Tag: tv

Murder She Wrote: Footnote to Murder

On By Christopher LansdownIn Mystery, TV & Movies, Uncategorized2 Comments

On the tenth day of March in the year of our Lord 1985, the seventeenth episode of Murder, She Wrote aired. Set in New York City, it was titled Footnote to Murder. (Last week’s episode was Sudden Death.)

After some establishing shots of New York City while wistful piano music plays, we then come to a small diner where a poet is composing a poem:

Why go on alone, rejected…
with Cupid’s turgid rights neglected?

He then pulls out a gun and Jessica, walking in, says, “You’re going to kill yourself, Horace. Those cigarettes will be the death of you.” (The gun is revealed to be a souvenir lighter.)

It turns out that they’ve both been nominated for literary awards (Horace for poetry, Jessica for mystery), which is why they’re in town. He also asks after some women and Jessica replies that he left Cabot Cove strewn with broken hearts last summer.

After a bit of establishing that he’s got no money, they head off to the award ceremony.

Before we get there, though, we get an scene of a blue collar schlub who just came home…

…and sees something in the newspaper which upsets him. (To set the mood, the establishing shot was from outside, through his rain-covered window.) He puts the newspaper down, visibly angry, and grabs his keys. As he’s leaving, the camera zooms in on the newspaper article which so upset him:

If you look very closely, you can see that under the picture of the man are the words “Hemsley Post” and “Master of Ceremonies”. We can’t make anything else out, so that must be what upset him. That said, I don’t think that anyone would have been able to read this on broadcast television during the moment it was on the screen, so it couldn’t be too important.

We then meet another character, who is doing pushups. Or rather, half-pushups. (He doesn’t get lower than his elbows.) He manages seven before a knock on his door interrupts him. The camera then switches to an establishing shot through his window, and we hear thunder.

They are establishing the heck out of the rain. Perhaps someone’s umbrella is going to be significant in the episode?

The person at the door turns out to be Tiffany Harrow, the assistant awards coordinator.

Stills don’t do justice to how happy she is to meet him.

His name, by the way, is Hemsley Post. The picture of him in the newspaper must be several years old.

You can see him admiring her shoulder pads

In addition to the detail that, upon hearing the knock at the door he skipped from seven to twenty in his count (and raised the volume at which he said “twenty”), we get a sense of his character from the enthusiastic way he helps her out of her coat, unasked.

She thanks him for being the master of ceremonies and remarks that it’s a pity that he’s not up for an award himself. He replies that even the mighty oak must let a little light fall on the saplings. (This is probably the writers’ way of letting us know that he’s a washed-up literary titan who hasn’t written anything of importance for years.)

After he offers her a drink and she declines, her gaze falls on something that might well be the manuscript to a novel. We get a closeup of it, so we know it’s important:

These closeups are always interesting, but a bit conflicting. On the one hand, they mark the important clues out with no subtlety. On the other hand, they are careful to try to give us no context, so there is still something to figure out. It was necessary, given what broadcast TV was like. Don’t get me wrong; the quality of the image of broadcast TV was often pretty good, given the low resolution of TVs of the day. But it could also be fairly bad, especially if weather was unfavorable and the viewer had an cheap, old, or especially a cheap and old TV.

I tried to re-create an example of how bad it could get, going from memory:

Sometimes it wasn’t this good.

She then remarks that everyone is talking about his new, unpublished novel. He replies that it’s quite the best thing he’s ever done. It’s the definitive novel on the Vietnam war. (He puts it back in the briefcase and closes the briefcase as he says this.) When she says that she’d love to read it, he replies that no one has read it, not even his publisher. This is, in fact, the only copy.

But then his tone changes and tender music starts playing and he says that perhaps if she came back tonight, after the party, he could read some of it to her. She replies, in a seductive voice, that she finds great literature stimulating.

Then his wife knocks at the door.

He greets her by saying, “Alexis, my darling. I wasn’t expecting you.”

To which she cooly replies, “Obviously not.”

Tiffany is delighted to meet her, then leaves. Alexis doesn’t seem to care but gets straight to the point: she heard that he got a six figure advance on his new book and she’d like to discuss the $264,000 she’s lent him over the last six years. (She wants it immediately; her lawyers have drawn up a contract.)

They reminisce a bit about old times—he brings up a safari in Kenya—but she rebuffs his invitation to come back for a drink, and leaves on a threat to have her lawyers eviscerate him in court if he doesn’t sign the contract.

The scene then shifts to the lobby of a hotel, where we meet Adrian Winslow, though only after another establishing shot of the pouring rain outside.

That’s not academic garb, it’s just a flashy scarf and a dark overcoat.

He’s being interviewed by a reporter asking whether his latest book, Pericles at Parnasses, is a metaphor for the communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s. (To be fair to them, before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the number and extent of communist spies in the USA, particularly in the 1930s through 1950s, was not well known in the USA.) Anyway, he rebuffs this idea, having already stated that “history as literature” is a challenge suitable for his talents. A young woman comes up and asks for his autograph then asks if he’d read a short story of hers, but he declines, saying that his attorney will not let him read unsolicited manuscripts.

As a fun fact, Adrian is played by Robert Reed, who is best known for playing Mr. Brady on the show The Brady Bunch (which ran from 1969 through 1974). The way Mr. Reed plays Adrian is quite interesting. It’s hard to convey in words, but take the most pompous, full-of-himself person you know, at 50% more pomposity, and you’ll possibly imagine Adrian in his more modest moments.

The scene then shifts to the men’s room, where Hemsley is combing his hair in the bathroom mirror. The blue collar schlub from earlier walks in and tells Hemsley that he wants to speak with him. Hemsley is contemptuous until the sclub mentions that his name is Frank Lapinski. There’s a bit of a physical altercation where Lapinski proves to be far more adept at hand-to-hand combat than Hemsley is.

As he’s holding Hemsley in a painful arm-lock and reciting his complaint—that he’s waited four months for some kind of answer then suddenly reads that Hemsley has a new novel and should probably kill Hemsley and likely will if he can prove that Hemsley stole his book—a stranger walks in to the men’s room. Hemsley calls out to get security because he’s being robbed. Lapinski gets in one more threat, deftly deals with the security guard who walks in, then makes his getaway. (As an interesting detail, Hemsley detains the security guard from giving chase, explaining that he’s fine and the guy didn’t get anything. Ostensibly, it’s not worth the security guard risking his safety, though clearly Hemsley doesn’t want the guy caught.)

The scene shifts to Horace and Jessica walking in the lobby of the hotel where the conference is going on (the same lobby we saw Adrian in). The same woman who asked Adrian for his autograph approaches them, recognizes Jessica, and asks for her autograph, too.

She also asks Jessica to read her short story. Jessica is a little reluctant, but accepts. She gives Jessica the manuscript—her name and address are on the cover. Jessica reads her name, Debbie Delancy, and says that it has a certain ring to it. She replies that she thought it sounded literary when she made it up.

Jessica and Horace then make their way to a reception for the authors before the main event, and we start off seeing this through a rain-covered window, too.

