Beyond Paradise season 2 episode 3 offered us a rare glimpse into the private life of office support Margo Martins (Felicity Montagu), when her former sister-in-law Maisie Morgan (Jenny Coverack) disappeared from a fishing trawler, and Margo's ex-husband Jaime (Danny Webb) came back onto the scene. Meanwhile, DI Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) and Martha Lloyd (Sally Bretton) underwent the next stage in their assessment as potential foster parents when social services carried out a home visit — but in the heat of the moment, Humphrey and Martha told a fib that had serious consequences for Martha's mum Anne (Barbara Flynn).
Here's what happened in Beyond Paradise season 2 episode 3...
It's a beautiful Shipton Abbott morning, and Maisie Morgan is standing at the bow of fishing trawler the Tom Crocker. Below deck, Adam Morgan (Dan Skinner) and his brother Sam (Louis Martin) are playing cards when their other sibling Billy (Harry Long) comes down to tell them they've nearly arrived, so Sam takes the opportunity for a quick loo break. Adam says it's time to get the nets in, but when he gets up on the deck, Maisie is nowhere to be seen — although her scarf is tied around the handrails and her boots are on the deck with a note left inside them. As the brothers call out for Maisie, Adam makes an emergency radio call to raise the alarm.
As the Tom Crocker returns to the harbour, a white van screeches to a halt alongside it — it's driven by Jaime, Maisie's brother, who wants to know what's going on. Sam tells him that she's gone.
Over at the police station, Humphrey is wondering what a home visit entails, and Margo and DS Esther Williams (Zahra Ahmadi) are gently teasing him that social services need to come round and check he's not a weirdo who has people chained up in his cellar. (Humphrey points out that he lives in a boat, so he doesn't have a cellar, and Margo suggests he could use the engine room.) Kelby takes a call from the harbour master that someone has been lost at sea from the Tom Crocker, and Margo leaps out of her seat and hurries out to the harbour. She approaches Jaime, who tells her that the missing person is Maisie, and they share an emotional hug.
Catching up, Esther briefs Humphrey that Maisie went missing from the Tom Crocker at 5:53am, and the RNLI are liaising with the Coastguard and the police's marine unit to go back out and search the area, but they aren't holding out much hope of finding Maisie alive — or indeed at all, given the scale of the area they'd have to search. The harbourmaster has told Humphrey that everyone suspects Maisie took her own life — Maisie was dying, and the brothers found a suicide note.
Humphrey and Esther approach Margo and ask her if everything's all right. She explains that Jaime is her ex-husband and he works on the Tom Crocker sometimes, filling in the details that the three Morgan boys are Maisie's stepsons from her marriage to Sam Sr, while she also has a daughter, Jenny, from a previous marriage — and Jaime has just gone to call her and break the news. Humphrey suggests Margo might want to take some compassionate leave, but Margo brusquely insists she's fine.
The next order of business is for Humphrey and Esther to speak to the Morgan boys — Adam explains that they were all up on deck until they'd put the nets out, at which point Maisie offered to keep watch while the others went for a tea break. They went down into the cabin to play cards, and when they came up to get the nets in, Maisie was gone. There's no other way off the boat — the life raft was on the back, and it's still sealed. Humphrey wonders why Maisie was on a dawn fishing trip, given that she was terminally ill, and Adam explains that she'd always loved the sea — she hadn't come out to work, she just wanted to go out to sea one last time. He realises now that they should have known what she was planning. Billy says that he was the last one to see Maisie when he came up to check the wheelhouse, and Sam clarifies that he went straight from the toilet up to the stern of the boat, never going near the bow.
Kelby brings Margo over an ice cream, having been sent over to check on her by Humphrey and Esther. He tells her that he always wanted to be a fisherman, but he couldn't handle the early starts — he got a summer job on a boat once and had a 4:30am call, but the boat had always gone by the time he got there and he got sacked on his third day. (His best turnout was 8:15am, and apparently the rest of the crew were already in France by then.) When Margo explains her connection to Maisie, Kelby asks if that's why she rushed out when she heard the news, and Margo admits that she actually feared it was Jaime who'd gone missing. Kelby says he can't picture Margo being married to a fisherman, and asks how long they were married. "Too long," she replies, adding that they got married a bit too young when they still had a lot of growing up to do — but nobody could have told them that at the time.
