Back to Miss Scarlet and the Duke
Jul. 13th, 2025 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessOops, over a month between episodes.
2.02 The Black Witch Moth
It started with Eliza trying to convince Mrs Parker and two lieutenants to let her give a lecture about being a woman private detective at their ladies’ society. Mrs P haughtily put down such pretentions, and made a wounding comment about the desperate and poor being Eliza’s only clients. Eliza lashed out with some family skeletons in return, which briefly made her feel good, but would-be assistant Hattie warned her that Mrs P would now absolutely be out to get her.
William was having difficulties with his unwanted assistant, having to drag him out of an opium den and dunk him a bit to get him cogent again.
Eliza was delighted to get a case of the week who would pay her full price, the insurance company of a museum whose prize sketch of the not at all symbolic titular moth by Charles Darwin had disappeared overnight. Guess who was also investigating this crime?
The museum owner, a Ms Garret, assumed Eliza had been hired to gain her confidence as a woman. Eliza’s hackles rose and she denied this, and then she learned that Ms Garret was separated from her husband Mr Dashwood (wait, wasn’t that the name of the criminal family last week?) He was a natural historian cum bully, and hadn’t liked his wife gaining as much knowledge as he had. When Eliza met him, he was horrible to servants and her, as a mere woman. His German mother seemed nicer, although yeah, Mein Frau, your dodgy lungs probably have something to do with the pipe smoking.
Eliza and William’s paths crossed, she criticised his attitude towards his assistant (who would strain anyone’s patience) and he criticised her everything. They had to team up over an art dealer called the Count because he descended from Hungarian nobility. He told them that Mr Dashwood was known to be unscrupulous about where he acquired his natural history specimens and related artefacts.
A journalist (I don’t remember if we met him in the first season) got involved, because someone had placed an ad for a reward for whoever returned the sketch to Eliza’s office before the theft had taken place. Then someone entirely new turned up at William’s office claiming to represent the insurance company for the museum.
It turned out that the office on the card Eliza’s client had left her was situated in a derelict building. Hattie turned out to be a stationery geek and got to assist Eliza in finding out who’d had the card made. Turned out he was the Dashwoods’ solicitor who admitted to having been working for Mrs Dashwood, not her son. William had got a warrant to search the Dashwood residence, just at Mrs Dashwood (the German mother) had died. Her son railed at him, and things were further complicated by the sidekick collapsing. I wasn’t sure for a bit if he’d been taking opium because he was very ill, but he’d collapsed because he’d taken opium because his dad hated him. He’d imprinted on the Duke, who now had a filial figure whether he liked it or not.
Eliza let herself into the Dashwoods’ house unannounced, after searching a bit, finding herself in the dead woman’s bedroom and in a ridiculous contrivance, was led by the symbolic moth to a secret room that showed that Mrs Dashwood had had a very exciting life before being married. She’d been an explorer who had been erased from the history books, forced to marry a repressive bully, then, when he’d died, had found her son to be just as bad.
Okay, William said, but that didn’t explain why she’d stolen the sketch, which still hadn’t been found. Eliza was reminded that Mrs D had really loved puzzles, which led her to figure out that the fake insurance company’s name was an anagram…
I thought it was ridiculous that Mrs Dashwood had somehow, in one night, got the sketch inside Darwin’s bust. Well, maybe it was hollow inside and Eliza just smashed it for the visual in front of the journalist and Ms Garret. She and William figured that Mrs D had done it all to get press for her daughter in law’s museum so that she could keep it running and stay independent from her horrible son. (Eliza would also get coverage.)
Eliza confided to William that she wished she could have been brought into this case on her own merits, not because she was a woman (and thus notorious.) He said that she should just make the most of it, as he made the most of being a Scottish man in some circumstances. (Yeah, but way to ignore that being a man in Victorian society brought so much privilege, even if we’d seen that he was the victim when it came to class privilege and the privilege of having family support.)
She came back to the office to find Mrs Parker wanted a word. Mrs P had looked up the terrible accusations about her husband (I think) and found them to be true. So she wanted to hire Eliza to look up potential husbands for Hattie (presumably wanting to cut out any gamblers.) Eliza wanted to know why,Mrs Parker wanted to hire her. She said it was because she was the only private investigator she knew. Heh.
But, okay, weed out gamblers and miscreants, but shouldn’t Hattie, however mildly irritating she is, have a say in who she marries???
