'Professor T' Recap: Season 4 Episode 2

Professor T airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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The professor’s Aunt Zelda wants him to give an opinion on her new boyfriend Peter, whom she met when she and Peter were both stood up on dates. (Hers was with the dean.) At his mother’s insistence (she’s on vacation), the professor agrees to go with Zelda to meet Peter at the retirement community where he lives.

A surprise awaits: Peter is the father of the professor’s assistant Miss Snares. Snares is also sizing up her father’s date, and is wary because Zelda has been married three times.

While everyone is enjoying some tennis, a dead body is found in the community.

Dan and his new colleague Chloe soon arrive and find the professor and Snares waiting, even though Peter has left to drive Zelda home. Still upset that the professor put everyone in danger in their previous case, Dan tells them to leave.

Of course the professor disobeys and conducts his own interview with Lucien Hailsham, the father of the victim, Abbey Sommers. Lucien lives in the retirement village; Abbey visits him at the same time every week. She controls his finances, and has recently been using some of his money in an expensive custody battle over her daughter, Poppy, after a divorce. She thus moved Lucien into a cheaper room to save money. He moved yesterday, and no one had yet informed Abbey of the change.

So she went to room 12, which now houses Eddy Baines. When Eddy’s son Dennis tried to visit his father, he couldn’t open the door despite it being unlocked. Abbey’s bloody body was blocking the door from the inside, while a horrified Eddy held a hammer, the murder weapon.

Eddy is 80 and suffering from escalating dementia, but Dennis won’t accept that diagnosis. He had Eddy moved into room 12, thinking the ample sunlight there would help. The retirement community officials had suggested that Eddy be moved to a care home instead.

Eddy came to the community after a burglary at his own home during which he was beaten badly. As his dementia worsens, he has become aggressive; he took a swing at the nurse and receptionist Julie Norman last week. Eddy has been having flashbacks to his attack during the burglary.

A roofer finished work on the community last week; perhaps that’s where the expensive titanium hammer came from. But the roofer is on an off-the-grid holiday and can’t be contacted. The windows to the rooms only open three inches, and the only other way in was the door. Blood on the doorknob suggests that Abbey tried to escape during the attack, but the door was locked. Someone unlocked it after her death but before her body was found.

Eddy will only talk to Carol, who has a way with the retirees. He says he was scared, and that he hit a burglar several times. He answers that Lucien gave him the hammer. He seems confused.

Meanwhile, the professor befriends Marie, the daughter of the community’s director, Kate. Marie is home from school ill, but still doing homework. The professor relates to her.

But his unauthorized interviews with people cause Dan trouble when Lucien is brought in for questioning and complains that the professor already spoke to him. Lucien says that Eddy would yell and threaten the cleaners, and also tells the detectives to speak to his son-in-law, Bruno, given the messy divorce from Abbey.

Snares is obsessed with the case, and is trying to make her own deductions. She casually mentions to the dean that her father and Zelda are dating, shocking the dean. He later looks at an old photo of a young woman and a ring still in a jewelry box.

The professor returns to the retirement community, ostensibly to visit Peter, and sees Marie hide when Abbey’s ex-husband Bruno arrives with his daughter Poppy to visit Lucien. Marie’s mother Kate says Abbey used Poppy as a weapon in the divorce battle.

It seems that the professor’s therapist, Dr. Goldberg, is also in the midst of a divorce – although it appears amicable. When her husband visits to mark his books with red stickers, she wonders if things would have been different if they had had children.

A gossipy retiree told Carol that Bruno was having an affair with Julie, the receptionist and nurse. Julie has given inconsistent answers as to why she wasn’t at the reception desk when Eddy’s son Dennis arrived for help with opening the door to Eddy’s room. And Carol has noticed Bruno lurking outside Eddy’s window around the time of Abbey’s death, in the background of a photo shown to her by one of the retirees she has befriended.

Bruno explains that he was hiding from Abbey. He had come to the retirement community to tell Julie that he had feelings for her and then saw Abbey and ducked out of the way by the window. Julie had been kind and supportive to him during the divorce, but they had not started seeing each other – yet.

The professor says Bruno and Julie aren’t the murderers – they don’t know each other well enough yet to collude on murder, and Julie’s inconsistent answers are simply mistaken memories. Maiya has asked the professor to help with the case, to Dan’s frustration. But the professor refuses to share information, so Dan blows up at him. You didn’t even come to Lisa’s funeral, he accuses the professor.

Maiya sends the two fighting men to a joint therapy session with Dr. Goldberg. Neither wants to talk, but Goldberg tells Dan that the professor has been having paralyzing flashbacks to Lisa’s death, and feared witnessing Dan’s pain over her death. This is why he has avoided the detectives for months. Dan says it helps to know that. The professor offers to let Dan attend his lectures, so that he can acquire the same background in criminology that Lisa had.

The professor learns from Bruno that his daughter Poppy was acting out in school due to the divorce, and had even been accused of cyberbullying other students. Abbey took Poppy’s side.

The roofer finally gets back to the detectives, telling them that Eddy had taken an interest in the hammer – he must have stolen it for protection, fearing more burglars due to his dementia. Eddy’s answers to the police were confused. Kate threatened to sue the roofer for leaving the hammer out where Eddy could take it – an overreaction that leads the detectives to her.

Her daughter Marie was bullied by Poppy at school so badly that she self-harmed; that’s why she wasn’t in school. When Kate confronted Abbey, Abbey just said Marie should toughen up. Kate wanted Abbey to feel some of the fear Marie felt, and so didn’t inform her that her father had moved and let her enter Eddy’s room. She didn’t know he had the hammer. When she heard Eddy shout, she left; she couldn’t hear Abbey’s screams over the tennis match.

The police will push for a reduced sentence for Kate, since she didn’t know Eddy had a hammer and she is Marie’s only parent. (Eddy himself won’t be charged because of his dementia.) The professor understands from his own childhood how a mother might be moved to extraordinary lengths to protect her child. This is why he is overlooking the fact that Kate must have been the one to lock the door on Abbey after she entered Eddy’s room, and then unlock it later, after her screams had died out – the tennis match wasn’t loud enough to drown them out, as Snares points out.

Maiya schedules Chloe for the national detective exam in two weeks, assuring her that she can pass. And Dan decides to take up his own education, taking time off from work to attend some of the professor’s lectures.