On the sixth day of November in the year of our Lord 1988, the episode Mr. Penroy’s Vacation aired. It was the third episode of the fifth season of Murder, She Wrote. (Last week’s episode was A Little Night Work.)

Jessica is back in Cabot Cove.

The episode opens with the perpetually re-election-minded mayor of Cabot Cove, Sam Booth, walking his bulldog, Winston.

As he’s walking Winston along the coast he notices Mr. Penroy and strikes up a conversation with him. Not surprisingly, for those who know Sam, the subject of the conversation is about voting. Specifically, he couldn’t help but notice that Mr. Penroy hadn’t yet registered to vote.

Mr. Penroy thanks the mayor for reminding him, saying that a man needs to put down roots. Sam pretends to reluctance at running again, and Mr. Penroy is sufficiently complementary that Sam feels confident of Mr. Penroy’s vote, so he takes his leave.

Mr. Penroy only gets about thirty feet along the path when a young man named Daryl jumps over the short wall. They emphasize his thuggish nature by having him pull out a switch blade.

He then uses it to clean his fingernail, but the point, as it were, was made.

Evidently the two know each other; Daryl was not supposed to show up for another two days. There is some oblique reference to something valuable made which seems to be in Mr. Penroy’s safekeeping. Daryl showed up early to make sure that it was safe, though the subtext seems to be that he showed up early to make sure that Mr. Penroy wasn’t going to skip town with whatever the valuable thing is.

Darrel says something solicitous but insincere about Mr. Penroy’s health, then Mr. Penroy dismissively tells him to keep out of sight and walks off.

While this happens, some guy looks on.

The scene then shifts to Jessica’s house. She’s wrapping presents on her kitchen table when Seth Hazlitt knocks on the door. He’s there because Jessica said she would help him wrap his present for Morris Penroy’s birthday party.

Jessica asks where on earth Seth bought it and he replies that he didn’t buy it. Amos Tupper gave it to him last Christmas. This causes Jessica to start reminiscing about Amos, who has retired. He’s been gone for a month, and went back to Kentucky where his family is.

I’m not sure that we ever knew that Amos was from Kentucky. (It’s possible we did learn it in the episode where his family came to visit him but I don’t recall it being mentioned.) He seemed to me to be played much more as a Cabot Cove native. To be fair, he didn’t have a Maine accent, but then the accents on the show were all over the place. Sometimes it’s suggested that this is because many of the residents moved in decades ago but often times no explanation is given. About the only two (recurring) characters who had Maine accents were Seth Hazlitt and Sam Booth.

Be that as it may, this is an interesting way to introduce the fact that Tom Bosley left the show. (He left in order to take the starring role in Father Dowling Mysteries.) This is a problem that all long-running shows face and they deal with it in a variety of ways. I like that they sent the character off to a peaceful retirement rather than killing him off. They never brought him back, but it was nice that there was the possibility, and in any event it’s good that the character got a nice ending to his story. One becomes fond of characters. Amos never appeared in the fifth season; over the four seasons he did appear he showed up in nineteen episodes. That gives us a decent approximation of the number of Cabot Cove episodes: roughly five per season.

The conversation shifts to the new sheriff, Mort Metzger. He took early retirement from the police force of New York City. Jessica remarks that, paying what they do, they’re lucky to have gotten someone with police experience. Seth then brings up Mort’s wife, Adele. Adele will form something of a running joke in the series. She will never show up in an episode, with Mort often making excuses for her not being present, and other people being relieved because she is extremely talkative. (She is a retired Marine.) The joke is introduced, here, with Seth remarking that Adele was in to see him with a sore throat, which didn’t surprise Seth because he’d never heard someone talk so much before.

The scene then shifts to Mr. Penroy going home to the room he rents in the house of the Appletree sisters. Before he can get in the gate, he’s accosted by someone by the name of Cliff.

Whatever scheme Mr. Penroy and Darrel are in on, Cliff is in on it as well. Mr. Penroy is as short with Cliff as he was with Darrel, and tells him to make himself very scarce.

The scene changes to the center of the market district of Cabot Cove, where a bus stops. A woman gets off of it and a man who is waiting there asks her if he can help her with her bag.

She’s uninterested, so he says that he’s new in town but thought he could recommend a place to stay as he’s found a place which is inexpensive but clean. She tells him to go there, get a cold shower, then call his wife. She walks off without further words, and he looks after her pensively.

The scene shifts to later in the day when we finally meet the Appletree sisters.

Helen is on the left and Lilian is on the right. If they were in a marvel comic book, they would be described as living embodiments of spinsterhood. More accurately, though, they’re doing their best impression of Abby and Martha Brewster from the 1944 Cary Grant film, Arsenic and Old Lace.