There is thunder, as well. While in other shows it might just be cool atmosphere—storms are perfect for murder mysteries because they tend to isolate people—Murder, She Wrote usually doesn’t usually waste something like atmosphere when it comes to clues. The storm must be a clue.

That said, it is interesting atmosphere, too.

Anyway, we get the dialog from Adrian with the woman he’s talking to. He is congratulating her on her tenth week on the best seller list.

Her name is Lucinda Lark. We also learn that the name of her book is Woman Unleashed and it’s apparently a (somewhat) high-brow romance novel. Adrian can’t keep the politeness up for long, though, and when she says that her next book is going to be more literary, he scoffs and she, offended, excuses herself.

We then see Jessica and Horace run into Tiffany Harrow. Horace offers her a drink, calling it an offering on the altar of beauty, and she accepts it. When Jessica says that it’s nice for writers to get to meet each other like this, she explains that she’s not a writer—writers mostly starve, while the real power is in publishing. She correctly identifies Jessica as being in mystery and Horace as being in poetry, then excuses herself, handing the drink back to Horace.

We then see Hemsley, saying that the greatest novels have always been about war.

Those are amazingly gothic windows.

I find it interesting how much taller he is than everyone else. I don’t know that it means anything, but at the same time they chose their camera angle to emphasize it.

Anyway, Adrian hears him talking and comes over, asking him what the new book is about. When Hemsley says that it’s the definitive novel on the Vietnamese war, Adrian replies that this is remarkable since Hemsley only spent a week in Vietnam as a correspondent for Playboy. (Playboy was a pornographic magazine which was either widely regarded for its articles or else many people were willing to pretend that its articles were great in order to explain why they purchased it. I cannot say which it was from my own knowledge, but for whatever it is worth, I did not hear this claim made about other pornographic magazines of the time.)

Anyway, Hemsley is not one to take this lightly. He replies, “At least it’s not that prissy drivel you write, Adrian. Greek boys, mincing about.”

After a few more barbs traded, Hemsley tells Adrian that he gave him a good trashing ten years ago and is willing to do it again. Adrian replies that ten years ago he (Adrian) didn’t have a black belt. Presumably he means the rank of black belt in Karate, rather than owning an item-of-clothing belt which is black, since most dress belts at the time were black and this minor bit of fashion trivia would not have been interesting.

After a bit of protracted staring, Hemsley merely says “Hmph” and walks away.

He walks over to the bar, where Horace is making up poetry for Lucinda, who seems enraptured.

Is her dress made from window curtains? And where are the shoulder pads?

Thunder quivers.
Wings beat.
Petals aching, parting.
Beak thrust of sunburst nectar.

When she asks what it means, Horace replies that he has no idea.

To be fair, that accurately represents a lot of poetry from the 1900s.

Hemsley then interrupts and tries to engage Lucinda in conversation, which Horace doesn’t take well. He insults Hemsley’s most recent (published) novel as having bad grammar, so Hemsley punches Horace. After another visual gag of Horace lighting a cigarette with his novelty lighter than looks like a handgun and Hemsley fearing for his life, only to become more angry when he realizes the gun isn’t real, Jessica scolds Horace and Hemsley until they stop fighting.

The scene then transitions to the next day with a vertical wipe, and after an establishing shot of the hotel, we see Jessica walk up to a door carrying an umbrella and knock. The person who opens the door doesn’t seem too happy to see her.

Jessica apologizes saying that she thought that this was Mr. Post’s room. The man says that it is, and Jessica explains that she thinks she picked up Mr. Post’s umbrella the previous night, after the party. She was hoping that he had her umbrella. I guess this is why they established the heck out of it being raining the night before.

The man says that perhaps he does, and invites her to come in.

That’s when we discover that Hemsley Post is no more.

We then get a close-up shot of the murder weapon:

I could be mistaken, but that looks like a sword-handle to an umbrella. I wonder if one of the suspects—perhaps Horace—had a sword-umbrella.

Then after a reaction shot from Jessica, we fade to black and go to commercial.

Had you been watching in 1985, you might have seen a commercial like this:

When we come back, we get another establishing shot of the building:

These establishing shots are quite interesting. They gave viewers time to run back from whatever they were doing during the commercial break, of course, but they also give a lot of feel for the location. Most episodes set in New York City could really have been set anywhere, and it’s mostly in establishing shots that we get the sense that we’re in New York City. (That and whatever actors do a New York accent—Murder, She Wrote was rarely consistent with accents.)

Anyway, the man who opened the door turns out to be Melvin Comstock, an assistant district attorney. He asks Jessica if the sword stuck in the victim is her umbrella. She tells him, sourly, that it isn’t. Anyway, he’s taking personal charge of the case, but he introduces the homicide detective who would otherwise have been in charge.

Here, his name is Lt. Meyer. Of course, if you ever watched Murder, She Wrote after the fourth season, you’ll recognize him as Sheriff Metzger, who replaced Amos after Amos retired. Given that Metzger was a cop in New York City before coming to Cabot Cove, I wonder why they didn’t just keep the character he already played. Perhaps “Meyer” didn’t have the right sound to it.

Jessica asks about the manuscript to Post’s latest novel, but it’s not in the room. In looking for it, Lt. Meyer does find a key, however. It’s to room 2441, which is in some other hotel because there’s no twenty fourth floor in this one. Jessica also notices a smudge of lipstick on the pillow on the bed, and a copy of Woman Unleashed, signed by the author, on the nightstand. (The message, “To the old master from his humble disciple, Lucinda Lark” was dated the day before, that is, the day of the awards ceremony and, presumably, the day of the murder. I don’t think that dating inscriptions is at all a common practice and Lucinda certainly didn’t seem to be the type to know what the date even was, but I doubt that this really matters.)

Jessica then finds a pair of glasses in the bed, saying that she wondered what Hemsley was reading, since there was no book in evidence. Comstock is spending most of his time on the phone arranging publicity and is uninterested in this discovery. He’s equally uninterested in the threatening letter on Hemsley’s desk from Frank Lapinski. Keeping this letter is a bit of an odd thing to do and bringing it with him on this trip—Lapinski couldn’t possibly have known the hotel that Hemsley was staying at to send it to him at the hotel—was even stranger. I can’t imagine Hemsley intended to write back, and the other possible motives for bringing this letter are even less plausible. I suppose he brought it because murder mysteries need clues, which was uncharacteristically selfless of him.

Anyway, Comstock gets tired of Jessica being around and collects her things—inadvertently putting the glasses Jessica found into her purse—and shoves her out the door. The scene then changes to Horace being interrogate in Comstock’s office. The odd thing is that we get an establishing shot of a building that I really doubt that Comstock’s office is in:

For reference, here’s the google maps view of One Hogan Plaza, which is where the NYC district attorney’s office is:

You’ll notice that it’s a wide building, with no more than five or six floors, not a skyscraper with forty or fifty floors. I suppose that there was no stock footage available of this building.

Anyway, it turns out that the sword umbrella belonged to Horace—he bought it at an antique store on second avenue because it was raining. His accounting for his whereabouts is a bit vague—he went to the hotel bar after the ceremony and then everything was blank until he woke up at noon.

