Ghosts – Director: Peter Stebbings/Writer: Ian Carpenter
This one starts with a shadowy figure meticulously putting together a homemade bomb. At Frankie’s office, a woman named Elspeth Burton wants to hire Frankie to find out why her husband has been pushing her away lately. Elspeth thinks he’s hiding something, mentioning a number of strange phone calls he’s gotten lately. Elspeth doesn’t believe her husband is
screwing around on her, nor does she think he’s suffering shell-shock from the War. Frankie goes to the Burton house to talk to Grant, but he denies anything is wrong and assures Frankie things will soon be back to normal. As she leaves, Burton gets a postcard in the mail (from Salisbury, England with the message “See you soon”) that freaks him out. Barely a minute later, the Burton house explodes, scaring the shit out of Frankie.
The next day, Mary tells Frankie the gas line was cut and the police are calling it a suicide. Frankie doesn’t believe it, so she asks Mary to look around the crime scene for clues. Elspeth doesn’t believe the suicide theory 
either, but admits Grant always had trouble talking about the War. She mentions several recent visits to the Soldiers’ Hospital, so Frankie decides to check it out. She finds out Burton was visiting a Private named Lewis Davidson and in a hell of a coincidence, she actually knows Lewis. Apparently they used to hang out and go dancing quite a bit in England during the War (although Frankie later tells Trudy that she and Lewis never banged), but unfortunately Lewis has amnesia and doesn’t remember Frankie … or anything else from the War. Trudy talks to a friend of hers who works at the telephone exchange, who tells Trudy the calls to the Burton house came from a phone booth. She does give Trudy a
number that Grant Burton called just before his house blew up. At the hospital, Frankie tells Lewis about some of their hijinks and he lets her know that Burton visited him several times, wanting to ask about something that happened during the War. Naturally, Lewis couldn’t remember anything, so they just talked about banal stuff. At the office, Frankie and Trudy exchange info and Trudy calls the number Burton rang just before his death, which turns out to be a pharmacy. Mary brings in all the stuff she found in the remains of Burton’s house, which includes the charred postcard of Salisbury. She also found the detonator, which Frankie 
recognizes as a pencil-type detonator. (Frankie’s obviously had some demolitions training, since she recognizes the detonator and knows how picric acid could’ve been used to set it off.) Frankie and Trudy head to the pharmacy to figure out why Burton called there, but find the owner tied up and dead. A guy in a gas mask jumps out of the closet and after a brief fight he flees, leaving another pencil detonator behind. Frankie and Trudy snuff the detonator before it blows the place up, but the killer gets away.
They find another Salisbury postcard, as well as some clay that Trudy identifies as coming from the Don Valley. (Her dad used to work there.) Frankie goes to the Don Valley and snoops around, finding a shack in the woods surrounded by crude alarms. Trudy goes to an Army surplus store to find the gas mask the killer was wearing. She flirts with the owner to get the info, but he says that particular type of mask is rare and he’s only sold one. He says he could track down the guy’s info, but it’ll take a while because of
his disorganized records. In the woods, Frankie hides when the shack’s occupant returns. She watches as he takes off the gas mask and dons a Phantom of the Opera-style half-mask. He heads out again and she follows. Mary drops by the office to tell Trudy about the background check she ran on Burton and dead pharmacist and they realize the two were in the Artillery Corps during the War. Frankie follows the masked killer to the Soldiers’ Hospital and freaks out when she sees him talking to Lewis. Frankie chases the killer, but he gets away again.