As you can tell from the shovel in Helen’s hand, she’s digging and Lilian is bringing her some lemonade to refresh herself. They bicker and Lilian goes inside to make a cake. Later on, she’s almost done when Helen comes in. Lilian says that she’s frosting it with chocolate, which is Mr. Penroy’s favorite. Helen dismisses this, saying, “What difference does it make?” and asks Lilian to give her a hand. We find out with what in a moment:

The camera pans down and confirms that it is, in fact, Mr. Penroy’s body which they are dragging.

They put him in the shallow grave which Helen had dug during the day, then cover him with their best tablecloth which Helen embroidered herself, and bury him. Lilian excuses herself to bring up some cider for Mr. Penroy’s party the next day.

The scene shifts to the party the next day with Jessica and Seth arriving. There is small talk, and the Appletree sisters explain that Mr. Penroy isn’t present because he got a phone call for a sick friend in Peoria—Helen corrects Lilian that it was Phoenix—and had to rush off to be with him.

Amid small talk and Seth discussing the gossip about Mr. Penroy having romantic interest in one of the Appletree sisters and possibly having left because he got cold feet, the Mail Man arrives and delivers the mail to Helen, carefully announcing each piece of mail to everyone around, including the fact that her electric bill is a second notice. Handy for us the audience, but I would expect a postman to be more discrete than this.

As an interesting tidbit, Jessica thanks him for covering her postage due the other day—she was three cents short. The smallest coin she has on hand is a nickel, so he replies that he’ll put two cents into her mailbox the next day, with a receipt. Inflation certainly has had an effect—my recollection was that in the late 1980s a letter stamp cost $0.25 while at the time I’m writing this they cost $0.63. That said, it’s not that huge a jump. If we do a rough adjustment for inflation, it would be as if Jessica were short nine cents, gave him fifteen cents, and he promised to leave six cents in her mailbox with a receipt. To modern ears it’s weird that either of them are expending any energy over this trivial an amount of money, but I think it is a cultural thing—both characters would have grown up during the Great Depression and it was deeply ingrained in them to never waste anything, no matter how trivial.

Next Cliff shows up, but dressed as a clergyman.

He introduces himself as Reverend Wilford Smythe, an old friend of Mr. Penroy, from Albany. He says that Mr. Penroy had written to him and invited him to stop by if ever he was in town. They explain, to his consternation, that Mr. Penroy has left to visit a sick friend and won’t be back for some time. He gives them a blessing and leaves.

That night the sisters are discussing their overdue bills and decide to endorse Mr. Penroy’s pension check over to themselves since he won’t be needing it. They then hear a rattle upstairs and decide to deal with it because they don’t trust the new Sheriff.

The scene cuts over to Sheriff Metzger paying a visit to Jessica. The last thing that Amos Tupper told her before he left was that if he ever needed help he should ask Jessica, so here he is. Amos left him the parking plans for the Founder’s Day picnic, but he can’t read Amos’ handwriting. Jessica admits that she was never very good at reading Amos’ handwriting either, but between the two of them they’ll try. They then fall to small talk in which we get some character building for Mort. His wife, Adele, who is very talkative, had spent two years in the Marine Corps and he is very happy to be away from New York City in which he was constantly worried about being caught in the middle of a gang war on his way home on the subway. His closing remark, in the scene, is that in a quiet little town like this he practically feels like he’s stealing his paycheck (i.e. that he has no work to do to earn it).

Back at the Appletree sisters’ house, Helen is digging another grave, this time for Cliff, who is lying dead on their lawn with a pitchfork stuck in his chest.

The scene shifts to the next day where the Appletree sisters are discussing the events of the night before. They agree that they did the right thing and couldn’t have turned to the new Sheriff. They then go inside the bank to cash Mr. Penroy’s pension check, and run into Jessica. They make some smalltalk, but mostly this scene exists to have Jessica witness them cashing Mr. Penroy’s pension check.

Right after the Appletree sisters leave, Jessica notices the guy who was hiding behind the tree at the beginning of the episode (he still doesn’t have a name) lurking in the bank, watching the Appletree sisters and her. When he notices her noticing him, he leaves.

Jessica then runs into Sam Booth who is trying to train his bulldog, Winston, to heel. When given the command, Winston runs off. Sam shrugs and says that they’re just getting started, then starts to ask Jessica to serve on the town council, but she’s already served three terms and with all of the traveling that she does, she doesn’t want to serve another term. Sam says that that’s what he wanted to discuss. He was thinking that Morris Penroy would be an ideal candidate. He’s only been here a year, but people like him and he’s retired so he has time to attend the meetings.