Jessica then tells Comstock that it’s obvious that someone took Horace’s umbrella by mistake.

After some haranguing by Jessica, Comstock asks Meyer whose room the key was to and it turns out to be Tiffany Harrow. She’s waiting outside, so they bring her in. She gave Hemsley the key so he’d remember her room number—he’d offered to show her the manuscript and she didn’t want to go to his room. He never showed up, though. She waited, then ended up going to dinner with Adrian Winslow.

After she leaves, Comstock grills Horace and asks him whether he did or did not kill Hemsley Post. Horace replies that, to be strictly honest, he doesn’t remember. Comstock says that’s good enough for him and has Meyer book Horace on Murder One (that is, murder in the first degree).

After insulting Comstock a bit and vowing to find the real killer, Jessica follows Meyer and Horace out to the elevator and discusses the case. Meyer tells her that everyone knows that Comstock is a real jerk but he is in charge. Unfortunately, Horace had gotten into the elevator and Meyer didn’t, and the elevator closes. Meyer then notices this and runs for the stairs.

And on that bombshell, we go to commercial.

When we come back, Horace wanders out of the elevator and sees a uniformed officer, who he tells that he’s not sure he belongs here. The officer tells him to tell it to the judge and to get back in line—a line that turns out to be for some kind of prostitution bust, but they drew a judge who doesn’t want the customers, only the prostitutes. So the men are dismissed and this includes Horace—over his protests. But the officer tells him to go, so he goes.

In the next scene Jessica is in a phone booth at her hotel, leaving a message for Horace at his hotel, then she spies Tiffany Harrow. Jessica manages to get Tiffany to tell her about we saw in the opening scenes with Tiffany, Hemsley, and Hemsley’s wife (mostly off camera, but not entirely, since TV shows in their second half hour need to recap for people who were watching something else during the first half hour).

Jessica then goes to visit Hemsley’s wife. This is one of those cases where Jessica is oddly confrontational and accusatory. It’s especially odd as her intelligence of Mrs. Post visiting her husband was that she visited him before the ceremony—and he was obviously quite alive at the ceremony. Anyway, Jessica asks if she was the woman whose intimate company Hemsley had shortly before his death and she replies that writing wasn’t the only thing that Hemsley couldn’t do lately, though it didn’t stop him from trying.

Back at her hotel Jessica runs into Horace in the revolving door and there’s a comedy bit where they both revolve several times before finally ending up in the same place. He tells her that they let him go and Jessica pays no attention, saying that he’s got to go turn himself in right away.

At Mr. Comstock’s office, he’s interviewing Lucinda Lark. Jessica and Horace walk in on Comstock asking Lucinda to sign his copy of Woman Unleashed. After clearing up that Horace didn’t escape, he was lost, Jessica begins haranguing Comstock about beginning a real investigation. For example, what about the inscription in Lucinda’s book?

Lucinda explains that this was a mistake. She had signed it before and just wrote the wrong date—she’s not very good with numbers. She then adds that, while she’s sure no one would suspect her, in any event she has an alibi—she spent the evening and the entire night with Horace.

In the hallway, as Jessica and Horace are leaving, after Horace laments having spent the night with Lucinda and not being able to remember, Jessica tells Horace that Lucinda might have made up their tryst just to give herself an alibi. If so, it’s not much of an alibi since he doesn’t remember it. But it does serve to give Horace an alibi. Anyway, Jessica is off to Brooklyn.

In Brooklyn, she tracks down Frank Lapinski. After some chitchat in which he denies knowing Hemsley Post, Jessica asks him why, if he never knew Post, he was sending him threatening letters. Frank says that she has him mixed up with someone else and excuses himself.

Jessica then runs into someone who asks her if she needs help and he turns out to be an acquaintance of Frank’s. From him, Jessica learns that Frank wrote a book about Vietnam. She then asks if she can get a cab around here and the man laughs. He directs her to a phone booth. Jessica thanks him and goes to the phone book as ominous music plays.

Superman would have found this telephone booth useless.

As she looks for some coins in her purse with which to place a phone call, she notices the pair of glasses that Comstock shoved into her purse that morning and remarks that they’re not hers.

Anyway, her first phone call is to Comstock, who isn’t very impressed, but listens. The scene then shifts to Jessica walking into a bookstore and the music shifts from ominous to cheerful, with nothing having happened. We then see why Jessica went to this bookstore:

I love the headshot of Robert Reed back in the 1970s.

This is an interesting way of conveying that his books are not very popular.

She doesn’t even bother to buy his book; she just asks where he had dinner and confirms that it was not with Tiffany Harrow. (He explained that he had dinner at the Four Seasons and the young man with him was a newspaper reporter.) When he deduces that she’s trying to solve the case herself, he begins discussing it with her and says that Alexis Post is a much better suspect than Horace. Contrary to what she says, Hemsley dumped her, not the other way around. Which is why she gave him so much money.

It also comes up that Adrian used to be Hemsley’s private secretary. He’s then called away by someone who actually wants to buy a book and the scene ends.

Back her hotel Jessica runs into Debbie Delancy. She asks what Jessica thought of her story.

That’s a nice sweater.

Jessica apologizes, saying that she’s been frightfully busy, and besides Debbie only gave it to her yesterday. She promises that she will read it, though.

Jessica then goes to see Tiffany Harrow, who’s reading a manuscript in her room. Jessica pushes in, past Tiffany’s protests, and asks if she has Jessica’s umbrella. Interestingly, while she doesn’t, she does have someone else’s umbrella. Jessica then confronts Tiffany with Adrian’s denial of having dinner together. Oddly, Tiffany says that she was worried about her key being found at the murder scene and that Adrian said he would tell everyone that they would have dinner together. This seems unlikely, since Adrian was surprised that Tiffany said she’d had dinner with him, but Jessica lets it go and instead asks about the manuscript she was reading.

Tiffany then shows it to her. It’s an autobiography of an old movie star. (Tiffany is considering going out on her own and representing it herself.)

Jessica then asks what Tiffany was actually doing the night before and Tiffany said that when Hemsley didn’t show up, she took some sleeping pills and went to bed. “Life in the fast lane can be a little lonely.”

The scene then shifts to Frank Lapinski’s apartment, where Comstock and Lt. Meyer show up with a search warrant. Lapinkski slams the door in their face, grabs a briefcase, then goes out the fire escape. He doesn’t make it far, though, as uniformed police offers box him in and arrest him. The briefcase contains Hemsley’s manuscript and Lapinski confesses to killing Post.

And on that bombshell, we fade to black and go to commercial.

When we come back from commercial we get an establishing shot of the New York city streets, we follow one car, then cut to rear projection of Jessica and Horace in a driverless cab.

Maybe the Cabbie is just missing the right half of his body.

Horace is saying that stealing someone’s novel is a dastardly thing to do and he doesn’t blame Lapinski one bit. Jessica says that, despite Lapinski’s confession, something is wrong. There are too many other people with motives covering their tracks.

Horace then asks about the manuscript that “that girl” (Debbie Delancie) gave Jessica. Is it any good, or should he not ask?

