Disguise or Identity? 'Endeavour' Season 9 Continues with "Uniform"

“It always starts with a body,” intones Superintendent Jolliphant (Kevin McNally) on the TV show Jolly For Short. Thursday looks remarkably unimpressed as the episode reveals a case of a crooked cop, but Win, beside him on the sofa, seems to be enjoying herself. Meanwhile, down at the station, CS Reginald Bright is distressed. “This is Oxford, not New York,” he laments. He’s upset about a sudden violent crime surge — the theft of Lady Mayoress’s car and an attack on a group of vagrants that has left one dead. DeBryn reports the victim was severely beaten, but the cause of death was a broken bottle to the neck. A partially burned £20 note lies in the debris on the floor nearby.

Sam: “My tin hat made me feel safe, but that wasn’t love.”

Still obsessed with the Blenheim Vale case in his spare time, Morse returns alone to the vagrants’ lair and discovers part of a white plastic mask. He meets one of the homeless people who tells him the attackers were “devils” in the shape of men “dressed like Fred Astaire.” The dead man was called Hughie, and his pockets included old, creased photographs of young children, a wedding ring, and a military beret from the Lancaster Rifles, Thursday’s old regiment. Thursday makes some calls and identifies the victim as Hugh Sellers, but there’s probably little chance of contacting his family.