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At the home of Lady Theresa Cutler, a school party has just arrived to be shown round the 400 year old house. Lady Cutler's husband, Sylvester Le Fley is outside by the pool having a massage, and talking into a Dictaphone. He's dictating his latest theatre review for his column for the Sunday Telegraph. Clearly, he didn't like the play!

Lady Cutler watches her husband being massaged, and gets annoyed. The masseur is going a little higher up Sylvester's leg than she would like. In revenge she makes him a sandwich that has a stinging nettle filling!

Meanwhile back on the school tour, they have reached the pinnacle of the art collection a painting called, "Kiss of Judas" by El Greco. It's kept in a locked room which has humidity and temperature carefully monitored. The room is small and so the guide can only let 4-5 people in at a time. Looking round the room, the only entrance is through the door, and the windows in the ceiling do not open. The door is of an elaborate Spanish design dating back to the early 1900s. An old man can be seen sitting at the end of the hall way leading to the room, starting to eat his lunch. His name is Eric and he's a member of staff at the house.

The guide then takes in the 2nd group of children into the room, however the painting can no longer been seen. It has been cut from the frame and stolen, but as it was there only 30 seconds ago, where and how could it have gone? The guide immediately starts to panic, and Eric puts aside his spam sandwich to fetch Sylvester.

Sylvester tells Martha (the guide) to call the police. As she does, she hears Sylvester cry out and runs to his side. He has been hit from behind, and says he heard someone running off. Soon the police arrive and are questioning people and taking forensic evidence.

Meanwhile in a park, Jonathan and Adam are practising a new trick, for Adam's forth coming open air show. Adam is being locked in a trunk after being wrapped in a straight jacket and placed in a sack. It's raining very badly, and things get worse when, as Adam is being nailed into a box, an old woman misunderstands what's going on and proceeds to beat up Jonathan! Soon the police arrive demanding an explanation. After Jonathan tells them it's a practice run for an illusion for Adam's show, they carry on. The box is lowered into the ground coffin style, and then the whole is filled in.

Jonathan goes back to the trailer they have near by, and meets Adam there. Not sure how he got there, but he is spying out the window at a couple of beautiful women! Jonathan reads in the paper of Sylvester's misfortune and laughs. Sylvester gave Adam's show a particularly bad review, "With Adam Klaus performing miracles, Jesus has nothing to worry about!"

Maddy on the other hand is talking to her therapist. She's been having erotic dreams about Jonathan, her latest being that they were making love on stage at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. The audience were booing and shouting bring back the juggler, which seemed to put them off slightly! Before she says anymore a policeman bursts in, stopping the consultation because Maddy's therapist, isn't a therapist! She's a woman suffering from a mental condition making her believe she's a therapist! Then another woman comes in, claiming the same thing for the man! It turns out he works for the gasboard, and not the police at all! She takes the man away, and they continue with Maddy's consultation.

Next we see Maddy and Jonathan at her agent's (Barry) office. Unfortunately Barry has double booked himself for lunch, and they can't stay. Barry then asked Maddy if she has heard any more about that thing? She replies yes and that she's going to see it through on Thursday morning. Jonathan is left thinking that they are talking in code, but doesn't ask any questions. Maddy then offers to take him to lunch, to somewhere classy.

Jonathan is not best pleased to discover she has taken him to Sylvester Le Fley's house. However Maddy does her usual number on him, and he reluctantly agrees to have a look at the room. As they walk round, Benjamin, Sylvester's son, suddenly appears and asks if they're married! When asked why, he replies that he saw them arguing earlier! His mother then appears, and warns him against talking to strangers, moaning that it's another bad habit he's picked up from Melissa (his last Nanny). While Maddy and Theresa talk, Jonathan has a look around the room and hall. He comes back into the room just in time to hear Theresa talk about the £50,000 reward they are offering for the paintings return. This was something Maddy didn't tell him!

