I just finished watching this on PBS, and there’s something I don’t understand.
Foyle left the skeleton key with the gear attached on his desk where the note from the photographer was left. The Special Service broke into his office that night and took both the key and the note before they went off to abduct the photographer.
Later, Foyle’s sitting in his office writing an arrest report when Sam comes in and sees the key on his desk. She recognizes the gear and cracks the case by knowing what it’s used for.
Maybe I nodded off somewhere in the middle of the show, but how did Foyle get the key back after the Special Service made off with it? What did I miss here?
(BTW, I absolutely love the series and am now watching it every weekday and on the weekends.)
Damn. It was on last week but I’ve deleted the recording. Looks like it’s online if you pay for it, if you want to check. Did the SIS really take the key and not return it at some point?
Okay, I missed that. It must have taken just a second or two.
Did Foyle at some point mention the photographer to the SIS agent and tell him he was a potential witness to the murder on the beach? If not, how did they know he could incriminate their VIP?
I just ran it through, but it wasn’t entirely clear - when the intruders swiped the message from the photographer (at around 49m30s) there was a clinking sound but I didn’t see what happened to the key. Certainly Bishop the minder appears to be having his own suspicions at about 53m.
But one more point of (quite irrelevant) detail: when Foyle’s old flame is pouring her heart out to him and says she must sound like a Noel Coward play - is it just me or is she wearing much the same hat as Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter…?
It seems that women of the period were considered all but naked if they didn’t have a hat on when they went out—it was the fashion of the time. It looks as though the same was true for men too, since Foyle and Milner never leave the police station without a hat on.
I’m sure there were a number of popular designs in women’s hats, so it’s not all that unusual there would be similarities between the one in the movie and those in the show.
(On the other hand, it may have been deliberate just to see if viewers were sharp enough to catch the allusion. )
When the intruders come in through the window, the key can be seen on top
of the papers on the desk. Just behind that is a box with a blue book on it,
You see the key being picked up to get to the papers.
As the intruders leave through the window, the key can be seen on the box
next to the blue book.
I seem to remember Anthony Horowitz has done similarly meta things elsewhere.
On the key and cog thing again - on checking (obsessive, or what:)?), I see that when the message was lifted from the desk, you can see obliquely that the key has been put in front of the notebook on the file box at the back of the desk, where at the beginning of the scene there was clear space, and again when Foyle spots later that something has changed on his desk, the key is still obliquely to be seen in the same spot.
)