Humphrey and Esther inspect the boat, and Humphrey thinks it's a little odd that Maisie tied her scarf to the rail and left her shoes behind like that — not to mention the fact that she jumped off the boat at the most inconvenient place, given that she would have had to climb over the railings, while if she'd gone down to the sides of the boat she could have pretty much stepped off. He's not ruling out a suicide at this point, but he thinks they should keep an open mind for now. Esther suggests talking to Maisie's doctor for further information.
The news of Maisie's shock disappearance has already reached Ten Mile Kitchen, where Anne is explaining to Martha that the Morgan family basically are Shipton Abbott. Anne mentions that Maisie fell out with her daughter, Jenny, just after she and Sam Sr got married — they've not spoken since, and Maisie is heartbroken. When they finish discussing the Morgan family, Anne tells Martha to head off for her home visit, and that she and Zoe (Melina Sinadinou) can hold the fort at the restaurant. However, Anne wants her to be back by 3pm because she's got a date tonight, and she's being picked up at 7pm. Martha is incredulous that her mum needs four hours to prepare for a date, and Anne tells Martha to just wait until she's Anne's age, and then all will become clear.
Margo drops in on Jaime, claiming she was just passing on her way back to work. (That old excuse!) She asks how Jenny took the news, and Jaime says she didn't say a lot other than thanks for letting her know, and she'll be coming to Shipton. Margo says it's a shame she didn't make the effort when her mum was alive, but they both admit that was never likely to happen. Margo asks after the boys, and Jaime says they'll be mostly worrying about themselves. Finally, Margo checks if Jaime himself is okay — he says he's fine, that it's not as if what happened came out of the blue. Margo apologises for not checking in before, and Jaime says it wasn't really her place any more — but he reminds Margo that Maisie always liked her, and Margo returns the sentiment. Margo tells Jaime that even if Maisie had been ill for a while, it doesn't mean he'll grieve any less — she was his sister, and he'll miss her. Jaime jokes that he'll miss her nagging, and the two of them chuckle, with a little hint of an old spark rekindling.
Kelby has been checking the boat's GPS logs at the police station, and it confirms that they left at 4:30am, went out about five miles and dropped their nets. They then towed them for three miles, and after that the movement was a bit erratic — presumably because they were searching for Maisie. Esther says that the forensic team are hopeful that they've got some good samples from the boat, and that they've also visited the Morgans' home and taken DNA swabs for identification. Martha arrives to collect Humphrey, and he leaves Esther in charge while he's gone.
Over at the Morgan house, the three brothers are gathered with Billy's wife Sandra (Gem Carmella), and it's Sam who addresses the elephant in the room — the subject of Maisie's will. Adam and Billy are aghast that he'd bring this up so soon, but Sam believes they're thinking the same as he is, because it turns out there's an ongoing dispute over their inheritance that's got the Morgan brothers at loggerheads.
Hannah Owen (Amalia Vitale) from social services is inspecting Humphrey and Martha's houseboat and tells them they're almost at the end of the process: they've got a final panel meeting the following week, and after that, a senior manager will make a decision. Hannah checks various details about the houseboat with them and verifies that they're in a long-term relationship, but not married. Martha asks if the fact that they're not married is a problem, and Hannah assures her that it isn't — they have single people fostering children, the main priority is that the child has a stable and loving environment.
Martha checks whether the fact that they live on a boat is a problem in and of itself, and Hannah says she doesn't expect so — but that it may limit the age of children they ask them to take in, because it's not a great environment for toddlers, and they don't have a garden as such. Martha points out that they have lots of open space around them, and Hannah agrees that's undoubtedly a positive, but it's harder to leave small children playing on their own if you don't have a secure garden. Humphrey points out that they do have the house...
