty, and who likes to save money wherever possible by working on her own electricity problems while reading a do-it-yourself book. Two nights later, while keeping guard at the castle, Jeff alerted by Kim's screaming and the sound of a gun firing. He finds the body of Larry Wentworth, apparently shot by Kim in self-defence. This seems to be the end of the case: Larry has obviously invented the ghost in order to frighten his wife enough to get rid of her and so inherit her fortune, enabling him to marry Laura Slade, the girl Jeff saw him with at the cottage. Jeff, however, is not convinced: Larry could not have killed McAllister, as Jeff had tailed him at the time he was killed. Refusing a pay-off from Kim, Jeff presses on with his investigations. At midnight, Jeff is woken and Marty scared by a hooded figure emerging from the shadows. After a struggle, the ghost runs to Kim's room, and is revealed to be Jean-Claude. His escape into the priest-hole is stopped by Marty, who blows the curtains of the four-poster bed around him. Jeff tries to capture Jean-Claude but is tripped by Kim, and he falls into the priest-hole, where Kim plans to leave him to rot. It seems Kim intends to leave with husband-to-be number eight following the inquest into number seven's death. Marty's only hope is Mrs Pleasance, and so he tells her to go to the castle and open the priest-hole. Jeff, now freed, arrives at the inquest in time to expose Kim and Jean-Claude.Back in the office, Marty is happy that he can now contact people through Mrs Pleasance as well as through Jeff, but the old lady appears dressed all in white, having fatally fiddled just once too often with her electrics…

Jeff Randall (Mike Pratt), Marty Hopkirk (Kenneth Cope), Jean Hopkirk (Annette Andre), Mary Merrall (Clara Faringham), Brian Blessed (Lawsey), Vernoica Carlson (Suzanne), John Sharp (Sagran), Roger Delgado (Tapiro), Nicholas Courtney (Max), Roger Croucher (Terry), Nicholas Chagrin (Andre)

Directed by Cyril Frankel

TX:
UK: 7th December, 1969 @ 7.25pm

Notes:
*Featuring Jeff Randall, the late Marty Hopkirk, and Jean Hopkirk