At this point Winston runs off to the Appletree sisters yard and digs up Mr. Penroy’s hand.

Finally, things can get started.

The scene shifts to later when the police have arrived and dug up the body. Doc Hazlitt estimates that Morris has been dead for about forty eight hours, but there are no obvious signs of the cause of death. He refuses to speculate as to the cause of death, saying that they’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report. He did, however, find a key on a thin chain hanging around Mr. Penroy’s neck.

Sheriff Metzger tells Doc Hazlitt that he wants the coroner’s report “code blue,” whatever that’s supposed to mean and for whatever reason he thinks that Doc Hazlitt will be involved in the coroner’s report coming to him.

Sheriff Metzger then interrogates the Appletree sisters, but they get upset and go to their house to get the Sheriff refreshment. After they leave, Jessica counsels the Sheriff to be more gentle and he gratefully accepts her advice, then wanders off to talk to someone (it’s unclear who). Jessica follows the Appletree sisters, but on her way notices the tablecloth that Penroy was buried in (it’s bagged as evidence, and sitting in plain sight).

Inside, Jessica gently interrogates the sisters. She’s more subtle than she usually is—she doesn’t make a single thinly veiled accusation—and the Sisters decide to confide in her.

Outside, Sheriff Metzger is talking to the Mayor, who advises him that if he has any difficulty in clearing up the murder that he should go to Jessica for help. Metzger remarks that he’s not the first person to say that. He then goes inside and starts bullying the Appletree sisters again despite having been grateful to Jessica for her advice to be more gentle.

His bullying of them is interrupted by Floyd coming in and announcing the discovery of the other body the Appletree sisters burried (Winston has been a busy little bulldog). The Sheriff looks at Jessica, Jessica looks at the Appletree sisters, the Appletree sisters look at each other, and we go to commercial break.

When we come back, Seth is on the phone. It’s with Sheriff Metzger, who is impatient for the coroner’s report, which apparently would go to Seth because… I don’t know. Doctors stick together?

Anyway, he’s got the Appletree sisters in his office and after putting down the phone, demands answers. They deny everything. Metzger confronts them with the fact that Penroy never took the bus and their house never received a long distance phone call all that week. Lilian says that if he’s going to raise his voice, they’re not interested in continuing the conversation and he has them locked up.

He then gives Jessica a lift somewhere and they drive there in glorious rear projection.

Jessica explains to Mort that she’s known the Appletree sisters since she was a young woman and she can’t believe that they just turned into a pair of serial killers, though she agrees that they are lying. She brings up their cashing of the pension check at the bank, which is suspicious given that the check was delivered yesterday during the party and Penroy was already dead by then. Metzger says that he will look into this right after they’re done searching the Appletree sisters’ house.

At the house they find Penroy’s luggage, which contradicts the Appletree sisters saying that Penroy had packed his bags. They wisely don’t dwell on this, though, because there’s no need to belabor the reasoning behind what the audience already knows because we were shown it.

Downstairs on the main floor, Jessica notices something suspicious in the fireplace.

I know I’m a bit of a stickler for details, but I’m really curious how the sisters managed to build a fire that entirely consumed the wooden handle of the pitchfork that was standing up but left two logs at the bottom unburnt and covered in ash. It must have been a roaring fire indeed to burn a stick several feet up in the air, and it’s curious to use fireproof logs at the base of it. (You do want something fireproof to keep the combustible material off of the ground so oxygen can more easily get to it, but that’s what the iron grate that the unburnt logs are on top of is for.) Also, my hat is off to them for building a fire that burnt so completely that everything (except the fireproof logs) burnt completely to ash and there are no charred bits of wood that fell off as the fire consumed the wood. When I build fires I always get little black cinders that burned incompletely and went out before turning to ash.

Sheriff Metzger recalls that Doc Hazlitt said that the corpse had four stab wounds in the chest, and says, “looks like we just found ourselves a murder weapon.” Jessica has an interesting reaction to that:

This feels a little out of character for Jessica. Normally when evidence surfaces against someone she likes, she is quick with indignation and alternate interpretations.

Someone knocks at the door and it’s the woman who got off of the bus and was given advice by the strange guy on a good motel to stay at. She asks if this is the residence of Morris Penroy, and when she’s told that he’s not at home she says that she’ll come in to wait for him.

She introduces herself as Marilee Penroy, Mr. Penroy’s wife. She says that they were married a little over a year ago, before he came to Cabot Cove. They then break the news that Morris is dead. She faints and Sheriff Metzger catches her.

