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

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.
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Tanika surreptitiously sits next to Judith and Becks on a bench in the park while her child cavorts in the playground. The women swap information, including that Tristram Bailey apparently has a secret girlfriend named Sarah Fitzherbert – Judith, Becks, and Suzie saw Tristram go meet and kiss Sarah.

While Tanika gets a background check on Sarah, Judith and Becks visit the coffee cart Sarah runs. Becks pretends to break down while talking about an imaginary heartbreak, drawing Sarah into the conversation. Sarah says she’s been dating the same guy, on and off, since she was 16. His father died last week and he said it was over, but then he came back after all. Judith drops the act and asks Sarah where she was when Sir Peter died. Startled, Sarah says she was at The Bounty pub listening to a band.

But the bartender at the pub doesn’t remember her.

Suzie is busy spending any time she can with her daughter Zeta, who’s about to leave for college. Both Suzie and Zeta worry the other will struggle without them.

Becks is trying to schedule a date with her husband Colin, but they’re both so busy they can’t find a window.

And Judith is eager to decipher the meaning behind the hidden date, time, and place that she has consistently noticed in the four corners of a newspaper crossword. She takes her friends to one of the meeting places at the correct time, but they don’t spot anything unusual.

Lady Bailey, Sir Peter’s ex-wife, does walk by – and Becks notices that she’s wearing Hunter wellies, and the boot print matches the print the women found in the mud outside Sir Peter’s study, where he died. The women follow and question Lady Bailey. She explains that she felt betrayed by Sir Peter’s pending remarriage, and wanted to see his bride. So she snuck through the back garden during the party, but didn’t see anyone inside. Right before she heard the crash of the bookcase crushing her ex-husband, the glare from the sun prevented her from seeing into the study.

She would lose her title, which she wears happily, if Sir Peter remarried, and he died right before his wedding.

At Sir Peter’s home, the Marlow Murder Club spots another of Lady Bailey’s boot prints – it must be where she stopped and was blinded by the sunlight glinting off the window. But something seems off to Judith.

Her musing is interrupted by calls from Adam Warner, the gardener: he has found Sir Peter’s most recent will in the compost heap. The trio rushes over and helps piece it together: everything was to go to Sir Peter’s new bride Jenny if Sir Peter died before his wedding. If that happened, the will states, it was Tristram who killed him.

Adam is surprised the will doesn’t leave him anything – Sir Peter always said he’d look out for him after decades of loyal service. Adam witnessed the will: he could have seen he wasn’t getting anything and killed Sir Peter. But he says he was working in the garden during the party, and confirms it by mentioning that he saw Lady Bailey, right after the church bells chimed 3:00 pm and right before the crash of the bookcase.

Tristram’s girlfriend Sarah does have a police record: she got into a fight with a hunter while attending a protest against fox hunting. But even if she killed Sir Peter on behalf of Tristram, she’s dead now, from ingesting rat poison.

Tristram is arrested. Adam believed Tristram had stolen rat poison, and now it has been found in Tristram’s car with his fingerprints on it.

But Judith thinks something is off. The killing of Sir Peter was so meticulously planned; why would Tristram be so careless with evidence in killing Sarah?

And Sarah’s alibi during Sir Peter’s death checks out: a video of the band performing at the pub shows her there.

Judith goes to another meeting place hidden in the crossword, and recognizes a man from the previous meeting. She confronts him and learns that he puts a meeting place in the crossword for his wife, and they pretend that they don’t know each other and are having an affair, to spice up their marriage.

When light glints through a water carafe, Judith has a realization: Lady Bailey couldn’t have been blinded by the sun in the window of Sir Peter’s study, based on the time of day. This helps Judith figure out the killer.

She, Suzie, and Becks approach Jenny at Sir Peter’s home and tell her that Tristram killed his father, but the police don’t believe them so he will be released from custody soon – and he will try to kill Jenny. The trio will hide and catch him. Jenny agrees to the plan.

As the trio watches the front yard, a scream comes from behind them. Tristram came in the back and is choking Jenny. Tanika runs in and arrests Tristram. Suzie and Becks get upset and lecture Judith for endangering Jenny’s life with her little games. They both storm out.

Tanika’s colleague Brendan appears, skeptical of Tanika, and she admits that she became too obsessed with the case; he should take over. Tanika, too, leaves, and is followed by Brendan.

Left alone with Jenny, Judith reveals the truth of Sir Peter’s death: Jenny killed him. She worked in France, where she fell in love with Tristram while he spent time there, and they devised a plan for him to acquire his father’s fortune. Tristram would make sure Sir Peter hired Jenny, she would pretend to fall in love with him, and then she would kill him on the eve of the wedding – no one would suspect the bride. The inheritance would all go to Tristram, and they would live together after some time.

So Jenny and Tristram staged an argument at the party and Jenny stormed off into the house. She went to the study, where she called Sir Peter, and then bashed his head in and arranged him amongst broken equipment so that it would look like he was killed by the falling bookcase. She locked the door after she left, went upstairs, where Rosanna saw her.

Rosanna thought Jenny was lighting a cigarette, but she was actually lighting magnesium tape. Judith had been surprised to find a jar of this in the study, unbroken in the bookcase’s fall – Jenny had positioned it wrong so it wasn’t crushed. Jenny unhooked the bookcase from the wall, supported it with magnesium tape, which is strong, and then tilted the bookcase on the verge of falling. She ran the magnesium tape up the chimney to the bedroom above the study, where she lit the tape – the white-hot burning of magnesium is the blinding glint Lady Bailey saw in the window. When the magnesium burned, it released the bookcase to fall onto Sir Peter, who was already dead. Jenny returned the key to the study to his pocket when his body was found.

But Jenny learned along with the Marlow Murder Club that Tristram had an on-again-off-again girlfriend in the form of Sarah. Jenny killed Sarah to send a message to Tristram, who figured it out and attacked Jenny because he loved Sarah.

Jenny didn’t know what was in Sir Peter’s new will, so she grabbed it from the safe when she opened it for the police. When she found out Tristram was with Sarah, she allowed the will to be found so that more guilt would fall on Tristram, whom she also framed for Sarah’s killing.

Tanika has listened to this entire conversation in the shadows, recording Jenny’s confession, to Jenny’s surprise. Judith and friends staged an argument to make Jenny think she was alone; Becks drove off in Tanika’s car while Tanika stayed behind. To keep the jealous Brendan quiet, Tanika tells her boss that the whole sting was his idea.

This does cause Becks to miss her date with Colin, but she gets to pick up her son in a police car.

Suzie sends Zeta off to college with a hug.

And Tristram’s sister Rosanna will now receive Sir Peter’s entire inheritance, instead of Tristram.