The Prisoner Under The Spotlight

   Having resigned his job, by handing in a letter of resignation, and the use of a few well chosen words, the Prisoner leaves the underground car park at Abingdon Street in Westminster, and drives through the streets back to his home in Buckingham Place, shadowed by two Undertakers in a black hearse. Upon arriving home, the Prisoner collects two suitcases, and into one he packs two magazines, before collecting his passport and airline ticket to Europe. I used to be of the opinion that the Prisoner was actually packing two colour photographs, one of a tropical beach somewhere. And for the life of me I could not see what relevance those photographs had for the Prisoner. But thought that they must be of some importance to him, seeing as he packed them into one of this suitcases. But after some small research, I found that after all these years, thinking that they were two photographs, I find they are simply two magazines of no importance whatsoever. Only selected reading matter to take on his journey.
   So where is the Prisoner going? I’ve already mentioned that his airline ticket is for Europe. How do I know that? Again through research. I telephoned the museum at Heathrow airport and spoke with a very helpful curator there. So, the Prisoner was not going to Ireland, Paris maybe. As he had been discussing his future new life, with Madame Engadine, at one of her celebrated parties. The Prisoner had said to Engadine that he wasn’t sure where he was going. Somewhere different, somewhere quiet, as he needed to time think. Well Portmeirion is somewhere different, and it was almost certainly quiet at that time. But no. Portmeirion is in North Wales, and entirely in the different direction to Europe, because of the European airline ticket in the Prisoner’s possession.
   But all this is quite incidental, to what was about to happen. Because the Prisoner had left it too late! They came for the Prisoner before he was expecting them. Oh yes, I do believe that he was expecting them to be coming for him, hence the Prisoner’s urgency to get away, to escape, together with the two previously packed suitcases. Any everyday, run of the mill person, who had just resigned their job, would go home, have a drink. Put their feet up and slowly contemplate their future. But with the Prisoner and the kind of work he did, made such a thing impossible. He had to get away. But as I say he had left it too late. There they are already, outside two Undertakers getting out of a black hearse. I’m sure that the Prisoner had been expecting them, but not as a pair of Undertakers. Not that he ever saw them of course. The black hearse parked outside, as one opens the back for the coffin. While the second undertaker gains entry to the house with the aid of a key. Then using a gas gun, as we’ve seen in the episodes of ‘The Schizoid Man’ and ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ pumps nerve gas into the study though the keyhole, rendering the Prisoner unconscious.
   Then a coffin is carried into the house between the Undertakers, and once inside the lid removed and the body of the Prisoner placed inside, and the lid replaced. Then the coffin is carried out of the house, across the pavement and into the back of the waiting hearse with the unconscious body of the Prisoner inside, as he is being abducted from his home. Picture the scene if you will, and outside 1 Buckingham Place, as the two Undertakers close both the back door of the hearse and the door of the house. It is an everyday occurrence, Undertakers collecting a body from someone’s home. So innocent would the scene be, that any passerby would not give it a second glance. Although a gentleman who might be passing by at this time, would remove his hat in quiet respect for the dead, as gentlemen do. As I have done as a hearse containing a coffin, with or without a cortège following behind as  it passes by. But in this case, and how many cases like it, the coffin inside the hearse contains the unconscious body of a man being abducted from his home, by two agents, whose origin was unknown at that time. But then any such passer by would not know that. Would they?   

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