'Bookish' Recap: Episode 6

Bookish is available to stream on the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous episode.
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Despite two gunshots as the lights at the Walsingham Hotel went out, no one has been killed. The maid Eadie Rattle brought room service to the princesses Ruhije and Nafije, who believe someone is trying to kill them. So they were nervous that Eadie brought a bottle of champagne even though they didn’t order it, and when the cork popped as the lights went out, Ruhije shot and grazed Eadie’s arm with a bullet. She shot again when Gabriel rushed in at the sound of the first gunshot, but missed him. 

In return for nearly killing her, Eadie insists that she get to stay the night in the princesses’ suite. It will be her last night at the hotel: she has been fired for sabotaging the hotel’s generators by pouring linseed oil, which she uses for cleaning, into them. That is why the lights have been on the fritz. Meanwhile, the princesses receive another threatening letter.

Gabriel helps the police question the bartender Ismail, whom they have arrested on suspicion of trying to poison the princesses, who left his country to be invaded by Mussolini. But Gabriel says Ismail is innocent: he’s not a talented enough bartender yet to poison a drink without anyone noticing. And the “Kanun of Scutari,” a law code from his homeland, forbids harming a guest – and anyone drinking his cocktails would be his guest.

Once released, Ismail apologizes to Eadie, who is indulging herself on the princesses’ account at the hotel despite her firing. He was so upset with the hotel last night that he sabotaged it by pouring Eadie’s linseed oil into the generators. He will confess to the manager Mr. Kind and save Eadie’s job.

Meanwhile, a notebook of the late Victor Orr has been discovered. It’s a list of his sexual conquests, with ratings and comments. One name sticks out: an M. Barberini at the Ascot racetrack in 1940. Sergeant Morris thinks Victor had an assignation with Ismail’s fellow bartender Marco Barberini and tried to blackmail Marco, so Marco killed him.

Gabriel searches Marco’s room, recalling a photo pinned to the wall of a ship with a date in 1940. He finds a framed article about the sinking of that ship in the room, noticing an M. Barberini among the listed deceased, and takes it.

Trottie meets with Victor’s beleaguered wife and realizes she is the woman who disdainfully handed Trottie a towel to clean up Victor after he spilled champagne on himself. She explains that she comes to spy on Victor as he flirts, having become numb to his “adventures.” She also mentions that Victor served during the war in both the Balkans, where the princesses are from, and at Ascot.

Someone writes “Death to parasites” on the door to the princesses’ room. But Gabriel calls Ruhije to lunch and reveals that he knows she is behind the threats to herself and her sister. She admits that, after years of exile following the Communist takeover of their country, they had become irrelevant. No one wants them dead anymore; their third sister, who betrayed them, was herself betrayed and killed by the Communists. So Ruhije started writing threatening letters herself, as Gabriel deduced from the distinctive impression of Nafije’s music pen nib on the letter and from a highly specific reference to the princesses’ wardrobe. 

If Victor was actually the target of the poisoning, then, who killed him?

Gabriel gathers everyone at the hotel bar where Victor was poisoned to reveal the killer.

Even though Nafije switched her and Ruhije’s drinks with Trottie and Victor out of fear that they were poisoned, Victor was the true target; his drink was poisoned after the switch, while everyone was still distracted by Ruhije’s dropped purse. Marco poisoned him with special ice that he had prepared.

Marco was taking vengeance on behalf of his sister Maria, the “M. Barberini” who shows up several times in Victor’s book of conquests. During the war, Ascot was an internment camp, not a racetrack. Marco and his sister were sent there because of their Italian heritage; someone claimed they were fascists. 

Victor carried on a relationship with his prisoner and then put her on a ship to Canada so that his wife wouldn’t find out about the affair. But the ship was a death trap, as the British government knew. When it was torpedoed by Germans, many more of the internees on it died than should have, including Maria – and her baby. She was pregnant by Victor, not that he knew. 

Marco heard Victor identify himself while drunk with Trottie and realized that he was the man Marco held responsible for his sister’s death. So he decided to kill him; the fact that it was Maria’s birthday was poetic justice. 

Having been found out, Marco tries to kill himself by imbibing his own poisoned ice – but Gabriel has anticipated this and switched it out for normal ice. As Marco is arrested, he tells Mr. Kind that he sabotaged the generators with linseed oil, thus saving both Ismail and Eadie their jobs.

Eadie doesn’t want hers anymore, though. After Mr. Kind rehires her and strikes her name from a book of fired people, she resigns.

Jack has realized that Gabriel got him a job as the princesses’ bodyguard through Mr. Kind, and asks why. Kind assures Jack that there is no sinister motive behind the Books’ support of Jack; they just want to help him.

So Jack visits Book’s shop, coming in just as a returning customer thanks Gabriel for giving her Ibsen’s A Doll’s House on a previous visit – it has convinced her to leave her husband, whom she never liked.  

Jack tells Gabriel that he quit his bodyguard job, and asks for his job at the shop back. He then asks why Gabriel saved him after his stint in prison. Gabriel gives Jack a book that his father gave to Gabriel, his lover, before they parted. Gabriel hadn’t looked at the book of Tennyson poems much since Jack’s father died not long after Gabriel saw him. Only now that the war is over did Gabriel find himself looking at it again – and noticing a note about Jack inside. Gabriel didn’t know Felix had a son, but he tapped his contacts in British intelligence to find Jack and give him a job. 

Jack didn’t even know his father’s name; now he does. He asks how Felix died, but Gabriel doesn’t know. Shall we find out together? he asks Jack.