We have a very ritzy party and a rather formidable old
woman, Gloria Carlyle, giving everyone the razor edge of her tongue. While one
of the guests wishes it was her funeral, I have to admit I have a soft spot to
savage old ladies who can gut you with a word. She wanders off alone while they
make a speech about her generosity
And we cut to Gloria’s bettered body being examined by the police and Detective Jo and Hanson on the scene. And no Henry – just Lucas who is not an awesome substitute.
Henry is set to maximum moping because he once knew Gloria.
When he has her on the slab, Jo asks why he didn’t attend and Henry says he
never goes to that museum. He strokes back Gloria’s hair in a very familiar
fashion (actually managing not to be creepy with it).
And Lucas spills that it’s murder to a journalist. Which has Henry needing lots of coffee (and chance for Abe to push to get an in on the antique estate sale) before going in. At work the Carlyle family is Not Amused by the press leak. Henry nobly tells a very penitent Lucas to go back to the lab and is willing to take the blame – he does – and he is pulled off the case because of it, Conrad Carlyle just has too much influence.
So Jo decides to invite Henry to accompany her everywhere
(which is slightly hilarious because it’s what he would be doing anyway and
still not what a medical examiner should be doing). Which means he has to go to
the museum crime scene which is a major problem for him. Naturally Jo pokes him
for an explanation which he continually dodges.
Flashback to Henry and his wife Abigail sneaking into a
private party in the museum because Abigail is a very confident and daring
woman (especially compared to the cautious Henry).
In the museum Henry uses his genius to retrace Gloria’s
footsteps and concludes that she was pushed down stairs then tried to crawl
afterwards. Hanson’s CCTV review also confirms there was someone else (Henry
has a very restrained gloat)
They bring the man they saw, Lance (poor fiance of Gloria’s
granddaughter), for questioning and Henry observes from the next room, Lt Reece
decides to believe he was never there (something which Henry misunderstands and
is actually amusing in doing so). Lance claims he asked Gloria’s blessing for
the wedding because Conrad (Gloria’s son, this granddaughter’s dad) refused –
and he didn’t steal Gloria’s ring, she gave him it to use in the engagement.
She also said to “follow your heart” which, in the brief moment we saw of her,
seems very unlike her. This isn’t very believable.
Of course Henry just can’t watch and calls Jo on Reece’s
phone and gets Jo to ask lots of diagnostic questions about Gloria. Henry puts
them all together as a symptom of stroke – so he needs to slice and dice Gloria’s
body some more… except he’s off the case. And even worse he can’t even get
Lance to do it because they’ve already released the body.
Jo tries to talk to Lance’s fiancée and learns how
dysfunctional the family is – everyone is far more interested in hurting each
other and being spiteful than in actually getting anything done. She describes
her grandmother as heartless (which isn’t what Henry remembers. As a younger
woman she urged Henry to marry Abigail). Jo does dig up more info – Gloria was
threatening to cut Conrad out of the will – and he’s currently auctioning off
Gloria’s furniture
Henry calls Abe who has an invite to the auction (he runs
an antique shop after all), and gets him to sneak into her bathroom and take a
photograph of all her medication – but it’s another dead end. But when Henry
sees Conrad arriving to rant at Lt. Reece he notices the man’s shaking hand –
he has epilepsy. Questioning and irate Conrad they learn that he takes the
medication that caused Gloria’s stroke.
But questioning him they learn that not only did Gloria
threaten to cut him out of the will, she actually did so. His motive for
killing her crumbles. They do get a break though from Lucas who, in all his
guilt, has performed an illicit biopsy on Gloria’s liver for Henry to examine.
In doing so he finds out she was poisoned by the drug – but before the party
not during it. There’s only one person who was with her at the time – her nurse,
Marta
Just as Hanson arrives with a newspaper confirming Marta inherited everything. Of course we still have time left so the case has to get more complicated. On hearing Gloria ordered a fire despite it being warm Henry does some more investigating and finds a burned letter in the fire and a missing Champaign glass (despite Gloria not drinking). All of this eventually leads them to the car where the poisoning actually happened.
Henry gathers all the party together to do a classic,
Agatha Christie style explanation of what happened. Gloria, terminally ill,
took the drug herself to commit suicide – and she dragged herself across the floor
when the drug acted too quickly (and she was delayed by Lance) so she could die
in front of one painting – painted by an ex-lover of hers (they kept returning
to this painting frequently throughout the episode since it was out of place,
painted by an unknown).
Afterwards, Jo shares a story of her dead husband and
painful memories and Henry finally cracks and reveals the painful memory that
kept him out of the museum – Abigail. The museum is where he proposed to Abigail.
I don’t really have anything to add to this episode. It’s
kind of following the same pattern for the series I predicted in the pilot –
murder mysteries solved by Henry’s brilliance. I don’t think there’ll be much
in a way of meta and even the mystery at the beginning of the series of the
other immortal seems to have petered out. There wasn’t even much in the way of
Henry’s immortality on display here – though I appreciated the more human look
at immortal memories, especially of people who have aged and changed, rather
than the flash “he’s dead and now alive again!” repeat.
