Beyond Paradise season 2 episode 1 welcomed us back to the Devon village of Shipton Abbott for a new series of quirky rural crimes and heartwarming family drama with DI Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) and the gang.
Humphrey and DS Esther Williams (Zahra Ahmadi) were assisting with the preparation for the Shipton Abbott Players' interactive murder mystery evening on a steam train, only to discover that the victim's corpse-acting was a little bit too method. Plus Humphrey and his fiancée Martha Lloyd (Sally Bretton) enjoyed some quality time together, and Martha's mum Anne (Barbara Flynn) decided it was time to get back into the dating game — but how did she get on?
Here's what happened in Beyond Paradise season 2 episode 1...
We open with a steam train chugging through a tunnel accompanied by the sound of screams, and inside the train Humphrey is hurrying after the guard who is leading him to the next carriage, where there's a dead body on the floor with a knife in his back. Humphrey dismisses all the witnesses into the next carriage and kneels down to the body, before congratulating him on an excellent job — at which point his eyes pop open and he thanks Humphrey brightly.
That's right — all is not as it seems, because as an art deco-style sandwich board at the station informs us, the Shipton Abbott Players will soon be unleashing an immersive murder mystery night on their audience — and it turns out that Margo Martins (Felicity Montagu), Shipton Abbott police station's office support and woman of many talents, is directing. As the train pulls back into the station, she dismisses her cast while reminding them they are due back for a full dress rehearsal tomorrow. It turns out that Humphrey and Esther have been standing in for two absent actors, who have been delayed returning from holiday, and Margo asks for their help again in the next day's dress run — but the real cast members should be back in time for the actual performance.
Humphrey and Esther step off the train to a small round of applause from the other cast, where Noah Culpepper (Holby City's Paul Bradley) congratulates them , although Kate Potts (Abi Clarke) takes it upon herself to give Esther a note on her performance, and Esther, with a facial expression suggesting that she's wondering if she could use her extensive experience in the police to commit a murder right now and get away with it, promises to try harder next time. Paul Yellen (The Gallows Pole's Adam Fogerty) offers, "as the new boy", to take everyone out for a drink, but Vivienne Bishfield (The Sixth Commandment's Anna Crilly) excuses herself — as do Esther, who's got a hungry teenager to feed, Kate, who has lines to revise, and Humphrey, who just wants to get home.
Esther spots a handsome man emerging from the cab of the train and is instantly smitten, but Humphrey only has eyes for the train itself and asks Kieran Fish (Dane Williams) — who explains that he's the fireman on the train rather than the actual driver — if he can have a look at the engine. Kieran tells Humphrey that he's welcome to jump into the cab, and Humphrey is delighted, while Kieran explains to him that he's in charge of keeping the boiler at temperature by stoking the fire, while Harry Bishfield (Richard Glover), the driver, is in charge of the throttle and the brakes. Humphrey asks if he can blow the whistle, and is granted permission to do so - but in his excitement he accidentally disengages the train's brake and it starts steaming out of the station — until Harry and Kieran regain control and Harry promptly ejects Humphrey from the cab.
At Ten Mile Kitchen, Anne is on her phone, occupying a table that might otherwise accommodate a paying customer, which Martha politely points out, and Anne informs her that she is shopping — for a man. She's signed up to a dating app called Silver Heart, and Martha asks if she's just looking for companionship. Anne explains that she's just looking for someone to help her walk the dog — not a euphemism, but a lie nonetheless: she mentioned having a dog on her profile to make herself sound warmer, and named it Humphrey.
Humphrey and Martha head off for a date night, where Anne's new love life is the main topic of conversation. Martha admits that the idea bothers her a little bit, while conceding that her dad has been dead for three years now and her mum had to move on at some point. Martha's primary concern is that Anne might get catfished, so Humphrey offers to give her an unofficial chat on the dangers of online dating from a police perspective. The talk turns to Humphrey and Martha's hopes of becoming foster parents — they have to go through an interview and a home visit soon, and the couple admit to being a combination of scared and excited.