Cut to: Martha at Ten Mile Kitchen, guiltily breaking the news to Anne that they told Hannah that they sometimes live in the house, and that the boat was more of a "recreational" abode. Anne asks the very reasonable question of where exactly she's supposed to be living when Martha and Humphrey are living in her house, and Martha — after a deal of umm-ing and ahh-ing — fesses up that they told Hannah they took it in turns: when Martha and Humphrey live in the house, Anne lives on the boat and vice versa. Martha explains that if they'd said they lived in the house with Anne, they'd have to go back to the beginning of the process: answer all the questions again, get Anne vetted by social services, and so on. She points out that they would only be living in the house if they were fostering, so it could only be for a matter of days or weeks, so it would almost be like a holiday for Anne. (Credit to Martha here, she is doing a much better job of selling this to Anne as a good thing than we would have managed in her position — although she's still not exactly doing a great job...) Oh, and one more thing: they need Anne out of the house quickly so Hannah can come back and assess them "in situ" — like, this weekend. Anne gets to her feet and tells Martha she's going home to have a shower while she still can, and then she will be "layering on an inordinate amount of make-up, which will hopefully mask the horror and disbelief of being evicted from my own home by my only child." Martha, perhaps a little too brightly, suggests they can talk about it later, and Anne icily informs her that they will indeed do just that. Zoe comes over, sensing the tone, and asks what Martha did. "Stole her house," Martha admits.
At the police station, Esther's got the fingerprints report back from the Tom Crocker: Maisie's prints were found at the bow of the ship, where her scarf and shoes were left, as well as on the port and starboard sides. The three brothers' prints were pretty much everywhere. Esther also spoke to Maisie's consultant, who thought she had a few months left — possibly only weeks. Apparently the last time he saw her, she was fixated on getting her will changed, and asked if there was any medical reason that she would not be able to do this. Margo, ever the font of Shipton Abbott knowledge, picks up the story here from what she's heard on the grapevine: when Sam Senior died, he left everything to Maisie in his will on the proviso that when she was gone, she would leave the fishing business to his sons. However, Adam — as the eldest — kept insisting that Morgan family tradition is for the oldest son to inherit the business. But Maisie doesn't remember Sam Sr saying that was what he wanted, and Billy and Young Sam always thought they would get a share of the business, because that's what Maisie had told them. Humphrey deduces that if Maisie was talking about changing her will, presumably she had taken Adam's side after all. Esther points out that they're hardly the first family to argue over a will — and none of this really changes anything as far as their investigation is concerned. Humphrey agrees, but thinks it's important to find out if Maisie did actually change the will before she died.
Over at the harbour, Young Sam is on the phone to someone he presumably owes money to — potentially giving him a motive for offing Maisie before she had a chance to change her will. Back at the police station, Humphrey rearranges a load of furniture and office supplies into the approximate layout of the Tom Crocker. He stages a mini re-enactment in the office in order to demonstrate that Maisie would have had to climb over the handrail in order to jump from the bow of the boat — but the forensics team didn't find any fingerprints to suggest the change in hand placement that this would have required.
The report did state that Maisie's prints were on both sides of the boat, and the prints on the port side make absolute sense, because the boat was moored port-side to the jetty. But there's something suspicious about the prints on the starboard side of the boat: they show Maisie's hands facing inwards, as though she was standing on the other side of the rail. Kelby wonders if that's where she jumped from — but, Humphrey wonders, if that's the case, why did Maisie leave her scarf, shoes and note at the bow? Esther suggests that whatever else happened, they definitely know she jumped, but Humphrey thinks they can't even take that as a given: what if someone just wanted to make it look like she jumped? Could the suicide note be a forgery? He tells Esther that they speak to the Morgan boys again.
Humphrey and Esther interview Adam at the harbour, and he says it's obvious in hindsight that when Maisie asked to come out on the boat with them, she was planning to end her life. Esther asks about his relationship with Maisie, and Adam says there's not much to tell: she was their stepmum, she looked after their dad, they respected her for that... and that's all he has to say.
