“Are Ye’ Dancin’?” 'Sister Boniface's Sure-Footed Skills Solve a Birthday Murder

Episode 3 of Sister Boniface Mysteries' fourth season begins with suspicious behavior afoot at the local Church Hall; a Scottish invasion has taken place. It’s a surprise party thrown by Vera Clam’s sister, Jeanie McIntyre (Elaine C. Smith), and her husband, Angus (Gordon Kennedy), who’ve come all the way from Scotland, with help from all the usual local suspects. 

Already the police are involved – DS Felix Livingstone runs to warn them that Vera is on her way, and the conspirators barricade themselves in. Vera sees Dottie Thimble enter the Church Hall and bangs on the door, claiming she needs to borrow a teapot to accommodate additional guests. (Vera is the proprietor of Great Slaughter’s Sea View Bed & Breakfast although I believe it’s nowhere near the sea). Everyone inside the Church Hall, including Sister Boniface, freezes and waits for her to go away.

Musician Callum McIntyre (Calum Gulvin), Jeanie and Angus’s son, is the next to arrive, driving the Loch Killin Ceilidhs’ van. From his conversation with his parents, we know there are musical differences within the band, but for his Auntie’s birthday, he’s prepared to go strictly traditional. Inside the hall, Callum is playing his fiddle, and charmingly, Dottie dances solo, while Sister Peter (Tina Chiang) and Sister Reginald (Virginia Fiol) link arms and join her.  “I do so admire a man who knows how to use his instrument,” Dottie simpers to Callum, who looks confused.

John Adams (John Mackay), the leader of the band, arrives with his son Jimmy (Joseph Prowen) and daughter Maggie (Alyth Ross). In contrast to the other friendly Scottish visitors, John is cold and insulting to everyone. His first words to Jeanie and Angus are: “You should have warned me this place was so English.” He’s just begging to be murdered. (Oops.) 

Jeanie asks Maggie if she’ll be singing, but it’s clear her father has forbidden it. Maggie and Callum exchange longing glances. (Almost certainly, John will disapprove.) Jeanie, who looks as though she’d like to kill John, comments to Angus that it was a pity his wife died and not him. Meanwhile, Jeanie finally does what she's been dreading – meeting her sister after all these years. Vera does her usual hatchet-face act, serves tea, claiming she’ll be far too busy on her birthday with all her rooms booked. Jeanie has even brought a taste of home, stovies and cranachans. Vera frostily responds that she’s started dinner. Jeanie suggests a buffet. Vera’s hostile response: “Buffets are for christenings and funerals.”

Back at the hall, Sister Reginald has discovered that no one knows Vera’s age, so she and Tom Thomas (David Sterne) start a sweepstake. Callum shows Jimmy his newly-acquired electric guitar, only for John to sneer and suggest her leave the band. (Introducing electric instruments in folk music was a bold new move on both sides of the Atlantic at the time – Bob Dylan’s electric guitar performance at the 1965 Newport Festival lost him the traditional folk fan base.)

Dinner (Not tea! Nor a buffet!) is served at Vera’s, with her other tenants DI Sam Gillespie and Felix Livingstone present. Jeanie reminisces about the ceilidh for Angus’s eighteenth birthday. Both Angus and Cyril went off to war soon after, and Jeanie fervently hopes the music the following evening will remind Vera of happier times. Cyril didn’t make it home.

Callum suggests a visit to the pub, which John forbids, but he’s ignored. At the pub, Constable Peggy Button and Maggie bond, while Callum plays his electric guitar, accompanied by Jimmy on fiddle. Callum invites Maggie to sing, but the evening's enjoyment is disrupted by John's arrival, who orders his children to leave. When Callum protests, John tells him they’ll be leaving the next morning, and the ceilidh is canceled. However, the next day, preparations at the Church Hall continue, so apparently, John was wrong?

Oh, actually, he's dead. John's body is discovered under the refreshments table. 

As Sister Boniface tries to put together what occurred, it seems John came into the hall earlier that morning to collect his equipment. She finds a fragment of wood in John’s hair and some bruising to his face, but the fatal blow was a stab wound in the abdomen. There is also some blood on his chest, which may be the assailant’s. She collects blood samples and fingerprints as Sam takes statements. Rather untactfully, Callum suggests they should go ahead with the ceilidh, to Maggie and Jimmy’s initial distress.

Felix learns from Jeanie that John suffered a personality change after the death of his wife. Angus, whom Felix needs to interview, has gone out on errands, and Vera hands over the keys to Felix so the rooms can be searched. Sister Boniface reports that a glass in John’s room revealed traces of whiskey laced with barbiturates, and two sets of fingerprints, one of which was his. Maggie tells Felix and Sam she took her father the whiskey, laced with some of her medication to make him sleep, so they could have fun undisturbed in the pub. John became very controlling after her mother’s death, and she’s lived under her father’s bullying oppression since.

