'The Marlow Murder Club' Recap: Season 3 Episode 1

The Marlow Murder Club airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous episodes.
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Suzie is frustrated that a bridge has been inaccessible for months and decides to take her complaint to the Marlow town council. The councillors explain that the owner of the land where the bridge sits is responsible for repairs; there’s not much they can do. Suddenly, the mayor starts to choke. He stands up and grasps at his coffee mug, then collapses, dead. 

When Tanika and the police show up to investigate, Suzie suggests that Geoffrey might have been poisoned, given his focus on his coffee cup in the moments before death. 

The other council members all scoff at the possibility that someone could have wanted Geoffrey dead: he was the best of them, beloved by all and involved in numerous charitable causes. The only councillor who is quiet is Sophia, who was late to the meeting – she got wrapped up in working on her podcast in her home studio. 

Becks is a fan of Sophia’s podcast, which is about gardening, and remembers pertinent knowledge from it when an autopsy shows that Geoffrey was poisoned with aconite, a plant to which Sophia devoted an entire episode. Indeed, when Suzie, Becks, and Judith visit Sophia’s home, they find a “poison garden” of harmful plants. Sophia champions natural methods, such as using hair from her brush to keep slugs away. She says aconite is a popular plant – lots of people grow it. And she explains that Geoffrey helped her out of a bad situation when she messed up something with graveyards – she wouldn’t want to kill him. 

Becks’ family is out of town on a camping trip, leaving her valuable relaxation time – but she can’t resist tidying up. That leads her to find some old files kept by the church where her husband is a priest about the mix-up Sophia mentioned. Sophia messed up the locations of some graves; one body was never found. It was only through Geoffrey’s many letters to the local bishop that she was saved from prosecution.

Judith has had her own distraction: she’s been going on brunch dates with the archaeologist Darius, although she downplays them. 

Another councillor, the estate agent Marcus, spots Becks and her friends at a cafe and introduces himself – he knows Judith by reputation, and seems to want more information about the police investigation into Geoffrey’s death. After he leaves, Judith receives a phone call in which a scrambled voice tells her to “follow the money.” The police trace the call to a phone box, but the door handle and the phone have been wiped clean of prints.

Testing shows that the coffee and tea station at the council meeting was clear of aconite except for a decaf coffee pod – and Geoffrey was the only one who drank decaf. Accountant and council secretary Debbie was the only other person who drank coffee, and her prints are found on the poisoned coffee pod along with Geoffrey’s, but she explains that it was stuck in the machine and so she had to push it through when she made her own coffee. Geoffrey had already brewed his by the time she arrived. She suggests talking to Alec, the man who typically supplies the drinks.

Alec also does the coffee and tea for some of the events at Becks’ church, so Becks knows, unlike the police, that he retreats to a caravan over summer. She, Suzie, and Judith meet him there. Like everyone, he praises Geoffrey – he heard about the poisoning from Marcus. But he didn’t prepare the drinks before the council meeting yesterday. Sophia called and told him the meeting had been cancelled.

Judith then gets another scrambled phone call. She and her friends race to the phone box it originated from once the police trace it and once again find it empty and everything wiped clean. But Becks notes that the phone box is in view of a camera installed on the spire of the church to watch falcons that nest there. She pulls footage and gets a shot of the man who used the phone.

The detective trio then heads to Sophia’s to ask her about telling Alec the meeting was cancelled. She insists it wasn’t her; someone must have pretended to be her, or Alec is lying. The rest of the council arrives for a meeting, and the detectives ask if they recognize the man who called Judith from the phone box. Debbie, who works for Sophia’s husband Paul, recognizes him as a man who did IT work on an office for Paul as well as for Sophia’s podcasting studio. 

Judith and her friends visit the man, Dave, who explains that he saw a spike in petty cash spending on the council website, where everything is reported. He surmised that Geoffrey discovered some corruption related to this and was killed for it, and wanted Judith to investigate. He also adores Geoffrey, who had recently retired from publishing. Years ago, Geoffrey was a mentor to Dave in an aspiring writer’s program. After Dave moved away following his mom’s death and then returned to Marlow last year, Geoffrey ran into him and offered to help get his book published. They’ve been working together ever since on Dave’s manuscript – the detectives can check his story by using Geoffrey’s hidden spare key to find the manuscript at his house.

When they arrive at Geoffrey’s house, they find the key already in the lock. Inside is Dave’s manuscript with supportive notes from Geoffrey, as promised. But there’s also someone else there. The masked and hooded man flees, dropping a box as he does so. Becks and Suzie lose him over a wall after a long chase. 

The police are conducting their own investigation in parallel to Judith’s, even if Tanika is distracted by concerns that her daughter is friends with students at school who have been bullying someone. They have found CCTV footage soon before the council meeting in which Geoffrey is arguing with another councillor, the architect and stickler for rules Terrence. Mrs. Eddingham is visible watching the argument from behind a bush, so the police go to her to learn what it was about.

She says Terrence was saying horrible things although she couldn’t quite discern them; Geoffrey said that Terrence had handled the situation badly. Terrence himself says that the argument was over comments on the council website. (One commenter, Marlow1628, is particularly vicious towards the council.) Terrence wanted to turn them off, Geoffrey wanted to keep them on. That was all.

Back at Geoffrey’s house, Judith has found something else: an earring in an out of the way place, and a note that says, “Stop or I’ll tell everyone your secret.”