Hetty Wainthropp Investigates IV
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Jim Goddard
Ray L. Nicholas
Brian Banes
Nathaniel Duncan
Angela Lonsdale
Margery Withers
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Sixty-something gumshoe Hetty Wainthropp returns with her teenage sidekick, Geoffrey, and her doting husband, Robert, to take on a variety of cases at the Wainthropp Detective Agency with the help of Geoffrey's fiercely independent girlfriend-mechanic, Janet Fraser. In "A Minor Operation," Hetty goes into the hospital for a varicose vein treatment. There she meets DCI Adams, who's guarding a prisoner who needs an operation. When a young nurse accuses Adams of sexual harassment, Hetty investigates from her hospital bed. At home, Hetty's brother-in-law Frank meets a widow who asks him to help her son, who is in trouble with a gang. His inquiries lead him to the hospital. In "Helping Hansi," a retired German gardener, Hansi Bauer, asks Hetty to help locate his sister, whom he last saw during World War II, just as she was fleeing to England with her baby, while he stayed behind in Switzerland working for the Red Cross. After the war, he worked as a gardener for a British lord, who bequeathed to him partial control over the family estate, now a retirement home. Hetty discovers that the residents of the home where Hansi lives refuse to associate with him, calling him a Nazi. As she searches for Hansi's family, Hetty tries to put a stop to his victimization. Hetty locates Hansi's nephew -- and exposes a greedy plot to rob Hansi of his stake in the property. In "How Time Flies," clock restorer Montague "Monty" Francis tells Hetty he's in danger and needs her help. Two small-time crooks, the Flintoff brothers, asked him to mend a rare antique clock, but Monty suspected they weren't the rightful owners and kept the clock. The brothers want it back and Monty needs Hetty's expertise to help him find the truth. Meanwhile, brother-in-law Frank breaks Hetty's number one rule -- no divorce cases. In "Something to Treasure," Hetty and Geoffrey go undercover and underground when a miner's widow asks her to find a book written by her late husband, who died in an explosion at an iron mine in Cumbria. Posing as a writer who's preparing a book about miners' wives, Hetty discovers that the villagers believe the retired miners collected valuable minerals, planned to sell them and share the profits. No one knows the whereabouts of the minerals, however, and the villagers believe the dead man stole them. In "Family Values," the police determine that there was no foul play in the drowning death of a wealthy man, but his brother Harry is convinced that the housekeeper, Ella, has stolen property from the house and murdered her employer. Robert reluctantly goes undercover, posing as the brothers' wheelchair-bound relative, arrived from South Africa, to help Hetty solve the case. Geoffrey poses as his chauffeur/attendant. In "Digging For Dirt," a local councilor asks Hetty to mediate between the council and his mother, Enid, who has barricaded herself in her ramshackle flat in Glebe Hamlets, which the council wants to replace with a new development. Enid is convinced that the original builder, who stands to profit from the new construction, knew that the original structure was faulty and she refuses to move until the facts are uncovered. Hetty and Geoffrey learn that a time capsule in the building is likely to include damaging revelations about the original development.
