'Grantchester' Recap: Season 9 Episode 8

Grantchester is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes and other seasons. 
Keep up with your favorite dramas and mysteries by signing up for our newsletter, Dramalogue.

After disappearing from Leonard’s halfway house along with the rest of Sam’s group of followers, Daniel has written Leonard a letter. He apologizes for leaving so suddenly and explains that he has found new purpose with Sam; he’s selling his house to help raise funds for Sam’s group. Don’t try to find me, he tells Leonard.

But soon the police are trying to find Sam. Fred Eccles was an accountant who kept to himself. He was quiet and never had friends visit his lodging, his landlady says, but he did belong to a church group and would meet a man to hand out leaflets together. He recently sold a bunch of the tin soldiers he painstakingly painted and organized in mock battles to raise money for the group. And now he has died from a fall out the window of his third-story room.

His landlady insists it wasn’t suicide. Some of his soldiers are still wet with paint and are also out of place even though he was meticulous. Someone else must have been in the room with him.

She heard him arguing over money last night with the leafletting man from his church group, even though he never raised his voice. It sounded like Fred was accusing the man of stealing. Geordie and Larry ask if the man’s name was Sam White – it was.

They bring Sam in, and he initially says he last saw Fred a week ago – immediately caught in a lie. He then admits he saw Fred the previous night, because Fred stole a large sum of money from the church group. He also says that Fred told him he had considered suicide. He then leaves the police station – they have nothing to hold him there.

Leonard was with Alphy seeking comfort over Daniel’s departure when Geordie informed Alphy that he had brought Sam in for questioning, and so both Alphy and Leonard went to the police station. Leonard confronts Sam as he’s leaving and tells him he’s taking advantage of Daniel. Sam offers to have Leonard come with him to the house his group is refurbishing as a new home and ask Daniel himself.

Sam already has a new devoted girlfriend, soon after his previous one, Caroline, went to prison for murder. Daniel is leading a Bible group, and tells Leonard that he’s happy and feels accepted. For once, his life is not centered around Leonard – he always worried that their friends were Leonard’s, not Daniel’s.

Distraught but suspicious of Sam, Leonard snoops around the house and finds a folder in Sam’s room containing a draft of a newspaper story denigrating Sam’s group by Innes Clark, the writer Caroline murdered in order to keep that same story from being published. Sam told the police that he didn’t know anything about the story.

While the police couldn’t hold Sam, Larry did “accidentally” keep an accounts book while searching Sam’s bag, given the large amount of money Sam said Fred stole. But the book is actually a war games book, despite its slipcover, which has a blue fingerprint on it. The war games book must be Fred’s – and he must have switched the slipcovers.

Larry returns to Fred’s lodging and finds the war games book – which is actually an accounts book with the wrong slipcover. He also grabs a bottle of paint matching the color of the fingerprint on the account slipcover. That paint dries in an hour, so if it was still wet when the police arrived at Fred’s, the person who touched the soldiers he was painting and then grabbed the “accounts” book and left a fingerprint had just been there.

As an accountant, Fred must have discovered that all the money Sam was raising for his group from people like Daniel and Caroline selling their houses or dipping into their wealth was actually going to Sam. Sam then must have come to Fred’s room and pushed him out the window before taking what he thought was Fred’s accounts book to remove evidence – except Fred had switched the slipcovers of his books to hide them.

Ms. Scott has done some digging and found that Sam White did indeed study at Corpus Christi, as he says – but that Sam White died in a fire that burned down his house years ago. Geordie wonders why Sam has been connected to so many deaths as a supposed bystander – there was the case involving the pregnant Rose Shirley, Caroline’s murder of Innes, and now Fred’s death. Hearing about Rose, Alphy connects her to a woman with a stroller whom he saw dropping off another Bible verse with red writing in his mail slot that morning. It said “Why have you given up?”

Geordie goes to visit Rose. She admits that Sam is the father of her baby, and that he draws out secrets from a person’s past and then uses them to make them feel needed and wanted. But when she became pregnant, he turned nasty: he saw her drop a letter off at the vicarage and told her he would kill both her and her baby in a fire. Her Bible verse messages were attempts to warn Alphy that Sam was a dangerous man.

Alphy, meanwhile, has been looking at those verses and realized that Rose was also using them to reveal the real name and birth date of “Sam”: John Amos. Alphy also surmises that the break-ins that occurred at the vicarage after the arrival of every Bible verse were Sam trying to retrieve them – he must have been watching Rose. Ms. Scott confirms his identity when she finds that the real Sam White had a housemate named John Amos when he died.

Ms. Scott also realizes that Leonard, whom she saw leave the police station with John Amos, is in danger, and tells Alphy, who sets off to help Leonard.

Leonard is still snooping around the house and spots a rifle in a closet. John appears, closes the closet door, and brings Leonard to an upstairs room. He then sees Alphy arrive through the window and tells Leonard to stay put and silent if he wants to see Daniel again.

John then goes to greet Alphy, who reveals John’s ruse in front of his group, including Daniel. John explains that he used to be a bad person and was saved by the real Sam White, so he took his name after his death. He then sends Daniel and the others away.

Alphy realizes that John sent Caroline to sleep with Alphy to tarnish him, a rival whom Rose was trying to warn about John – and that he also put her up to murdering Innes.

Geordie and Larry arrive, and John grabs the rifle and shoots at them. Larry is hit and so is Geordie’s car, killing the engine. John then starts barricading doors and windows, telling his group that the police fired at him. Daniel goes door to door to tell people to shelter in their rooms, and finds Leonard bleeding – Sam shot at him when he yelled from the window. Daniel asks Leonard why he’s still there, and Leonard tells him because his life is nothing without Daniel.

Geordie tells Larry to apply pressure to his gunshot wound and then makes his way to a back door of the house. Larry goes to a phone booth and calls Ms. Scott for back-up. She encourages him to keep talking to her as he gets weaker.

Geordie sneaks through the house to find John pointing the rifle at Alphy and manages to punch John and handcuff him. He gives him an extra punch for Larry.

Daniel calls for help, and Alphy rushes to them. He realizes that Leonard was just hit by a splinter from the bullet hitting the window frame; he’s fine. Larry, however, is fading, but is rushed to the hospital in time. When he returns to work with a sling, he and Ms. Scott rekindle their romance with a kiss.

Alphy is leaving Grantchester, per the bishop’s orders, but he’s not fond of the priest replacing him – nor is Mrs. C. Alphy is surprised to see the bishop in Grantchester, and learns that not only Mrs. C but other members of the parish have persistently written letters to the bishop demanding that Alphy stay. Alphy belongs there, they all say – and the archbishop agrees. Alphy will keep his job. He gives Mrs. C a hug.

Everyone comes to the vicarage for a Sunday dinner, but as Daniel and Leonard arrive Daniel backtracks – he fears they all want Leonard there but not him. But then everyone appears and begs Daniel to come inside – he makes the best gravy. He does with a smile, and dances with Mrs. C.

Geordie and Alphy take a break from washing dishes to take the dogs on a walk. Geordie tells Alphy he needs a wife. Alphy says he has Mrs. C and Geordie. He’s happy as is.