The next day, the cast are back on the train getting ready for their dress rehearsal, and Paul yelps when he's putting his jacket on — Vivienne, in her dual role as performer and wardrobe supervisor, seems to have left a pin in it. As the journey gets underway, the actors carry out their dress rehearsal, and as the train approaches a tunnel, Harry tells Kieran that they've had a warning about debris on the line ahead, so the train slows to a crawl while Kieran steps out of the cab with a lamp and walks carefully along the side of the engine to scan the track ahead, leaving the carriages in near total darkness. Kieran returns to the cab and gives Harry the all-clear as the train emerges back into the daylight and the cast continues their rehearsal. Esther's character is required to step out to the buffet car to get a glass of water — but she makes a swift return, telling Humphrey that there's something he needs to see. Paul is lying on the ground — and he's really dead. That means there's a murderer on the train!
Back at the station, Paul's body is removed and PC Kelby Hartford (Dylan Llewellyn) has secured the platform, kept the press at bay and searched the train. He's talked to both the driver and the fireman, but they didn't see anything unusual and were together in the cab the whole time, so Humphrey deduces that one of the players is their murderer. Esther points out they can rule out three of them — herself, Humphrey and Margo — and, in a lovely blink-and-you'll-miss-it visual gag, Kelby scratches three lines out from his notebook.
Esther says they're left with four suspects, and any one of them could have sneaked back into the buffet carriage while the train was in the tunnel. Humphrey points out that it's actually very difficult to stab someone in the back — the muscles are very thick, and given that Paul was a big man and there was no sign of a struggle, it would suggest he had his back to whoever killed him, presumably meaning he was standing at the buffet table. But there's still one thing about the crime scene that's very curious — there's no blood.
At the police station, Margo has bad news for Humphrey and Esther — the national press have picked up on the story of a man being murdered during a murder mystery night in the presence of two serving police detectives, and Chief Superintendent Charlie Woods (Jade Harrison) is not pleased. Humphrey nominates Esther to be the one to call CS Woods, while Margo gives Humphrey a quick rundown on the player-suspects: Kate's a wannabe actress fresh out of drama school, George Harris (Peter Landi) was widowed six years ago and joined every single social group in Shipton Abbott, gaining a reputation as a bit of a moaner in the process, Vivian is a biology teacher at the college and moved here from Exeter about five or six years ago, and Noah is a bit of a geek but harmless — his wife ran off with his best mate. Paul, the victim, was a newcomer to the group — Margo mentions that he just moved to Shipton Abbott from Hastings — and explains that it's a tradition in the Shipton Abbott Players for the group's newest member to play the dead body.
Meanwhile, Kelby's off to see Polly Deakins (Flip Webster), who called the police station to report a peeping tom. When he gets there, she seems less interested in providing deals of the offender than she does in plying Kelby with tea and cake, enquiring after his mother and insulting his father. (Anyone else hoping we'll get to meet Kelby's parents properly soon?) When they do get to talking about the loiterer, Polly tells Kelby that he was standing there for over an hour — not necessarily looking through her window, but looking in the general direction of her house, and only left when some woman arrived to tell him off. She can't offer much in the way of a description: the man was of medium height and wearing a woolly hat, while the woman was also of medium height but was hatless, repeat, hatless.
As Esther drives Humphrey home, he suggests they contact Hastings Police in the morning to find out more information on Paul Yelland. Esther mentions that she'll be spending her evening helping her daughter Zoe look for a job, and Humphrey tells her that he's going to be spending his evening trying to talk Anne out of online dating — a plan which proves foolhardy, because it turns out that Humphrey's cautionary tale involves a woman who is suspiciously the same age as Anne and also lives in Devon, who went to pub to meet a man only to discover he had an axe hidden in his coat. Anne — astoundingly — does not find this account credible. Besides, it's too late: Anne's already got a date with Oliver, 63, own hair, teeth and house. He's coming for dinner tomorrow night to sample Anne's tagine. Humphrey snorts. (We did too, but we're not proud of it.) Martha asks what happens if Oliver wants to meet Humphrey the Non-Existent Dog, and Anne says she's planning to say he's at the vet's. Anne tells Martha and Humphrey that they can't expect her to be on her own for the rest of her life, especially since the two of them have their own life now — they might even end up moving away, and then what? Would she have to leave Shipton and move in with them? Humphrey gives a small involuntary yelp of protest and attempts to cover by saying that of course they'd love for that to happen, but they aren't going anywhere. Humphrey tells Anne they just want her to be happy, and Anne says that's good — because she's happy to be going on this date.
