'Marble Hall Murders' Recap: Episode 5

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

In the wake of Eliot’s death, Jonathan calls the Crace family together. Everyone is angry. Roland’s affair with Gillian is common knowledge. Edward and Leilah give credence to Eliot’s contention that his grandmother Miriam was murdered, arguing that Jonathan and Dr. Lambert covered up an unnatural death. But Jonathan argues that she was dying anyway and he needed to protect her legacy, which they all live off, even if Julia gives away the quarter million pounds she receives every year. Frederick sides with Jonathan.

Money is once again in the balance: there’s a huge Netflix deal Jonathan wants to make sure goes through, and he doesn’t want the chaos raised by Eliot to derail it. 

Susan’s freedom is in the balance: the cloth found stuck on her damaged car matches Eliot’s coat, and the blood on it is his. The police are looking into CCTV footage to confirm that Susan took the train and didn’t drive to the party, but it will take time. Furthermore, an anonymous witness called to say they saw her car speed away from where Eliot was hit.

Susan says she’s being framed and tells the detectives to read Eliot’s book and go through his notes for clues. Blakeney, a fan of Alan Conway’s books, agrees to do so, to his colleague Wardlaw’s surprise. 

Susan then goes to meet Jonathan’s wife Leilah, who has requested a conversation. She explains that she met Jonathan while performing on a cruise. But his wealth proved not to be the escape she had hoped; Marble Hall was horrible, and Miriam was cruel. She almost left, buying a ticket to Cairo, but Frederick got into his infamous accident while driving her to the airport; the chauffeur had left by the time she joined the family. She rejects Eliot’s suggestion that Frederick was drunk – Leilah is the drunk, as is evident to Susan. Leilah wants Susan to bring Jonathan down, but also warns that he might try to hurt her, suggesting that he could have killed both his mother and his nephew. 

Susan moves on to a strained meeting with Charles Clover, her old boss and the man who tried to kill her after she realized he had murdered Alan Conway. He’s in prison and bitter, but shares some thoughts. He at first assumed one of Miriam’s myriad lovers, including amongst her staff, had killed her. He knows about the lovers from an unauthorized biography that was kept from publication by the Crace estate. Indeed, Miriam’s famous “breakdown” that sent her to a clinic in Lausanne was actually a trial separation demanded by her husband. But Miriam was Catholic and wouldn’t get divorced.

Finally, Charles reveals that Eliot told him who killed Miriam – or at least who Eliot believed was the murderer. Eliot, Julia, and Roland all concocted a poison, including from deadly plants on the grounds of Marble Hall, but it was Roland who gave it to his grandmother. Eliot saw him in the long hallway outside her room the night she died. 

But Charles will deny this story if anyone else asks. He wants Susan, the current main suspect in Eliot’s death, to end up in prison, as revenge for sending him there. Alan was cruel and provoked Charles into accidentally killing him, plus Alan was dying anyway. Why did Susan have to reveal Charles as the murderer? He was about to retire; what good did it do?

Charles’ wife Elaine calls Susan to ask how the visit went, then quickly gets off the phone when she hears the doorbell.

Susan returns to her home, picking up a package as she goes in, to find it ransacked. Food is smeared everywhere, papers tossed about, compost upended on her bed, and “Killer” painted in red on her wall. Her car keys are missing, and her cat has been stabbed.

She rushes Hugo to the veterinarian, who says he will survive. Susan then returns home and calls Blakeney, who comes over and declares that the intruder got in through Susan’s backyard, forcing the lock on the door. He offers to drive her to get dinner while she waits for her sister, Katie, to be free so she can stay at her house.

Knowing it’s a breach of protocol since she is a suspect in Eliot’s death, Susan asks Blakeney to join her at dinner. He agrees, justifying it because she is in shock and a victim herself. 

Over tapas, he asks why Susan was visiting Charles and she explains. She also reveals a deduction: Dr. Lambert was bribed to fake Miriam’s death certificate. He told Susan that his expensive classic cars were paid for by a bequest from Miriam’s will, but Jonathan told Susan that Lambert wasn’t in the will, so the money must have come from a bribe.

Blakeney also asks Susan about the package he saw in her home, pointing out that the courier who delivered it may have noticed something if the intruder was in her home at the time. He then drives her to Katie’s house.

On the way, he explains that he became a policeman to address the crime he grew up around, but will retire soon. He wants to write in his retirement; he has completed some short stories, at the urging of his late wife. As he leaves Susan, he tells her that he has read Eliot’s manuscript of Pünd’s Last Case and also has Eliot’s notes for it.

Katie wants to gossip with Susan about the man, Blakeney, who dropped her off. Her own boyfriend, the shy (or dull) investor David, has moved in with her. 

Blakeney’s partner Wardlaw chastises him for going to dinner with a suspect; she believes Susan killed Eliot. But Blakeney is not so sure. He retreats to his office with Eliot’s notes, and finds amongst them a historic ad for Spat’s shoe polish, one of the pieces of evidence seeming to incriminate Elmer Waysmith in the book. He pins it up on an evidence board as Pünd watches.