Maddy then has a word with Eric, while Jonathan plays with Benjamin, teaching him a trick with an elastic band. He verifies that the painting was there, and 30 seconds later it disappeared! They then move on to Sylvester. Jonathan asks him to lie on the floor where he was hit, which he does. Jonathan then proceeds to walk over him on the way to the library where some footprints were found, along with an open window, taken as the way of escape of the burglar.

The first thing Maddy notices is the smell of the room, and she sniffs at some potpourri on the table. Jonathan has a look at the footprints, and can't understand why they are the way they are. When asked what he means, he jokes, "Oh come on, a kid of five could work it out!". Benjamin then speaks up pointing out, that the footprint go round the rug on the floor. Why? It would have been quicker just to run across the rug. Another thing that strikes Jonathan is that the footprints are that of someone walking, not running.

Jonathan then surprises Maddy by saying that he can't help Sylvester. When Sylvester says that's it a mystery which has stumped everyone, why he should have expected anything different from Jonathan....Jonathan interrupts him.

"I know exactly how your painting disappeared Mr. Le Fley, I'm just not gonna tell you."

Needless to say on the drive back, Maddy is not happy. Admittedly she is only thinking of the money, which doesn't seem to have any effect on Jonathan. The higher the price the better the feeling of saying no! Maddy drops Jonathan off at Adam's place, and says she'll work it out for herself, but if Jonathan would give her a clue to get started she'd be grateful! He gets out of the car, and tells her:-

"Look to Eric's spam sandwich, it's the key to the whole thing."

At Adam's house, Adam wants Jonathan to come up with a new trick for when he meets the queen. He is thinking along the lines of producing a stamp on her tongue, and wants Jonathan to come up with a way of doing it....!

The next day, Jonathan turns up at Maddy's flat. She thinks he's come to gloat, but all he's after is the lunch she promised him yesterday. Maddy seems a bit distracted, and when she goes to put her makeup on and make a few calls, Jonathan see an entry in Maddy's diary. On Thursday it reads, "Gordon Hill - Coming Down".

After lunch, Jonathan still refuses to tell her how it was done. But as she did buy him a particularly nice lunch, he agrees to run through it with her. He tells her to think about the scented room (meaning the library). The smell from the room was too strong to be from the potpourri. Potpourri is notorious for having no smell unless placed very close to your nose! So where did this extra smells come from? Before they can talk anymore, a man walks into Maddy's house. It's the man who burst into Maddy's therapy session pretending to be a policeman. He immediately demands to be told what Jonathan knows about the robbery. Jonathan isn't fooled for a second, having seen the man's ID telling him he's from The Thames Gasboard. He proceeds to walk out, leaving Maddy calling after him, "I had to have a contingency plan.."

Back at Lady Cutler's house, Benjamin is being shown his new tree house by his parents. It's a metal box placed in a tree, complete with lift! He clearly isn't happy, he was hoping for a wooden one, with a rope ladder. His parents seem to have no idea! They are interrupted when Sylvester's mobile phone rings. The insurance company say there isn't enough evidence to convince them that a robbery has even been committed, and are refusing to pay up! Sylvester is clearly not a happy man!

That evening while cleaning Jonathan gets an angry call from Adam. It would appear that Lady Cutler is the Chairperson of the local Conservative Association. She also welds a lot of influence over Westminster Council. West Minster council have just refused permission for Adam's open air show. He is not happy and demands Jonathan goes down to Lady Cutler's house and tell them how their painting disappeared!

The following day, Jonathan sets out to find Maddy. Unable to find her, he pops in to see Barry. He shows slight signs of jealousy, when he mentions that she might be with Gordon Hill as it was in her diary. Barry then tells him that Gordon Hill isn't a person, but a road name.

Maddy never knew her father, and her mother lived mainly on her nerves. One day her mother was accused of stealing a packet of bacon, and it ended up going to court. The day after the court case, she took a wire from an electric iron and put it in her mouth, committing suicide. Maddy came home from work and found her. Maddy was only 17 years old.

