Beyond Paradise season 2 episode 4 gave us a spooky mystery-of-the-week when teacher Father Michael (Starstruck's Joe Barnes) went missing from an elite boarding school after wandering down the foggy coastal path at night, leaving DI Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) and DS Esther Williams (Zahra Ahmadi) trying to work out exactly what happened to him, while Anne Lloyd was left humiliated after her new boyfriend Richard (Peter Davison) was revealed to be hiding a fairly large secret — a wife-sized one, in fact.
Here's what happened in Beyond Paradise season 2 episode 4...
We open on what looks for a brief moment like the music video for "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" as the camera swoops towards a building on a clifftop that's revealed to be St Barnabus School for Boys, where Father Michael is ushering the boys out of the common room and towards their dormitories because it's bedtime. Roddy (David Olaniregun) wants to stay behind and finish watching his TV programme, but Father Michael is having none of it. Much later, we hear the school's church bell tolling midnight (can't imagine that does much for the pupils' sleep patterns) as Father Michael quietly exits and makes his way along the cliff path, heading down to the beach as the fog draws in. He calls out "Who is that? Who's there? ... No! Oh, no!" — though of course the fog means we can't see what's prompted this reaction from him.
The next morning, Humphrey and his fiancée Martha Lloyd (Sally Bretton) are in a proper flap in their houseboat, having overslept on the morning of their big interview to be approved as foster carers. (Incidentally, this scene makes canon what many of us have been suspecting: the ceilings in that houseboat are very low for a man of Humphrey's stature.) Anne is sitting outside her house enjoying a cup of tea, noting that they're cutting it a bit fine for their appointment as they dive into the car and accelerate past her. They arrive in time for their meeting — but on the way in Humphrey realises he's wearing odd shoes (and both of them lefts, for that matter). Martha advises him to just style it out as a deliberate fashion choice.
PC Kelby Hartford (Dylan Llewellyn) arrives at the police station to find that almost every electrical appliance (yes, even his pencil sharpener) has a sticky note attached with the word "NO!" on it in black marker. Margo Martins (Felicity Montagu) explains that she's had a smart meter fitted in a bid to keep their electricity usage down, because part of the review that's currently being conducted into the station's efficiency includes their running costs, so they'll all need to make sacrifices — since the most likely other option is redundancies.
Kelby, worried, asks who she thinks is likely to get the chop if it comes to that, and Margo says, "whoever they think we can do without, I suppose".
Post-interview, Humphrey's dropping Martha off at Ten Mile Kitchen. He's pleased with how it went but Martha's got something on her mind: given how their morning went, she's worried that they don't actually have the time to give these (theoretical) children the attention they need and deserve.
Before Humphrey can answer, Margo calls to inform him of this week's big case: that of the missing teacher. She warns him to be careful on his way there: St Barnabus School is near Cannons Cove, and local legend has it that dark forces operate in that area: "Beware the devil on the rocks," she intones before hanging up.
As Humphrey goes to rejoin Martha, the week's second mystery reveals itself: someone has trashed Ten Mile Kitchen. A short while later, Kelby arrives to survey the crime scene, and Humphrey leaves him in charge while he heads off to St Barnabus (Martha suggests he change his shoe on the way there). Zoe (Melina Sinadinou) arrives, having heard about the break-in and offering to help Martha clean up.
Humphrey and Esther arrive at the school, where Esther briefs Humphrey that Father Michael is a housemaster ("whatever that is") and that the school is very strict and old-fashioned, infamously a place where posh people send their kids if they're going off the rails. They pass Roddy on the way in, who's been left to mop up some sort of spillage in the car park, and proceed to their meeting with austere headteacher Marion Goddard (Van Der Valk's Emma Fielding), who's having a stiff brandy despite the fact it's still not the afternoon yet. She describes Father Michael as "good-natured, likeable, a wonderful teacher", and keeps calling Esther "Constable".
