A Coincidence Solves Two Murders on 'Ludwig'

The third episode of Ludwig starts off with the discovery of a dead body inside a church belonging to Megan (Ella Bruccoleri), a 21-year-old American tour guide who was murdered on the last stop of the Cambridge tour she gives every day. Ludwig and Carter set about interviewing everyone who was on Megan’s final tour. They are typical: the local couple doing the tour for their anniversary; a grandmother, mother, and daughter on a trip from Paris; a couple of students from the Isle of Man. To his dismay, Ludwig can’t find an immediate solution to this mystery of why Megan was killed. Everyone who went on the tour is a suspect. “I think we are going to have to find a motive for this one,” he says.

Ludwig: People who plan murders in advance don’t commit them in front of six potential witnesses and then write their email address down for good measure...

Ludwig and Carter’s interviews with the tourists don’t yield much information. The local couple, Adrian and Julie Tate (Paul Chahidi and Amanda Lawrence) weren’t spending much money on their 30th anniversary because the husband had been laid off (or “made redundant,” as the Brits say) and had just found a job as a security guard. The three Parisians are on a 22-city “eat, pray, love” type of tour; the grandmother’s husband had died, the daughter was recently divorced, and the granddaughter had her heart broken. The college students, it turns out, are friends of Megan’s who just took the tour to ensure she hit her quota. 

That’s not the only case in this episode. DCS Carol Shaw (Dorothy Atkinson) is putting together an emergency task force to find Jordan Halshaw (Mark Slaughter), the missing son of a millionaire. He’s eventually found at the bottom of the river but it’s discovered he had been camping out in one of his dad’s developments. Police found a sleeping bag, food, and all sorts of drug paraphernalia. 

All along, Ludwig struggles to impersonate James. He still can’t park, hates sugar in his coffee, and hates having to wear contacts even more. 

Focusing on the first case, Ludwig realizes that the motive for the murder had to come up during the tour since people don't usually plan to commit murder in front of others in public, and looking through her phone, he realizes one of the photos Megan took might be the reason she was killed. The only way to figure out what happened is for them to walk the tour and stop at every one of the tour’s photo opportunities. 

Finally, at the last tour stop, Ludwig, to his relief, discovers the statistically significant number of coincidences he needs to solve the crime... like getting to the center of a tootsie pop, the answer is three. 

1. The tour's final stop is right next to the building where Jordan's body was found, and the angle at which people take selfies puts right where the murder was committed directly in their background.... 

2. The building is protected by Cambridge Complete Security, which is... 

3. The security company that just hired Adrian Tate.

Adrian confesses that during his job as a security guard, he found Jordan squatting in the building. He attacked Adrian in a drug-induced fugue. They struggled, and Jordan died.  Adrian was afraid one of the photos Megan took on the tour inadvertently captured what he did. He took the tour to get access to Megan’s phone. At the end of the tour, he tried to take Megan’s phone to see what photos were on it. When she resisted, he hit her, and she banged her head against a pew. 

His wife is devastated. “She was 21 years old,” she tells him in horror. 

Meanwhile, in the show’s overarching mystery, James’ wife, Lucy, and son, Henry, investigate the Sinclair case. You will recall that the Sinclair case is the one James faxed to himself before he disappeared. But the report he faxed himself and what is officially in the police records are vastly different. Lucy and Henry have discovered that Sinclair was a conspiracy theorist. Henry immediately latches on to this.  “He’s now got his father single-handedly fighting the Illuminati,” Lucy tells Ludwig.

Lucy is frustrated that Ludwig can’t stay the course in what he is supposed to be doing—that he keeps getting sidetracked by solving murders. She wants him to find out more about Carter, who appeared at the precinct when James went missing and seems to have a personal relationship with Chief Constable Ziegler. Carter tells him that his fiancee, Mandy, died. She was Ziegler’s daughter. Ziegler helped him fast-track his transfer but has done nothing else to help his career, and Carter doesn’t want people thinking he’s getting special treatment. “The only thing we have in common is a shared grief,” he tells Ludwig. 

Lucy investigates Rhys Bowen, the burglar accused of killing Sinclair. She visits his mother under the auspice of being a newspaper reporter. Rhys’ mom tells Lucy she told the police her son was with her all night. She can’t understand why her son would confess to something he hadn’t done. 

When Lucy returns to visit the mother, she learns that Rhys is dead. He hung himself in his jail cell. Lucy is wracked with guilt, thinking she may somehow be responsible for Rhys’ death. “They killed Sinclair. They framed Bowen. And when dad wouldn’t drop it they started coming after him,” Henry says. He’s convinced whatever his dad was investigating, it has to be big. “Dad wouldn’t just abandon us if it wasn’t.”

The episode ends with someone taking a photo of Ludwig from their car. He’s being watched. But why?

Ludwig continues with one new episode every Thursday on BritBox. Season 2 is already greenlit.