'Patience's Fourth Episode Faces the Mystery of “The Locked Room”

It’s the fourth installment of a six-episode first season, and Patience accelerates a couple of arcs while managing not to rush anything. We get the continuation of the adorable flirting between Patience and Elliot (Tom Lewis), the CSI manager. The enormous amount of plot in the previous episodes didn’t allow space to mention their cute crime scene interactions; however, if you’ve been watching, you surely noticed them making googly eyes at each other over the evidence. The chemistry is palpable.

This episode also sees Patience opening up about her mother, who we previously learned left her father when Patience was six years old. Metcalf asks about contacting her mother now, and Patience is perplexed as to why she’d want to do that. Patience also allows Metcalf into her inner sanctum: first at work, then later in Patience’s bedroom for tea. It’s a jump in their friendship, but it feels earned.

Our mystery this week concerns reclusive but successful crime novel writer Harry Franklin, who was found dead in his home from what turns out to be cyanide poisoning. Metcalf is sure it’s suicide since the apartment was locked from the inside, there’s no sign of forced entry, and the poison was in Franklin’s drink. But Patience is equally sure it’s a murder and one that mimics the plot of one of the victim’s books.

Franklin had a popular series but had recently killed off the main character. A hermit who shunned modernity, he used a manual typewriter and a landline and didn’t have internet. He had recently contracted with a new publisher to write his memoirs, leaving behind the publisher of his hit series. Though bank records show he was paid, the police can’t find the memoir anywhere in Franklin’s flat and wonder if someone was trying to suppress its contents.

Interestingly, the investigation is treated as a murder almost solely on Patience’s intuition. When traces of cyanide cannot be found around Franklin’s apartment, she has a brainwave: it was mixed with water in an ice tray, leading Franklin to put the poisoned ice cube in his drink. As usual, the lab tests reveal her hunch to be correct.

Franklin’s former publisher, Pippa (Shereen Martin), is questioned. She reveals what a nightmare Franklin was to work with and claims his first draft was terrible, but she saw potential in it, and he agreed to her extensive edits. She admits to visiting Franklin’s house after learning he signed with the new publisher but says he didn’t answer the door.

Patience shows Metcalf what she’s found digging into Franklin’s past: there’s a photo of him with another writer, Edmund Lennox (Christopher Osikanlu Colquhoun), and Franklin’s girlfriend, Lisa. Patience finds out they were all at a writer’s retreat, and Lisa died in a fire that may have been set deliberately. Franklin was there but survived, as was Lennox. As research for his memoirs, Franklin had requested Lisa’s police file and autopsy report.

An interview with Lennox feels a little off from the start, but Lennox tells Metcalf and Patience that he and Franklin were long-time friends. Lennox says, “the creep,” Aldous Tate (Rupert Holliday Evans), ran the retreat and took the photo, and that Lisa was afraid of Tate and his advances. Lennox claims not to know his friend was writing a memoir.

Tate has an assault charge on his record, and CCTV footage shows him skulking around Franklin’s apartment. When the police collect him for questioning, they test his clothes for cyanide residue, which is found. He won’t answer questions without a lawyer, and DCI Baxter authorizes a formal charge against him. 

Metcalf thinks he sexually assaulted Lisa, set fire to her cabin, and then killed Franklin for digging up the past. Tate is promptly released, however, when his lawyer, Marissa (Alix Wilton Regan), sharply points out that the type of cyanide is found in plants grown all over his land.

Patience figures out a secondary mystery buried in the case, namely that Franklin didn’t write his own novels; Lennox did. But before this new thread can be explored, Tate is found dead in a car, smelling of almonds – the telltale odor of the same kind of cyanide that killed Franklin. They’ve also found Franklin’s lost memoirs in the trunk of Tate’s car.

Franklin’s memoirs reveal he believed Tate killed Lisa and was going to expose him publicly. Checking the post-mortem, Metcalf also notes Lisa had a stab wound, which was unrelated to the fire and was the likely cause of death. With Patience’s help, Metcalf realizes Lennox is the guilty party. She connects the dots via the two writers’ identical typewriters and the way Franklin’s fire-injured hand made his typing distinctive.

With Lennox in the interrogation room, Metcalf reveals they’ve spoken with Lisa’s twin sister. Lennox is the one Lisa was afraid of, not Tate. The police lay out their theory: After assaulting her, Lisa died of a stab wound to the neck, and Lennox set fire to the cabin to cover his tracks. Then he staged Franklin’s death to look like suicide, and when that unraveled, he framed Tate. Surprisingly, Lennox confesses to it all, including killing Lisa in a moment of “blind rage” when she rejected him. This is more than a little convenient for the plot, but not entirely out of character for Lennox as presented.

The best parts of this episode involve Patience simply being herself, navigating the world around her, and attempting, albeit often failing, at social interactions or conventions. She’s learning and trying new things, moving out of her comfort zone. Patience has a mini-crisis when she doesn’t figure out soon enough that Franklin didn’t write his novels, questioning her very worth and usefulness. There’s a sweet scene where her autistic support group points out she’s putting far too much pressure on herself.

When Patience tells Metcalf about her mother in the final scene, it’s a quiet but impactful moment. Metcalf’s well-intentioned prodding about reaching out to her mother plants a seed of thought Patience may not have considered seriously before. Perhaps this is a plot point we’ll return to.

Patience Season 1 continues on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on PBS, the PBS App, PBS Passport, and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. All six episodes are available for members to stream on PBS Passport starting from premiere day.