A Taste for Death - Season 1 (1988)

Commander Adam Dalgliesh is asked by a friend, Home Office Minister Sir Paul Berowne, to be aware correspondence of a personal nature he's received. He's not being blackmailed and so there's nothing to investigate per se and he only wants Adam to keep an eye on what's going on. Sir Paul's personal life is somewhat complicated. He lives in the shadow of his late brother Hugo and has little time for his wife Barbara who is having an affair with Stephen Lampart. She is now pregnant but insists that the child is his. He's fed up with it all and decides to chuck it all in....

Sir Paul Berowne gives his latest anonymous letter to Adam Dalgliesh and the next day visits Father Francis Barnes at St. Matthews Church in Paddington, requesting permission to spend one night alone in a spare room at his church. The next day, Sir Paul's body is found by Mrs. Wharton, a church volunteer, his throat slit. There was also a homeless man, Harry Mack, also dead in the room with him. Dalgliesh takes charge of the case and learns from Father Francis that he had only known Berowne for less than two weeks but had noticed something very peculiar at communion. ...

Commander Dalgliesh and Insp. Miskin continue their interviews with those associated with the case. Gordon Halliwell, the family chauffeur, came to the Berowne family after serving with the deceased Hugo in the army. He freely admits that he and Sir Paul didn't along. Barbara Berowne's brother Dominic Swayne has an alibi. Dalgliesh also questions him about the death of the Berowne family's servant, Diana Travers, who drowned. Swayne says she wasn't an unemployed actress as she claimed. Berowne's daughter Sarah didn't get on with her father and were estranged owing to ...