Jessica replies that it’s not bad. It’s a beginner’s story about a teenage girl remembering how she felt about her brother going off to the war. (That doesn’t sound like much of a plot, but it’s really here to draw our attention to the brother going off to war—since a novel about Vietnam has been central to much of what has happened.)

Jessica then notices the glasses that are still in her purse. She remarks that she can’t imagine how they got into her bag, but she should give them back to Mr. Comstock. She suspects that they belonged to Hemsley.

Horace takes them and looks at them, then says he doubts that. He then puts them on…

Horace is right. These are quite girly.

And says that if Hemsley Post had bought glasses, he would expect him to buy something more macho.

Jessica then realizes what she wasn’t able to put her finger on and asks the cabbie to stop the car. She gets out, gives Horace cab money, then goes to see an optometrist.

After some minor humor about her previous optometrist learning his craft at the Braille Institute—Jessica is pretending that the glasses are hers—Jessica asks him to mount the lenses in new frames. She then hurries off.

We then see who she went to meet—this late in the episode, there’s a 98% chance that it’s the killer—and it turns out to be Debbie Delancie. There’s a contrivance where Jessica swaps the glasses in the new frame for Debbie’s glasses and she doesn’t notice at all, confirming that the glasses at Post’s room were Debbie’s.

Jessica then confronts Debbie with the fact that Frank was arrested the night before for killing Hemsley Post—Debbie had been at a Cabin the day before and hadn’t seen any newspapers since she got back—and Debbie becomes distraught. Frank Lapinski is her brother—the brother the story is about. After Jessica reveals the deception about the glasses, Debbie tells her what happened.

She didn’t mean to kill Post. He had seen her approaching other writers about his story and so he approached her. He asked her up to his hotel room after the party. She knew what he had in mind; she wasn’t sure what she was going to do—talk to him, or just grab the manuscript and run—but she wasn’t prepared for the way that he just jumped on her like an animal. He apparently took Horace’s sword-umbrella by mistake. In the scuffle she grabbed it and tried to use it to defend herself, but when he tried to pull it away from her all he got was the umbrella part, thus unsheathing the blade. She fell back on the couch, holding it in front of her…

If you look very closely you can kind of see the sword.

…then he walked forward and impaled himself on it.

After he fell over, dead, she took the manuscript and gave it to Frank. Hemsley had stolen the novel almost word-for-word.

She then says that she has to go to the police—she can’t let Frank lie for her. Jessica replies that she should tell them everything that happened and that Jessica thinks that she has a strong case for self-defense.

Jessica takes Debbie’s hand to comfort her, then the scene shifts to the awards ceremony—which I thought must have already happened since they had the pre-ceremony reception the day before—and Horace and Jessica leave the room together, both having won in their categories. Horace laments that the award is brass and wood, making it unhockable (that is, unsellable at a pawn shop).

They then go to a concession stand and Horace pulls out his souvenir pistol lighter to light his cigarette and the woman at the concession stand screams, ducks, and presses an alarm button. Jessica tells Horace that he should probably give up smoking and we go to credits.

This was a fun episode. Not only was there a lot of comedy, but most of it landed. They took the idea of a gathering of literary gods on publishing’s Mount Olympus and had fun with it. I do suspect that when I first saw this episode as a young child I took all of this seriously, as an adult I can see that they leaned into the absurdity.

To be fair, while the literary world was never as much like the golden age of Hollywood stars as it is made out to be, there was a lot more money and prestige in it back in the 1980s—and in the decades preceding it, which many viewers of Murder, She Wrote in the 1980s would remember. When Hemsley said that his new novel was going to be the definitive novel on the Vietnam war, he was referring to something real. There is a sense in which Catch-22 was the definitive novel on the Vietnam war (in spite of the fact that it was set in World War 2 and published before the USA became involved in Vietnam). It shaped how people thought about the Vietnam war and gave people a language to talk about the Vietnam war through references to it.

To be fair, there aren’t really definitive novels of things as complex as wars, but there are sometimes novels that are influential enough that one might at least talk about them in this way without being ridiculous. All Quiet on the Western Front, for example, constitutes much of what many people know about the first World War—even if they haven’t actually read it and only saw parts of the movie.

And this is the sort of thing that Footnote to Murder alludes to. It’s especially interesting in this context because it has many of the hallmarks of the classic great house dinner party mystery. We have a number of important people who are mostly strangers to each other who have temporarily gathered. There is money there, though in this case it comes from whatever publisher or trade association is hosting the event. And we even get a storm, though its only purpose seems to be to establish a reason for everyone to have an umbrella.

As far as the mystery goes, I think that the choice of Debbie Delancy as the killer was interesting. On the one hand, they did a good job of making her present and unobtrusive—always there, but you don’t really think of her as a suspect. But the problem is that they didn’t connect her to the story other than by being there. Nothing happens where she knows more than she should about something related to her motivation. She never shows up to something that wouldn’t be strictly necessary for her cover story but is for her real purpose. There was never anything more to her than met the eye. To be fair, her glasses do change on the second day, but that’s a clue, not a connection.

Her actual motivation was solid. It makes sense that, Post having stolen her brother’s novel, she thought that she might have a better chance of getting it back than he did. Even if she was wrong, she could easily have believed herself more clever than him and also more capable of deceiving Hemsley Post with her feminine wiles.

While the overall story and the characters were reasonably solid, the details weren’t. About the only clue that actually makes sense were Debbie’s glasses, which Jessica found in Hemsley’s bed with no reading material around. I’ve already mentioned that it doesn’t make sense for Hemsley to have carried Frank Lapinski’s threatening letter with him and it there’s no plausible way for it to have been delivered to Hemsley’s hotel room—and a man with creditors and no income is not overly likely to have his mail forwarded to him. This is more than a little problem since without the letter, there would have been no way to find out about Frank Lapinski.

The umbrella is another problem with the story. I know that they established the heck out of it raining that night, justifying why everyone at the reception had an umbrella. So far, so good. Except for Horace’s umbrella. According to his story he bought the umbrella from an antique shop because it was raining. While this would not be impossible, and Horace is quite impulsive, he’s not the sort of person to be shopping in an antique shop and notice that it’s raining, and he’s also not the kind of person who could afford an umbrella in an antique store anyway. They were careful to establish that he had no money—he said he’d buy Jessica a cup of coffee but couldn’t afford to. Later in the episode there’s a gag where Jessica gives Horace money for cab fare and he uses it to stop at a liquor store rather than go to his destination.

There were also a number of threads which were simply never addressed, one way or another. For one thing, it seems that no one took their own umbrella home the night of the reception but no one’s umbrella was ever returned to them. That’s not critical, obviously, but it would have been nice for at least someone to get their umbrella back, or at the very least find out where it went, since it was so pivotal to the plot.