Sam and Felix return to the police station, where they find Angus dropped by to fit up Chief Constable Hector Lowsley (Robert Daws) in full Highland regalia, bagpipes included. Not only that, but Angus has brought kilts for Sam and Felix, and to their horror, Hector orders them to get kitted up. Also, Angus hadn’t heard about John’s murder.

Sister Boniface searches the van and comes across a crate of whiskey. Angus has a friend with a distillery, but is shocked – shocked! – at the suggestion he might be planning to resell the liquor without a license. However, he was clearly aware of this, as evidenced by John's attempt to blackmail him in retaliation for Angus declaring he couldn’t cancel the ceilidh. However, Agnus is trying to reconnect Jeanie and Vera; murder wouldn’t help. As for Jeanie and Vera, they seem to be getting on until Jeanie accuses her sister of disliking Angus, and Vera points out that she was left behind, widowed, taking care of their mother. Jeanie tells Vera that a surprise party had been planned for her, mainly by Angus.

That's when Sister Boniface finds Callum’s electric guitar, smashed to pieces, and suspects the wood fragment in John’s hair is a match.

In the Church Hall, Sister Peter concocts a lethal punch, but the mood changes when Sam and Felix arrive. Callum admits he met John early that morning in the Church Hall and told him he loved Maggie and wanted to marry her. As John sneered, Callum claimed the instrument would jumpstart a new musical career for him and Maggie. It was then that John smashed the guitar. Callum didn’t retaliate because he knew Maggie loved her flawed father

As the team gathers in Sister Boniface’s laboratory, Felix comments that Callum had the most to gain from John’s death, and Peggy sighs over the romance of it all. Sister Boniface’s vivid imagination conjures up a medieval romance scenario where she performs a hand-fasting ceremony for them, and Callum retrieves a knife from his sock. Returning to reality, Sister Boniface realizes she has identified the murder weapon, a sgian dubh (black knife), which is traditionally part of the kilt regalia. John was stabbed with his own ceremonial dagger. 

At the police station, Hector is still torturing the bagpipes and looks on in astonishment as his officers delve into the bag of kilts Angus brought for them to wear. Hector had the first choice of Highland paraphernalia, and the knife in his sock tests positive; Sister Boniface finds a coal-tar substance in the carved grooves of the handle, as Peggy adds tartan enhancements to her habit. Meanwhile, under questioning, Jimmie admits he went to the Church Hall to challenge his father after his smashing Callum’s guitar. Their quarrel escalated to a fight, in which Jimmie, heartbroken, asked why his father had never loved him. John responded that Jimmie isn’t his son, leaving the young man shocked and tearful.

Vera discovers a birthday present from Jeanie. She opens it to find a framed photograph of herself, Jeanie, Angus, and Cyril from years ago. She is inspired to go to the party, where Sister Boniface meets her outside, after she and Sister Reginald took charge of a very drunk Sister Peter. (Tom Thomas and Angus had spiked the punch with the not-quite-legal whiskey.) The group greets them with warm applause, led by Dottie. Vera makes a speech, which begins “I don’t like surprises ...” and continues with a criticism of push pins being used to secure the bunting, quite against the Church Hall rules. 

As the crowd sings “Happy Birthday,” she makes her peace with her sister and Angus, acknowledging that they lost Cyril, too.

Sister Boniface notices Maggie, who has borrowed a dress from Peggy, didn’t only cover up because of her father. She has psoriasis, which was treated at that time with coal-tar ointment. Pulling the girl to a quiet spot outside, Maggie tells Sister Boniface, Sam, Peggy, and Felix that she overheard John and Jimmie and confronted her father about her mother’s death. He admitted her mother was planning to leave and live with Jimmie’s father, taking Maggie with her. Her father pushed her mother down the stairs that very day as punishment. Realizing she was dealing with a murderer, Maggie grabbed the knife from a bundle of John’s belongings, and when they grappled together, she killed him.

Callum joins them outside just as Sam announces that he’s not going to ruin Vera’s night, although he will arrest Maggie for murder afterward. Callum looks stricken. She kisses him and goes back inside to the party. As Maggie sings, Angus asks Vera, “Are ye dancing?” and she accepts.

The next morning, it’s time for the visitors to leave, everyone in good spirits despite the drama and sadness of the past few days. There’s good reason to hope the judge will be lenient, after Maggie’s history of abuse. Vera reminds Callum that “true love stories never end.” She has bought a ticket to visit Jeanie and Angus in a few weeks, and Felix will probably stop limping soon after his first ceilidh. 

We never find out which birthday Vera was celebrating, in case you were wondering.

Season 4 of Sister Boniface Mysteries airs weekly with a new one–hour episode each Tuesday through October 7, 2025, on BritBox. Seasons 1-3 are currently streaming on BritBox, and Season 1 is airing on select local PBS television stations and streaming on select PBS Passports. Check your local listings.