'Whitstable Pearl' Recap: Episode 4

Whitstable Pearl airs Saturdays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes. 

It’s the Christmas season, and young widow Christina Scott is home with her child when an unsigned note drops through the front door mail slot: “Your husband didn’t commit suicide.”

Meanwhile, Mike is not coping well with the anniversary of his wife’s death. Later, a perky realtor shows him into a tiny and depressing flat, leaving him with the keys, upbeat holiday wishes, and a sad poinsettia plant. Evidently, he’s staying in Whitstable for a while.

Everyone is in high spirits decorating the Whitstable Pearl for Christmas when Pearl is summoned by Christina. Her husband Robert disappeared when she was three months pregnant – the police found no body, just his abandoned car and a suicide note that they never showed her. Christina is convinced that her husband is still alive and needs her. Despondent, she shows Pearl the anonymous note; the police won’t help her as everyone thinks she’s delusional. She begs Pearl for help.

Pearl is skeptical, but pays a visit to Robert’s parents. His mother Evie Scott seems to be heavily under the influence of Minister Cameron, the pastor of their church. Evie is bitterly resentful of Christina, saying she has turned away from them and the church and won’t let her son be baptized; she is equally angry at Robert for his death. Pearl explains that she’s just trying to find out what happened, and Evie angrily shows her an identical note to the one Christina received; she is sure Christina must have sent it to prompt the police to reopen the investigation. Evie insists that her son is dead, and the only person who can help Chrstina is Minister Cameron. She storms off, and Robert’s father Alan explains that Robert had a twin brother, Mark, who accidentally drowned at age 12 while swimming in the bay with Robert. Robert always blamed himself for Mark’s death. Alan implores Pearl to “stop the madness.”

At the police station, Mike and Nikki are questioning a belligerent young woman arrested at the local market who is claiming not to know how a 30-pound frozen turkey wound up under a blanket in her baby stroller. She insists on lawyering up, and resigned, Mike suggests that Nikki make sure there isn’t a baby somewhere that they need to worry about. Nikki, knowing that Mike has just moved into a new flat, gives him a small Christmas tree. Mike accepts it reluctantly, as his phone pings. It’s Pearl.

Pearl is researching Robert’s suicide and Mark’s drowning when Mike arrives. She asks Mike for Robert’s suicide note, which is in police files and not accessible to her. Ethically, he can’t give it to her, but she is persuasive and offers lunch. He declines, and Pearl gifts him a poinsettia plant for his new flat. He leaves, depressed, and Pearl is concerned.

Pearl heads over to Cameron’s church, where a young girl informs her that Cameron is busy conducting a baptism out at the beach, but that she should return later for his grief counseling group session. Noticing Robert’s photo on the wall, Pearl manages to elicit that Robert used to attend those sessions with his girlfriend “Alice” – “she was the love of his life, and he was hers,” the girl recalls, and adds, “Now they’re both gone.” Pearl, poker-faced, asks where Alice went, and suddenly the girl won’t say any more.

That evening, Pearl pays another call to Robert’s parents, finding Alan in his work shed. He is not pleased to see her, but she asks him about Alice. Alan admits that Robert did have a girlfriend before Christina – “a bit of a lost soul, ran away a lot” – but he doesn’t recall her name and never met her parents because she grew up in “a children’s home.” Pearl presses him for the location, but Alan is now incensed, forcefully ordering Pearl to shut it down.

At the restaurant, Pearl tells Dolly that she’s heading out to Cameron’s church to check out the grief counseling group. Dolly is concerned: “They’re a cult – like the Manson family, but with a priest.” Fortunately, Dolly has always wanted to experience a cult, and insists on tagging along.

Mike’s flat now contains nothing but a pile of boxes, a Christmas tree, and two poinsettia plants. Moodily, he scrolls through photos of a beautiful woman on his phone and weeps. Pearl interrupts, calling to ask if he has plans for Christmas – she’s having a party at the restaurant. If he doesn’t want to meet new people, he can always talk just to her.

Pearl and Dolly watch Cameron preaching to the grief counseling group, which includes Evie and Alan. They, and everyone else there, are drinking the Kool-Aid and Cameron is eating it up. Dolly turns to Pearl and mouths, “Cult.” Afterward, Pearl tries to question Cameron about Robert and Alice, telling him about Christina’s note. Just as Evie did, Cameron has no use for anyone who turned away from the church, and that apparently includes Christina, Robert, and Alice. Pearl believes he’s hiding something. He doesn’t care what Pearl believes, asserting that Christina sent the messages herself. He shows Pearl the door.

At the police station, Mike is making a copy of Robert’s suicide note for Pearl. With regard to the woman and the frozen turkey, Nikki informs Mike that there was no baby and the woman definitely stole the turkey.

Later, at lunch with Pearl, Mike hands over the suicide note – he can’t see any reason why Robert didn’t die by suicide, but Pearl insists that Robert’s life was looking up at the time of his death. Mike says that not talking about problems is typical male behavior. “Not me, of course,” he says sarcastically. “I’m the male equivalent of Oprah.” Pearl mentions Alice and the children’s home. The restaurant’s proprietor interjects, claiming she was the one who got the home shut down due to the negligent behavior of the people running it. She also remembers Alice and the butterfly tattoos all over her chest, and that Alice had become pregnant before running off. Finishing his lunch, Mike admonishes Pearl not to interview people alone. “Just call me.”

Naturally, Pearl doesn’t take Mike’s advice, and scales a fence to check out the creepy interior of the shuttered children’s home. Suddenly, a door slams into her face, bloodying her nose, and she sees someone fleeing. Pearl gives chase in vain, and, convinced it’s Robert, leaves him a note; she then calls Mike, confessing what she’s done. Mike warns her that whoever hit her might know who she is and where she lives and works. And what if he killed Alice? Pearl believes she just frightened the fugitive.

The next morning before the restaurant opens, a disheveled young girl appears and asks for coffee. Judging from the visible butterfly tattoo on her chest, Pearl correctly guesses that this is Alice, who found Pearl’s note (and hit her with the door). Alice confirms that Robert is dead and that she has returned to Whitstable to meet the father of her child: the man who killed Robert.

That night, we see Alice entering the church, and behind her, Alan appears and bars the door, locking her in with him. Alice confronts him: he seduced her when she was 14, taking lewd photos of her and threatening her. She knows that Alan beat Robert to death and made it look like a suicide, and it was she who sent the notes to Christina and Evie, to expose Alan as Robert’s killer. Alan pulls out a switchblade and advances on Alice, but as Pearl arrives and helplessly watches while rattling the window, Evie, who has followed Alan, rushes up and bludgeons him with a heavy brass candleholder. Finally, she and Alice are both free. Shakily after what she has just witnessed, Pearl calls Mike to tell him the case is closed.

Mike does show up at Pearl’s Christmas party, but prefers to spend it outside on her quiet balcony, away from the holiday music. Dolly gestures that Pearl should join him. She does, and together Mike and Pearl silently take in the night air.