'Sister Boniface Mysteries' Reminds Us “There’s No 'I' in Slaughter”

Sister Boniface Mysteries opens this week’s episode at the Hempford Hill Training Ground, where Chief Constable Hector Lowsley brings his team, Constable Peggy Button, DI Sam Gillespie, and DS Felix Livingstone to compete for the prestigious “Police Team of the Year Award.” Felix gazes at the collection of Nissen huts and the lookout tower, and optimistically asks if it’s a top-secret training facility. (It’s probably a relic from World War II.) For Peggy, it brings back memories of a Girl Guide expedition in which everyone came down with dysentery. Their trainer, ex-cop and Hector’s old friend, Len Shepherd (Phil Cornwell), arrives to explain they’ll be competing against the Stowington Police Team in several team exercises, each of which will earn them one second off their Assault Course time the next day.

Right on cue, in slow-motion and full of menace, in it to win it, Stowington’s finest arrive in uniform with their own background music via a boombox carried by Rupert Beagle (Tyler-Jo Richardson), along with Heather Thorne (Tamla Kari), and led by DI Jack Stagg (Jay Taylor). Hector and his nemesis and counterpart, Chief Constable Horace Winthrop (Mark McDonnell), engage in some macho posturing and a crunching handshake. Both teams gather in a Nissen hut for the first team-building exercise, introduced by Len concerning fictional criminal Billy McCoy. Although Heather, stiff and formal, has rejected Peggy’s friendly introduction, the teams are together to find out more about each other (not that they want to), and Len presents the first question: Which of them trained as a ballerina? 

Max suggests it was Heather. (It isn’t, as she makes very clear.) Felix points out that since it’s neither of the women, the correct term is ballerino. Heather protests against the sharing of private information, and Winthrop, obviously an old-school type, tells her to go and make tea. Round two is a blindfold-trust challenge, where one partner is aided by verbal clues from their partner, navigating a course to pick up a bag containing Billy McCoy’s loot. The Stowington team cheats by ignoring the traffic cones. Beagle, blindfolded, trips up, and Len and Winthrop insult each other with veiled comments about past encounters.

For Round 3, the teams enter a Nissen hut where a reconstruction of a crime scene is set up. Mannequins in police uniform represent two officers who successfully captured McCoy’s loot and had decided to celebrate at home. One officer, shot dead, is on the floor, and the other, badly wounded, is on the sofa.. They were shot at 2 a.m. the following morning from outside, through a window. The two teams now have to conduct a crime examination, but with lower- and higher-ranking officers exchanging roles, e.g., Peggy in charge and Sam acting as her subordinate. Sister Boniface, naturally, is in charge of forensics, bouncing cheerfully into the Nissen hut and crossing herself at the sight of the mannequins. 

Winthrop seems really bent out of shape at the concept of officers switching roles, and he and Len exchange cryptic insults. Jack finds the spinning top and string, which is Billy McCoy’s calling card. Even though he’s won two more points for the team, Jack is yelled at by Winthrop. Peggy announces that a bullet hole over the fireplace is impossible with the murderer shooting through the window, as Sister Boniface has just pointed out, and it sets Winthrop off again, screaming the Great Slaughter police are part of the plot (Plot? Against him, whatever it is.) Winthrop angrily declares the day’s activities are over. (We’re all relieved.) Peggy and Heather are roomies, so Peggy once again tries to be nice, but Heather insists her friendliness is a cunning plot to win the competition. 

The next morning, Winthrop’s hut is locked, and he’s not responding to attempts to wake him. Sam knocks the door down and, yes, you’ve guessed it, Winthrop is dead. 

He’s been felled by a head injury, which looks to have been probably caused by falling while drunk and landing badly on the steel frame of his bed. For a minute, it seems like a terrible accident, as the only key to the hut was inside, the lock is undamaged, and the window is securely bolted. There’s no other way out; it couldn’t have been murder. But of course it is: Billy McCoy’s calling card, the spinning top, has been left beside the body, and the blood pattern on the floor indicates it was placed there after Winthrop’s death.

Sam breaks the news to Hector, who must now report to Winthrop’s commanding officer. But, Hector stresses, it was officially an accident, and the murder will have to be secretly investigated, so the Stowington team doesn’t realize what Slaughter is doing. When the two teams meet, Len tells them he has a no alcohol policy, but Winthrop insists on searching the huts anyway. Jack tells Sam that Winthrop once planted a bottle of liquor in his belongings and then denied him a promotion. They commiserate, and Jack suggests going for a drink. (It’s 10 a.m.!)

He also asks if Peggy is single. Sam warns him off Pegs, and when he says no to drinking, Jack, embarrassed, explains his habit came from the pressure of having to be everyone’s hero. 

Sam joins Sister Boniface and Felix, who are discussing why the killer tried to make it look like an accident but then left a clue. Peggy, who has just found a torn-up letter outside, comes into the hut, followed by Len, forcing Sister Boniface to hide under the bed. (Remember, no one outside the Great Slaughter team knows it's murder, so there's no reason for her to be there.) 

Len announced the contest will continue, despite Winthrop’s death, and is here with another ridiculous scenario planned. Felix is to play Billy McCoy’s hostage and is bound and gagged; the rest of Team Slaughter has to rescue him from Team Stowington, who represent Billy’s vicious hounds. If the “hounds” touch their opponents, they’ll have to return to the starting line. Sam eventually “rescues” Felix, despite Jack knocking him down three times. Then the roles are reversed, and Len selects Rupert Beagle (his woebegone expression and humble demeanor naturally lead to his last name being adopted as a nickname) to play hostage for Team Stowington. 

