'The Marlow Murder Club' Recap: Season 2 Episode 3

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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Suzie and Becks are helping Judith clear out some of her great-aunt’s clothes from the manor Judith inherited from her ancestor. Judith refuses to get rid of the archive of newspapers in the house, but she decides to do some digging through other papers when she accidentally breaks a frame with a picture of her great-aunt and discovers that the photo is folded to hide a man. 

Aunt Jess was proudly single her whole life. But when Judith goes through an old bureau, she finds letters addressed to a “dear love” hidden away. 

There’s a more pressing mystery to investigate, however: a man has been found dead in a cul-de-sac. 

Only two of the large houses on the cul-de-sac are still occupied; the others were sold some five years ago to Grace Wellingborough, who wants to build a carbon-neutral development there. But the Wingroves and Butlers have refused to sell to Grace, with Kerry Butler and Caroline Wingrove in particular holding together. Their husbands, Dean and Phil, have had a falling out recently, feuding over their garbage cans. Dean is beginning to think the Butlers should sell.

The dead man was stabbed. He has no wallet, phone, or even keys to identify him, and was probably killed within three hours of being found around 8:00 am. He’s in a fancy suit, and there’s pollen on his pants. None of the neighbors admit to knowing him.

Although the cul-de-sac is cordoned off, Suzie knows a back way to enter from her job as a dog walker. She, Becks, and Judith sneak in and immediately offer suggestions to Tanika and the other detectives. Suzie recognizes the pollen on the man’s pants as ragweed, which is everywhere in the woods behind the houses. And Judith has a way to identify the man: his expensive shoes are handmade, and have a cobbler and serial number on them. The cobbler quickly identifies him as Louis Oldham, and Tanika, impressed, once again hires Judith and her friends as civilian advisers on the case. 

As the police follow these leads, Becks talks the amateur detectives into the Wingrove home, using her status as the vicar’s wife. The Wingroves’ daughter Evie was married at the local church, and is now pregnant with her first child in France, where she lives with her husband. The Wingroves have made the house their own, getting a local carpenter to make some furniture out of reclaimed boat wood as a commemoration of their meeting through a sailing club. Judith notices a room full of packed boxes, but the Wingroves insist that they’re just clearing things out, not moving. 

Meanwhile, the police search the woods and find Louis’ bloody wallet in a trash can near snapped branches and a patch of flattened, bloody ground. Louis must have been killed there and then moved to the cul-de-sac. 

Upon leaving the Wingroves, Becks rushes off to an appointment about which she won’t share details while Judith and Suzie go to speak to the developer Grace Wellingborough – Suzie knows where her office is. 

It’s just behind the cul-de-sac, and Grace is doing her best to drive out the Butlers and Wingroves by throwing up dust and noise with an excavator that she operates from outside the vehicle with a remote. Judith tells her that the Wingroves admitted they were moving and gets confirmation of her suspicion from Grace. The Wingroves sold to Grace so that they can move to France to be near their daughter and coming grandchild, but asked her to keep quiet about it until they were ready to tell the Butlers. 

Judith, a retired archaeologist, asks Grace if she can learn to use her excavator remote. Suzie goes to the restroom – and searches Grace’s office for papers, finding evidence of massive debt. As Grace goes to see what Suzie is doing, Judith nearly runs the excavator into the office, distracting her. 

Louis Oldham worked for a loan company – and the years of delays on the development have left Grace owing lots of money. But Dean Butler has also taken out loans recently for his carpentry business, although he’s keeping up with payments. He told the police that he and Kerry didn’t wake up until 8:00, when the body was found, but Phil told Judith and company that he heard Dean and Kerry arguing outside before that. Grace told the police she was on the phone at the time of death.

There’s no evident connection between Louis and Marlow. He arrived there on the train at 6:55 am, then was seen 12 minutes later on a camera heading towards the cul-de-sac. 

The trio of amateur detectives visit Kerry Butler at home, having earlier been turned away by Dean. Kerry says they lied to the police about when they got out of bed because Dean thought it would be simpler. She’s known Caroline for 16 years, so she’s upset when the trio tell her that the Wingroves have sold their house and are moving. As a nurse, she also casts doubt on their supposition that the body was moved to the cul-de-sac by the murderer – bodies are heavy, and there’s no sign of scrapes or dirt on Louis that suggest that his body was dragged. 

As the trio leaves Kerry, they see Phil emerging onto the cul-de-sac from a back way. He explains that he and Dean had been feuding because Dean was putting the Butlers’ trash in the Wingroves’ bins. More recently, he’s even been putting rotting chicken carcasses in their drain. Suzie thinks back to a stinky, over-filled garbage can she saw outside Grace’s office.

Kerry emerges to confront Caroline over her sale of the house, and the trio leaves to test out how difficult it would be to move Louis from the forest to the cul-de-sac. Using Becks’ husband, Colin, they determine it would be impossible to carry the body. 

Becks then rushes off to another appointment, but can’t avoid Suzie and Judith’s digging. When she admits it’s an art class, they insist on joining. 

They’re impressed by the handsome teacher, who quietly asks Becks if she had any more thoughts since that morning. Is he who she rushed off to see earlier? She responds that she’s happy. 

A witness has seen Phil toss something into the river. A man who joined the crowd ogling the crime scene that morning and took a photo of Judith there is now searching her online. And Grace finds a human arm while excavating.