Naturally, the killer clears out his hideout in the woods, so Frankie is left with no clue as to where to find him. She figures Lewis might be the key and 
asks her own therapist (Peter, who’s a priest) about how to get through Lewis’s mental blocks. He advises her to concentrate on specifics instead of trying to get Lewis to remember everything at once. Frankie talks to Lewis, who says he feels like he should know the guy in the mask. Frankie urges him to concentrate on that and the word “Porton” comes to him. At the Army surplus store, Trudy gets the info on the guy who bought the gas mask. The store owner never met the buyer, but does have the address where the mask was delivered. At the office, Frankie asks Elspeth about her husband’s War years and she mentions he was stationed near Salisbury. When she looks at a map, Frankie sees that Porton is a small town just outside Salisbury. Frankie puts on her old uniform and goes to the Department of Defense to look through the records. She must have a pretty high clearance, but a lot of the records are still heavily redacted. She does find out that Porton Down was a facility used for testing chemical weapons like mustard gas, chlorine, and phosgene. She also finds out that Lewis’s old unit (12th York Rangers) was stationed at Porton Down.
Trudy checks out the address of the guy who bought the mask and finds a dilapidated house. She breaks in and finds the bomb lab in the basement, along with a list of the killer’s victims … and the killer’s name, McElroy. Trudy calls Frankie to let her know where she is, but McElroy returns and she’s forced to hide in the basement. But she doesn’t hide well enough and he catches her.
When Frankie arrives, she finds Trudy tied up in the basement and McElroy gone. They go through his victim list and Frankie realizes they were all in the 12th York Rangers stationed at Porton Down. They figure the unit commander (General Chanston, who Frankie saw visiting soldiers at the 
hospital earlier) is the final target. Frankie tells Trudy to call the cops while she goes to find McElroy and Chanston. McElroy has the General tied to a tree outside his shack in the Don Valley and reveals his identity to him. McElroy’s face is heavily scarred from mustard gas and he’s about to blow himself and General Chanston to hell when Frankie shows up. After a brief stand-off, Frankie gets the General to admit that he gassed his own men (sixteen of whom died) to test the efficacy of the new gas masks. Frankie convinces McElroy that leaving the General alive will insure that people find out what really happened and McElroy decides to spare him.
Later, Chanston tells Frankie that McElroy will get psychiatric help. He gives her the details of what happened and tells her Lewis ran away when his fellow soldiers started dying, which is why he didn’t get gassed.
(Apparently, Burton was a textile expert and the pharmacist made the filters, so they weren’t bad people, they really believed the masks would work.) Elspeth meets Chanston, but finds it hard to sustain her anger. Frankie tells Peter that Lewis’s memory has come flooding back, but refuses to see the parallel between her own trauma and his. Peter suggests she talk to Lewis as a form of therapy and she does.
This is a pretty good episode, giving us a little more insight into Frankie’s 
PTSD by comparing it with Lewis’s (and maybe McElroy’s to some extent). We still don’t see exactly what happened, although there is a quick flashback at the end of Frankie telling Lewis she can’t go dancing with and then breaking down as she washes blood from her uniform. I’m assuming we’ll get the full story in a future episode … at least I hope we do. The Great War looms large over everyone’s lives, which makes sense since it was the worst conflict ever known up to that time. In spite of her trauma, Frankie does still have her old uniform (and her service revolver). We also learn that both Frankie and Trudy can
take a beating pretty well. We don’t get much insight into Trudy, although she does seem to be constantly complaining about not being able to find romance. But for someone looking for love, she certainly has no qualms about flirting to get info from various people. I’m not sure if she doesn’t see a connection, or if she’s just looking for something deeper.
Noticeable Things:
- When asking for Frankie’s help, Elspeth mentions reading about her previous cases seen in Ladies in Red and Mother of Pearl.
- We see the beginnings of Remembrance Day (then known as Armistice Day) and the selling of poppies to commemorate those who died in the War.
- Porton Down was (and still is) a centre for chemical research for the Army.
- The “classified papers” Frankie reads at the Department of Defense look like they were copied straight off of Wikipedia.
Favourite Quotes:
- “Well, I may have promised more than I intend to deliver.” Mary admitting that she “charmed” a gas man into letting look through the wrecked Burton house.
- “Oh, that’s the best kind of friend.” Trudy’s response when Frankie says she and Lewis were just friends, with no strings attached.