However, Felix recognizes that something is wrong – Beagle is having a panic attack as a response to being tied up.  As Felix frees him, he notices an injury on Beagle’s hand. With the game paused, the contestants take a break. Heather takes notes, Jack drinks, and Felix sits next to Beagle, tending to his injury, which happened because Beagle was forced to carry everyone’s luggage when they arrived. Felix recognizes bullying when he sees it, and responds kindly.... Until Jack interrupts to tell Beagle that Felix is trying to break down his resolve so Team Slaughter will win the contest. Beagle assures him he knew what Felix was doing, and was not fooled, he is loyal to the team.

Peggy’s torn-up note turns out to be a report written by Heather, ratting out her fellow officers to Winthrop for minor mistakes. It’s no wonder they are all unfriendly and cold if they are all being encouraged to snitch on each other’s activities. Heather’s report includes that Rupert’s luggage includes a comfort blanket and that Jack is hiding his alcoholism, neither of which is exactly a secret. As for her take on Team Slaughter, Peggy is a doormat, Felix has no particular talents, and Sam has “a staggering lack of intelligence, mitigated only by his boyish good looks.” (Sam isn’t as upset about this as you’d think he’d be.)

When Sam gently confronts Heather, she admits that Winthrop forced her to spy on her colleagues and that she was angry at him for wasting her time, which demoralized her. Peggy is shocked and tells her that not all men are like that and that Sam, for instance, respects everyone. Heather has to reconsider her opinion of Sam’s intellect and tact when he tells her he knew Winthrop had something on her, and if this were a murder investigation, she’d have to tell him what it was. She tells him it’s not relevant, and Peggy persuades him not to push for details.

Len rallies the contestants for one more round of competition, a scavenger hunt allegedly connected to Billy McCoy, who has been arrested but then given an alibi by his girlfriend. Everyone dashes off except Felix and Peggy, the latter of whom has realized that Winthrop must have had access to everyone’s personnel files; that’s how he was able to undermine his officers. Sister Boniface expertly picks the lock to Len’s Nissen hut, where they find the files, which someone has clearly raided. Sam reports to Hector and tells him the case is made difficult because all the suspects are trained police officers. Also, in a blow to Hector’s ambitions, Team Stowington, who have just returned with armfuls of junk they found, are now way ahead in the contest with their accumulated points since they aren’t hampered by trying to solve a mystery without anyone else realizing it.

Grateful she told Sam to leave off questioning, Heather confides in Peggy that her previous job was as a “racy” (ie, nude) model; Winthrop blackmailed her, and she knew her career could be destroyed at any moment. Peggy, already impressed by Heather’s professional police work, and not quite picking up on the euphemism, blurts out: “A model and a police officer!? You’re my superhero.”

Meanwhile, with the case files, Sister Boniface has discovered that the "Billy McCoy" case is not fictional, as Len claimed, but is based on a real, unsolved case from his time as Chief Constable. During the failed investigation, one of the two officers assigned to the case, Sgt Harrison, was murdered. The other officer was shot as well, but survived; no one is surprised it was Winthrop. Len lost his job and turned his skills to directing team-building courses for police officers. Len added the fictitious persona of Billy McCoy and his spinning top calling card to his training course, hoping that by forcing all the officers in the county to take the training, he would eventually find the guilty party. 

Sister Boniface does some serious experimental work on angles and windows to discover how the spinning top and its string were used to return the key to Winthrop’s room after the murder. She even conducts a time-traveling (imaginary) postmortem interview with Winthrop in the reconstructed crime scene, in which she explains the science-defying trajectory of the bullet that caused his injury. The blood spatter and burn marks on his uniform indicate he turned the gun on himself after killing Sgt Harrison.

Outside, Hector hustles the team to participate in the obstacle course, which they have no chance of winning, and they are quite hilariously incompetent. Sam and Felix at least don't let the time go to waste, discussing the case as they hand Peggy over the walls. (Team Stowington isn’t much better.) Sister Boniface joins them to tell them her findings, only to notice Beagle running away, heading toward the tower. Team Slaughter gives chase and corners him at the top of the tower, where Beagle confesses. He is the son of Sergeant Harrison, and when he saw the crime reconstruction and the spinning top, he realized what had happened the night of his father's death. 

That night, Beagle confronted Winthrop, who was drinking heavily and threatened to kill him if he told anyone. In the ensuing struggle, Beagle pushed Winthrop backward. The injury to his hand, which Felix had bandaged, was caused by the string he used to return the key through the window.

Beagle feels he has failed his family, his honor, and the police. Sam appeals to him, one cop to another who’s taken the same path; from below, Heather shouts to him not to jump, that their team needs him. It's possibly the first kind and sincere sentiment he’s ever had from his colleagues. It persuades him to come down and surrender himself. Beagle expects to be handcuffed, but Felix gently coaxes him into the police car.

Len’s great mission is accomplished after building this elaborate trap to restore his own honor and find who was responsible for Harrison's death. He’s hoped for ten years that someone taking his training course would recognize the setup and provide the information to solve the case. Now it’s done, he’s ready to move on and find another career. However, Team Stowington won the Police Team of the Year Award. Hector is embarrassed, but also relieved.

That leaves one final mystery: who is the Ballerino? Of course, it’s Felix. (Sam knew, because he had access to the personnel files, the rest of us guessed because we’d seen Felix dance the tango in Episode 5.) Felix obliges with a pirouette or two (no tututs). Honor restored, the team returns to Great Slaughter. 

Sister Boniface Mysteries Season 4 continues with new episodes every week on Tuesdays on BritBox through the end of September. Seasons 1 through 3 are currently streaming on BritBox. Seasons 1 and 2 are also available on select PBS Passports for members to stream; check your local service.