Towards Zero - episode 3
Apr. 5th, 2025 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessWe had to learn who’d got killed at the end of the previous episode, and as everyone turned up for a relocated (awkward) breakfast, it turned out to be the lawyer, who, like Sylvia, was staying at the House of Death now. Worse, it was Sylvia who found her dead guardian. Leach was righteously angry at that, and her being left bereft because of it, and decided to put all his suspects, including Not!Macdonald (who couldn’t have killed the lawyer because he'd been in custody), in the same room and not give them food or drink. (Don’t think too much about that, or the fact that Sylvia would tell Leach off for using language that Agatha Christie never wrote in her books.)
What followed was a torrent of clues, interviews and every time Leach had thought he’d ruled someone out, a new suspect. The clues seemed to point to Neville (his golf club, his jacket with bloodstains on it, his cufflinks), but so obviously that it seemed likely he was being set up. There was an attempt to make it seem like it could have been any of them. Then they took a closer look at the bloody jacket and found evidence that pointed to Audrey. Peter James’s death was raked up again, and suddenly Audrey was retracting her claim that Neville had been with her all night. WAS it one of them, or both? But there was only a 45-minute window when Neville wasn’t seen...
And then, thanks to Sylvia, Leach found a rope with a claw on it, suggesting Her Ladyship’s murder was an outside job. Morrell? Leach’s latest theory was that Kay, Morrell and Not!Macdonald were in on it together, because they all had criminal records, but when he interviewed Not!Macdonald, he seemed to be telling the truth when he said he didn’t really know why he’d come to this house. His mother had been sixteen when she’d been impregnated, and okay, he had committed violent crimes, but never against any women. Leach had also come to believe that Kay had fallen for her mark, Neville.
I was starting to wonder why anyone had killed the lawyer, and to believe that Sylvia might know where Audrey’s much mentioned compact was. Turned out she did, but she’d got it from Audrey’s vanity that very morning, where it hadn’t been on the night of the first murder.
Leach had a headache after trying out how you might smother a policeman’s helmet and how you might clamber up the side of the building, so he went back to the kitchen for a tea and aspirin. Turned out he’d commanded the cook’s dead son. She told him that his being dead wouldn’t have stopped her son’s death, and seemed to have transferred all her mother love towards Neville because she’d kept a scrapbook about him. With all the orphans and Not!Macdonald’s story, I was starting to wonder if this was significant, but what was important was really the report in the scrapbook that revealed to Leach that Neville was an excellent swimmer as well as a tennis player.
And so he set Neville up. It was pretty blatant too, but Neville was competitive and egotistical enough to agree to a match with someone who’d been quite good once if not at his level of good. And someone who drank and wasn’t fit at all. Fair play to the actors, this was with ye olde wooden rackets, although the camera shots involved a lot of fudging. And it wasn’t suspicious at all that Leach had his subordinates bring everyone else out to watch. Well, nearly everyone. Suddenly all of Neville’s shots were out, and his shoulder was hurting him. HOW SUSPICIOUS.
Audrey came out to watch too, as Leach laid out his latest (and final because it was nearly the end of the episode) theory. Competitive Neville had not liked ‘losing’ to Audrey, who had planted Kay’s compact in his car to get a divorce – apparently Kay wasn’t the first woman he’d been unfaithful with. She’d made him look bad in public...and so he’d decided to revenge himself by setting her up by setting himself up. Turned out he’d swam back and forth to murder his aunt, while planting his own clues. (I liked that he’d deliberately used Audrey’s compact to plant her powder on his jacket.)
And then when the police had arrested the wrong person, he’d killed the lawyer, incriminating Audrey again. Leach used the lawyer’s metaphor as if he’d been there to hear the speech. We got to see all of this play out in flashback, now with added dastardly expressions on Neville Strange’s face. He claimed it couldn’t be proved. Audrey exploded, and Neville, I think, made enough of a confession that the police could arrest him. Poor cook! But at least you didn’t get murdered, as his aunt and her lawyer had. And, indeed, Peter James had.
