'Moonflower Murders' Recap: Episode 1

Moonflower Murders airs Sundays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the following episode.
Recap and stream the previous series, Magpie Murders.
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Susan Ryeland has left her life as a book publisher behind and joined her boyfriend Andreas in Crete to run a hotel. But while the setting is a paradise, the life is less so. Andreas’ cousin is an investor in the hotel but barely shows his face, and they’re running out of money. They lose their cook because they can’t pay him at the same time that they lose their kitchen to a leaking roof and resultant loss of electricity. Susan is looking at publishing jobs back in England, and tells Andreas that this life is not working for her.

And then her old life in publishing comes to her in Crete – and proves that her problems running a hotel could be much worse.

Lawrence and Pauline Treherne have a hotel in Suffolk and have come to Crete to find Susan – even if they’re not staying in her hotel. Their daughter Cecily has been missing for five days, and they think Susan can help find her.

Eight years ago, Cecily got married to Aiden MacNeil at her parents’ hotel. As Cecily began a speech in a tent outside the hotel following Aiden’s, a maid named Natasha appeared from the hotel and grabbed Cecily with bloodstained hands. She eventually switched from her native Russian to get out, “He’s dead,” in English.

“He” was Frank Parris, a guest who had arrived the previous day – Friday – from Australia to visit his sister. He had been unhappy with the room shown to him by employee Derek Endicott and complained to Lawrence at the front desk, who apologized that all the rooms were full due to the wedding. Aiden appeared and smoothed things over by offering Frank a room assigned to guests who had not yet arrived – he was always good at dealing with the difficult guests. He already knew Frank’s name, to Frank’s surprise.

Frank asked Aiden himself to show him to the room in the hotel’s Moonflower wing. The other wing is named "Barn Owl," an anagram of the hotel's name, Branlow. 

That night, there was a party for the staff – Cecily wanted them to partake in the celebrations before working the wedding itself the next day. Frank was killed that night, but his body wasn’t found until mid-afternoon the next day when Natasha entered his room to clean and found a bloody hammer on the carpet and his body under the sheets on the bed.

The police, led by Detective Inspector Chubb, arrived within 20 minutes. They quickly narrowed in on Stefan Leonida as the suspect. He had been hired out of prison by Lawrence to work maintenance, but after eight months at the hotel had been fired by Lawrence’s daughter Lisa after a series of petty thefts. His employment was ending, so he attended the staff party in a gloom.

When Chubb asked who had keys to Frank’s room, since the lock had not been forced, Lisa pointed the finger at Stefan – even though much of the staff had keys to the rooms. Derek, the night manager, claimed to see Stefan in the Moonflower wing the night Frank was killed, even though Stefan said he went to bed after the party. Light bloodstains were found on Stefan’s bedsheets, and bloody money was found hidden in a book in his room. Frank’s wallet was empty and had blood inside it.

Stefan was arrested and found guilty six months later, by which time he had confessed. He’s still in prison on a life sentence.

What does all this have to do with Susan? Her star author Alan Conway visited the Trehernes’ hotel and then turned Frank’s murder into a book featuring his star detective: Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. Before disappearing, Cecily read it. Over the years, she had gotten over her suspicion that Stefan was innocent, but the novel convinced her she had been right. She called her father and told him that the real killer was revealed in the book, but someone came into her room before she could tell him who it was and she hung up. She disappeared the next day.

Notices were put out, and someone in Norfolk claimed to have seen her, so she may still be alive. Lawrence and Pauline will pay Susan ten thousand pounds if she comes to their hotel for a week, searches Alan’s book for clues, and helps them find Cecily.

A fire breaks out in Susan’s hotel kitchen – someone turned the grill back on after the roof leaked – and interrupts Susan’s conversation with the Trehernes. She quickly tells them she’ll consider their offer.

She initially rejected it, but now can’t stop thinking about Cecily. Eight years ago, Susan showed Alan an article about Frank’s murder in the paper and told him it would make a good story: a murder at a wedding. Now she worries that Cecily’s disappearance is her fault.

Just as he did in his final novel Magpie Murders, Alan turned real people into fictionalized characters in Atticus Pünd Takes the Case – but Cecily wasn’t one of them. Lawrence and Pauline became Lance and Maureen Gardner, who run the Moonflower hotel for the actress Melissa James, who is based on Lisa Treherne. Aiden was included as the swindler Algernon Marsh, while the staff member Derek became Melissa’s house employee Eric Chandler. Frank Parris was transformed into the film producer Oscar Berlin – but he’s not the one who’s murdered in the book.

Susan settles in to read Atticus Pünd Takes the Case.

It’s 1954 in the town of Tawleigh. Melissa James has bought a hotel using insurance money from an accident on set that ended her Hollywood career. She named the hotel Moonflower, after the film for which she received her first Academy Award nomination. But the hotel is losing money, so she’s bringing in her financial adviser Algernon Marsh to conduct a complete audit, to the fear of the Gardners, who run the hotel.

Algernon drinks from a flask while driving his fancy car from London to Tawleigh, and hits a man crossing the road. He gets out to see blood on the prone man’s temple – then drives away.

He’s on his way to stay at his sister Samantha Collins’ home, which she shares with her husband, Leonard Collins, Melissa’s personal physician. Samantha has just inherited £980,000 from an aunt while her brother got nothing. Leonard worries that Algernon will try to wheedle the money from Samantha if he finds out about it, and urges her to keep quiet.

Melissa cancels a date with her husband, John Spencer, for the opera that night to meet with Algernon. John is from a higher class and was cut off from his fortune by his parents when he married her, and she still doesn’t like his posh friends or life. She tells him he can go to the opera alone, and sleep in the spare bedroom when he returns.

She has already rejected another man that day, the film producer Oscar Berlin, who has been trying to stage her return to film for years. But now she pulls out of the project, a decision that will ruin him.

She also wants to have a stern word with her housekeeper Phyllis and her son Derek. They’re due to borrow her car; Wednesday is Phyllis’ night off. But Algernon arrives first. Melissa tells him that she wants to sell her shares in Day’s End Holdings, which he recommended she finance. Money is short. Algernon is shocked and argues against it, but she persists.

Melissa is strangled to death that night.

Susan tells Andreas that she’s taking the Trehernes up on their offer and returning to England. She and Andreas need the money for the hotel, after all. But she might not return; she misses books and editing. He tells her to do what she has to do.