On the way back to the houseboat, Martha points out that she never knew what her mum was getting up to when she and Humphrey were living in London, so maybe she should just trust that Anne knows what she's doing. Humphrey agrees that Oliver is probably an entirely decent chap — and Martha says that if he isn't, they could kill him and bury his body in the river, which Humphrey is on board with. (Maybe Kelby shouldn't have been quite so quick to cross Humphrey off his list of suspects?)
As Margo arrives to open up the office the next morning, she's hounded by reporters and gives them all a swift "no comment" (while making sure that they all know that "Margo" is spelt without a T). Over at the train station, Esther tells Humphrey that the preliminary autopsy confirmed the blade puncture in the lung as probable cause of death. Harry and Kieran are talking on the platform, so Humphrey goes over to speak to Harry to confirm that the train didn't stop at all during the dress rehearsal. Kieran mentions that they had a call to slow down while they checked for debris, and Harry confirms that someone could potentially have time to jump on and off the train while that was happening, although neither of them saw anything like that. CS Woods arrives with Kelby in tow, once again ineptly trying to flirt with her (telling her that her uniform looks "pressed nicely") before panicking and making a swift exit. CS Woods wants to know why Humphrey hasn't decided to run his murder room from regional HQ, and warns him that because of the high level of media interest in this case, the higher-ups want this case solved quickly — so it would be in everyone's best interests for Humphrey to catch the killer sharpish if he wants the Shipton Abbott station house to remain open.
Back at the house, Anne is trying to decide what to wear for her date. Over the phone, Martha tells her to pick something casual that she'll be comfortable in — and just to be herself.
Humphrey and Esther go to interview Noah, who plays the guard in the play, who runs through what happened in the dress rehearsal, but didn't see anything that he felt was suspicious. They move on to Kate, who didn't really talk to Paul, but overheard him talking to George. So onward they go to George, who explains that he and Paul were both Plymouth Argyle supporters and chatted about that. George had met Paul in local pub The Kitty Jay a few days before, and when he found out Paul was new to the area, George suggested that he join the Players as a way of getting to know people. After they leave, Humphrey notes to Esther that it seems unusual for Paul Yellen to have been a Plymouth Argyle supporter if he was a recent arrival from Hastings.
Their final interview is at the college, where Vivian is setting up a biology lecture. She explains that she does running repairs on the costumes for the Players, because they've all seen better days (the costumes, not the actors). She explains that she got roped into it after Margo found out her mum was a seamstress — just like her husband Harry ended up as the train driver when Margo found out he knew how to do it. Vivian says she didn't notice anything unusual about Paul at the dress rehearsal — but that she didn't really know him well enough to be able to tell either way.
Back at the station, Kelby has been making enquiries to see if anyone can corroborate Polly's account of the peeping tom and the woman who saw him off, but nobody can remember seeing either of them. Margo thinks Polly imagined the whole thing. She, meanwhile, has been looking up Paul's history in Hastings, which also turns out to be a bit suspicious: there's no record of him on any official lists. Humphrey suggests she talk to the solicitors who did the conveyancing on the house that Paul bought in Shipton Abbott recently — and see if she can find out more information about the debris warning that necessitated the train slowing down. He's a bit puzzled, because nothing about the case adds up right now — not only do they not have a motive for Paul's murder, he's not even sure if they know how it was done, given that there was no blood around the body, which you'd expect there to be quite a lot of if someone had been stabbed to death.
