'The Marlow Murder Club' Recap: Episode 4

The Marlow Murder Club is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous episode.
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Everyone is depressed and shaken up by their failure to prevent a third murder from taking place. Liz Curtis is now dead. Tanika is doubting her ability to lead the case, which is not helped by one colleague arguing for her to be replaced. But Tanika’s boss has faith in her and her instincts.

Becks’ husband Colin worries about his wife’s safety; Suzie’s daughter Zeta worries about her mother’s. But that won’t stop them from investigating. Judith has managed to reassemble the sheet of paper shredded by Giles Bishop at his office after he was asked about the will of Iqbal Kassam’s neighbor Ezra Harrington. It contains some obituaries – and two of the people listed who died last year are the witnesses for Ezra’s will, which was modified shortly before his death this year to benefit Giles alone. Giles must have forged the witnesses’ signatures, using dead people who couldn’t come back to object to his fraudulent changing of the will. But Giles can’t have killed Iqbal; he was in the hospital for surgery, as Tanika has told Judith.

Judith explains all this to Becks and Suzie, then asks for their help. She noticed that a photo had been taken down from the office of Elliot Howard, and recalled from her first visit that it was of him on a rowing team in school. Now she wants to know who was on the team with Elliot all those years ago. Fortunately, the great-aunt from whom she inherited her manor was a hoarder, and kept every newspaper she received. The women start sorting through to look for the listings of regattas in the papers.

But Suzie is drawn to another room containing Greek artifacts from Judith’s past as an archaeologist. She spots a newspaper there reporting the theft of a statue of Artemis from an architectural dig in Greece. Judith and her husband are named as the culprits.

Confronted by Suzie, Judith explains that her husband stole and sold the statue, which they found together. Judith lied for him to the police, despite suspecting his guilt, but by the time she was sure he was guilty and reported him to the police he had disappeared. The scandal tarnished her name for the rest of her career.

Judith suddenly asks Becks and Suzie to leave, and they oblige, fearing that they have offended her. Judith has found a paper listing Elliot and his school teammates at a regatta – and both Giles Bishop and Liz Curtis’ husband Danny are among them.

Judith calls Elliot’s wife Daisy and asks if he is hiding the painting stolen from Stefan’s house – she warns Daisy that she knows what it’s like to stand by a man who committed a crime, and it’s not worth it. Daisy says that Elliot is leaving on a spontaneous fishing trip. Worried, Judith calls Giles’ office and learns that he just left for Manchester. Judith determines that another murder is going to occur – and that she’s the target.

Judith calls Becks and tells her and Suzie to stay away from Judith’s house that day. She then settles in with her crosswords and travel sweets. When she hears a person in her house, she starts to dial emergency services on her cell phone – but a masked person with a gun takes her phone away from her. She greets him by name, and he takes off the mask: it’s Danny Curtis.

Judith has worked everything out. Elliot, Giles, and Danny each had someone they wanted to kill and conspired to do so together. The person who wanted the murder made sure they had an airtight alibi, then one of the other three killed their target. They used the same gun and put medallions in the victims’ mouths to make it seem like the work of one killer – Elliot’s idea.

Danny wanted his wife killed because she was a better rower than him and refused to sell the rowing center they owned together even though it was worth a fortune. Giles killed her while Danny was out of town with a rowing team. Elliot killed Iqbal for Giles while Giles was in the hospital. Iqbal received the same magazine that Giles mined for obituaries for his “witnesses” to Ezra’s will, and so realized Giles’ fraud and confronted him about it. So Giles had him killed.

And Danny killed Stefan Dunwoody for Elliot, who wanted the painting his father bequeathed to Stefan instead of Elliot – the painting he then snuck into Stefan’s house to steal. Judith has recalled that she saw a kayak on the river by Stefan’s house when he was shot, despite him telling a reporter in a story she found in her great-aunt’s newspapers that he couldn’t swim and hated boats. Danny had access to both kayaks and the river.

Liz grew suspicious that Danny killed Stefan, which is why she watched Stefan’s funeral from afar and became withdrawn – useful behaviors for Danny, who could twist them to make it seem as if she killed Stefan. He had already set this misdirection up by using her name and credit card to book Iqbal’s taxi to bring him to Chris Bott’s house to steal the antique German gun they all used as a murder weapon.

The killers all reconnected after decades apart at the regatta where Elliot drunkenly accosted Stefan, and devised their plan. They made sure to have perfect alibis, so when Judith learned that Elliot and Giles were both leaving town she figured she, the nosy investigator, was next.

Hearing Judith explain that she has figured everything out angers Danny, who shoots out the glass door of her conservatory. When he finally moves to kill her, she throws the sugar from her travel sweets in his eyes and stabs him with her pencil to make him drop the gun. But he recovers the weapon in the ensuing scuffle.

Fortunately, Becks has surmised that Judith was in danger from her cagey insistence that she and Suzie stay away. She warned Suzie, who turned back from picking her daughter up from the airport to help, then tried calling Judith’s landline but found that it was out of service – Danny cut the line. Becks also went to Tanika for help, and Tanika decided to ignore an anonymous tip – probably from Elliot or Giles – that a person had been seen throwing what might have been a gun into the river.

Unfortunately, a severe storm has closed a bridge and downed a tree, preventing anyone from reaching Judith. While Becks cuts the thick rope of one of the church’s bells and borrows the SUV of a congregant to tow the tree off the road, Suzie and Iqbal’s dog Luna sprint across a footbridge to Judith’s house. As Danny raises the gun to Judith, Luna jumps through the broken door and attacks him, just as Tanika and the police arrive from the opposite direction to arrest Danny. Giles and Elliot are also arrested, and the painting is recovered from Elliot’s house.

Judith takes Suzie and Becks out on the river on her boat, and they enjoy a picnic with champagne. Judith apologizes for not telling the other two she was in danger – she didn’t want to put them in danger, too. They tell her that she has made amends for whatever she did or didn’t do all those years ago for her husband when he stole the statue.

Did Judith ever see her husband again? they ask. No, she says definitively.