'Miss Scarlet and the Duke' Recap: Season 3 Episode 6

Miss Scarlet and the Duke is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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There’s something about season finales and danger for Eliza. This time the threat is a bomb—and she’s not the only target. As she unwraps a package in her office, Nash rushes in and tells her not to open it. The box contains a bomb, although the timer is not linked to the detonator, so it won’t go off.

Nash received the same thing, as did Moses and William. The only difference is that William’s contained a note in Gaelic: “We’re watching you.”

William assumes he is the primary target and the others are simply collateral as his associates. Some Irish nationalists have planted bombs at government offices recently, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they also targeted Scotland Yard.

The police’s Special Irish Branch is called in, and its leader, Hudson, takes full control of the investigation. He got the job over William, and commandeers William’s office to lead the investigation. He also begins ordering William’s men around, and puts William on leave, because his presence at Scotland Yard as a bomb target could prove dangerous.

Hudson questions Moses, Eliza, and Nash, and suspends the licenses of Nash and Eliza. He even ransacks their offices and seizes their files.

Moses is worried that Hudson will send to Jamaica for information and thus publicize Moses’ whereabouts back in his home country. Moses was forced to flee Jamaica several years ago and planned to keep moving, but has stayed in London for three years. Now he fears some dangerous men will finally find him, thanks to Hudson. Perhaps it’s time to move on; Nash is opening an office in Paris where Moses could find work.

Nash himself knows more about the bombs than he has revealed to Hudson. He was hired to work for a train company whose train to Liverpool from London was recently robbed. The robbery was similar to a recent one by Irish nationalists on another train, so Nash thinks they are trying to scare him off the case with the bombs. Moses works for him, William is in charge of the police’s investigation, and Nash often lies that Eliza works for him, so that’s why they were all targeted.

Shut out of their normal work by Hudson, Eliza, William, Moses, and Nash decide to work together to investigate the robbery. Eliza takes charge, of course.

The train was unusually carrying loads of cash the day it was robbed: wages for workers building new rail lines in the northwest. The thieves robbed the train at a regular signal stop. There was likely an insider involved in the robbery, who took advantage of all these details.

The bank that transported the cash insists everything was normal and hands over a list of the workers who transported the money. Meanwhile, Moses and Nash visit the railroad executive Lyndhurst—right as he, too, receives a bomb like theirs.

Eliza and Moses take the bombs to Solomon, who is confident Irish nationalists didn’t make them: they’re of a different construction than the nationalists typically use, and contain high-quality, new materials.

William visits Scotland Yard on the pretense of offering Hudson his help—and tells Fitzroy to retrieve some files while he’s there. One of them reveals that a train employee said there were five bank employees transporting the money, when the bank only shared a list of four.

Turns out that the fifth was Jack Fenton, a man with convictions for armed robbery. He’s the hated brother-in-law of the bank manager, who admits that his sister forced him to give Fenton a job. The manager shares a list of locations where Fenton might be found, including a jewelry store where he works security.

Eliza and William pose as an engaged couple at the store to discover when it will receive a new shipment of gems, thus learning when Fenton will be there without tipping him off. William is forced into describing his “proposal” to Eliza, and does so admirably, looking into Eliza’s eyes the entire time. Chatting later, she says the rings were all too big for her. She’d like any simple ring, as long as it was in a box with a ribbon.

Moses and Nash find Fenton first, though, at a pub. They try to fight him into submission, but Hudson and his men arrive and Fenton flees. The police arrest Moses and Nash instead.

Lyndhurst has new information for Eliza and William, however. The train’s conductor has remembered a suspicious encounter with Fenton before the robbery. Fenton bought the conductor drinks at the pub, invited him to his room for more, and then asked numerous specific questions about the train schedules.

William nearly triggers a bomb hidden in a suitcase while searching Fenton’s room, but Eliza manages to disarm it before it goes off. It’s the same construction as the others, but this one was actually wired to explode. All of this explosive equipment would be expensive for Fenton; did he steal it? Eliza and William visit the armaments manufacturer who made the dynamite.

They’re the same firm that supplies the train company for its engineering work building new rail lines—and Lyndhurst personally oversees the contract. Plus, he served in the army with Fenton. He says the fake bombs were just to misdirect Nash and everyone from looking into the robbery, which he organized with Fenton. He sent himself one to further turn them off the scent. Using real explosives to try to kill Eliza and William in Fenton’s room was Fenton’s idea. The case is solved.

William tells Eliza that he has missed her company since he began seeing Arabella. But Eliza knows they can’t maintain a friendship without making Arabella jealous. Indeed, when William is again late to a dinner date with Arabella, she sits him down and tells him he loves Eliza, and that they must end things. She wishes him luck; Eliza’s ambitions will always come first, even before her feelings for William.

Eliza gets her own advice from a friend. When she gifts Moses a French dictionary, in case he does decide to leave for Paris, he tells her to focus on a single goal, rather than everything she wants in life, lest she get none of it.

One ambition is about to be fulfilled. A box once again waits for Eliza at her office, but this time it’s wrapped with a bow, and a bit more welcome than a bomb.

It’s a stack of business cards from Nash. He wants her to run the London branch of his firm while he sets up the office in Paris. She would be working with him, not for him, and would have a full-time staff under her. She’ll only take the position if she gets an office with her name on the door—something Nash has already fulfilled.

Will she take the deal?