Back in the Sheriff’s office, they discuss the pitchfork end a bit, then the guy who met Marilee at the bus stop and offered her advice on hotels comes in. He introduces himself as Bart Clapper, special investigator for the Boston & Western Railroad.

Apparently, five million dollars were stolen about a year ago. Three armed men overpowered the baggage clerk and took the money. Mr. Penroy was that clerk. Clapper knows who the three men were—he hands out photographs and gives their names. They were the three men who showed up to talk to Mr. Penroy the day before his party. Clapper figures that there must have been a falling out among thieves and they murdered Penroy and Cliff and burried them in Penroy’s back yard.

Seth interrupts this—he got the call from the Coroner’s office—and gives the news that it turns out that Penroy died of a massive heart attack and wasn’t murdered at all.

Jessica objects that many things don’t make sense, including why Mr. Penroy concealed that he was married. Clapper says that Penroy wasn’t married, and after receiving a description of “Mrs. Penroy” identifies her as Cliff’s wife. The Appletree sisters ask if they’re free to go, and the Sheriff says that they are. Jessica follows them.

At home they decide to tell Jessica the truth. Mr. Penroy came back from his walk in a good mood, told the sisters that he was expecting to come into some money, and asked Helen to marry him. She set him straight that her kindness had no romantic aspect—in the flashback she beat him with a hand towel when he grabbed her to kiss her—and that’s when he had the heart attack.

Jessica asked why they buried him in the back yard. It turns out that they got used to having the rent money, but after what happened, they didn’t want to rent to another bachelor. And it would have all turned out OK if that fake minister hand’t come poking around.

Jessica says that she shutters to ask what happened to the minister, but the Appletree sisters don’t really know. They heard someone bumbling around int he room upstairs and threatened him through the door that they would call the police. He went out the window, then they heard Cliff shout “Holy!” (Helen thinks it was calling out the name “Foley”.) When they found him outside, dead, with their pitchfork in his chest, they figured it would be better to cover it up.

When they straightened up the ransacked room, they did find that Mr. Penroy’s baggage claim check collection was missing. Jessica surmises it has something to do with the missing money, then says that she has to run along.

Sheriff Metzger finds Daryl Croft and Ole Korshack talking and arrests them. (They had a brief conversation before the arrest where each wondered if the other had the money.) Back at the police station, Jessica comes in and hears the news of the arrest. She doesn’t think that they know anything, and figures that he doesn’t have much to hold them on without the money. (It’s not obvious what they could be charged with even if Jessica and the police do find the money. Merely being in Cabot Cove is not a crime.)

Sheriff Metzger calls the railroad company and asks about a reward, and learns that they’re offering a 10% reward for the return of the money—half a million dollars. He also finds out that Bart Clapper doesn’t work for them anymore.

Jessica then notices the key that had been around Morris Penroy’s neck. “This may be a bit obvious, but, uh, you know, this key looks like one I have for an old trunk.” Metzger replies that it’s obvious, but worth checking out.

The scene shifts to the Appletree sisters’ house, where they’re looking in their basement for the old trunk which they had stored there for Mr. Penroy. They break it open and find the money. Their discussion of whether they need to mention it to Jessica is interrupted by Bart Clapper, who had been watching their house all afternoon. He has an interesting line when, after some discussion, Helen asks if he means that he’s going to steal the money: “It’s an imperfect world, Ladies. We all have our weaknesses.”

They try to dissuade him by saying that they’ll tell Sheriff Metzger, but he merely indicates he’s going to murder them to prevent that. As he threateningly approaches them Sheriff Metzger, standing at the top of the basement stairs, orders him, at gun point, to stop where he is.

The scene shifts to Jessica catching up with Marilee next to the bus stop. She gossips about the recent goings-on and in passing asks if it’s OK for her to call her “Lee.” Marilee says that all her friends call her “Lee.” Jessica says that as soon as Sheriff Metzger finds the checks which Cliff stole from Mr. Penroy’s room that will be the final evidence needed for a conviction. Marilee responds that she doubts that Sheriff Metzger will find the baggage claim checks, Clapper would probably have burned them.

Having thus revealed her guilt, Jessica pounces. She expects that Cliff had run out on Marilee and she followed him because she’d found out about the intended money split. It was her name he called out when he came down the stairs with the briefcase full of baggage claim checks. More specifically, he said, “Oh! Lee!” Jessica then observes that it must have taken a great deal of frustration and rage for Marilee to do what she did.

“Being married to Cliff was like being on a burning roller coaster… He was always in trouble with the law and when he finally made his one big beautiful score, he left me. You understand, don’t you?”