It’s also an issue that the solution to the case did nothing to satisfy Jessica’s problem with accepting Frank Lapinski’s confession. She said that it bothered her that there were so many other people with motives to kill Hemsley Post who are covering their tracks. Which is fair enough, though unless the solution was a Murder On the Orient Express style conspiracy, that objection would still apply to everyone except the killer. But with Debbie as the killer, it applies with full force—all of the people with motives who were covering their tracks had nothing to do with the death of Hemsley Post. That is a flaw with this episode in microcosm: there were a lot of threads, but they were only next to each other, not connected.

Having said that, this episode was a lot of fun to watch. It had good characters in an enjoyable setting. The premise supported the cast of interesting characters. There were also a lot of jokes, many of which landed. It wasn’t perfect, but I’d definitely put it in the top 20% of episodes.

Next week we’re nearby to Cabot Cove in Murder Takes the Bus.

Rumpole of the Bailey Seems Almost Good

On By Christopher LansdownIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Starting in the mid 1970s, there was a British TV series called Rumpole of the Bailey, which was about a barrister named Rumpole. It was a bit of a courtroom drama and a bit of a comedy. Rumpole was a highly skilled barrister who had a tendency to quote the poetry of Wadsworth and to wax occasionally philosophical. My father used to watch it, when I was a child, and I recently had a hankering for it.

Here’s the first episode ever made:

The actor, Leo McKern, did a fantastic job. He really sold the character, and gave him an outsized amount of vivacity. It’s easy to be quite taken with Rumpole.

Until you watch a full episode or two.

Rumpole is not a good man. The writer, John Mortimer, who was a barrister and from his biography on Wikipedia not a good man either, plays a trick that I’ve seen a fair amount in nihilistic works: putting in little tidbits that suggest that Rumpole is a good man in order to keep the audience going.

To give an example: in the third episode, Rumpole has successfully defended a woman on a major drug charge by impugning the evidence against her, but the case adjourns for lunch before the charge can be dismissed and during that adjournment she tells Rumpole that she did in fact buy the drugs. Once she has told him that she is guilty, he can no longer defend her and only advise her to enter a guilty plea. There’s a scene where he explains this to her, but rather than saying that he is morally obligated to be truthful, he says that the book containing the barrister code of ethics is his religion.

I’ve grown to rather despise this kind of trick, of suggesting that the character has principles only to pull the rug out and have him say that he doesn’t, but always in a way that it’s just possible to doubt. Except that there is also the clear evidence that he doesn’t really have principles. In the first episode, there’s the issue of his son who he has raised spectacularly badly. So badly, it’s clear that he never tried—a point his son makes by pointing out that at age seven he was sent away from home to various boarding schools and never really knew his parents after. In the third episode, Rumpole (a married man) more-or-less accepts sexual bribery from his client in order to stay on the case when he wants to leave after she confessed to the crime.

I was strung along for about four seasons of the show House by this same basic trick, until I finally figured out that Dr. House was, in fact, the villain of the show.

It’s a great pity because Rumpole could easily have been a really good show. It did not depend on the poor character of Horace Rumpole for anything that made it good.

Murder She Wrote: Murder To A Jazz Beat

On By Christopher LansdownIn Mystery, TV & Movies, Uncategorized2 Comments

On the third day of February in the year of our Lord 1985, the twelfth episode of Murder, She Wrote aired. Titled Murder to a Jazz Beat, it’s set in New Orleans. (Last week’s episode was Broadway Malady.)

The opening shot was actually a closer-in shot of the paddle boat behind the bridge. Even in the 1980s paddle boats were antiquated; screw-driven propellers are more efficient and less bulky. The paddle boat was iconic of the Mississippi river, though, so it makes perfect sense that our establishing shots have one. Mysteries frequently make use of iconography. There is something very fitting about suggestive imagery in a genre that’s all about interpreting clues. Murder, She Wrote, in particular, also made heavy use of types and archetypes to convey more in the relatively short time that it had. (Upbeat Jazz music plays over these images, solidifying the New Orleans feel.)

The episode begins with Jessica in a cab.

The cabbie, Lafayette, is explaining that the secret to good gumbo is using stale beer to make the fish stock, because that makes for an excellent roux. Jessica is polite, but not super interested. She does like his outlook on life, though, which is that if you spend your time with good food, good friends, good music, and good conversation, a man can’t die no ways but happy.

When Jessica observes that he’s a philosopher, he offers to take her on a tour of the city (off the meter) so they can keep talking and there isn’t a man alive who knows New Orleans better than he does. Jessica is tempted, but has her obligations. Specifically, she needs to be at the TV station to tape a segment for New Orleans Today. When Lafayette asks if she’s a celebrity, she replies “I sincerely hope not. But, uh, the taping starts in six minutes.” Lafayette asks her why she didn’t say so before, then takes a shortcut (which starts by going the wrong way down a one-way street).

The establishing shots in Murder, She Wrote are interesting because they do so much of the heavy lifting for the set decoration, and this one is no exception:

Lafayette screeches up with two minutes to spare. He tells Jessica that he’ll drop her luggage off at her hotel, and they’ll meet up later for sightseeing.

When Jessica gets inside, she goes to the stage, which is empty. The stage, by the way, is quite interesting from the perspective they show it:

This angle does a very good job of highlighting how fake the stage is; it’s a tiny oasis of New Orleans themed decoration in a larger sea of functional production that could be anywhere.

We then meet Jonathan, the man who is going to interview her.

He’s surprised to see her, because the taping is in two days. Jessica checks her pocket calendar and it turns out she’s transposed the dates of two engagements. At the moment, she’s supposed to be forty minutes into dedicating a new school library.

Jonathan is excited for the opportunity to show Jessica New Orleans and all it has to offer in terms of food and entertainment, since she’s clearly going to be in town for a few extra days. Which he does.

We then meet some Jazz musicians. Here’s Eddie Walters:

He appears to be a personal assistant to “Ben.” He’s got to get the coffee he’s holding to Ben while it’s still hot. Ben doesn’t like it when it’s not hot. (Eddie speaks in a halting and inarticulate way that suggests he’s got some kind of intellectual impairment.)

And then we meet Ben (Coleman), who’s giving an interview:

He’s in the middle of saying that there’s no denying that luck played a big part in his move to Vegas, but so did a lot of hard work. The woman sitting next to him is Lisa.

We then meet Dr. Aaron Kramer:

He’s Ben’s manager. And not too happy with something, though it’s not made clear what. If Lisa turns out to not be Ben’s wife, then it might be her.

Shortly after this, Jonathan comes up to the table and introduces Jessica to Ben and Aaron. There is small talk and the topic of the upcoming move to Las Vegas comes up. At the mention of this, two of Ben’s band-mates come up and angrily bring up the subject of whether they’re coming with him.

The guy on the right is named Eubie, the one on the left is Jimmy. Ben and Aaron try to avoid the subject, but eventually admit that they and another musician (Hec) are being dropped from the group in Vegas. Eubie feels betrayed. He spent sixteen years helping Ben and feels he’s owed gratitude. Instead, Ben insults him. When Eubie says that he aught to kill Ben, Ben insults him further, saying that he doesn’t even have the guts to do it.

I think we can tell who’s going to die in this episode.

Aaron promises the guys that he will take care of them—he’s got other groups. They leave, disappointed, but partially consoled.

