by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2014 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Charles and I watched the
latest episode of Endeavour, the quirky program on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery series dealing with the young career of
then-Detective, later-Inspector Morse of the Oxford police. This episode was
called “Sway” and was set, like the others in this series, in the year 1966 —
specifically in November, as is evidenced by the paper cut-out poppies most of
the characters are wearing in their lapels (a commemoration of Armistice Day,
Charles told me) and the Guy Fawkes festivities are also a part of the plot.
It’s not clear just why the episode is called “Sway” but overall it’s quite
good, the best of the three I’ve seen so far, mainly because at least within
the conventions of mystery writing the plot makes sense. It was interesting to
be watching this shortly after reading J. A. Jance’s Second Watch — also about a police detective character’s
younger days, though Jance mashed up her protagonist’s past and present in ways
Endeavour writer Russell Lewis
didn’t — and the plot features Morse showing up his superiors at the Oxford
P.D. by identifying three recently deceased women — all middle-aged, all
married but with husbands either temporarily or indefinitely absent, and all
with their wedding rings missing from their fingers — as the victims of a
serial killer. The investigation leads to Burridge’s department store, recently
inherited by a rather twit-like young man, Alan Burridge (Joe Bannister) —
“Call me Alan,” he tells everyone, from his staff to the cops — because the
killer offed his victims by strangling them with a high-end French stocking and
Burridge’s is the only store in the area (according to Alan, the only store in
the entire U.K.!) that sells them.
While all that’s going on there’s a
fascinating subplot, surprisingly emotionally intense for a mystery (especially
a British one!), between Burridge’s salesgirl Luisa Armstrong (Cécile Paoli)
and Morse’s superior, Fred “Fredo” Thursday (Roger Allam), who it turns out
knew each other and had a brief affair in Italy during World War II, where Fred
was stationed, until Luisa was captured and nearly executed. When she sees Fred
again she faints dead away, and later we learn that Luisa married another
British serviceman after her escape (which was how she got the decidedly
non-Italian last name “Armstrong”), only he is now dead and she would very much
like to resume her relationship with Fred — only he is married to Win (Caroline O’Neill), one of those
wives in movies who remains her husband’s faithful helpmate even though the
sexual fires between them (which, they being a typical fictional British
couple, probably lasted only long enough to produce their two kids) have long
since died out. There are several intriguing red herrings, including a blind
piano tuner who was acquainted with one of the victims (she was an amateur
musician and had to leave her piano behind when she separated from her husband)
and a sexy blonde salesgirl at Burridge’s, Gloria Deeks (Gina Bramhill), whom
we see being angrily coaxed into a car by a mystery man — we immediately assume
she’s going to be victim number four but in fact victim number four is someone
else, though the climax has her coming very close to becoming victim number
five. There’s also a man, a “slow” stockroom clerk named Norman Parkis (Matthew
Wilson), who’s stabbed when he catches the real killer boosting a pair of the
ultra-expensive stocking — only the killer catches him and dispatches him with a pair of scissors
ordinarily used for opening packages. Police arrest Burridge’s employee Joey
Lisk (Max Wrottlesley), who seduced and had edgy sex with all of the victims —
he’s the mysterious “Mr. X” referred to in the diary of one of the victims that
the police recovered at her home — but it turns out he’s been framed by another
staff member, Roy Huggins (Rob Jarvis) — interesting that the character name
should also be that of the real-life writer who created The Fugitive — who, after Joey seduced his wife and got her to
leave him, was determined to have his revenge by tracking down all the other
women Joey was having affairs with, killing them and planting evidence to make
it look like Joey was the killer.
