Four months after being shot Morse returns to work and witnesses a pageant, held to mark nine hundred years of history, disrupted by two events. The first is when feminist Kitty, daughter of prospective MP Barbara Batten, sprays beauty queen Diana Day with red paint, the second when an unknown man falls to his death from a roof. Initially deemed a suicide he has a host of fake identity cards and has scrawled a message in a motel notebook, D DAY FRIDAY 98018. When Bernard Yelland comes to Oxford in search of his runaway step-daughter Frida, Morse believes that FRIDAY actually reads FRIDA Y whilst D DAY could also signify Diana Day though a diversion from these mysteries is provided by the burglary of the Wolvercote Trove from the local museum. The dead man is a London-based private detective, Pettifer, who is not above blackmailing his clients and is possibly involved in the burglary though this is later disproved. Morse meanwhile works out the significance of the figures and exposes ... Written by don @ minifie-1

Elderly genealogist Adrian Weiss is murdered with an Indian ceremonial dagger in an Oxford museum. Other visitors that day were a party of school-girls from Blythe Mount school, where Morse goes, to find two teachers and seven girls staying there for the summer vacation. After he has left he finds a note reading 'Save Me' stuffed into his pocket. He learns that exactly a century earlier the school, then a private house, was the scene of the unsolved murders of the Blaise-Hamilton family, former owners of the dagger. Soon afterwards sensitive pupil Bunty disappears after hearing ghostly music played in the night. Headmistress Miss Symes tells Morse that the spectre of Charlotte Blaise-Hamilton is said to haunt the school and both Morse and teacher Miss Danby believe they have seen her. Morse contacts Stephen Fitzowen, who wrote a book about the murders and who reports that Weiss was keen to see him before he died and Fitzowen and Morse mount a ghost watch, during which there is another... Written by don @ minifie-1

When Vivienne Haldane is found murdered in her house she becomes the third victim of a serial killer who strangles married women with a silk stocking and removes their wedding rings after death - though the women are unknown to each other. Separated from her husband Mrs Haldane had a secret lover, referred to in her diary as 'X' and, like one of the other victims, she was seen getting into a green car. The stockings are a unique brand, Le Minou Noir, and have only one retail outlet in Oxford, Burridges department store. Here Thursday is shocked to find that widowed Italian saleslady Luisa Armstrong is a former partisan he met in the war but believed to be dead. Morse interviews the stockings' supplier, shifty Joey Lisk, who had tried to come on to Gloria Deeks, a prisoner's wife and assistant at the store, where she has many admirers. With the discovery of a fourth corpse evidence seems to point to Lisk but when simple store-man Norman, who worshipped Gloria, is also slain, it becomes... Written by don @ minifie-1

The body of ex-Fleet Street reporter Eric Patterson is found by a railway track. He was last seen arguing with Alderman Wintergreen over the Landesman construction company's plans to develop the site of former borstal Blenheim Vale. At the same time ten year old Tommy Cork runs away from his bullying father and George Aldridge, a former Blenheim Valley boy, absconds from jail and is later found dead, Morse believing that Tommy saw the killer and is now hiding. Then Wintergreen is also murdered. Eventually Morse learns that three of George's contemporaries at Blenheim Vale were trying to contact him. They tell Morse that there was sexual abuse of the boys when Wintergreen and Landesman were on its governing board but police declined to step in. At the same time ACC Deare confides in Thursday and Morse that he believes there is a cover up involving police corruption and asks them to investigate covertly. Aware that Tommy must have seen at least one of the murders Morse has to save both ... Written by don @ minifie-1