Esther presumably has a few alternative names she'd like to use for Marion, but remains admirably professional. Father Brian (Nicholas Woodeson), the school chaplain, arrives with the CCTV camera footage which he is struggling to navigate on a tablet, but which shows Father Michael crossing the east lawn just after midnight, heading towards the coastal path. Father Brian has video evidence to prove that this isn't the first time Father Michael has gone for a late-night wander: in fact, he's been doing it regularly for the past five weeks. He thinks Father Michael wouldn't be doing that unless he had a very good reason.
Back at Anne's house, Richard is helping her move into Humphrey and Martha's houseboat, as agreed last week so that they can live in the house when they're fostering. They have a little joke about where his berth will be, and Richard helps Anne to start moving Humphrey and Martha's belongings into the house.
Humphrey and Esther speak to Father Michael's pupils to see if anyone saw anything around the time of his disappearance, and it's clear that Mrs Goddard rules the school with an iron fist. It's also clear that Roddy knows something about Father Michael, but isn't keen to speak up.
On the way to Father Michael's quarters, Marion asks Humphrey and Martha for their discretion, revealing that if it were up to her, she might not have called the police at all (it was Father Brian who insisted they were informed) because she doesn't want a big media circus around the school. She cuts Humphrey down to size by using big words like "mordacious" (meaning sarcastic or cutting), no doubt also helping BBC One to fulfil its educational remit for the week.
Mrs Goddard leaves them alone in Father Michael's room, where Esther finally gets a chance to vent everything she feels about Mrs Goddard: chiefly that she's a woman who doesn't respect other women and only ever talks to the men in the room. Humphrey leafs through Father Michael's books and rips out a sheet of paper with a phone number on it. Esther quizzes him on his own experience of boarding school, and he mentions that he actually enjoyed it — it helped that he was good at sport. (Esther finds this detail a little hard to believe.) Humphrey noticed Roddy's unease earlier and, spotting him out the window heading off on his own, goes off to look for him while Esther goes to speak to Father Brian.
Martha rushes home to move her things, but when she tells Anne about the break-in, Anne tells her not to worry about it and to go back to work. Richard assures her that they have all of the moving under control, and Martha thanks him before hopping back into the car and heading back to Ten Mile Kitchen. After she leaves, Richard mentions to Anne that there's a "little do" at an art gallery in Calstock tomorrow night, and he'd very much like her to go with him. Anne says it sounds lovely, but she'll be too busy sorting out her unpacking — also, tomorrow would have been Antony (her late husband)'s birthday. Richard tells her he understands, but the offer is always open if she changes her mind.
Over at the school, Father Brian is telling Esther that Father Michael made a request for an advance on his salary a few weeks ago, ostensibly because he needed to send money to an aunt in Yorkshire. School policy didn't allow for such things, and when Father Brian broke the bad news, Father Michael got quite agitated about it. Suspecting that there was more to the story than meets the eye, he invited Father Michael to come to confession — but Father Michael never came. Father Brian says that Father Michael was a very good friend of his, and Esther assures him they're doing all they can to find him.
Humphrey finds Roddy in a cave down the cliffs having a cheeky vape, and Roddy asks Humphrey if he's going to snitch on him. (Humphrey: "Do I look like a snitcher?" Roddy: "A bit.") Humphrey assures him that he isn't, but assures Roddy that any information he can share might make all the difference when it comes to finding Father Michael. Roddy reluctantly admits that he saw Father Michael on the cliffs a few nights before he went missing, which only happened because Roddy sometimes goes out there himself after lights out to get some much-needed alone time.
When he saw Father Michael, he looked like he was in a hurry and had something important to do — but then the fog came in really suddenly which left Roddy disorientated and panicking. When the fog dissipated, he could see Father Michael on the beach, apparently marching on the spot, looking almost possessed. Roddy shows Humphrey a video that he took on his phone that day, and Humphrey asks what beach it was: Cannons Cove, it turns out.
Back at Ten Mile Kitchen, Kelby giving himself some kind of motivational pep talk while taking fingerprints. Zoe comes into the back room to ask Martha for another dustpan, and Martha asks Zoe how she feels when her mum tells her she's going on a date. Zoe admits that Esther doesn't tell her, she just says that she's meeting a friend, but Zoe always knows the truth because Esther will be wearing her nice perfume.
