'Miss Scarlet' Recap: Season 6 Episode 4

Miss Scarlet airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes and other seasons.
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Phelps has been promoted to detective inspector in a different police jurisdiction, but that good news is tempered by his mother’s illness, which has left her unresponsive in a hospital. Visiting her, Phelps runs into his uncle Dylan Cooper – his mother’s brother – a notorious crime lord. Cooper warns Phelps that the rival Galanis crime family is causing problems, and a crisis could be coming. Phelps warns his uncle he’ll arrest him if anything tracks back to him.

So when a chorus girl named Natalia Lorenzo rumored to have a relationship with both Cooper and Philip Galanis goes missing, leaving behind bloodstains and a bullet in the wall of her boarding room, Phelps goes to Eliza for help. He doesn’t believe his uncle killed Natalia, but he can’t be seen to be favoring a relative, so he asks Eliza to investigate. Phelps is also wary of arresting his uncle while his mother is ailing, so he has to have unimpeachable evidence if he does so.

Such a job could open up a new police jurisdiction of jobs to Eliza, but she can’t tell Alexander, lest he suspect Phelps is trying to protect his uncle. But when she traces Natalia to various establishments where she danced, Eliza is spotted by Alexander, who has just interviewed the same person about Natalia and guesses that Eliza is working for Phelps.

Alexander is there because Philip Galanis has been found shot dead in the street in Alexander’s jurisdiction. Rumors point to Cooper as the culprit, so Alexander has raided Cooper’s safehouses – and found not Cooper but Phelps. The two inspectors argued over jurisdiction: Natalia’s room is in Phelps’, but the gun that shot Galanis matches the bullet in her wall.

Alexander fights with Eliza for again keeping secrets from him, like when she went to “visit a relative” but was actually meeting Patrick Nash. She has also upset Alexander by forgetting to bring his daughter Sophia home on time after going to the zoo. But Alexander later apologizes for his behavior and has dinner with Eliza: spending time with her makes a difficult day better.

Meanwhile, Cooper comes to Scotland Yard with his lawyer to deny any involvement with the murder of Galanis. He warns Alexander not to make an enemy of him, threateningly mentioning Alexander’s home address and Sophia.

He has also taken a threatening tone with Phelps while meeting him once again at the hospital. He kept Phelps out of the workhouse after his dad died; he should be grateful. Cooper says he’s innocent and just needs some time to prove it.

The owner of an establishment where Natalia danced has confirmed that she is alive: she collected her wages but had a bandage over her shoulder and was feverish. Any doctor she went to for treatment is legally obligated to report a gunshot wound to the police, but Clarence has a list of doctors (from Nash) who will ignore that requirement. Eliza and Clarence see Natalia leaving one doctor’s office, seemingly not under duress.

Eliza asks Phelps to meet her at Scotland Yard, where he gets upset that Alexander knows he hired her. But there’s a crisis there: Sophia has gone missing. Alexander blows up at Phelps, blaming Cooper. Phelps sets off to meet Cooper and demands to know if he took Sophia, but Cooper insists he doesn’t know anything about the girl’s disappearance.

Even the clerical workers set out to look for Sophia, including Ivy, who is joined by Mr. Potts. His memoir keeps getting rejected by publishing houses, so now he wants to write a novel. Ivy finally tells him he’s not a good writer, hoping that will send him to apologize to his former boss at the mortuary in order to get his job back. He refuses, and later finds a different job: he will apply to be the new office manager at Scotland Yard; i.e. Ivy’s boss. Her coworker Isabel – who’s enjoying a romance with Detective Willows – has told Ivy she would be good for the job, but the advertisement specifically stipulates it is for a man.

Searching one of Cooper’s establishments for his daughter, Alexander loses his temper and attacks one of Cooper’s men. But then Sophia is found: she simply skipped school to go to the British Museum and then got lost on her way home. Eliza had told her that she once did the same thing when she was a girl.

Thanks to a financial trail discovered by Clarence, Eliza has learned that the doctor who treated Natalia is Cooper’s personal doctor – he sent her to him. She and Phelps go to Cooper and tell him they know that he has obstructed justice by protecting Natalia – and that she’s the one who killed Philip Galanis. 

Cooper admits it’s the truth. Natalia is not a romantic partner of his but rather the daughter of one of his friends who died after getting out of jail. She’s like a daughter to Cooper. He tried to warn her against Galanis, but she carried on an affair. Galanis got drunk and attacked her; she shot him with his gun in self-defense. Cooper helped hide her away and move the body. She’s now on a boat; he doesn’t know where she’s going. 

As Phelps and Eliza confront Cooper, he receives a message: Phelps’ mother has died.

After seeing his mother, Phelps goes to Alexander’s house and explains the case. Alexander apologizes to him for suspecting that he was corruptly protecting his uncle. Phelps proves his allegiance to the law by handing over a full report on Cooper’s various criminal activities, which Phelps has been compiling for years. Now that his mother is dead, he can finally allow Cooper to be arrested. Alexander happily does so. 

He also tells Eliza that he lost control when Sophia went missing, and could have lost his job as a result – and Eliza planted the idea for Sophia to go off on an adventure. He is Sophia’s sole provider. He needs some time away from Eliza to think things over.