Next, they go to speak to Billy at the family home, who explains that Maisie said her will would be divided four ways between the three boys and Jenny. Adam went ballistic when he found out, although Billy and Sam Jr thought Sam Sr was just making a perfectly reasonable break with tradition. At the boat shed, Sam Jr says that Adam bullied Maisie, going on and on at her about how she was going against family tradition — and last week, she agreed to speak to a lawyer about changing her will. Sam admits to having no interest in taking over the family business, but Billy had offered to buy out his share so that Sam could start up his own business doing boat trips for tourists. He's not sure if Maisie changed the will before she jumped. Humphrey asks what Jenny stood to inherit, and Sam isn't sure — he hasn't seen Jenny for years, due to her falling out with Maisie many years ago. He thinks Uncle Jaime is the only family member Jenny's still in contact with. Humphrey and Esther leave, noting that Maisie's plan to change her will meant that all three sons (and arguably Jenny too) had a vested interest in exactly when she died.
Anne is now ready for her date, and tells Martha that Richard (Peter Davison) will be taking her for dinner, and then a stroll along the front: "maybe I can pick out a suitable shop doorway? Somewhere to sleep when I'm homeless." Martha says she'll call Hannah and tell her there has been a change of plans, but Anne tells her not to: she's decided it's a wonderful idea — she's finding the idea of staying on the boat slightly romantic, and can picture herself and Richard sitting on the deck sitting champagne. Martha cautiously asks if Anne's sure things aren't going too quickly with Richard, and asks how well she really knows him. Anne gets a little defensive at the question, and the ringing of the doorbell signals an end to the conversation. Over at the harbour, Adam is on hold on the phone to someone — presumably a solicitor.
Margo and Jaime have gone to the Kitty Jay for a drink, and the conversation has turned to whether they could have made more of a go of their marriage. Margo reckons she still considers it a lucky escape. It turns out they had a fight over Jaime lying to her: he told her he was sleeping on the boat because he was going out early in the morning, but her friend saw him out on the town, standing on a table and dancing for a group of girls. Apparently this wasn't the first time he'd lied to her, but it was the last straw. Jaime asks why she came out tonight if she hates him that much, and Margo says he sounded sad on the phone. Jaime says he was laying it on thick to make sure she'd come.
Apparently Jaime has been trying to get Margo out for a drink for some time and she's always turned him down, not seeing the point. He still thinks the two of them could have been good together, and Margo thinks maybe if things had been different: if she hadn't got pregnant, if they'd waited and grown up a bit, perhaps. However, she claims the moment when she knew for sure she shouldn't have married him was when she realised how slow he is to get the drinks in.
Richard and Anne arrive in the pub, passing by Margo's table and heading over to one of their own. Richard mentions he's "famished", which gets them onto the subject of old-timey words that people don't say much any more, which in turn gets them onto the subject of how Zoe's been teaching Anne all the modern vernacular. Richard tells Anne that one of the things he admires about her is the way she doesn't act her age, and she suggests they agree to grow old disgracefully. They discuss their respective days, and Anne mentions that she's been forced into house-swapping with Martha and Humphrey, and also Martha giving her "a lecture" (we would dispute that description!) about Richard. They joke about the idea of Richard being a conman who's after Anne's non-existent fortune, and Richard says in that case he'd better pay for dinner. Later in the evening, Richard explains that he ended up on the dating app after being cajoled into it by his daughters, so he agreed to meet three women maximum and if none of them were suitable, he was allowed to delete his profile without another word. (How romantic!) The first woman he met cried a lot and talked about her ex-husband. The second had had so much surgery she looked like a Picasso painting. Anne was the third — and, as she points out, he's essentially just told her she was the best of a bad bunch. She says her experience was not unlike Richard's, except he's only the second man she's been out with. The first taught Shakespeare and collected stamps, and Anne felt compelled to tell him that she was moving to Mexico to look after her ailing Aunt Judith. Still, she checked his profile again recently and he's now dating Cheryl from Aberdeen, so that's nice.
