'The Marlow Murder Club' Recap: Season 2 Episode 1

The Marlow Murder Club airs Sundays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous and following episodes.
Keep up with your favorite dramas and mysteries by signing up for our newsletter, Dramalogue. 

After deducing the culprits behind three murders and preventing a planned fourth in the tony town of Marlow, Judith Potts has acquired a reputation as a problem solver. So when Sir Peter Bailey fears something bad will happen at a party he’s hosting at his manor the day before his wedding, he calls her, even though they don’t know each other. Sir Peter acquired Judith’s number from the busybody Mrs. Eddingham, who is currently running Judith’s friend Becks ragged so that she can search the records in the church crypts for family history – Becks is the vicar’s wife.

Judith accepts Sir Peter’s invitation, on the stipulation that Becks and their other friend and crime solver Suzie come, too. Sir Peter agrees.

Sir Peter is marrying Jenny Page, who was hired the previous year as a nurse to help the older Sir Peter manage his diabetes. When his son Tristram arrives at the party, Jenny argues with the younger man: Tristram wasn’t supposed to attend. Upset, Jenny runs into the house and is followed by Sir Peter.

Soon afterwards, there’s a loud crash in the house. As everyone runs inside, Jenny appears at the top of the stairs. The door to Sir Peter’s study is locked, so Tristram breaks it open as his sister Rosanna appears. A heavy wooden bookcase filled with scientific materials has fallen – and Sir Peter is dead underneath.

Judith quickly surveys the room and takes photos before the police arrive, even checking behind the curtains to see if anyone could have been in the room with Sir Peter and hidden. Once Tanika Malik arrives with the police, Judith sends Suzie and Becks to search for clues outside, while Judith follows Tanika to the study.

The old-fashioned key to the door is found in Sir Peter’s pocket, and the family claims it’s the only key. The windows don’t open and the chimney flue is narrow, so no one could have gotten in or out. Everyone but Judith thinks the death was an accident. She points out that a hook on the wall holding the bookcase upright has been detached.

Judith sticks around as Tanika questions the family. Tristram was forbidden from attending the party because he accused Jenny of being a gold digger. Jenny says she sought refuge in a cigarette from a pack in Sir Peter’s bedroom upstairs after fighting with Tristram, even though she doesn’t typically smoke. She says she didn’t know Sir Peter followed her into the house.

Tristram hadn’t been the only one causing drama with Sir Peter: his father had recently refused to give his sister Rosanna a loan for her business. Judith notes that Rosanna’s eye-catching jacket is missing a button on the cuff, and doesn’t recall seeing her outside at the party.

The questioning is interrupted by the appearance of the family lawyer Andrew Husselbee. He has come to collect the new will Sir Peter suddenly drew up three weeks ago. While Tristram received everything in the previous will, Andrew doesn’t know the contents of the new will: Sir Peter simply called him and the loyal gardener Adam Warner to witness it. But the new will is not inside the safe upstairs, the combination of which has recently been changed from Tristram’s birthday to the date of the wedding. Jenny cries when she sees the wedding bands inside.

Outside, Suzie and Becks have found footprints in the damp ground outside Sir Peter’s study. The left sole has a cut in it, and Becks recognizes the pattern as from a lady’s set of Hunter wellies. The trio of detectives goes home to consider the evidence.

Suzie’s daughter Zeta is about to leave for university but barely wants to spend time with her mother, to Suzie’s disappointment. Becks and her husband Colin are getting on better than ever: he even suggests that they find the time to go on a date. And Judith has been doing the crossword in a new paper, and noticed that the four corners of the puzzle always list a date, time, and place.

The police are trying to find any reason that Sir Peter’s death could have not been an accident. He died of a wound to the head around 3:00 pm – a bookcase did fall on him, after all. His gardener Adam Warner called the police to the manor three months ago, when Tristram and Sir Peter fought about Sir Peter’s marriage. Sir Peter declined to press charges against Tristram, but Adam says a packet of rat poison went missing from the garden shed – he thinks Tristram took it. Sir Peter loved the garden, and Adam is devoted to Sir Peter.

As the police leave from questioning Adam, they notice Judith, Suzie, and Becks arriving at Sir Peter’s manor and realize they are still investigating. Jenny has called them there to search for the new will – if Sir Peter trusted Judith, then Jenny does, too.

Jenny started dating Sir Peter a few months after becoming his nurse, and has glowing recommendations from previous jobs all around Europe.

The trio notice an untouched glass jar amongst the wreckage of the fallen bookcase. How did it survive the fall? It has been wiped clean of fingerprints, and contains magnesium.

Upstairs, Judith finds the missing button from Rosanna’s coat in Sir Peter’s dressing room. Rosanna’s company website lists a home as its address – and it turns out to be that of her mother, the Lady Bailey, whom Sir Peter divorced three years ago. Becks talks her way in as the vicar’s wife, and the trio of detectives go to the office in the back yard where Rosanna works.

Rosanna resented Tristram, who was due to get everything as the first-born child, even though he had no job or relationship and spent months gallivanting in the South of France, where he wanted to move to become an artist. Rosanna, meanwhile, runs a consultancy to help people make their lives more eco-friendly, but it has recently hit hard times. When she asked her father for some help to tide her over and he refused, her feelings about Tristram finally came out and she berated her father.

She returned to his home a few days later to apologize and saw him signing a new will with Adam and Andrew. She decided to stay out of sight, thinking her father had listened to her about Tristram being undeserving and changed his will to include her.

She wanted to be sure, however, and so tried to open the safe to see the will during the party but was unable since the combination had been changed. She heard Jenny come upstairs and hid in the dressing room – that’s why her button was there. Even though she agrees with Tristram that Jenny is a gold digger, she vouches that Jenny was upstairs with her at the time of the bookcase crash.

When the detective trio returns to the manor, they hear Tristram yelling at Jenny that it’s his house now. They stand up to him on Jenny’s behalf, and then he gets a call from someone listed as “Cupcake” on his phone. As he leaves, he tells the person he’s coming to them. The trio follows, discreetly, borrowing a man’s electric wheelchair when Tristram hops on a bike. They see him meet a woman outside a van. She yells at him; eventually he kisses her.

Meanwhile, Tanika is ordered to stop investigating Sir Peter’s death unless or until new evidence emerges that it wasn’t an accident. The old-fashioned key to the study would have to have been copied by a blacksmith, and it’s missing any marks of doing so. It has to be the only copy, so no one could have gotten into the room to kill Sir Peter.

But Tanika thinks it was murder, especially since Sir Peter thought something bad would happen at the party and thus invited Judith. She calls Judith, who tells her that she and her friends believe Tristram is behind it, and that he had an accomplice inside the study to kill his father. Judith and Tanika agree to meet.