'Miss Scarlet' Recap: Season 5 Episode 4
Daniel Hautzinger
February 2, 2025

Miss Scarlet airs Sundays at 7:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Ivy has more time now that she’s just Alexander Blake’s assistant instead of also a clerk – and she finds her employer an admirable, and handsome, man, as she doesn’t fail to point out to Eliza. But she’s avoiding her own marriage, which Mr. Potts is subtly trying to push after two years of engagement by finding a home for them to move into together. He can afford more after his promotion, after all.
But Ivy declares that she doesn’t like the house. Eliza feels bad for Potts (for once) and tells Ivy that she doesn’t need to worry about moving out and leaving Eliza alone; she’ll be fine. She hopes that she is not the reason Ivy has yet to set a wedding date.
Eliza does have to make sure she can retain her lodgings: it’s time to renegotiate her lease with Mrs. Parker. When she arrives for her appointment, she’s surprised to find Mrs. Parker tittering with a Dr. Timpson over tea. Even more shocking is Mrs. Parker’s immediate renewal of the lease without a raise in rent.
Another surprise is waiting for Eliza outside her office: her associate Patrick Nash. He has been released from prison early, because the cells are becoming overcrowded and he professed to be a changed man, with less than a year left in his sentence. Unfortunately, he’s out of money, as his old accountant Clarence tells him: he used it all bribing the judge for a lesser sentence and the guards for liquor and free rein in the prison. In fact, he still owes one guard money. He needs to get back on his feet, but has lost his license to be a private detective.
Se he asks Eliza to share office space for a time, having already moved himself in with the reluctant help of Clarence. She agrees, as long as he’s out by the end of the week and doesn’t involve either her or Clarence in his work.
Good thing, too, as Nash’s work will be illegal. As he goes to find lodging in a seedy boardinghouse, he is met by the judge who released him early. There was no real sentencing review; the judge just wanted Nash, with his reputation as a successful detective, to help him.
The judge’s younger brother Bertie is a dissolute character who’s in debt to the notorious Dylan Cooper, who will kill Bertie for not paying up. The judge wants Nash to find Bertie and put him on a ship to the penal colony of Australia that leaves Friday at 10:00 am. If Nash refuses or fails – even though he can’t legally work as a detective – the judge will send him back to prison and increase his sentence by revealing his bribes. He will at least pay Nash for his troubles if he is successful.
Despite Eliza’s prohibition, Nash enlists Clarence’s help after he wastes several days trying to find Bertie without success. He needs someone to pose as a gambler at Cooper’s club and find out if Bertie has already been discovered and dispatched by Cooper. Nash can’t do it because Cooper dislikes him for having “dealings” with his mistress, even if it was before Cooper knew her.
So Nash teaches Clarence poker. He’s good at the game – except for not revealing his emotions. He needs money to keep his cover at Cooper’s, so Nash pawns the pocketwatch he bought early in his career – it was the first thing he ever owned.
Clarence does well in a game with Cooper – until he asks about Bertie. Cooper ends the game and insists that Clarence reveal his true identity, or else. Clarence finds his courage, and his poker face, and takes a trick from Eliza: declaring that he’s a police officer with more waiting outside to raid the establishment if he doesn’t leave unscathed. Cooper buys it and tells Clarence that Bertie has been posing as a doctor to con wealthy women out of their money.
Eliza has also inadvertently ended up on Bertie’s trail. Mrs. Parker has come to her to ask for help – she knows Eliza won’t judge her. Dr. Timpson proposed to Mrs. Parker and she accepted, but then Timpson disappeared. And Mrs. Parker gave him one thousand pounds for a charity – not that she suspects anything is wrong in that matter.
Suspecting a scam, Eliza goes to see Timpson and finds Nash in his office – and a different man, the real Timpson, wondering what they’re both doing there. Nash tries to get Eliza to help him find Bertie and keep himself out of jail, but when she realizes he has already enlisted Clarence despite her prohibition, she walks out on him. Nevertheless, she eventually agrees to help him – if he agrees to turn Bertie over to the police once they find him if he no longer has Mrs. Parker’s money.
The detectives turn to Solomon, suspecting Bertie has paid someone to help him disappear. Indeed, Solomon learns that another of the “Solomons” who specialize in underground business in London has helped Bertie – and both Solomons share Bertie’s hiding place after a bribe. He’s in old, uncompleted sewage tunnels under a notorious neighborhood, and is leaving town on a train the next day.
Eliza and Nash find the hiding place behind a hidden door, but Bertie darts out – and is tackled by Clarence. Bertie doesn’t have Mrs. Parker’s money, so Nash reluctantly agrees to tie him up and bring him to Scotland Yard, even though it means he himself will be remanded to prison.
But they get lost in the notorious neighborhood and Bertie yells out that they’re undercover cops, leading to a tumult in which he flees, with Nash in pursuit. When Eliza reconnects with Nash back at her office, he says he lost Bertie. He’s going back to prison.
Later, Eliza notices that Nash’s pocketwatch is missing from the pawn shop window where it was displayed – and the receipt for it is also gone from Clarence’s desk.
Eliza meets Nash outside his boardinghouse, where he reveals that he did catch Bertie, and brought him to the judge to receive his payment, with which he bought back the pocketwatch. Now he will put Bertie on the ship to Australia – or at least that was the plan. But he has changed his mind, and offers a tied-up Bertie to Eliza to bring to Scotland Yard. Nash will use the ticket to Australia, where he can once again work as a detective (and avoid prison), with a good head-start thanks to the judge’s payment.
Eliza visits Mrs. Parker to tell her that she was scammed. Eliza tells her she’s always available to talk – and reassures her that the malicious gossip of Parker’s society lady acquaintances will eventually die out.
Mr. Potts has been missing his regular breakfasts with Ivy, so she visits him at work. He gives her a letter releasing her from her obligations to him; he has realized she doesn’t love him as much as he loves her, and that she will find a man more worthy of her – a selfless act on his part.
Ivy, having clearly reevaluated her relationship with Potts, later summons him with a “most urgent” message. The reverend is waiting there with her to set a wedding date.
Ivy and Mr. Potts happily tell Eliza that they are getting married at the end of the month – and that Mr. Potts will move in with Ivy and Eliza for a “year or so,” since Ivy doesn’t want to leave Eliza alone. Eliza agrees to the arrangement, hiding her distaste for the idea.