Tin-mining areas have a lot of arsenic in their soil - arsenic which is quickly absorbed by any body buried in it. Which makes it impossible to detect whether or not the deceased was killed by arsenic poisoning. Got that? Good.
We open (like Death of a Great Dane) at a burial service, conducted by the Rev Adrian Wyper (George Benson, who I think is the likeable civil servant in Free For All).
Steed is unobtrusively in the background, because it's an old friend of his being buried. And he has suspicions about how he came by his death, causing him to make some visits to the deceased's son (Robert 'Major Hunda in Traitor' Morris). On the second occasion he displays some unusual anger - which, like everything else Macnee does, nevertheless seems perfectly Steed-like.
We're shown exactly how Steed's friend ended up dead in the progress of the latest undertaking of Mandrake Investments - proprietors Roy Hopkins (Philip 'Bigon' Locke back again) and Dr Macombie (John Le Mesurier as the second bent doctor in as many episodes).
Cathy is despatched to the churchyard in Cornwall for some misdirection about exactly who's involved in the scheme at that end, while Steed visits Hopkins' Christmas cracker factory to sweet-talk Annette 'the watchmaker's daughter in It's Your Funeral' André. And from there it's not far to the compulsory winding-up of Mandrake Investments in the public interest.
Not a bad episode - Benson's playing in particular keeps us in doubt for as long as possible about whether or not the vicar is part of the scheme.
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