'The Marlow Murder Club' Recap: Season 3 Episode 5

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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Judith, Suzie, and Becks are excited to attend a book launch party at Marlow’s finest restaurant, Gastronomy: Judith because of the local sourcing, Suzie because Chef Ferdy Blake is handsome, and Becks because it gets her away from her dismissive and demanding mother-in-law, whose couple-day stay after her husband left her for another woman has now stretched into two weeks. 

But when smoke billows for Ferdy to make his entrance to the party, he misses his entrance. His ex-wife and current sous chef Isla goes to look for him. He had gone to the dish station to retrieve his favorite blue-steel knife – and now he’s lying there on the ground with a knife in his chest, a 50-pound note pinned by the knife. Isla screams and the oblivious dishwasher, Cal, removes his noise-canceling headphones and turns around in shock to see Ferdy’s corpse.

Damon, who was running the event, tells the police he was in the dining room waiting for Ferdy’s appearance when his body was discovered, but Suzie, who the smoke had sent outside, saw him going back inside just before Isla screamed. But Damon has left the restaurant, giving a ride to Cal, who is so shocked that he can’t drive or speak to the police yet.

The rest of the kitchen brigade was at their stations when Ferdy was found. The only other person who is not accounted for is the kitchen gardener, Omari, but he left the restaurant 20 minutes before the scream. 

Looking around, Judith finds Ferdy’s car unlocked – and a handwritten note threatening him inside. 

The next day, Cal says that Ferdy was a bullying boss. The day Ferdy died, he yelled at Isla and Omari and threatened to fire Damon. Cal’s wife, Nicki, is glad Ferdy is dead – but she has an alibi, having called Cal from her home phone, as she does everyday at the beginning of his shift, just minutes after Ferdy died. 

Cal kept the job despite the abuse because it was the only one he could get after a gambling addiction led him to lose his house. He has cleaned up after rehab, and Ferdy gave him a job. As the interview concludes, Cal asks the detectives to drive him back to Gastronomy, where his car still sits. 

Judith, Suzie, and Becks are there, and see Cal suspiciously looking around near a pile of firewood outside, but they can’t find anything there. They do notice a few nasturtiums from the cocktails served to guests on the grass even though no guests were outside. The flowers lead to an open gate. 

Isla soon goes through that gate, talking on the phone about how the police are still at the restaurant. She has just been sent home by the police, even though she’s trying to organize things in the wake of chaos, since half the restaurant is hers; she refused to be bought out after the divorce.

Judith and friends follow Isla through the woods, where she meets with Omari briefly. Suzie has her dog Luna with her. Suddenly, Luna bolts. Judith follows her barking past a sign warning private property and finds the dog inside a walled garden, digging. She used to be a sniffer dog at airports. Omari is there. Suzie apologizes, and the women ask Omari about Ferdy. He says the chef was always good to him, and lies that he hasn’t spoken to any of the other staff since the murder. 

The police find more handwritten threats inside the safe at Gastronomy. Damon fails to return to the restaurant for his witness statement, and he’s not at his house either. He’s an ex-offender who got the job with Ferdy through an employment program, so maybe he’s avoiding the police. 

The police find that there was a clause in Isla’s divorce to Ferdy giving the full restaurant to either party if the other died first. She freely tells the police she saw Omari, in order to reassure him that he would still have his job. She refuses to let the restaurant die without Ferdy. 

A tabloid publishes a video of Ferdy bullying Cal in the kitchen. The paper resists revealing their source.

A newspaper has asked to profile Tanika, but she’s wary. Suzie, who has been taking a life-coaching course, helps Tanika gain confidence in her success both at work and at home.

Judith and friends ask Cal where Damon might be and he directs them to a fishing spot. Damon says the police won’t believe him, an ex-offender. He says he was outside when Isla screamed, just to get some air. And he says Ferdy’s cruelty didn’t bother him; it had nothing on prison. He leaves and goes to finally speak to the police.

When the police speak to Omari, he still denies seeing any other restaurant staff, then says he just bumped into Isla when asked about her. The police learn that he changed his last name just before starting at Gastronomy, and that his father worked at Ferdy’s first restaurant but left under a cloud.

Another video is published, this time of Ferdy bullying Omari. Also, Ferdy was regularly withdrawing increasingly large amounts of cash over the past six months. 

Judith has been receiving letters from a recently widowed wealthy classmate. He wants to visit her in Marlow – and then arrives, unannounced and confidently stating his intentions. Darius also appears and Matthew asks him to leave Matthew with Judith, who would rather have Darius there. She reluctantly agrees to have dinner with Matthew later, just to get him to stop bothering her.

There are no fingerprints on the threatening notes, but there is a boar bristle. Judith and her friends arrange a foraging trip with Omari and are startled when they notice that the brush on his foraging knife has bristles that seem to match. And the ink on the notes is UV- and water-resistant, as from a garden marker.

Suzie has once again let Luna go sniffing while Judith and Becks distract Omari. But Luna’s barking draws him, and he appears as Suzie finds Luna at an outdoor trash heap near his garden with a printed article about Ferdy defaced with a red, written “Liar,” along with a poisonous mushroom next to a printout about it. The police arrive and lead Omari away.

But there’s a new development. Cal has been found dead in Gastronomy’s walk-in storage.