Tidy-up at the end, where it seemed Morrell was happy/pathetic enough to welcome Kay back, returning to him, now that it turned out she’d been used by a murderer she’d fallen for. WHATEVER! The only characters we cared for were Sylvia, and with as much attention to likely arrangements as there’d been to police procedurals, Leach said she could stay with him, and he was going to hire the cook to look after them. Yay, no more suicide attempts from him, and somebody wanting her might make Sylvia stop being a kleptomaniac and maybe become a police officer one day (and forget being orphaned and having walked in on a dead body!)
What followed was a torrent of clues, interviews and every time Leach had thought he’d ruled someone out, a new suspect. The clues seemed to point to Neville (his golf club, his jacket with bloodstains on it, his cufflinks), but so obviously that it seemed likely he was being set up. There was an attempt to make it seem like it could have been any of them. Then they took a closer look at the bloody jacket and found evidence that pointed to Audrey. Peter James’s death was raked up again, and suddenly Audrey was retracting her claim that Neville had been with her all night. WAS it one of them, or both? But there was only a 45-minute window when Neville wasn’t seen...
And then, thanks to Sylvia, Leach found a rope with a claw on it, suggesting Her Ladyship’s murder was an outside job. Morrell? Leach’s latest theory was that Kay, Morrell and Not!Macdonald were in on it together, because they all had criminal records, but when he interviewed Not!Macdonald, he seemed to be telling the truth when he said he didn’t really know why he’d come to this house. His mother had been sixteen when she’d been impregnated, and okay, he had committed violent crimes, but never against any women. Leach had also come to believe that Kay had fallen for her mark, Neville.
I was starting to wonder why anyone had killed the lawyer, and to believe that Sylvia might know where Audrey’s much mentioned compact was. Turned out she did, but she’d got it from Audrey’s vanity that very morning, where it hadn’t been on the night of the first murder.
Leach had a headache after trying out how you might smother a policeman’s helmet and how you might clamber up the side of the building, so he went back to the kitchen for a tea and aspirin. Turned out he’d commanded the cook’s dead son. She told him that his being dead wouldn’t have stopped her son’s death, and seemed to have transferred all her mother love towards Neville because she’d kept a scrapbook about him. With all the orphans and Not!Macdonald’s story, I was starting to wonder if this was significant, but what was important was really the report in the scrapbook that revealed to Leach that Neville was an excellent swimmer as well as a tennis player.
And so he set Neville up. It was pretty blatant too, but Neville was competitive and egotistical enough to agree to a match with someone who’d been quite good once if not at his level of good. And someone who drank and wasn’t fit at all. Fair play to the actors, this was with ye olde wooden rackets, although the camera shots involved a lot of fudging. And it wasn’t suspicious at all that Leach had his subordinates bring everyone else out to watch. Well, nearly everyone. Suddenly all of Neville’s shots were out, and his shoulder was hurting him. HOW SUSPICIOUS.
Audrey came out to watch too, as Leach laid out his latest (and final because it was nearly the end of the episode) theory. Competitive Neville had not liked ‘losing’ to Audrey, who had planted Kay’s compact in his car to get a divorce – apparently Kay wasn’t the first woman he’d been unfaithful with. She’d made him look bad in public...and so he’d decided to revenge himself by setting her up by setting himself up. Turned out he’d swam back and forth to murder his aunt, while planting his own clues. (I liked that he’d deliberately used Audrey’s compact to plant her powder on his jacket.)
And then when the police had arrested the wrong person, he’d killed the lawyer, incriminating Audrey again. Leach used the lawyer’s metaphor as if he’d been there to hear the speech. We got to see all of this play out in flashback, now with added dastardly expressions on Neville Strange’s face. He claimed it couldn’t be proved. Audrey exploded, and Neville, I think, made enough of a confession that the police could arrest him. Poor cook! But at least you didn’t get murdered, as his aunt and her lawyer had. And, indeed, Peter James had.
Tidy-up at the end, where it seemed Morrell was happy/pathetic enough to welcome Kay back, returning to him, now that it turned out she’d been used by a murderer she’d fallen for. WHATEVER! The only characters we cared for were Sylvia, and with as much attention to likely arrangements as there’d been to police procedurals, Leach said she could stay with him, and he was going to hire the cook to look after them. Yay, no more suicide attempts from him, and somebody wanting her might make Sylvia stop being a kleptomaniac and maybe become a police officer one day (and forget being orphaned and having walked in on a dead body!)
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Date: 2025-04-06 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-06 07:15 am (UTC)