Loveday Writing

The next morning, Peregrine arrives at Kenneth’s home, as he is the architect she hired to renovate her house, she is greeted by Pauline. When Peregrine asks to see Kenneth to get their meeting started and Pauline doesn’t know where he is, they look around for him. Peregrine sees steam coming from Ken and Pauline’s recently built sauna, Pauline opens the door and they both discover Ken and Linda dead.

Steed arrives to start the investigation. He and Peregrine briefly meet Theo, a contractor who did concrete work for Kenneth and Pauline who was also at the party, before they start investigating. They find that something was jammed in front of the sauna door, keeping Kenneth and Linda locked in there. Steed and Peregrine proceed to tell Dirk (Linda’s husband) and Francine the bad news and that they will be interviewing them about the sequences of events.

Pauline tells them that she left Kenneth in the lounge room with the others around 9pm when she took Theo upstairs. She didn’t come downstairs but Theo took a shower an hour later. She heard raised voices downstairs but also said that wasn’t unusual for Dirk and Kenneth. She also mentions that someone turned the radio on, and she thinks that maybe Kenneth was with Linda and Francine. Whilst Pauline is talking to Steed, Peregrine finds that Kenneth hasn’t worked on the plans for her house renovations.

When Steed and Peregrine talk to Francine, she tells them that she didn’t have a tryst with Kenneth, but she did with Dirk. She also tells them that Linda went outside to try the sauna, and she left Kenneth inside where he played the same record over and over, and she asked Dirk to go out and get more drinks for them. Dirk tells them that he took a long time to return as he had difficulty picking the right cognac, when Peregrine notices he has an arm injury, he tells her it’s from a fondue fork. He also tells them that Linda wanted to have fun and Kenneth was ruining things by talking about a career crisis.

As they leave, Sparrow and the police arrive. Sparrow tells Peregrine to leave and before she does, she goes back to the sauna and finds a wood chip on the ground near the door.

We then cut to the Adventuresses’ Club where we see Samuel and Violetta kissing as Birdie calls out to them for lunch. Birdie tells Samuel that his and Violetta’s trysts are keeping Violetta from getting her work done. Peregrine arrives and tells Birdie about the case. Birdie informs her that she likes Pauline, but finds Kenneth inarticulate for someone who has been dubbed an architecture genius. When Peregrine mentions Francine, Birdie tells her that Francine wrote a feminist book, as well as an essay on Linda’s art.

Meanwhile, Steed talks to Theo at the police station. Theo tells him that he didn’t want to be there, that he only called by to collect what Pauline and Kenneth owed him for concreting their pool and Francine shoved a drink in his hand. Theo tells Steed he went downstairs and found the neighbour next door had smashed the record player, as the music was keeping him from hearing the radio broadcast of the cricket.

Back at the Adventuresses’ Club, Samuel has developed the photos Peregrine took of the crime scene. Violetta tells her that she suspects the marks on Kenneth’s shoulder were sustained before he died, and there is another mark on his arm, a burn of some kind. She also informs Peregrine that since rigor mortis had set in when she found them, that Kenneth and Linda had been dead for at least nine hours, spending most of the night in the sauna. When Peregrine suggests that the sauna door had been jammed with something like a broom or mop, Samuel and Violetta tell her that the wood could have only come from a cricket bat.

Peregrine and Steed go to see Pauline and Kenneth’s neighbours, Major Alfred Harris and Mrs. Harris. Peregrine sees the cricket bat in his bin. Major Harris says he’s guilty as hell and he’d do it again, although it’s revealed that he’s guilty for smashing the record player, not killing Kenneth. The Major tells Steed that Pauline and Kenneth filled his wife’s head with “stupid ideas”. Mrs. Harris tells Peregrine that Pauline lent her a book once (most likely Francine’s) and the Major made her throw it out. Steed asks the Major about the cricket bat, which he says he left there, but Steed asks him how it ended up in his bin, the Major tells him he has no idea and storms out. Peregrine gives Mrs. Harris her card as they leave.

Back at the Adventuresses’ Club, Samuel has made a listening device disguised as a necklace and earrings set. He gives them to Violetta to test, asking her how her meeting with Father Neroli went. She tells him that it didn’t go well, that Father Neroli doesn’t want her coming to confession as he doesn’t believe she’s truly sorry for her sins if she keeps committing them. Samuel proposes that he converts to Catholicism and then getting married.