Humphrey thinks another search of Paul's house might throw up a new lead, so he and Esther head round there, but it's surprisingly spartan: there's only one bedroom being used upstairs, there are no family photos or personal effects. Paul must have had a very lonely life. The biggest clue, however, comes as they're leaving — at the exact moment that Kelby is leaving the house next door: Polly Deakins' house. So perhaps the person who was loitering across the street wasn't looking at Polly at all — he was looking at Paul.
Meanwhile, Anne is getting ready for her meal with Oliver, very slowly, in a sequence that's beautifully acted by Barbara Flynn as she captures Anne's anticipation, apprehension and lingering grief for her husband without saying a single word.
Back at the station, Margo's enquiries have revealed that Paul didn't buy the house, he inherited it from a Mrs Sarah Scarcroft, who left her entire estate to him in her will. CS Woods calls again, and this time Humphrey takes the call.
Returning home, Humphrey is greeted at the houseboat by Selwyn the duck, and is surprised to find Martha on the bow, spying on her mother's date. Martha is feeling put out that Anne didn't introduce her to Oliver, so she decides to go over to the house, only to discover that Anne has locked the door. She knocks at the door on the pretence of borrowing a cup of sugar — but Anne has pre-empted this, and has one ready to give her. Martha asks for some bread, and Anne's got that too. Martha tries asking for a lightbulb, and yep, Anne has got one of those ready and waiting as well. Realising that this isn't going to get her into the house, Martha drops the act and asks why Anne is hiding Oliver from her. Anne, quite rightly, points out that she isn't hiding him, she's simply not giving Martha the opportunity to interrogate him before she's had a chance to get to know him properly. Martha relents, reluctantly.
Later that evening, Humphrey is telling Martha all about his confusing case and asking whether Martha might be able to give Zoe a job, but Martha's attention is on her mum's house. A taxi pulls up, and Humphrey and Martha dive out of sight. Oliver leaves, and Anne makes it clear to Humphrey and Martha that she knows they're watching. She gives them a run-down of her date: Oliver was nice, polite, and didn't outstay his welcome. But she's not going to see him again — she "got the ick" when he slurped his soup.
The next day, Humphrey heads into work where Esther has news on Paul Yellen — his real name is Aiden Scarcroft, he was Sarah's son, and that's why she left him her house. He changed his name before he moved to Shipton Abbott, so Margo is running a check on his real name. Kelby, meanwhile, informs him that the train company have confirmed that they did not issue a debris warning for that tunnel.
Humphrey and Esther go round to Vivienne and Harry's house to try to clear this up. Harry says that there had been an incident of debris falling in the tunnel the previous week, so he'd slowed the train town just to be careful. Humphrey explains that if someone had specifically told the train to slow down, it might have been because they wanted to get on board while it was moving, and Harry says that he and Kieran are so far up the front that they wouldn't really be able to tell what was happening in the carriages. Humphrey shares his enthusiasm for steam trains with Harry, who offers to take him and Martha out on the train sometime.
By the time Humphrey and Esther get back to the police station, Margo has called with another update: Aiden Scarcroft got out of prison two years ago after serving 12 years for manslaughter. He was three times over the drink-driving limit and ran into some people waiting at a bus stop, killing an elderly woman and causing severe injuries to several others. Humphrey asks Esther to look up the list of casualties and cross-check for any connection to the suspects. Meanwhile, CS Woods is on the phone defending Humphrey to one of her bosses — sadly to no avail, as she rings Humphrey shortly afterwards to inform him that he has to move his investigation into the hub at 9am tomorrow morning. She assures him that this isn't a reflection on him or his team, but Humphrey has a hard time believing that.
Humphrey sits down at his desk, looks at the knife and his pile of scraps of paper, and seems to be on the verge of a breakthrough when Esther chimes in with one of her own: the collision at the bus stop happened in High Broughton, a village just outside Exeter, and one of the casualties with the worst injuries was an 11-year-old boy named Christopher Bishfield — Harry and Vivienne's son.