Martha finds Humphrey dangling off the edge of the houseboat over the water (perfectly normal situation) — he's trying to figure out if he can get on and off the boat without using his hands. He assures her it's perfectly safe, right before the rail he's holding onto snaps off in his hands and he falls into the water. After Humphrey clambers out and wraps himself in a blanket, shivering, Humphrey tells Martha that he was trying this out because something about the case that didn't add up. Martha gently points out that this wasn't Humphrey's wisest idea ever, but at least he didn't do it when Hannah from Social Services was visiting. They agree that the visit with Hannah generally went well, the whole "stealing Anne's house" part notwithstanding. Martha tells Humphrey that Anne took the news well, although she's sure they'll end up paying for their impertinence somewhere down the line. Martha admits that the comment about their martial status threw her, and she wonders why Hannah would mention it if it wasn't an issue — they're so close to being approved, so she's worrying about everything, but Humphrey assures her it's all going to be fine.
Somewhere things are definitely not all fine, however, is the Morgan house, where Adam bursts in and pins Billy against the wall: turns out he's managed to speak to the lawyer, and Maisie did not change her will before she died. Apparently Maisie had made an appointment with the solicitor on Thursday and had asked Sandra to take her into town — but, by the sounds of it, Sandra did not, and Adam thinks she and Billy did that deliberately.
At the Kitty Jay, Margo and Jaime are pretty intoxicated, and Jaime asks if he can go back to hers for old time's sake. Before Margo can give him an answer, however, Jenny (Jasmine Hyde) arrives to see Jaime.
Anne and Richard return to the house after their date, and Anne suggests he come in for coffee — though, she says, she isn't sure she's ready for coffee, as it were. They decide to have a brandy instead, given that it doesn't have quite such sexual connotations (as far as we're aware, anyway).
Esther arrives at the police station the following morning to find Humphrey lying back with his eyes closed, but apparently fully awake. He asks Kelby if there's any news from the marine unit, and Kelby says they ran out of light yesterday but will be going back out this morning. Margo tells Esther that Jenny has arrived, and is staying at the Kitty Jay. Humphrey says they should speak to her: Margo points out that she probably won't be able to say much, having not spoken to Maisie for years, but Humphrey thinks Jenny will be the last piece of the jigsaw. However, he does need to make a mysterious stop on the way...
At the harbour, Jaime is telling Jenny that Maisie had changed over the years. Jenny doesn't seem particularly moved by that. Humphrey and Esther arrive to speak to Jenny, and Jaime leaves them to it — with a promise to take Jenny out crabbing later, like he used to when she was little. Humphrey asks Jenny about her relationship with her mother, and Jenny says she didn't have one, due to her mother having an affair when she was younger. After the affair, Jenny went to live with Maisie and Sam Sr, but had a terrible time of things: the boys were horrible to her, and Maisie wasn't interested when Jenny told her how unhappy she was. Her dad had a cottage up the coast, but was no good on his own because he was still so in love with Maisie. One night, things came to a head when Jenny and Maisie had a fight over something the boys had done, which ended in Maisie taking the boys' side and Jenny leaving to live with her dad. But her dad was drinking heavily by this point, and one night he collapsed — Jenny called Maisie, but she was too busy with Sam Jr's 18th birthday party to care much. Jenny's father died before he got to the hospital. Maisie tried to apologise at the funeral, but Jenny wasn't interested, and told Maisie that the next time she'd see her would be at Maisie's own funeral.
Humphrey asks if Jenny knew about the friction over Maisie's will, and Jenny says scornfully that she doesn't care — she doesn't want anything from Maisie. She's only here for the memorial service to honour her promise, and then she's done.
