The Marlow Murder Club episode 2 on Drama saw retired archaeologist Judith Potts (Samantha Bond), dog-walker Suzie Harris (Jo Martin) and vicar’s wife Becks Starling (Cara Horgan) continue to look into two shootings.
But as the evidence pointed in one direction, a third shocking death threw the investigation into chaos and then the killer had Judith in their sights… Could they unravel the case in time?
Here's what happened in The Marlow Murder Club episode two (we also have The Marlow Murder Club episode 1 recap if you want to catch up on the first episode).
After two murders – one of art gallery owner Stefan Dunwoody and one of cab driver Iqbal Kassam – where medallions have been placed near the bodies saying ‘Faith’ and then ‘Hope’, amateur sleuths Judith Potts (Samantha Bond), Suzie Harris (Jo Martin) and Becks Starling (Cara Horgan) are determined to stop the killer before they strike again.
DS Tanika Malik (Natalie Dew) has now realised the women’s worth and – to their delight and her colleagues’ bemusement! – hires them to help the police as civilian advisors.
As they go through all the case files to see if anything jumps out at them, they deduce that Iqbal has had no large financial deposits in his bank account recently, so he hadn’t come into the money that they suspect had been due to him.
Meanwhile Becks realises that the woman they saw at Stefan’s funeral was Liz Curtis (Phillipa Peak), who runs a rowing centre with her husband Danny (Mark Frost), which had been struggling financially.
As they go to chat to Liz, she seems on edge and claims not to know Stefan or Iqbal and dashes off. But they manage to pick up a notebook she has left behind and they plan to check any fingerprints against those that were found in Stefan’s house after an expensive painting of his was stolen following his murder.
They also speak to Danny, who seems more friendly than his wife, and he reveals that Liz was once an Olympic rower and that she did know Stefan and she had recently used Iqbal’s services as a cabbie.
They then head to Iqbal’s house to check his call register and they find proof that Liz did use his cab, while they also open his post and see that while his neighbour, Ezra, was due to leave his estate to Iqbal in his will, shortly before Ezra died, he left it all to his solicitor Giles Bishop (Mark Fleischmann) instead.
Judith, gung-ho as ever, heads off to see Giles and confronts him and says she will contact the Law Society about him and he calls her bluff and tells her to go ahead, but she later spots him shredding paperwork in his office.
The trio realise they need to get into the office to see what Giles shredded, so they plan a heist! Becks claims she wants an appointment with Giles and manages to sneak upstairs and put bread in the office toaster, which sets off the fire alarm and everyone has to evacuate. Then Judith, dressed as an old lady in a wheelchair, helps Suzie into Giles’ office window. Suzie grabs the shredded paper and eventually makes a dash for it while Becks tries to keep Giles occupied.
Meanwhile data from the sat nav in Iqbal’s cab reveals that Liz went to the home of Nazi memorabilia collector Chris Bott (Tristan Sturrock) presumably to steal his World War Two gun, while prints from her notebook are the same as those at Stefan’s house.
Liz now looks like the prime suspect, but unfortunately that lead is spectacularly dashed when she is found shot dead by the riverside with a medallion by her saying ‘Charity.’ Her husband Danny has been away overnight in Nottingham coaching some young rowers and on his return, he says that his wife had been out of sorts lately and that the previous murders had upset her...
When Tanika realises that the ladies have been snooping around the crime scene she warns them (yet again!) that they need to be careful as the case is becoming increasingly dangerous.
The sleuths remain undaunted however and have worked out that the shredded paper from Giles’ office was a page from a local school’s magazine containing obituaries for two former students who were witnesses to Ezra’s will but had actually died before the will had been written. They think that Iqbal had seen the same obituaries and had realised that Giles had forged the will with fake signatures, but Giles can't be the killer as he was in hospital at the time of Iqbal’s murder.
Judith decides they need to look into rowing records from the 1980s as she remembers that auctioneer Elliot Howard (Daniel Lapaine), her chief suspect for both Stefan’s murder and for stealing his painting, was a schoolboy rower and she wants to see who he rowed with. She opens up a locked room in her home and Suzie and Becks are stunned to see piles of newspapers dating back years, which had been kept by Judith’s great-aunt, from whom she inherited her house.