Meanwhile, Steed and Peregrine are once again interrupted whilst on another date at Peregrine’s house when Mrs. Harris calls. They meet her at the police station and she admits to throwing the cricket bat in the bin after finding it in the Moore’s yard, when she went over to apologise to them for the Major’s behaviour. She also tells them that she saw Kenneth arguing with Dirk. When Steed interrogates Dirk (with Peregrine listening outside with Samuel’s listening device), Dirk reveals that Kenneth stabbed him in the arm with the fondue fork, he went back to the den and Francine left.

The next day, Francine gives a lecture at the Adventuresses’ Club, drunk. Her words encourage nearly every woman attending to take off their clothes. While Francine puts her clothes back on, Peregrine goes through her bag and finds poetry about Linda, clearly obsessed with her. Francine admits to being in love with Linda and cried by the pool because she was jealous of Kenneth, for two hours on the night of the murder. When Francine comments that Theo is a bad boy and has a criminal history, and that Kenneth’s award disappeared on the night of the murder, Steed brings Theo back to the station.

When Steed asks Theo to empty his pocket, he finds the receipt from the pawn shop where he pawned the award. Steed tells him to get the award back and then follows him, finding him making a phone call to someone. Theo calls someone asking for more money to get out of town. When Theo spots them he runs off. After Peregrine accidentally tackles someone who looks like Theo, she spots him and chases him. The chase ends when Theo runs around a corner and gets hit by a car, killed instantly.

When Steed returns to the station, the Major comes by and tells him that his wife was telling the truth about the cricket bat. He also tells Steed that a racket caused by a naked woman by the pool woke him up at around 11.30pm. He caught a glimpse of someone else in the driveway, someone wearing purple.

Meanwhile, Pauline brings Peregrine’s plan for the renovations to her house. Pauline looks around, saying she loves the house’s current design and tells her that Phryne gave her and Kenneth their first big commission. She also reveals that Phryne encouraged her to become an architect. When Peregrine opens the plans and finds them completed, she realises that Pauline was the murderer.

Peregrine drives to Pauline’s home with the plans, just as Pauline is walking out the door with a suitcase, and Steed arrives inspecting Pauline’s car. Peregrine tells us that Pauline went downstairs, hitting Kenneth with the cricket bat, he then went to the sauna and she jammed the cricket bat across the door, turning up the radio to drown out his cries for help, and wore the kaftan Francine wore to throw the bat over the fence. Theo saw her and she paid him for his silence, but he got greedy, demanding more, but she didn’t know that Linda was in the sauna. Pauline tells her she wanted Kenneth to suffer, not to die.

Towards the end of the episode, Birdie, Samuel and Violetta have dinner together and Birdie invites Violetta to move into the Adventuresses’ Club, so she and Samuel don’t have to sneak around. They politely decline the offer as they are waiting for Vatican II, which Violetta believes will provide more freedoms for women. Meanwhile Peregrine and Steed are having fish and chips together at her house and she catches him getting a ring box out of his pocket.

The episode ends with Steed proposing to Peregrine with his mother’s ring. She accepts.

Overall this was a solid start to the season, with Steed and Peregrine now in a relationship and getting engaged, providing a story arc. I also appreciated the continuation of Samuel and Violetta’s relationship. I also felt that the murder mystery was compelling, with the number of suspects small, but not too small that the reveal wasn’t completely obvious.

Stray Observations:

-Linda is portrayed by Madeline Davies, a Wagga girl like me. I know this as we went to the same schools, she was in the year below me.

-The Pride of Erin is controversial where Steed comes from.

-Steed screaming when he walked in on Francine’s lecture and nearly every woman there taking their clothes off was hilarious.

-Sparrow reveals that Constable Fleur Connor (Katie Robertson) was fired because she apparently was sticking her nose in where it shouldn’t have been, not because she was getting married like Steed thought.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “Is this teamwork?” “No, I’m taking the line of least resistance.” (Peregrine-Steed on her taking photos of the crime scene before the police photographer arrives)
• “I feel guilty.” “Well, you are catholic, so you’re meant to feel guilty.” (Violetta-Samuel on their romantic tryst)