Over at the police station, Kelby is entertaining himself (and baffling Margo) with the idea of some sort of Sliding Doors-style alternate universe where he became a fisherman and Margo stayed married to one, and they were still working together. Humphrey and Esther arrive, and Kelby tells Humphrey that the handwriting analysis has come back, confirming that the suicide note was written by Maisie, and that the CCTV from the harbourmaster has come in. Esther, pretty attuned to the Shipton Abbott grapevine herself, wants to know what happened between Margo and Jaime in the pub, but Margo claims it was just work — all part of the background checks on Maisie's family that Humphrey had asked her to do. Humphrey looks at Margo and makes a "your secret is safe with me" gesture.
Humphrey's reviewing the CCTV footage when he notices something strange — the four-person lifeboat crew returning from their search. Except there are initially five of them, until they walk behind Jaime's van and only four emerge on the other side. Humphrey realises that they've been barking up the wrong tree the whole time: remember the prints they found on the starboard side of the boat that had Maisie on the outward edge of the boat facing inwards, as well as the prints on the port side from when she boarded? Well, when the boat came back into the harbour, it was facing in the opposite direction, so Maisie's prints are on the starboard side because she was getting off the boat.
Humphrey summarises his theory: Maisie asked her stepsons to take her out on the boat one last time, but not in order to take her own life. When she was sure they were all below deck, she took off her scarf and shoes and left the note behind. She knew that when they found her scarf and shoes, they would assume she'd jumped — and would be focusing on searching for her in the ocean rather than on the trawler. Maisie hid in a chest on the boat, where she'd hidden a spare RNLI uniform. When the boat got back into the harbour, she climbed out and donned her disguise, then climbed out on the starboard side (leaving her fingerprints facing the wrong way). She waited for the RNLI crew to walk past and blended herself in among them, and then hopped into the back of Jaime's van. Jaime, of course, was in on the plan from the start. Maisie had remembered that Jenny said she wouldn't see her again until her funeral — so she'd faked her own death in order to see Jenny one last time.
Speaking of Jenny, she's down on the beach looking out to sea when Jaime and Maisie approach her from behind. Jenny gasps at the sight of her mother, and Jaime tells her apologetically that it was the only way they could get her here. Maisie tells Jenny that she's dying, though Jenny points out that so was her dad, and Maisie didn't care then. Jenny asks what she wants from her, and Maisie says she wants to say goodbye.
Humphrey and Esther arrive on the scene, and watch Maisie and Jenny's conversation from a distance. The two detectives start walking towards them, but Jaime tells them to leave them be: this reunion has been a long time coming, and surely they can afford them another 10 minutes. Humphrey and Esther stop to watch for a little longer, and sure enough, Jenny and Maisie share a tearful hug.
Maisie's memorial takes place — presumably after her actual, genuine death this time — and pretty much all of Shipton Abbott is in attendance. Humphrey tells Esther that Maisie never did change her will: all four children got an equal share, but Jenny remained adamant that she didn't want any of it, so the three brothers are now squabbling about what to do with her portion. Martha says they'll realise soon enough that money isn't everything. Esther says that technically they should charge Jaime with wasting police time, but Humphrey thinks they should probably run that past Margo first.
Afterwards, Humphrey and Martha plus family and friends head to the houseboat for their own informal wake, where Margo tells the others that she's washed her hands of Jaime: she was trying to comfort him, and he was lying to her again. Martha brings Anne a glass of wine on the bow, and asks her how things are going with Richard, apologising for what she said: she tells her mother that Anne spent much of her life worrying about Martha, and now Martha feels it's time she did the same for Anne. Anne says pointedly she's also spent most of her life supporting Martha, and gets up and walks off.
As Humphrey joins Martha, she admits that Anne is still cross with her, and Humphrey says that she'll need to make up with her soon, because they're going to need Anne: not only for the house-swapping, but also to give Martha away. He tells Martha that what Hannah said about them not being married made him wonder why they weren't: they both want to be, and they talk about it often enough, so what's stopping them? Martha says they just haven't got around to it, and Humphrey says that's exactly it: so he's booked their wedding for a few weeks' time...