Ever since then, Maddy has been blocking out the pain, until the time when she has to face it. Today is that day, Gordon Hill is being demolished. As Maddy's old house is being reduced to rubble, Jonathan appears, and they walk off.

They then arrive at the school where the children who came on the tour are from. To find the one piece of the puzzle left.

Then it's on to Lady Cutler's house. The tour guide shows them through, but not before Jonathan asks Benjamin if he wants to learn another trick. He nods his head eagerly!

They all assemble in the room where the painting used to be. After a bit of pre-amble, Jonathan asks everyone to leave, except Benjamin. Outside the room and behind the closed door, Jonathan counts out 30 seconds, and then re-opens the door. We then see Benjamin sitting on the floor with the painting in front of him, to the amazement of Sylvester and Lady Cutler.

Maddy is then seen back at her therapists, telling her that going to see her old house being knocked down wasn't therapeutic at all. If Jonathan hadn't turned up when he did, she might have walked in front of the digger! She then talks of the painting, and what really happened to it.

When they arrived at the school, they found the girl, Judy, who took the painting. She's amazed that they found out. Jonathan explains it's all logic, but what they are unclear of is why she did it. For that, she tells them, they'll have to ask her sister, Melissa.

Round at Melissa's house they learn the whole story. Melissa used to be Benjamin's Nanny before she was fired. Sylvester and Lady Cutler have no idea about Benjamin. Anything he wants, he gets, except the one thing he really needs, a mother and a father giving him quality time. So Melissa indulged the boy, racing him around the house and giving him her time. Of course this didn't find favour with his parents, and she was quickly given a fortnight's notice. Added to this Lady Cutler's temper was volatile, flaring up over the most stupid little things, even becoming violent at times.

Melissa then decided to teach them a lesson and see how they'd like it if something they loved was taken away from them. Her boyfriend, Jeff, first put the idea in her head, after he saw the doors. The way the wood is sandwiched, creating a hollow interior. Finding an hour when the parents weren't home was easy, and Jeff simply sliced a slit in the bottom of the door. They then placed a couple of nails to swivel round to stop the painting falling down once it was inside the door, and then re-hung the door.

Judy then suggested the school trip. It was easy to organise and who would suspect a group of 12 year old girls? When the first group of girls leaves the room, Judy stays behind, and proceeds to cut the painting away from the frame and push it up into the door, swivelling the nails round to keep it there. Her friends are outside keeping the tour guide busy, and then when they come back in, everyone is looking at the empty frame, so Judy can just blend in with them.

The rest of the story has to be guessed at, but it's not hard. Sylvester and Lady Cutler are arguing, her temper gets the better of her, and she hits her husband. He runs into the house, where he learns of the painting. Realising the obvious lack of evidence will cause problems with the insurance. Sylvester makes up an imaginary burglar. He pretends he's been hit from behind, and falls to the floor. While Eric and co. call the police, he and his wife set about making some foot prints in the library using some scented talcum powder for dust.

Back at Maddy's flat we see Maddy getting ready to go out in the bathroom, and Jonathan reading a paper leaning on the wall outside. Maddy is wondering aloud how a couple like Sylvester and Lady Cutler can stay together, when they clearly don't listen to each other. Jonathan is talking about Adam's appearance in the paper. It would appear he greeted the queen with a few birds hidden in his coat! They are clearly not listening to each other. Jonathan then stops and sniffs the air,

"What's that I can smell...? Is it, talcum powder....?"

Maddy then proceeds to spray him in the face with talcum powder!

Guest cast
Adam Klaus	Sylvester Le Fley	Lady Theresa Cutler	Benjamin Le Fley
Barry Opper	Roy Gregson	Judy	Melissa
Dr. Irene Wolverton	2nd Therapist	Scooter Lady	Eric
Martha Parrish	Masseuse

© 2024 Liane Frydland
Written by Liane Frydland except where cited. See also Disclaimer and Accessibility.