The Winged Avenger

"The Winged Avenger" is the sixth episode of the fifth series of the 1960s cult British spy-fi television series The Avengers, starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg, and guest starring Nigel Green, Colin Jeavons, Jack MacGowran, and Neil Hallett. It was first broadcast in the Southern and Tyne Tees regions of the ITV network on Wednesday 15 February 1967. ABC Weekend Television, who commissioned the show for ITV, broadcast it in its own regions three days later on Saturday 18 February. The episode was written by Richard Harris, and directed by Gordon Flemyng & Peter Duffell. This episode contains additional cartoon drawings by Frank Bellamy. Plot One night, a figure in a bird costume breaks into the office of Simon Roberts, the owner of a publishing company, and slashes him to death. As Roberts’ office was on the top floor of a skyscraper, Steed and Peel are called in by Roberts’ son Peter to investigate the murder due to the improbability of an assailant being able to access the office. Steed and Peel are baffled but resolve to continue looking into the matter as Roberts is not the first businessman to be killed in such circumstances. That night, Peter is also murdered in the same office and manner as his father, further confusing the two agents. An audio dictation made by Peter just before he died refers to an ongoing legal battle between the Roberts publishing company and Sir Lexius Cray, an acclaimed mountaineer who is one of their authors. The battle is over the profits from Cray’s memoirs. Peel meets with Cray, who she discovers to be a carer of numerous birds. Cray’s butler Tay-Ling knows the assailant's identity and proceeds to blackmail them. Peel returns to Cray’s country mansion at night to further investigate and discovers the assailant entering the grounds, but it is too late to save Tay-Ling from being murdered.