'Grantchester' Season 7, Episode 1 Recap
It's been over a season since Will gave up his celibacy. However, the sight of Will getting rather Sidneyish with jazz and cute girls who don't give him their number as Grantchester Season 7 opens is still a surprise, as he abandons the now single Geordie. With nowhere to live, the inspector resides in the empty curate's room, as Henry left and got married, and Leonard now lives with Daniel. Despite finding his calling ministering to prisoners last season, our Leonard is spreading his wings and finding himself in... Beat poetry? Complete with a coffee shop, funded by Jack and Mrs. C.
Geordie: I got jilted by a frisky vicar.
Good thing Leonard has a new hobby, as Geordie isn't going home anytime soon. He fails to impress Cathy by forgetting his day with the kids. Will saves the day by announcing a plan to take the kids to the Fitzgeralds. The sisters who own the place, Adele (Anna Wilson-Jones) and Maude (Emma Cunniffe), have opened their estate for public use, and their pool is perfect for the hot summer. It's a fun time, and Geordie even befriends Maude over gardening until a body turns up. It looks like a tramp but turns out to be Edmund Fitzgerald, the lord of the manor who's been off in Australia since the war.
Geordie's screw-ups last season didn't cost him his job, but they earned him a new boss, Elliott Wallace (Michael D. Xavier). Wallace is perplexed to find Geordie already investigating and horrified he allowed "a civilian" near the body. (Will claims he was "offering a final prayer.") Peters, newly promoted to DC, is handed the case. Naturally, he calls it a heart attack and closes it, hoping to impress their new superior. Geordie's sixth sense says otherwise; however, it's not his case. When he mentions following up on Wallace's initial observation it was the third "tramp" body in several weeks, Wallace cuts him down, as Edmund wasn't a tramp. He puts Geordie on paperwork duty, leaving no choice but to ask Miss Scott to do some sleuthing for him.
With Geordie hamstrung, Will uses "grief counseling" and his vicar gossip skills to learn Edmund squandered the family fortune while Adele and Maude helplessly worked to upkeep the estate with no money. It will now pass to the next male heir, cousin Howard (Philip Buck), Adele's fiance, as luck would have it. (Otherwise, they'd probably be homeless.) Edmund had wired for money to come home for the wedding, but Adele says there was none; Maude believes he must have come overland from Brisbane. The sisters seem grief-stricken, even as Adele says Edmund never grew up, and they paid the price.
While Will has them talking, Geordie does a walkabout the estate and determines the body was staged until he's caught by groundkeeper Frank Gibbons (Philip Whitchurch), who tells him to clear off. Back at the vicarage, Will mentions the body has a love letter from "Irene," dated 1946, and Mrs. C says it must be from Irene Gibbons (Kelly Price), who Edmund jilted. Irene still lives with her dad, Frank, on the estate. She says they were engaged, then he went to war and never came home, breaking off the engagement by letter.
Something is not adding up. Edmund has no papers to travel overland, Will and Geordie take a walk and find his discarded bag, with not just his passport but a ticket showing he'd been flown in first class, bought via Mayfair, Howard's money. Geordie tries to get Peters to look at it, but he's not interested in being wrong. Meanwhile, the girl from the jazz club comes around in daylight. She introduces herself as Maya (Ellora Torchia), and propositions Will in the church graveyard for an afternoon of fun, before walking out on him, calling it a one-night stand. Meanwhile, Miss Scott finds Edmund's telegrams wiring for money, and a second, to Irene, proposing marriage, to which she replied, "Yes."
Irene says he never replied; she also never sent the 1946 letter. It lived in her jewelry box, where there's now an engagement ring. She remembers coming home to see Frank throwing out "a tramp," Edmund. At the station, Frank admits he blocked Irene and Edmund's letters from reaching one another during the war, causing the engagement to break off. But he didn't kill Fitzgerald, just punched him, and Peters decides Geordie's embarrassed himself since he didn't find the murderer instantly. While Geordie questions Frank, Will talks to Howard and Adele as their officiant. Howard explains he chased Adele for years until this March. She asked him on a date out of the blue and agreed to marry by the end of the night.
Since Adele wasn't engaged in January, her "wedding" couldn't be what Edmund meant, but his own to Irene. Miss Scott uncovers Adele did send a reply from Mayfair, congratulating Edmund on his engagement and saying she'd send a ticket. She then sold a painting from the house for the money, which came through in March. Two days later, she got engaged to Howard. However, she didn't wire the money until June. Since Edmund's wedding announcement was an eviction notice, they decided to poison him; it took three months for Maude to grow the hemlock. Maude also planned to bump off Howard as soon as the wedding was over with the leftover hemlock, killing the last male heir so Adele would inherit.
Interestingly, Geordie has solved the case, but Wallace has no idea he did, giving credit to Peters and wondering why Will is even in the precinct. He excuses his presence as providing comfort to Adele and Maude, who are members of his flock; Wallace shrugs and then introduces the two to his finance... Maya. Nice. But Geordie's lack of winning at the office extends to the homefront, too, as, at Leonard's beat poetry reading, Geordie tries to win Cathy back. However, his gardening doesn't impress her. If he were serious and wanted her back, he'd step up and be a responsible dad and husband.