Zoe asks Martha if this is about Anne and Richard, and Martha admits that she's got a weird feeling about Richard, that he's not as genuine as he pretends to be, but she thinks perhaps she'd feel that way about any man who isn't her father who happens to be dating her mother.
Zoe — clearly wise beyond her years — tells Martha that it's annoying when your parents tell you what to do or think rather than letting you decide for yourself, but it's probably no less annoying when you do it to them. Martha smiles and thanks her.
Martha heads back out into the restaurant where Kelby is just wrapping up, having apparently found some very distinctive shoe prints, but Martha tells him she doesn't want to pursue the case any further. Kelby, a little nonplussed by the whole experience and generally crestfallen about the waste of a hard morning's work when he's trying so hard to prove himself indispensable, picks up his forensic case and leaves.
As Humphrey and Roddy walk down to Cannons Cove, Roddy tells Humphrey that Mrs Goddard has grown even stricter since an incident last year where some governors were caught taking bribes to rig admissions to the school. In exchange, Humphrey tells Roddy about his own schooldays as a star athlete (apparently he was a county-level table tennis player whose nickname was "Mr Whiff-Whaff", a fact that Roddy finds hilarious).
Having shown Humphrey to the beach, Roddy tells him that he needs to get back to the school, but Humphrey tells Roddy that he'll need to hang on to his phone so that forensics can make a copy of the video. As Roddy is walking away, Humphrey asks him if he knows about the legend of "the devil on the rocks", but Roddy dismisses that as a ghost story they use to scare the new kids.
At this point, accompanied by some lovely animation — interspersed with footage of Humphrey finding a trail of soggy banknotes on the beach — Margo narrates the story of the devil on the rocks: it involves a fisherman who was caught out in a storm and unable to row back to shore who made a deal with the devil: the devil would calm the storm in exchange for the fisherman's catch. But before he could row back to safely, the storm was replaced by a thick fog and the fisherman realised he'd been tricked. He got lost, and ended up rowing in circles until he was exhausted. By the time another fishing boat found him two days later, he'd gone completely mad and his nets were empty.
As the animation finishes, we see that Margo has been telling this story to Humphrey, Esther and Kelby by candlelight at the police station, although Esther complains that she can't see and turns a desk light on. Esther grew up hearing the story too, although the version she was told involved a rum smuggler rather than a fisherman. Humphrey hands Kelby the name and phone number that he found in Father Michael's book for further investigation, and Kelby says that the phone company have told them that they triangulated the last known location of Father Michael's phone on the night he went missing to Cannons Cove. Margo is convinced that the devil on the rocks is a worthwhile theory, but Esther puts her foot down that "a Faustian pact is not a proper line of enquiry in a missing person case".
Humphrey remains in the office late into the night, reading up on the St Barnabus admissions scandal, until he realises what the time is and heads home — autopilot taking him into the houseboat rather than the house, where he's in for a nasty shock after taking most of his clothes off and finding Anne in there rather than Martha.
The next morning, Martha is finding the story greatly amusing, though Humphrey's convinced he's going to have to leave the country rather than face Anne ever again. He gets a text from Margo telling him that a break-in has been reported at St Barnabus, and mentions to Martha that Kelby told him about her not wanting to take the break-in investigation at Ten Mile Kitchen any further. Martha assures him she just wants to move on, and says she's still worried that they barely have time to see each other at the moment, let alone care for a child. Humphrey assures her that they will make time for the things they really care about — and to prove it, he'll cook her dinner tonight.
Humphrey, Esther and Kelby head to St Barnabus, where Father Brian tells them that the bursar discovered that over £10,000 was missing from the safe. Mrs Goddard explains that they'd held a fundraising night the previous week. Kelby asks if anyone else had access to the safe, and Father Brian explains that all the housemasters did, because that's where all the contraband was stored. Mrs Goddard insists that Father Michael was a man of God and wouldn't have had a need for £10,000 — Father Brian and Esther know differently, of course, but they keep quiet. Humphrey shows Mrs Goddard the video of Father Michael marching on the spot in Cannons Cove, and Mrs Goddard admits that it looks like he's gone mad.
