Loveday Writing

The episode then cuts to Peregrine showing off her engagement ring to Samuel and Violetta, as she waits for her jujitsu lesson from Birdie. When Birdie doesn’t seem too pleased about her engagement news, Peregrine asks her if she doesn’t approve, Birdie then tells her she feels (in her own way) that men can be domineering to their wives. Meanwhile, Steed is at the crime scene investigating April’s murder where he finds blood on the cupboards and some sort of substance on the floor of the training plane. A cleaner, Gus Selby, sneaks up behind him and Steed tells him he needs to stay away from the crime scene. Steed also finds April’s broken watch, which stopped working at 7.30pm.

When Steed interviews June, she tells him that she was in her office and didn’t see anything, however she did hear a horse. She also shows him April’s locker, only for it to be empty. Later that evening, Steed discusses the case with Peregrine at her house, with Peregrine telling him that she considered becoming a flight attendant for the free travel. Steed tells her not to go undercover, but she does anyway, going to Melbourne Airport the next day to apply for a trainee job. It’s there that she meets a pilot, Captain Errol Jones, who is also married to June. Errol encourages June to hire Peregrine as she is under pressure from the airline to lower her recruiting standards. June gives Peregrine an eye test and then hires her.

When Peregrine meets two other trainees, Carmel and May, they are immediately hostile towards her. Later in the locker rooms, Peregrine manages to bond with them when she picks the lock of a locker that Carmel and May said was April’s “other locker”, filled with duty-free cigarettes and alcohol. Carmel tells Peregrine that April was a bit nosy and going to be the new face of the airline. When Gus comes into the room, both Carmel and May stop talking. After Carmel and May leave the room, Peregrine takes another look in the locker and finds a small box and a cheque for April given to her by Errol.

Steed and Sparrow interrogate Errol. He tells them he was giving April money to help out with her rent and that she wasn’t his mistress, and he last saw her on Monday morning. However Steed points out a witness saw him talking to April that evening. He gives them his flight logs to verify his alibi that he was in the air at the time of the murder.

Later, Peregrine finds out that Steed bought acreage for their future family home for their future family without telling her, which unnerves her. When she visits the Adventuresses’ Club to confide in Birdie, Samuel gives her his latest invention – a perfume bottle with a torch on the bottom.

The next day, the trainees are being subjected to a weigh-in with Carmel failing it, when Steed comes by to see June. He asks her if she killed April as she lied about her alibi. She admits that she was in the sick bay due to “women’s issues”. She also tells him that Gus left at the same time as her, however he says that she is mistaken. When June reprimands Peregrine in her office after catching her mucking around with the life vests and then leaves to reprimand Gus, Peregrine discovers the same substance Steed found on the training plane on June’s office floor.  She also hears a horse sound.

That evening, Peregrine bonds with Carmel and May over facials and cocktails, when the power goes out and someone breaks into her house. She manages to subdue the intruder in her lounge (by using jujitsu) who is revealed to be Gus. When Peregrine brings Gus into the station, Steed tells her that the little box she brought to him were contact lenses.

When Peregrine goes back home to comfort Carmel and May, and sees Carmel eat a diet biscuit, which leaves crumbs on the floor, this makes her realise that the unknown substance was biscuit crumbs. When she calls Steed to tell him this, he tells her that June’s an alcoholic and she had a secret stash in the sick bay, ruling her out. He also tells her that Errol’s alibi is fake, his co-pilot signed off on his logs and the contact lenses were his, this makes Peregrine realise that April was blackmailing him about them. Errol confirms this to Steed and that he was really at his optometrist getting another pair on the night of the murder. Sparrow interrupts the interrogation to tell Steed he’s needed elsewhere.

Steed goes to the airport where Gus has been found dead on the training plane, killed with the pipe of the emergency oxygen bag. When Peregrine questions who Gus came to the airport to see, she sneaks back into June’s office and finds a tear in her old flight attendant uniform that’s on display, and a half-eaten diet biscuit in the pocket. Peregrine and Steed catch Carmel and May trying to leave. Peregrine explains that Carmel was obsessed with June, wearing her old uniform, and April made fun of her obsession. April was someone who looked for people’s weak spots and blackmailed them over it, Carmel’s was her weight, Errol’s was about his eyesight, and May’s was being married to Gus. April and Gus had the same jujitsu injury and May knew jujitsu. May killed April. May says April blackmailed her, and that if she lost her job she’d never get away from Gus. Carmel saw May and April on the plane and covered it up. The horse sound that June heard was May’s shoes hitting the training plane stairs as she was leaving.

The episode ends with Peregrine showing up late to her engagement drinks, and pulling Steed aside to call off the engagement as she’s not ready to get married yet.

Overall this was a compelling murder mystery, providing an insight into 1960s Australian flight attendant culture. I also wasn’t surprised that Peregrine called off the engagement as it was in character for her, especially as I felt it was out of character to accept Steed’s proposal in the first place. It will be interesting to see the fallout of Peregrine’s decision in later episodes.

Stray Observations:

-The date on the cheque Errol gave to April was 2 November 1964, assuming the cheque isn’t old, the series is set in November 1964, consistent with the setting in the previous season.

-According to June, AIA hostesses must be under 10 stone (approx. 63.5kg), under 35 years old, have 20/20 vision, and must not be married.

-Violetta taught forensics to most of the officers on the police forensic team.

-Birdie tells Peregrine that Phryne lived an amazing life because she didn’t compromise her freedom to do so, implying that she never married and therefore never married Jack.

-Not sure how intentional it was that three female characters were named April, May and June.

-Diana Glenn (June) appeared in the Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries episode, Blood & Money.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “I only pretended to be married once, undercover, it scared the living daylights out of me.” (Birdie to Peregrine)