'Grantchester' Recap: Season 11 Episode 6

Grantchester airs Sundays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous episode and other seasons. 
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CeCe’s Boutique has scored a coup: the au courant model Tilly Mayflower will wear one of the store’s dresses. Tilly can’t make a fitting, so her manager, Clarke Brown, asks Cathy to bring the dress to Tilly at the hot new club Sady’s. Mrs. C contemplates canceling dinner plans at the last minute so that she can go with Cathy, but instead their accountant Switch accompanies her, igniting Mrs. C’s suspicion about his intentions towards Cathy.

Sady’s has been closed for Tilly’s privacy. Only Tilly, Clarke, the club manager Malcolm, and the hostess Kara are there when Cathy and Scratch arrive. Tilly loves the dress, and champagne is opened in celebration even though she is eager to leave. Clarke gives her a pill to take with her champagne. 

After several bottles, Cathy goes to leave, receiving an intimate hand on her back from Scratch in the process. At the coat check, she sees the club manager Malcolm slumped on the ground, dead. 

Geordie is shocked to see Cathy at Sady’s when he arrives to investigate. Malcolm’s watch is stuck at 8:45, presumably stopped in the struggle that killed him via strangulation. There’s an envelope in his pocket labeled “K” with a stack of cash. 

Tilly nearly has a breakdown when she learns that no one can leave until they are all questioned. Clarke gives her another pill, explaining that they help her stress-induced hallucinations. She seems to have trouble remembering anything, a side-effect of the pills. But she does praise Cathy’s kindness to Geordie, who shows the same virtue by giving Tilly a sandwich meant for his own meal – she can’t remember when she last ate.

Geordie guesses correctly that Clarke is having an affair with Tilly. But Clarke casts suspicion on Kara, the hostess – her relationship with Malcolm appeared frosty. 

Kara admits that the envelope of cash found on Malcolm was her wages but professes ignorance of anything else – including an illegal poker game Geordie discovered in progress in a back room of the club. Among the four players is Alphy, drunk on Scotch, to Geordie’s disappointment. He sends the vicar home and asks him to come to the police station in the morning – as a witness, not a detective. The other gamblers say they only saw Malcolm when he brought them to the room in the afternoon. One of them, Leighton, says Malcolm was an old friend and cries at the news of his death. 

The next day, Geordie cautiously asks Cathy about her evening. She gets defensive, but does say that Tilly seemed to need help, with Clarke never letting her out of his sight. There is a press report of Tilly pushing a photographer in her past, and Clarke was investigated for fraud but found innocent. The only person to leave the room was Kara, who was in and out.  

Alphy doesn’t have much to add. He met one of the other gamblers in the park and was asked to join the game. Malcolm didn’t come in after letting them in the room, but Kara did; she lied about her ignorance of the poker game. She even spilled on Alphy and made a big show of cleaning it up herself, and added ice and lemon to the players’ Scotches – an odd choice. Geordie guesses that she was helping Leighton, the winner of the game, cheat, looking at Alphy’s cards while cleaning the spill and signaling to Leighton with the ice cubes. 

Further evidence comes when Geordie notices the clock in the gambling room is a half hour slow – Leighton didn’t want his other players to know how long they had been there. Kara admits that Leighton asked Malcolm to help him fix a game and Kara, who had never met Leighton, was part of it. But Malcolm was nervous about the illegality, even though he wanted the money to help buy his mom a house.

One of the other gamblers says that Leighton left to go to the bathroom around 8:15. With the half hour delay on the clock, that would be 8:45 – the time Malcolm was killed. 

Leighton cries when questioned by Geordie. He fixed the game because he has been desperate for money lately. Malcolm got nervous and wanted to end the game and give the money back to the other gamblers. Leighton became furious and attacked Malcolm, killing him, to his great remorse. 

Mrs. C has done her own investigating with Jack, looking into CeCe’s accounts and discovering discrepancies. She and Jack follow Scratch and see him meet a woman and then bring papers she gave him to the bank. Mrs. C thinks he’s stealing funds from the woman, but when she brings it up to Cathy, Cathy explains that he’s helping his sister get a loan. Cathy’s eruption at Mrs. C for meddling is forestalled by the arrival of Tilly, who wants to choose some of her own clothes – without Clarke. When he appears and tries to retrieve her, Mrs. C and Cathy stand up for Tilly, inspiring her own show of defiance: She fires Clarke.

Miss Scott’s pregnancy will soon show, raising questions at the police station; married women are not allowed to work there. (Her marriage to Larry is a secret.) She reluctantly tenders her resignation to Geordie even though she doesn’t want to give up her career; he laments losing his best employee.

Alphy is struggling, though he bristles when Geordie brings up his gambling and drinking. Leonard is startled to find him closing the church early and even more shocked when he asks Alphy to help with the boy Raymond and Alphy shrugs off Raymond as not his problem. 

Leonard at least is trying to help Raymond, whose mother is dead and father Marcus is dying. He brings Daniel to check on the family and is surprised when Daniel is eager to treat Raymond to breakfast when he says he’s hungry. Daniel even buys a Black Forest cake for Raymond and Marcus when Raymond spots it in a window and says it’s his father’s favorite kind. 

Now also worried about Alphy, Leonard goes to Geordie and the two of them visit Alphy at the vicarage. Alphy is bristly towards their help, lashing out when Leonard lectures him on his neglect of priestly duties and after Geordie again chides him for his drinking and gambling. Alphy angrily asks them to leave. Geordie sadly tells him that he’s on his own now; Geordie is done trying to help. Alphy sits down and cries, alone.