Jonathan asks Aaron if this will interfere with the taping that night and Aaron assures them that it won’t—they’re all professionals and will fulfill their duties, whatever their private disappointments. He then invites Jessica to attend and Jonathan assures Aaron that she will.

Back stage, at the venue for the evening, if you can call it “that”back stage”, since the venue is a barn, we meet Callie.

She’s Ben’s wife. So it’s likely Aaron was indeed unhappy because Ben was fooling around with Lisa at the table earlier. Anyway, Eddie, Ben’s factotum, gives her a flower. Eddie, incidentally, speaks haltingly, and like he has some kind of mild mental impairment.

They discuss the latest news—she heard it from Eubie. Eddie is upset about Ben cheating on Callie.

Callie takes it more in stride, though. “Ben’s latest? She won’t last longer than any of the others.”

Eddie says that sometimes he doesn’t like Ben much, and Callie says that sometimes she doesn’t either. But then adds, “but we can’t help loving him, can we?”

Jessica and Jonathan have come early and go backstage to visit Ben and Aaron. On their way, they hear the two men shouting at each other in an office. (The barn has been sub-divided to provide a few rooms.) Aaron leaves and runs into them, embarrassed. After some minor talk about this, Aaron shows them to their seats.

After they’re gone, Ben comes out of the office and runs into Callie. They have some ambiguous dialog where Callie tells Ben if he wants to be free all he has to do is say so and he says that it’s not that simple and she knows why. So, yeah, Ben is definitely not long for this episode.

We then get a minute or two of the concert itself, then, at the end, there’s a special song, where Ben plays a song from his famous mentor, “Sweetman” Buddy Brunson, using Brunson’s famous clarinet. (Until this point, Ben had been playing a saxophone.) A minute or so into this song, Ben collapses. A doctor who was in the audience rushes up and, after taking his pulse, pronounces him dead.

After a few reaction shots in which everyone expresses surprise and dismay, we fade to black and go to credits.

Had you been watching back in 1985, you might have seen a commercial like this:

When we come back from commercial, Jonathan tells Jessica, “it’s like something out of one of your books.” Jessica gravely replies, “As a matter of fact, it is.”

The doctor who pronounced him dead remarks that it’s a pity for someone so young to die of a “coronary,” but Jessica is having none of it. The drained color around his lips and feint blue on the moons of his fingers suggests that it was poison, which she’s sure an autopsy will show.

When the doctor says that he’s not conversant with poisons, Jessica says that it’s unlikely that he would be with this one—it’s a very deadly, fast acting, and rare poison. Jonathan recognizes the book of hers this featured in. It’s called, “Murder on the Amazon.”

When Callie hears the word “poison,” she slips the coffee cup that Ben drank from right before he started playing into her purse. A moment afterwards, the police arrive.

They’re led by Detective Lieutenant Simeon Kershaw.

He asks who called them in and the doctor introduces himself. It doesn’t really make sense for the doctor to have called the police since he would have been with the body and wouldn’t have known where the telephone was, but I suspect that this is just TV economy—saving the money of hiring another actor to be the person who called the police. The doctor mentions Jessica’s theory, and Lt. Kershaw is extremely offended that she offered an opinion without being a medical pathologist.

In the ensuing conversation, we find out that the poison is an obscure curare derivative. This is curious because curares (curare is a family of plant alkaloids) are ineffective orally and must be introduced intravenously. Hence their popularity for being used to tip arrows and blowgun darts for hunting. (It does you no good to kill your food with a poison that will kill you when you eat it.)

Anyway, he suspects Jessica of a publicity stunt and says that an autopsy costs time and money, and if the coroner doesn’t find anything, he’s going to charge her and Jonathan with obstructing a police investigation. “Do you still say poison?”

Jessica starts to reply, “In chapter 18…” but he cuts her off and says, “Ten O’Clock tomorrow. My office.” He then walks out of the barn. It’s a dramatic exit, but more than a little strange that he evinces no interest in investigating anything at the scene of the death.

An older man, named Carl Turnbull, then walks in and talks with Jonathan.

He demands to know why he had to get a call from the cameraman instead of Jonathan. They have less than an hour to get the tape edited for the 11:00 news. Jonathan will have none of showing the footage of Ben dying on the news and they agree to see the station manager to settle the dispute. Aaron offers to drive Jessica to her hotel while the two men hurriedly walk off.

We then cut to Jessica investigating where the cup had been.

Aaron gives Jessica a ride, but they stop to have a “nightcap” since “sleep won’t come easily.”

At some restaurant they talk for a bit and Aaron explains that he wishes he could make music but can’t, all he can do is appreciate it, so he tries to help the various starving musicians make a little money, which is difficult because there are so many talented musicians in New Orleans. Many of his groups tour, as well as play locally. He lists them, and Jessica notes that Ben’s group just got back from playing in South America.

The next morning Jessica is in the Lt’s office where he plays her a tape of the 11 O’Clock news from last night where they showed the footage of Ben Coleman dying. The Lt. blames Jonathan for it, but he comes in and tells the Lt. that he (the Lieutenant) would have done well in the old west, being quick on the draw but none too bright. The station manager sided with Turnbull, so Jonathan quit.

He doesn’t seem to have gotten much sleep last night either, and looks the worse for wear.

Lt. Kershaw apologizes to him. When Jonathan tells him that he’ll be making another mistake if he doesn’t listen to Jessica, Kershaw tells him to stuff it, as he had a long night too. He pulls out a copy of Murder on the Amazon and tosses it on his desk, explaining that he roused a bookstore owner from sleep to get it. He tells Jessica that it’s not half bad. And this morning when the coroner called to say “heart attack,” he told him to check the “inner lining of the liver” and, sure enough, it was just like in her book.

Jessica graciously accepts his apology.

Oddly, no mention is made of the fact that curare paralyzes the voluntary muscles, not the involuntary muscles, so victims die of asphyxiation, not heart failure. I guess this is a very derived derivative of curare.

Lt. Kershaw also mentions that Ben had traces of narcotics in his system. The Lt. isn’t surprised; when he first met Ben, Ben was a “two bit street punk.” He adds that they were tipped that one or two of the band members might have been doing some smuggling, but they could never catch them.

Lt. Kershaw also recounts the story of how, fourteen years ago when he was just a beat cop, he had Ben and his brother dead to rights in a liquor store holdup where the clerk was killed, but they couldn’t obtain a conviction because Callie—then Ben’s girlfriend—swore that they were with her at the time. He muses that the brother died in a street fight a couple years later, and now Ben got his.

Jessica wonders how the poison was introduced. She asks if any marks were found on the body and Lt. Kershaw ridicules the idea of a poisoned dart blown from a trumpet. Jonathan asks if it could have been in his coffee. Kershaw says that he thought of that but the cup is missing. Jessica then points out that three cameras were rolling, so perhaps the killer was caught on tape.

This leads us to the next scene, at the TV station, where Jessica, Lt. Kershaw, and Jonathan (plus an extra playing the equipment operator) review the tapes. As they go over it repeatedly, Jessica notices something.