Of course Jessica doesn’t. She only has unlimited understanding for sexual sins no matter how bad; she can never comprehend how someone could stoop so low as murder.

The final scene is back at her house, playing chess with Seth. Jessica tells him that they returned the money from Mr. Penroy’s pension check and the Sheriff was kind enough to not press charges. Seth remarks that it’s only saving the taxpayer money, as any good lawyer could have gotten them off due to diminished mental capacity. Jessica replies that she suspects that there’s not much wrong with the Appletree sisters’ mental capacity, and Seth answers that he was talking about Metzger.

And with that, we go to credits.

Like most gimmick episodes, this one wasn’t great as a mystery. The first half of the episode is either an homage to Arsenic and Old Lace or uses Arsenic and Old Lace as a huge red herring, or possibly both. (At the date of first airing, Arsenic and Old Lace was forty four years old, so similar to, in 2023, making reference to Alien, Moonraker, The Life of Brian, Rocky II or Star Trek: The Motion Picture.) The result is that we only get about half an episode to have a mystery in, and in fact we get less because we waste about ten minutes of it not knowing that Morris Penroy died of a heart attack.

Once we learn that Penroy died of a heart attack and shortly after that the Appletree sisters didn’t kill Cliff, the suspects that we’re left with are all barely characters. Daryl, Ole, Marilee, and Bart Clapper had about three minutes of screen time between them.

I think that—based on Marilee and Jessica’s conversation at the end—it’s supposed to be a red herring that Bart Clapper announced his intention to murder the Appletree sisters in order to steal the railroad money. If it was, I didn’t catch any indication that he was involved with any other murder. No one brought it up and he said nothing that would have suggested it. It’s not that it would be a plot hole if he did it—the story didn’t really point to anyone—but since Jessica in no way figured anything out that pointed at Clapper, it didn’t feel like the reveal in a Murder, She Wrote, and consequently felt like eliminating the character from suspicion. (Not that Jessica couldn’t have visited him in jail and showed the evidence that he committed the murder, but that would require a separate scene.)

You can do the same basic thing with some of the other possible suspects—idneitify some scene that contained a scrap of a hint that they were the murderer—but no one’s actions had any consistency to them. All of Mr. Penroy’s co-conspirators showed up two days before the distribution of the money because, ostensibly, they feared that Penroy would flee, taking all the money with him. But why on earth, if he was going to flee, would he wait for two days before the distribution? He even points this out himself when talking with Cliff. “If I was going to run out on you, I’d have done it months ago.”

This really applies to everything that the suspects did. How did Marilee know to come to Cabot Cove? No idea. Why did Burt Clapper offer to suggest a hotel to her? No idea. Why was the getaway driver (Daryl) aggressive while the muscle (Ole) was timid and fearful? No idea. Why did Cliff show up to the birthday party dressed as a minister when it was still a day before he was supposed to show up and Penroy had told him to make himself scarce? No idea. Why did Cliff search Mr. Penroy’s room when he believed Penroy had skipped town with the money? No idea. How did Marilee know to wait for Cliff at the bottom of the ladder outside the Appletree sisters’ house with a pitch fork? No idea. Why did she resolve to murder him but didn’t bring a weapon? No idea.

Also, while the pitch fork wasn’t quite as bad a murder weapon as the tuning fork in Murder in a Minor Key, it still seems more than a little unlikely that a small woman in her forties who looks like she’d need help to open a jar of peanut butter could plunge a pitchfork deep enough into a man’s chest to cause instant death. What I’ve been calling a pitchfork was actually, technically, a garden fork. Its tines are thicker, flatter, and more blunt than a pitchfork because it’s meant to be plunged into the ground and used to break up the soil. This is usually done by pushing with one’s foot, using one’s weight on top to drive the fork into the ground because it requires a lot of force. To do that standing, sideways, with just one’s arms, and through clothing and skin, would require quite a lot of power. There are women who have that size and power, but Marilee did not look like she would be one of them.

So, if this episode wasn’t much of a mystery, how was it as an homage to Arsenic and Old Lace? I don’t think that I can fairly judge that. I’ve only seen clips from Arsenic and Old Lace and I do not have the nostalgic attachment to it that many people watching this episode in 1988 would have had. Some episodes of Murder, She Wrote transcend their time period and some do not. I think that Mr. Penroy’s Vacation is firmly in the latter category.

As a detail, the title is wrong. Mr. Penroy never went on vacation, even according to the cover story from the Appletree sisters. Mr. Penroy’s Sudden Departure would have been a more accurate title, as well as being a better one because of the double-meaning.

Next week Jessica takes to the slopes in one of my favorite episodes: Snow White, Blood Red.