But in another section of the room, they also uncover newspapers relating to Judith’s own past in Greece and she confesses that her husband stole a rare statue from a dig she was on and he sold it for a fortune. By the time she worked it out, he had left her and skipped the country but she was left guilt-ridden and the scandal followed her through her career. Upset that her secret is out, she asks the women to leave.
When they have left, she looks at another clipping on her wall featuring an interview with Stefan in which he says he didn’t like swimming or boats, but she suddenly remembers seeing a kayak by his house at the time of his murder.
She then calls Elliot’s wife Daisy (Juliet Howland) and says she thinks he was involved with the murders and that he stole the painting from Stefan’s house. Daisy admits she thinks he has stashed something in their home and that he has just left on an impromptu fishing trip, while Judith also learns that Giles has left for Manchester. She comes to the conclusion that there will be a fourth murder – her own.
Judith then calls Becks and asks her and Suzie to stay away that evening and not contact her, but when Becks speaks to Suzie, they think that Judith is about to do something foolish and that she needs them.
We then see someone cut wires outside Judith’s house and when Becks goes to the police station, she says that she can’t get in touch with Judith so she and Tanika head to Judith’s house. It’s stormy outside, however, and a fallen tree is blocking their path so Becks, who realises they need a tow rope, runs to the church and, to the bewilderment of her vicar husband Colin (Niall Costigan) and some of his parishioners, she grabs a knife and cuts the rope from one of the bells in the church tower and borrows a 4X4 and dashes back to Tanika to move the tree.
Meanwhile, Suzie is with Iqbal’s dog Luna, who she has taken in, and she is desperately trying to get across the river to reach Judith’s house but the road bridge is closed due to the storm so she has to try the footbridge.
Back at the house, however, a window is broken and Judith tries to ring 999 in vain just as someone comes in and points a gun at her head – it’s Danny.
Judith bravely tries to stand up to him and says that it can’t have been easy that Liz was a top rower and he wasn’t as good and that it must have frustrated him that Liz wouldn’t sell their cash-strapped rowing centre to developers, which would have netted them a fortune.
Danny can’t have killed his wife, however, as he was in Nottingham. But Judith has worked out that he did kill Stefan. He booked Iqbal’s cab on his wife’s phone in order to go and get the gun and it was Danny’s blue kayak which Judith spotted near Stefan’s house.
Danny had no motive for killing Stefan, but Elliot did, so Danny shot Stefan for Elliot, while Elliot was at choir practice, Elliot killed Iqbal for Giles, while Giles was in hospital and Giles murdered Liz for Danny, while Danny was in Nottingham. The three men formed a deadly triangle where each of them killed someone they didn’t really know so that another person, who had motive but a perfect alibi, would benefit.
It turns out that the killers all went to the same school and were top rowers and they met up at a recent regatta and shared their respective woes - Elliott wanted Stefan’s painting that should have been his, Giles would go be in trouble if Iqbal reported what he had discovered about the will, and Danny wanted the money from selling the rowing centre which could only happen if Liz died. They had the idea of using the medallions and the same gun to make it look like one person was the murderer.
As Judith reveals to Danny that she knows everything, she throws icing sugar in his face from her travel sweets and stabs him with one of her sharp crossword pencils and his gun ends up on the floor, where she tries to grab but he gets it first and points it at Judith, only for Luna to dash through the window and grab him, saving Judith’s life.
As Suzie follows the dog in, Becks, Tanika and the rest of the police arrive and Danny is arrested, while we also see Elliot and Giles being taken in and the painting is found in Elliot’s house.
Tanika is grateful to the three women for helping to crack the case and Suzie, Judith and Becks head out in a punt on the river to celebrate with a picnic. Judith apologises for not including them in her final plan but she wanted to keep them safe. She knew Danny would try to kill her as Giles and Elliot were out of town and had alibis, so the only way to lure them in was to put her life on the line.
Becks and Suzie says that this means Judith has atoned for her past in Greece and when they ask her if she ever saw her husband again, she says no and that they should look to the future. Is she telling the truth?
