The Hangman's Demise is the third episode of the fourth season of Father Brown.
A former hangman, Henry Lee, is confronted at his wedding anniversary by a mother about her son whom he executed a year before for the murder of a court secretary – an execution where the condemned man whispered to Lee the identity of the real killer. The following morning Lee is poisoned with hemlock. His friend George, an ex-policeman, is arrested and released. The mother, recently released from prison, is arrested and a motive for Lee's wife emerges. Father Brown untangles a web of deceit and corruption in the police as Lee lies dying.
Tropes:
- Framing the Guilty Party: The Victim of the Week actually commits suicide, but does it such a way as to make it look like murder, and frames someone he knows committed murder years before but whom the police cannot touch.
- Suicide, Not Murder: The Victim of the Week commits suicide in a manner designed to look like murder and leaves evidence framing one of his friends. Overlaps with Framing the Guilty Party, because the reason he did it was that he had learned his friend had committed a murder years ago and gotten away with it. By making him out to have committed this murder, he was attempting to ensure the friend would still go to the gallows.