Humphrey and Esther work through the chain of events: Harry and Vivienne turned up at rehearsals one day to see the man who seriously injured their son after driving drunk. He didn't recognise them because in all likelihood he'd never met them, but they definitely recognised him. That evening, Polly Deakin spotted Harry outside her house — he'd followed Paul home, wanting revenge. Humphrey realises that Kieran said they'd had a call about debris on the line, which doesn't match Harry's account that they slowed down as a precaution, which means that Harry likely lied to Kieran about having had a call. Harry knew that as they approached the last tunnel of the journey, all of the murder mystery suspects were being questioned by the detective in the third carriage, while Paul/Aiden, playing the corpse, would be alone in the buffet car. So Harry faked a debris warning, which would have required him to slow the train down and Kieran to step out of the cab onto the footplate to check the line ahead. With Kieran out of the way, Harry climbed back to the buffet car and stabbed Paul, giving himself just enough time to get back before Kieran returned to the cab.
That explains everything — except for the lack of blood around the body, so Humphrey and Esther bring Harry in for questioning. Harry explains that Christopher had been waiting at the bus stop with a friend's mum to go crab fishing in town. The accident shattered Chris's legs, leaving him in constant pain and needing numerous operations. Chris was never the same again, and six years ago he took his own life — and as far as Harry and Vivienne were concerned, it was Aiden Scarcroft who killed their son the moment he got behind the wheel of his car while drunk. Harry admits to killing Aiden/Paul, and says he isn't sorry. Humphrey has one more question: when Harry entered the buffet car and saw Aiden/Paul standing by the table, is there any reason the police didn't find any blood at the murder scene — did Harry dispose of a floor covering or something? Harry says Paul wasn't standing — he was lying down on the floor.
Humphrey and Esther step out of the room, puzzled as to why Paul would have been lying on the floor. Esther checks the full post-mortem, which has just arrived, and notices a marker in the toxicology report — there were traces of a substance called curare in the victim's blood. Humphrey's heard of this, and suddenly everything makes sense — the reason Paul didn't bleed when Harry stabbed him is because he was already dead.
When Paul was pulling his jacket on for the dress rehearsal, the pin that Vivienne left in the cuff pricked him and made him bleed. She offered to put some antiseptic and a plaster on the wound to stop it from getting infected, but in actual fact she dabbed curare onto Paul's arm — as a biology teacher, she would have known how to make curare by boiling the bark of certain plants, and that it was used by certain Amazon tribes to poison the tips of darts and arrows because it paralyses muscle tissue and stops the victim breathing.
Vivienne is brought in for questioning and admits that she knew Harry was planning to kill Aiden Scarcroft when she found Harry outside his house. She talked him out of doing it that night, but knew he'd try again — and she knew he would get caught when he did. She didn't want to see him sent to prison, because he's been through so much pain already — but she didn't care what happened to her, because as far as she considered, her life ended when her son's did. She says she'll never be free of the pain of her son's death.
So that's why Paul was already on the floor when Harry found him: the poison had already killed him. When Harry found Paul on the floor, he assumed he'd already got into position for the next scene, and stabbed him — but because Harry was already dead, his heart was no longer pumping and he didn't bleed out on the floor.
Harry and Vivienne are both arrested, and Esther tells Humphrey that she really hates her job sometimes. She asks Humphrey what's likely to happen to Vivienne, and Humphrey says it will depend on the CPS and who they deem responsible for Aiden Scarcroft's death. Esther calls CS Woods to give her the "good" news.
Humphrey and Martha arrive at the station, where Martha tells him that she's offered Zoe a trial period at the restaurant starting next week. Humphrey has arranged a date night on the steam train that was very recently a murder scene (swoon!), with the promise that he'll take Martha out for dinner once they've had a quick look around and taken some photos. He hops into the cab while Kieran tells Martha all about the workings of the train — but Humphrey manages to let the brake off again, and yells to Martha from the cab to call the restaurant and let them know they might be a little bit late, as the train steams out of the station. Humphrey, lest we forget, is a man who generally avoids driving a car because he doesn't really feel able to do it safely, so let's hope Kieran was able to catch up with the train before it left the station because otherwise this is not going to end well...