During the clarinet performance, Callie takes a drink from Ben’s cup. Which clearly proves that the coffee couldn’t have been poisoned.

And on that bombshell, we fade to black and go to commercial.

When we come back, Jonathan suggests that maybe Callie didn’t actually drink the coffee, but was just faking it. Lt. Kershaw suggests that perhaps the poison was elsewhere. But if that was the case, Jessica asks, why did the coffee cup disappear?

At this point Turnbull shows up and asks what they’re doing there since Jonathan isn’t an employee of the station anymore. Then he notices Lt. Kershaw and changes his tune. Jessica then says that she was going to make public a theory she had about Ben Coleman’s death on Jonathan’s show, but since he doesn’t have a show anymore, she’ll have to go to a competing station.

Turnbull is alarmed at this and says that shouldn’t be necessary. He’s sure that Jonathan’s program can be easily reinstated. Jessica then wishes him a good day.

This is a very strange turn of events, given that Jonathan wasn’t fired, he quit out of principle. Jessica getting him his show back suggests that his principle of not being willing to work with people who would air the footage of Ben Coleman dying on camera no longer applies. If so, Jonathan has very short-lived principles and it’s doubly weird that Jessica initiated this move which relies on his principles being so short-lived.

Jessica then walks out as Turnbull assures her that it can be straightened out and begs her to not leave. On their way out, Kershaw asks Jessica what her theory is, and Jessica replies that she’s still working on the theory, but she found Turnbull so insufferable that she just had to say something.

Later that day, Jonathan calls her from a payphone to relay the latest news on the investigation. Kershaw is checking all the chewing gum he can find at the barn. He believes Callie poisoned Ben because Ben only bought three tickets for Las Vegas. One for himself, one for Eddie, and one for his new girlfriend. Kershaw believes that Callie was going to be dumped like the rest, found out, and killed Ben in revenge. Jessica is dubious, though. You can’t get rid of a woman who saved you from a murder charge in the same way you can get rid of a trumpet player.

Jonathan invites Jessica to go have lunch to celebrate his show being back on the air, which confirms that this wasn’t just a thing to tweak Turnbull, Jonathan’s principles really didn’t last a full day.

Jessica declines, though, because she needs to make good her boast to Turnbull about having a theory to make public. Accordingly, she goes and finds Lafayette the cab driver. She asks if he knows where Eubie, Jimmy, and Hec are. Lafayette, making good his boast about knowing New Orleans better than any man living, takes her right to them. They’re in a restaurant auditioning for a spot as the restaurant’s entertainment.

They’re none too happy to talk to Jessica, and when the subject of Aaron saying that he’d get them work comes up, they explain that Aaron is a terrible businessman and can’t really get anyone work. When Jessica says that he must have something going for him, since he managed to keep on going, Eubie suggests she keep that kind of talk to herself. She might get someone in trouble with it.

Jessica then runs into Aaron outside and relays the news that the audition didn’t go wonderfully. He offers to give Jessica a lift, but Lafayette butts in. When he refers to Aaron as “Mr Kramer,” Aaron asks, “Do I know you?” Lafayette responds that there’s no reason he should, but he knows all about Aaron. Jessica tells Lafayette it’s OK and accepts the ride from Aaron.

In the car, Jessica accuses Aaron of smuggling, and he confesses to it. He’s not much of a business manager, and smuggling was a way to keep things going during lean times—to put a few dollars into the pockets of musicians when they weren’t working. Jessica says that there is no excuse for smuggling drugs, but Aaron exclaims that it wasn’t drugs—drugs are what customs always looks for. His fight with Ben Coleman was actually about drugs; Ben brought some in on almost every trip and if he’d gotten caught, it would have ruined everything.

But he didn’t kill Ben. There was no point. It wasn’t going to last anyway; the way Ben was going he was probably going to burn out in less than a year.

Aaron is also certain that Callie didn’t kill Ben. She loved him and would have gone through hell for him. In fact, that’s what she’s been doing for the last sixteen years.

That night, at a wake for Ben (which is being held at the barn where he died—I assume because it saved on set costs), Eddie puts the clarinet in the casket with Ben.

After he does this, Callie tells Eddie that it’s time to go, but Eddie doesn’t want to. Moments later, the police arrive and Aaron is arrested for smuggling. After Aaron is led away, Kershaw says that he figures Aaron killed Ben, too. He had motive and opportunity, and did it with the clarinet.

When he picks up the clarinet to collect it as evidence, Eddie gets deeply upset. He says that Ben told him to never let anyone touch it, and that Kershaw must put it back. Callie tries to calm him down but it doesn’t work; he’s inconsolable and uniformed officers are forced to restrain him.

When they drag Ben outside, Kershaw explains to Jessica and Jonathan.

It couldn’t have been the coffee, and they tested every spec of gum they could find and the poison wasn’t there, so there was only one other place it could have been: on the reed of the clarinet.

And on that bombshell, we fade to black and go to commercial.

When we come back from commercial, Jessica, Jonathan, and Lt. Kershaw are in Kershaw’s office. He lays out the case of Aaron being a smuggler, which Jessica doesn’t argue with since she knows that he is. But she still doesn’t see how that makes him a murder suspect.

Kershaw says that Aaron had a contract with Ben and Ben threatened to tell the authorities about the smuggling if Aaron didn’t let him out of it. When asked, Jonathan says that the Buddy Brunson tribute song (the one for which Ben switched to the clarinet) was Aaron’s idea.

Jessica counters that it wasn’t Aaron who smuggled in the poison, since at the time he didn’t know that he was going to be blackmailed. Her guess is that Ben Coleman was the one who smuggled in the poison. (Presumably to kill Callie, since he was planning to drop her but couldn’t leave her alive to take revenge by recanting Ben’s alibi for the convenience store murder.)

Then Kershaw gets a call from the lab. There was no trace of poison on the reed. There was nothing at all; it was absolutely clean. Kershaw is perplexed by this, as is Jessica. Why the lack of saliva doesn’t immediately indicate to them that the reed was changed out, I don’t know. Possibly because there’s still five minutes left in the episode, so it can’t end now.

The next scene is at the station where Jessica and Jonathan are going to tape the show. Turnbull shows up and says that the show is going to be aired live and he hopes Jessica is ready to deliver on her promise. I guess Turnbull has been repurposed as the station manager because that’s cheaper than hiring a another actor to play the station manager. Anyway, while Jonathan argues with Turnbull, Jessica watches a denture cleanser commercial being filmed.

(They’re showing off removing blueberry stains from dentures.)

Somehow, this commercial gives Jessica the crucial insight into how Ben was murdered. She then runs off and calls for a taxi. By coincidence, the taxi she hails is driven by Lafayette. When he asks where she wants to go, she says “Saint Charles Cemetery.”

At the cemetery the funeral is going on in New Orleans style.

The band is playing a lively version of When the Saints Go Marching In. They start marching off, and lead all of the mourners away except for Callie and Eddie.

Eddie is upset that Aaron let the police take the clarinet, and Jessica explains that Lt. Kershaw was only doing his duty. He thought that Aaron had killed Ben by poisoning the clarinet reed. Eddie says that he couldn’t have; only he and Ben were allowed to touch the clarinet. Jessica says that she knows.

