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The Undertakers

by Malcolm Hulke
Designed by David Marshall
Directed by Bill Bain

An undertaker, Green (Howard Goorney) conducts four pallbearers out of a lift into the hallway of an exclusive penthouse floor of a building. He enters the apartment where Madden (Patrick Holt) is reading the paper, fires his gun three times, and the pall bearers remove their top hats and bow solemnly.

Steed arrives at Cathy's apartment, leaving her his kitchen goods that he won't need, as he's been assigned to accompany Professor Renter to America and will be absent some months. He then goes to the same building as the undertakers, but knocks on the door of the next apartment.
The professor's wife (Lally Bowers) answers the door, and tell Steed that her husband has suddenly retired to a life of meditation and will see no-one. Steed leaves and she goes into another room, where Lomax (Lee Patterson) is coaching Wilkinson (Ronald Russell) in impersonating the Professor. Lomax later slips next door for a liaison with Madden's wife, Paula (Jan Holden), but their embraces are interrupted by the unexpected early return from a finishing school by Madden's daughter Daphne (Mandy Miller), they tell her her father has gone away for a few days.
Steed visits the exclusive rest home Professor Renter is supposedly residing at, but the stern Mrs Lomax (Marcella Markham) refuses to let him in, he sees Green's pallbearers carry a coffin out of the building. Mrs Lomax calls her husband at the Madden's apartment, telling him about Steed, and tells him she wants a 50/50 split of the profits, now their relationship is purely business and no longer friendly. Lomax decides to send the undertakers round, and when Steed investigates Green's funeral parlour, he sees Mrs Lomax in the coffin.

Steed returns to Mrs Renter's apartment but she tells him she's about to take up the Matron's job at Adelphi Park, and can't find her husband's plans to hand over to him. He then investigates the electoral rolls, and discovers that all the residents of Adelphi Park are millionaires and Cathy points out that death duties can be avoided by making a gift of all one's assets five years before decease but if death occurs within five years, death duties are invoked on the gift.
Madden is now seen to be very much alive, and plotting with Green to avenge himself on Lomax, who had ordered his death to gain full control over the concern, and free access to Paula. Green considering Madden more useful to the company that Lomax would ever be, so hadn't followed orders.
Steed asks Mrs Gale to take on the Assistant Matron's position at the home, and she discovers that Mrs Renter's husband is an actor hired to replace him so she doesn't lose most of his fortune in taxes. The retirement home arranges the send-off of the actress playing Mrs Baker (Helena McCarthy), it now being the required five years. Steed ring Cathy at the home, but his call is overheard by Green.

Daphne meanwhile goes to Adelphi Park, and enters the house looking for her father, but is shown the actor Reeve (Denis Forsyth) instead. She is detained by Mrs Renter until Paula and Lomax arrive, despite Cathy trying to help her escape. Lomax is shot by Madden, who arrives with Green to take care of Cathy, but Steed bursts in and a furious running gun battle takes place through the grounds and Grecian statues of the home. The Avengers subdue Green and Madden, and Mrs Renter is absolved of guilt by the police and is set to make a new million from the royalties of her husband's invention.