'Marble Hall Murders' Recap: Episode 1

Marble Hall Murders airs Sundays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream.
Recap and stream the previous two series, Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders.

Miriam Crace was a best-selling children’s author who is still popular 20 years after her death. Her foundation is run by her son Jonathan, with help from his nephew Roland – although Jonathan often finds himself upset with Roland, as when Roland invites his brother Elliot to a commemoration of Miriam’s death. Jonathan hopes that his nephew won’t come.

But Elliot is determined to go, despite his wife Gillian’s objection; after all, Elliot helped kill his grandmother.

Twenty years ago, Elliot gathered in the woods outside Miriam’s home of Marble Hall with Roland and their sister Julia. The trio concocted a deadly witches’ brew and promised never to tell anyone what they were doing. “We all know what has to be done to grandma,” they said.

Elliot is now a novelist, although a struggling one. Susan Ryeland knows him from her days at Clover Books. The mysteries Clover commissioned from Elliot didn’t do well, despite a hope that his grandmother’s reputation would bolster his own sales. Elliot was a bit of a mess and struggled with ideas for novels, Susan recalls.

Matthew Flynn assures her that Matthew has grown up since then. Elliot is writing a new Atticus Pünd novel for Matthew’s Causton Books, and Matthew has offered Susan a job as an editor to help Elliot finish it. 

Susan is back in London, having left behind Andreas and the hotel in Crete, where she didn’t want to live anymore. She missed publishing, but she’s reluctant to work with Elliot and return to Pünd. She does have a new house – with an unasked-for cat from her sister, Katie – to pay for, however, and it’s not easy getting a job at her age. So she accepts the first 10,000 words of Pünd’s Last Case from Elliot with a promise to read them and then decide whether to take the job. Elliot is uncertain in his progress on the book, and needs to know if his draft is any good.

Pünd’s Last Case takes place immediately after Magpie Murders, the final novel written by the detective’s late creator, Alan Conway. Pünd has retired to his ancestral home of Corfu, where his family lived before emigrating to Germany, to live out his final days with terminal cancer. 

On the island he runs into Lady Margaret Chalfont, who is also there for her health; she, too, is dying and spending her last summer in Corfu, where her late husband Henry bought a summer home, the Villa Belmar. She is with her daughter, the archaeologist Judith Lyttleton, who urges her on to their lunch date. But Lady Chalfont insists on having a drink with Pünd: she needs his advice. She loves her new husband, the American antiquities dealer Elmer Waysmith, but recently overheard something that disturbed her. Now she needs Pünd’s advice. She implores him to visit her at Villa Belmar for dinner in a few days; she’ll send a car for him.

Judith’s husband Harry arrives to pick Judith and Lady Chalfont up. They leave Pünd.

Elliot’s complicated familial relationships involve more than just his grandmother. He believes his parents abandoned him to move to America a few years ago, even though it meant he and Gillian get to now live in their house in the U.K. But now his father Edward is back and needs to sell the house. He and Elliot’s mother are getting divorced, he needs a job, and he needs money for a place to live. He’ll share the proceeds of the sale with Elliot and Gillian. But Elliot is furious – he was furious as soon as he saw his father.

Because of her illness, Lady Chalfont typically spent the morning in bed, enjoying the ocean view out her window while her family breakfasted on the terrace below. Her whole family is at Villa Belmar for her last summer, even though her son Jeffrey and his son Cedric both dislike the heat of Corfu. Jeffrey’s marriage to Lola has become acrimonious; she wants to return to the stage in a production she is financially backing, but Jeffrey dismisses her as without talent. He has an estate and some broken equipment to worry about.

Judith is working to preserve the Nazca lines from destruction and needs money from Elmer, who is dismissive of her and the entire extended Chalfont family, including Judith’s husband Harry. He’s trying to build a hotel on the island but has run out of money, and his mobster-ish contractors are demanding more to bring their workers back on the job – or else. 

Elmer is also disappointed with his own son, Robert, who has followed him into the antiquities business because he didn’t have a talent for much else. Robert is not enthusiastic about his father’s business either, or Elmer’s business partner, whom he accuses of acquiring artifacts in a less than savory manner. 

Most of these people are absent for afternoon tea on the terrace: it’s just Lady Chalfont, Jeffrey, and Harry, who pours the tea. Lady Chalfont gets her own pot, which the servant Maria noticed was missing its lid before she brought it out, even though she thought she had already covered it. The lawyer Hector Lambrose and his secretary Sofia Androulakis are rushing to Villa Belmar to make the meal on an urgent request from Lady Chalfont. When they arrive, six minutes late, Maria is surprised to see them: Lady Chalfont didn’t tell her about any guests. Jeffrey rushes up from the terrace: Lady Chalfont is dead. 

Susan is surprised to receive a request to meet from Elaine Clover, the widow of Susan's former employer Charles – who killed Alan Conway and left Susan for dead in a burning building. She reluctantly goes to Elaine’s house, where the doorbell still plays Charles on the piano, as it did when he was alive. We’ve both suffered because of him, Elaine tells Susan. She wasn’t allowed to reach out to Susan during the trial, and then Susan went to Crete, so she hasn’t been in contact to offer support after her husband tried to kill Susan. 

But she has reached out now because she is close with Elliot Crace, and she’s worried about him. He hasn’t been himself lately, having fallen out with his brother Roland; they were once inseparable. 

Elaine met Elliot when he was a boy through Charles, who worked on Miriam’s last few books. Elliot already wanted to be a writer, but Miriam was cruel to him and ruined his life. She kept everyone in the family under her vindictive thrall, insulting Julia’s glasses, emphasizing that Jonathan wasn’t yet in charge of her books, implying that Edward’s often absent wife didn’t love him. Charles signed an NDA to work with Miriam, so Elaine doesn’t know if he knew any of this. Elliot told her later, when they became friends. Elaine wants Susan to help Elliot with his book.

Susan is ready to forgive Elaine, and she feels like she owes Elliot since he wasn’t successful the first time she worked with him. She thinks she will take the job.