Callie tries to get Eddie to leave, but Jessica tells her that she knows who killed Ben. Callie denies this, but Jessica doesn’t care and just explains. Callie took the coffee cup off of the piano. She did this, not because it was poisoned, but because it wasn’t. He was poisoned via the clarinet reed, but via the reed that was on the instrument when Ben played it, not the fresh reed that was replaced on the clarinet after the murder. (Jessica points out that Ben drank black coffee right before he played, so the reed should have been stained, but it wasn’t, proving the reed had been replaced.)

When Jessica gently tells Eddie that he replaced the reed to hide the poison, he confesses. Ben had always been a good friend to him. Ben wasn’t nice to many people, but he was never not-nice to Eddie. A long time ago, Ben, Eddie, and Ben’s brother did a real bad thing, and Callie told the police that they were with her. He and Ben loved her for it. But then Ben didn’t love her anymore. He wanted to leave Callie behind, but thought she would tell the police that she’d lied. He got the poison in South America to kill Callie so he could leave her without going to jail, and told Eddie about this plan. Eddie couldn’t let him do that to Callie. He told Ben Callie would never hurt them, but Ben wouldn’t believe him. When he told Callie about Ben’s plan, Callie didn’t believe him. So he didn’t see any other way to keep Ben from killing Callie except to kill Ben. He then says that Ben didn’t love Callie anymore, but he still did. He repeats the last part several times as he breaks down crying and puts his head on Callie’s shoulder.

And on that sad note, we go to credits.

This is an interesting episode which has a lot of strong points. The mystery features the always-fun plot element of the victim having been caught in his own trap, or at least killed because of his own plan to murder someone else. And it’s done well. Additionally, this episode has an interesting setting (mostly in terms of music) and several vivid characters.

One big issue to consider in this episode is the poison: as a rare south-American poison, it is allowed to have any properties that the author wants it to. This can be easily abused if the properties of the poison are revealed toward the end of the story, but it has no major fair-play implications if all of the properties of the poison are immediately identified, as they were in this episode. The only major consideration is that it turns the episode into fantasy, just as much as if the killer had used a ray-gun or a magic want to kill the victim. (Just as much, but far more plausibly, since there are, undoubtedly, a great many poisons that we don’t know about.) It’s also a bit annoying that the writers got the properties of curare wrong, though this could be worked around by having Eddie have known Ben had a cut in his mouth.

That said, the identification of the poison was a bit fraught. It’s extremely implausible that a poison which kills within a minute would have time to do anything detectable to the lining of the liver, since blood circulation stops at death. Also, what lining of the liver? The liver is a dense organ that processes the blood. It’s not a pouch that stores stuff on the inside that it would have a lining, like the stomach or intestines.

In any event, the major effect of the poison being an obscure South American poison is that it effectively limited the circle of suspects to the band plus Aaron, which was useful. It’s a little unfortunate that it just happens to be the same poison that Jessica wrote about in one of her books but the killer didn’t know this. It would have been more interesting if the killer had gotten the idea from Jessica.

There are several characters in this episode which are worth considering. Let’s start with Jonathan, who’s a very vivacious character but also a bit strange within the episode. He serves two main functions: on a technical level he’s the primary connector between Jessica and the mystery. That doesn’t, in itself, make him a compelling character, but his broad range of connections that enables this is played up; people who know everyone are often interesting because they’re rare and this form of social connection is a kind of power. He also adds energy because of his boundless enthusiasm for all of the culture of New Orleans. Much of a setting being powerful is about how the characters react to it; this is a bit like how it was said of Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers that she gave him sex appeal and he gave her class.

Lafayette is another fascinating character. He’s a character with far more ability than is required for the job he performs. The thing about that is that it’s very rare in efficient economies with a lot of job mobility as has existed in the United States to a great degree after the second world war. It’s not universal, so it’s possible to find someone who’s just hard up on his luck, but in post-war America while it’s not completely unbelievable it just doesn’t ring true. What you can have, though, is someone who is simply content with what he has and who works a job he doesn’t find stressful in order to pay the bills and give him as much time to spend in a way he enjoys as he likes. The actual economics of driving a cab are a bit iffy, here, but he is portrayed as someone who enjoys meeting people, so I think it works. And they do lean into this with his character; he has an easy-going manner and a marked enthusiasm for enjoying the simple pleasures of life.

Lt. Kershaw is a striking character. Police lieutenants are often one-note characters in Murder, She Wrote and he’s got far more depth than most. He takes Jessica seriously and is willing to admit when he’s wrong. He is not passive, though, and does real investigation for himself. While he certainly doesn’t carry the episode, giving the police character some depth gives the whole story far more depth. Several real characters playing against each other makes for a far richer story because it creates a lot of possibilities.

Aaron Kramer is also a curious character. I’m not sure exactly how far we’re supposed to take the things he says as reliable, but he at least portrays himself as a lover of Jazz music who will do almost anything to help out the artists he can’t help by being competent as a manager. That kind of love is interesting. They keep it from getting too dark by having him smuggle things to avoid taxes rather than smuggling harmful things such as drugs, and tax evasion is, certainly, a much nobler way to make money than are highly addictive drugs, but at the same time struggling musicians are, perhaps, a dubious cause. It is interesting that he ends up paying for this approach to supporting the music that he loves with what is likely to be a lengthy prison sentence.

Callie isn’t a major character in this story, but she is still interesting. We’re left wondering why she has such a profound devotion to Ben Coleman. We certainly didn’t see him as having any redeeming qualities. But we didn’t see a lot of him, which is why this works. Her devotion raises a question which his relatively little screen time leaves possible there’s an answer to.

Having described the many interesting characters, one unfortunate thing about this episode is that none of them get closure. We last saw Jonathan when Jessica left him right before his newly reinstated show was going to air live. We last saw Lt. Kershaw when he was arresting the wrong man. We last saw Aaron when he was arrested for smuggling and was falsely accused of murdering Ben. We last saw Lafayette when he drove Jessica to the cemetery and was still hopeful he’d get to give her a tour of New Orleans. In none of the cases does the last time we see the character feel like the last time. That’s not the end of the world, and it’s particularly forgivable in a Murder, She Wrote episode which crams quite a lot into 48 minutes of screen time.

I’m in two minds about Eddie being the murderer. I didn’t really like the character, since he had the kind of hollywood intellectual impairment which feels extremely fake. Like with Forest Gump, it’s a kind of affectation of speech rather than an actual intellectual state. Eddie’s limitations are whatever the authors want them to be in the moment. On the other hand, having the murderer be the victim’s devoted friend is very interesting when it’s done well, and it’s done reasonably well, here. Eddie’s devotion is given an explanation—Ben was never not nice to him, which might well count for a lot to someone who was often picked on because of his intellectual disability—as is his being willing to murder his friend. He just couldn’t let Ben murder Callie. And I do like the touch that they hinted at this when Jessica said she guessed that it was Ben who bought the poison.

Next week we’re going to the sea for My Johnny Lies Over the Ocean.