‘The Marlow Murder Club’ Season 3 Premiere: Who Poisoned the Mayor?

The trio is back! The Marlow Murder Club is back for Season 3, and Judith Potts (Samantha Bond), Suzie Harris (Jo Martin), and Becks Starling (Cara Horgan) are wasting no time getting tangled up in another suspicious death.

The Season 3 premiere brings the women back together when a seemingly ordinary town meeting takes a deadly turn. With poison, plenty of suspects, and more than a few secrets floating around Marlow, Judith, Suzie, and Becks are once again on the case, whether the police need their help or not. Warning: Spoilers for The Marlow Murder Club Season 3 Episode 1 ” The Queen of Poisons.”

Episode 1 kicks off with a Marlow town meeting attended by Mayor Geoffrey (Peter Davison), local estate agent Marcus (Nigel Harman), architect Terrance (Tony Gardner), and accountant Debbie (Jacqueline Boatswain). Podcaster Sophia (Sarah Alexander) is running late, while Suzie stops by to complain about the locked bridge on Temple. Before the meeting can get very far, Geoffrey suddenly collapses and dies. His final gesture appears to be toward his coffee cup.

Suzie quickly calls Judith, who is having brunch with Darius (Hugh Quarshie), and the trio soon find themselves pulled into another murder investigation. Police discover that Geoffrey was poisoned with aconite, also known as wolfsbane, which immediately puts Sophia on their radar. Her podcast, Notes From a Marlow Garden, once featured an episode about aconite, and she claimed to grow it in a poison garden at her manor.

While visiting Sophia, the trio pop into her ominous-looking poison garden, where they find a plethora of fatal flowers nestled in patches of human hair (ick). Odd, but Sophia insists the old ways of gardening are sometimes the best, including using hair in lieu of harmful chemicals.

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Sophia also insists she adored Geoffrey and had no reason to hurt him. In fact, she owed him. Years earlier, while working at a cemetery, Sophia made a serious mistake and mixed up the locations of several graves. Geoffrey stepped in and helped sort everything out before she landed in serious trouble.

By all accounts, Geoffrey was a well-liked do-gooder with no next of kin who previously ran a publishing house. Everyone at the meeting claims they loved him, although Marcus seems especially interested in finding out what the trio knows. His attempts to squeeze information out of them during a seemingly “chance” run-in certainly seem awfully sus.

The lab confirms Geoffrey died from aconite placed in his coffee pod. Debbie’s fingerprints are found on the coffee pod along with Geoffrey’s, but she says she arrived after he had already made his coffee and used the machine after him. Normally, a man named Alec (Ranjit Krishnamma) lays out all the tea and coffee before council meetings, but there’s another problem: Alec never showed up because someone called him claiming the meeting had been canceled. The call supposedly came from Sophia, but she insists she never made it.

Meanwhile, Judith receives a mysterious call telling her to “follow the money.” When the distorted voice calls again, Judith keeps the person talking long enough for the call to be traced to a phone booth outside All Saints Church. A webcam installed in the church spire for a bird-watching group catches a stranger wearing a red beanie near the booth.

Debbie recognizes the man as Dave (Perry Millward), who built Sophia’s podcast studio. When Judith, Becks, and Suzie track him down, Dave admits he made the anonymous calls but insists he was only trying to help. He had noticed a suspicious spike in the council’s petty cash spending and believed Geoffrey would have gone straight to the police if he had discovered it. Dave has another connection to Geoffrey: Geoffrey had been mentoring him on a book and offered to help get it published. The trio cast an eye towards Dave, but as the handyman points out, Geoffrey’s death is actually a disaster for him because his best chance of becoming a published author may have died with him.

There are other possible suspects. Detective Constable Jason (Tijan Sarr) discovers video of Geoffrey having a heated exchange with Terrance, with Mrs. Eddingham (Rita Tushingham) nearby. She later confirms she overheard the argument, during which Terrance accused Geoffrey of handling a situation badly and demanded that comments be turned off on the council website. Terrance also claims he saw someone through the window.

Judith and Suzie eventually go to Geoffrey’s house to check Dave’s story and find his manuscript, proving he was telling the truth about Geoffrey helping with his book. But while they’re there, someone breaks into the house. The trio chases the intruder into the woods and over a stone wall, but he manages to escape.

The episode ends with another clue — and another mystery. Becks discovers a threatening letter that reads: “Stop or I’ll tell everyone your secret.”

The Marlow Murder Club, Sundays, 8/7c, PBS.