The Day of the Devil

"The Day of the Devil" is an episode of the British television detective mystery show Inspector Morse dramatized on ITV. It was first broadcast in 1993.

Set-Up

John Peter Barrie (Keith Allen), a convicted rapist and devil worshipper, escapes from a prison infirmary. He eludes the authorities with several disguises.

Investigation

Morse and Detective Sergeant Lewis begin a manhunt. They question his prison therapist, Doctor Esther Martin (Harriet Walter). Humphrey Appleton (Richard Griffiths) is a priest and an expert in the occult, who provides them with information. Barrie abducts Holly Trevors (Gilly Coman), wife of Steven Trevors (Gavin Richards), then lets her go. Barrie demands to meet with Dr. Martin on Lammas day, a pagan day of ritual fire.

As part of the investigation Lewis visits an Occult bookshop, asking to see the bookshop's list of mail-order customers. He then finds this includes the name of an Oxford college staff member who Morse and Lewis have already met, as part of their search for the abducted wife of Steven Trevors, who is working as an odd-job man for the college.

Further twists occur as members of the public recognise Barrie in successive disguises. Morse suspects that someone is helping Barrie, as he escaped with only a little cash (stolen from the psychiatric nurse he drugged, to make his escape), but is known to have access to effective theatrical make-up, and is driving a van, despite the fact that no such van has been reported stolen.

Surprisingly, Steven Trevors' fingerprints are discovered, previously unidentified, on the police data base from an earlier unsolved crime. This connects him with Barrie.

On Lammas Day, a group of devil-worshippers are in the middle of celebrating a Black Mass, when they are suddenly surrounded by a ring of fire, and Steven Trevors is burned alive. The Oxford college staff member is the leading devil-priest, and traumatised by the fire, and the bizarre appearance of a goat-headed figure - the "Master" he has always professed to serve, but never really believed in.

The mystery is finally solved when Barrie's much earlier connection to his prison therapist is revealed.

Conclusion

Barrie murders his former partner, Steven Trevors, and is finally shot dead by a female police officer. This officer had earlier been extremely sensitive to some of Morse's remarks about femininity, despite Morse's attempts to explain the way he values women's caring values and apologizes for the offence he has given, which he also adds, was entirely unintentional.

At the final confrontation between Barrie and his psychiatric therapist (who has gained Barrie's confidence by studying the Occult and pretending to be a medium of a powerful Occult female spirit), Barrie, who has been seriously wounded by Holly Trevors, earlier, agrees to come out of the house that is surrounded by heavily armed police. Feigning a surrender he throws down one pistol, and, claiming to be unarmed, asks Morse to come to speak with him.

Believing that Barrie is no longer armed, Morse steps forward. As Barrie reveals a second weapon (taken from his therapist, and much earlier victim), and is starting to aim at Morse, the woman constable, wearing body-armour, shoots quickly, killing Barrie.

Morse and Lewis then interrogate the psychiatric therapist, Esther Martin, and learn that she had been the first of Barrie's and Trevors' rape victims. Holly Trevors, likewise an occultist, had been their accomplice. Martin had been assigned to the psychiatric hospital where Barrie was incarcerated. She had sought justice for her unreported rape by manipulating Barrie to escape and kill Trevors. She had then intended to shoot Barrie herself, but fate stepped in and the woman police constable had done it instead.

Martin tells Morse that if he thinks her actions unjust, she should show a ring recovered from Trevors' stash of trinkets stolen from rape victims to the woman the ring had been taken from, and look deep in her eyes as he tells her how he happens to be there.

References

• The Day of the Devil at the Internet Movie Database