‘The Marlow Murder Club’ Eats Well in “An Appetite for Murder”

The final episode of The Marlow Murder Club’s third season starts with a cold open at the walk-in freezer where Cal’s body was found at the end of Part 1. Our trio of investigators meet up with DC Tanika and DS Brendan and agree that there may be a universe where Cal walked into the freezer, the door dropped closed, and he slowly died of hypothermia overnight; none of them believe that’s the case in this one. Tanika and Brendan head off to take another statement from Isla, who is currently batting a thousand, finding two dead bodies in her restaurant in under three days.

Left to their own devices, Judith immediately walks through the first unlocked door she finds next to the walk-in freezer. It’s the pantry and wine cellar; the dewar tank from the party is there too. (The specialty cocktail with the petal garnish was partly made using liquid nitrogen.) The tank is empty, which is surprising, since the drinks only require tiny amounts. The answer is that it was emptied into the walk-in freezer, speeding up suffocation while making his death look like hypothermia that occurred over many hours.

Just before the discovery of Cal’s body, the police had taken Omari into custody after the trio (and Luna) found his little shack in the woods that revealed he was the author of the threatening notes Blake was receiving. Tanika and Brendan question him, revealing they’ve learned his real name, Omari Laronde, and that his father used to work for Blake. Omari claims they were partners; Blake promised him U.K. citizenship. Instead, he had Omari’s dad deported, stole his recipes, and claimed them as his own. He admits he was working on a complicated poison-mushroom plot, but he’d lost his nerve, sighing, “Someone else was braver than I am.”