2.02 The Black Witch Moth
It started with Eliza trying to convince Mrs Parker and two lieutenants to let her give a lecture about being a woman private detective at their ladies’ society. Mrs P haughtily put down such pretentions, and made a wounding comment about the desperate and poor being Eliza’s only clients. Eliza lashed out with some family skeletons in return, which briefly made her feel good, but would-be assistant Hattie warned her that Mrs P would now absolutely be out to get her.
William was having difficulties with his unwanted assistant, having to drag him out of an opium den and dunk him a bit to get him cogent again.
Eliza was delighted to get a case of the week who would pay her full price, the insurance company of a museum whose prize sketch of the not at all symbolic titular moth by Charles Darwin had disappeared overnight. Guess who was also investigating this crime?
The museum owner, a Ms Garret, assumed Eliza had been hired to gain her confidence as a woman. Eliza’s hackles rose and she denied this, and then she learned that Ms Garret was separated from her husband Mr Dashwood (wait, wasn’t that the name of the criminal family last week?) He was a natural historian cum bully, and hadn’t liked his wife gaining as much knowledge as he had. When Eliza met him, he was horrible to servants and her, as a mere woman. His German mother seemed nicer, although yeah, Mein Frau, your dodgy lungs probably have something to do with the pipe smoking.
Eliza and William’s paths crossed, she criticised his attitude towards his assistant (who would strain anyone’s patience) and he criticised her everything. They had to team up over an art dealer called the Count because he descended from Hungarian nobility. He told them that Mr Dashwood was known to be unscrupulous about where he acquired his natural history specimens and related artefacts.
A journalist (I don’t remember if we met him in the first season) got involved, because someone had placed an ad for a reward for whoever returned the sketch to Eliza’s office before the theft had taken place. Then someone entirely new turned up at William’s office claiming to represent the insurance company for the museum.
It turned out that the office on the card Eliza’s client had left her was situated in a derelict building. Hattie turned out to be a stationery geek and got to assist Eliza in finding out who’d had the card made. Turned out he was the Dashwoods’ solicitor who admitted to having been working for Mrs Dashwood, not her son. William had got a warrant to search the Dashwood residence, just at Mrs Dashwood (the German mother) had died. Her son railed at him, and things were further complicated by the sidekick collapsing. I wasn’t sure for a bit if he’d been taking opium because he was very ill, but he’d collapsed because he’d taken opium because his dad hated him. He’d imprinted on the Duke, who now had a filial figure whether he liked it or not.
Eliza let herself into the Dashwoods’ house unannounced, after searching a bit, finding herself in the dead woman’s bedroom and in a ridiculous contrivance, was led by the symbolic moth to a secret room that showed that Mrs Dashwood had had a very exciting life before being married. She’d been an explorer who had been erased from the history books, forced to marry a repressive bully, then, when he’d died, had found her son to be just as bad.
Okay, William said, but that didn’t explain why she’d stolen the sketch, which still hadn’t been found. Eliza was reminded that Mrs D had really loved puzzles, which led her to figure out that the fake insurance company’s name was an anagram…
I thought it was ridiculous that Mrs Dashwood had somehow, in one night, got the sketch inside Darwin’s bust. Well, maybe it was hollow inside and Eliza just smashed it for the visual in front of the journalist and Ms Garret. She and William figured that Mrs D had done it all to get press for her daughter in law’s museum so that she could keep it running and stay independent from her horrible son. (Eliza would also get coverage.)
Eliza confided to William that she wished she could have been brought into this case on her own merits, not because she was a woman (and thus notorious.) He said that she should just make the most of it, as he made the most of being a Scottish man in some circumstances. (Yeah, but way to ignore that being a man in Victorian society brought so much privilege, even if we’d seen that he was the victim when it came to class privilege and the privilege of having family support.)
She came back to the office to find Mrs Parker wanted a word. Mrs P had looked up the terrible accusations about her husband (I think) and found them to be true. So she wanted to hire Eliza to look up potential husbands for Hattie (presumably wanting to cut out any gamblers.) Eliza wanted to know why,Mrs Parker wanted to hire her. She said it was because she was the only private investigator she knew. Heh.
But, okay, weed out gamblers and miscreants, but shouldn’t Hattie, however mildly irritating she is, have a say in who she marries???
