'Miss Scarlet' Recap: Season 5 Episode 6

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Mr. Potts is already transferring possessions to Eliza’s home in preparation for his move in after his impending wedding to Ivy. Ivy is busy baking cakes and sewing her dress, but still finds time to chide Eliza for her disorder – as does Mr. Potts, who should now be addressed simply as “Barnabas” by Eliza.

Fitzroy is also experiencing some domestic strife, as his mother Marianne convenes her annual attempt to patch things over between him and his father by bringing them together on her birthday. But his father, the commissioner of police, has no interest in politeness. He leaves the dinner as fast as he can.

The next day, Fitzroy’s mother visits Eliza. She has finally worked up the courage to ask Eliza to investigate her husband for adultery, after 30 years of marriage. He’s always at clubs, but the wives of other men with whom he’s been claiming to associate say he’s lying, and Marianne recently saw a bill for a dozen roses, weekly – and they weren’t for her.

Because he is the police commissioner and well connected, investigating him in a delicate matter could ruin Eliza’s career – but she agrees to help Marianne when she insists there’s no one else she can turn to. Following the commissioner, Eliza sees him meet a young man at the door of a residence and give him roses before going inside. After he emerges later, the young man leaves and Eliza follows him to a pub.

There, he barely sips a drink before exiting and leaving a bag behind – Eliza believes purposefully. But as she moves to grab it, she bumps into someone and the bag disappears. She believes he was handing off something in the bag to someone.

Clarence wants Eliza to drop the case, but of course she won’t – especially not after Fitzroy is beaten in a robbery while trying to apprehend a man who was following him. She believes the attack is connected to the bag and the commissioner.

Blake is eager to solve the assault on one of his own men, but Eliza can’t tell him about the commissioner’s liaison and her suspicions – Marianne wants everything kept secret. Blake warns Phelps that he’ll be fired if he tries to stir anything up during the investigation – Phelps resents Blake for taking a job he wanted, and has tried and failed to get the other men to rise up against Blake’s leadership. When Blake asks the commissioner if he has any enemies or reasons that his son might be targeted, he gets upset and unconvincingly says no.

Even Eliza is now being targeted. Russian men with guns meet her and Clarence outside her office and demand to know if she has listened to “it.” Eventually they reveal that “it” was in the bag belonging to Aleksey, the young man the commissioner met and Eliza followed. The Russians believe Eliza took Aleksey’s bag and are ready to kill Clarence if she doesn’t reveal its location. Eliza bluffs and tells them that she has to retrieve it on her own – otherwise they’ll never find it. They let her and Clarence go and give her a day.

And they’re not the only ones hounding Eliza. She returns home to find Ivy and Potts out, and a woman and man waiting for her. She recognizes the woman, who introduces herself as Miss Scott, as the woman she bumped into in the bar while following Aleksey. Miss Scott demands that Eliza stop investigating the commissioner, or else.

Despite the late hour, Eliza goes to Blake’s office. He’s there, having gone with Phelps to get information on Fitzroy’s assault. Phelps had revealed that he’s the nephew of the notorious crime lord Dylan Cooper, and brought Blake with him as he used his familial relationship to ask for help. Cooper shared that a newspaper vendor sold a paper to Fitzroy right before he was robbed, and might know something. Phelps thought revealing his connection would get him fired, but Blake instead commends him for using it for good.

Eliza now reveals to Blake that she has been investigating the commissioner. The pair of them search Aleksey’s rooms – Eliza has been watching and knows he’s not there – and find a wax cylinder. They bring it back to Blake’s office to play it on his phonograph, and Blake uses his rudimentary Russian to translate a voice that Eliza recognizes as that of the man who threatened her and Clarence. The voice says Aleksey’s “gray-haired friend” – the commissioner – will be killed near Aleksey’s favorite bird at 9:00 – and it’s 8:30 now.

Phelps appears with a clue: he saw a man threaten the newspaper vendor and then get into a carriage with a woman. He followed and lost them among some unused warehouses at Blackbird Lane – the “favorite bird” is a coded reference. Eliza guesses the man and woman are Miss Scott and her companion.

Blake, Phelps, and Eliza rush off to the warehouses. The commissioner is already there, Aleksey having arranged to meet him – but so is a man with a gun, ready to kill him. The policemen arrive and a shoot-out leads to a stand-off. Miss Scott appears and reveals that she is British intelligence. The Russians are arrested.

Miss Scott has been monitoring the commissioner, whom the Russians targeted with Aleksey because of his connections in a bid to learn more about British naval technology. Once Eliza breached their operation, however, they wanted to kill the commissioner. Fitzroy was being followed by British intelligence to see if he knew of his father’s dealings, but he noticed the people tailing him so they had to cover their tracks by pretending to be robbers. Miss Scott returns the goods stolen from him and apologizes for his beating. Fitzroy never learns the truth, but is excited to learn that his father has “decided” to retire to the countryside.

Blake tells Phelps he did good work on the case – and he asks Eliza to have a drink with him.

But he’s absent from Ivy and Potts’ wedding later, because his daughter Sophia is mildly sick. As Eliza cleans up after Ivy and Potts leave for their honeymoon, she spots a copy of a new book on forensic science that Blake gave her in gratitude for letting his daughter meet her. She decides to cross town in order to bring Blake and Sophia some cake. He thanks her and closes the door – then turns to open it again and ask her to come inside. She’d love to.