As they're leaving, Kelby tells Humphrey and Esther that he called the number they found in Father Michael's book: it was an estate agent in Leeds, where Father Michael is originally from. It seems that he was planning to leave the school and head home, though for what purpose? Kelby volunteers to go to Leeds to make some enquiries, largely because he's never been further north than Swindon. (Slightly disappointed that his request is denied — it would have been adorable to see him excitedly eating his packed lunch on the train and strolling around Kirkgate Market.) Mrs Goddard catches them up and tells them that, while of course she cares about Father Michael, her number one priority has to be the school — and with the admissions scandal still hanging over it, she can't afford any more bad PR.
At Ten Mile Kitchen, Anne brings Martha some flowers — though it turns out all the vases were broken during the break-in. Martha asks Anne how she slept on her first night in the houseboat, and Anne says the full moon kept her awake. (Martha: "There wasn't a moon last night." Anne, with a mischievous glint in her eye: "There was in my room.") After an exchange that implies Anne learned something about Humphrey's...equipment that she can't discuss in detail before the watershed, a conversation that Martha shuts down mercifully quickly, Anne changes the subject to say that Richard is coming over later to help set up the TV, and Martha admits she may have been too quick to judge him.
Anne says that Richard makes her happy: she doesn't know what will happen in their relationship, but she feels like her life is going forward for the first time since her husband died. Martha assures her mum that she's happy for her, and Anne mentions the art gallery event that night, which Martha encourages her to attend, telling her that her dad wouldn't mind and neither does she.
Humphrey and Esther are down at Cannons Cove, where Humphrey is tired, having slept poorly the night before. He's working on a theory that Father Michael had been recruited by a county lines gang who were bringing drugs into Devon via the beach — the marching being a sign to them that the coast was clear. Neither of them find that theory remotely convincing, but on a sunny, fogless day, they spot something that Humphrey missed the day before: a house just over the hill. They head up, discovering that the building is actually Old Harry's Farm and find Old Harry himself (Doc Martin's Malcolm Storry) fixing a car. Esther shows him a picture of Father Michael, and Old Harry claims not to recognise him, saying that he doesn't get many people passing through.
He lives alone at the farm since his daughter died, and says he's the last in a long line of Old Harrys, so the name will die with him. Humphrey asks if he saw Father Michael marching on the spot, and Old Harry tells him that "this land can get your inside your head" and cites the story of the devil on the rocks, saying that if you spend long enough there, you start to believe it.
As they're leaving, Margo takes a call from Esther: Father Michael has been found alive, adrift in a fishing boat, apparently mad. Margo, of course, is convinced that the devil on the rocks is the cause of all this. Meanwhile, we see Old Harry heading back into his house and going up the stairs, where there's a young woman lying in bed, facing the wall.
Humphrey and Esther head down to the harbour, where Father Michael — who can't remember anything — is being treated by paramedics. Kelby briefs them that the paramedics believe Father Michael suffered blunt force trauma to the head, though it's not possible to tell at this stage if it was inflicted deliberately, or if it was an accident. His trouser pockets were full of sand, but he had a phone in his coat pocket showing a text conversation with someone who signed off as M, who clearly wanted to talk to him urgently. In addition to this, Humphrey has a bunch of emails from the estate agent in Leeds which reveal that Father Michael had found a place there but needed more time to get the deposit together.
One of the emails from Father Michael is cc-ed to a random email address, "MT97@cellchat.com", which Kelby thinks must have been accidental. They've discovered that the account belongs to a Marie Trevellan — and the boat that Father Michael was found in is also called "Marie". Humphrey refuses to accept that's a coincidence. Kelby shows Humphrey one last text from "M" on Father Michael's phone: "PLEAS COME TONITE INSTED URGENT".
Kelby's tried calling the number, but there's no answer. Humphrey praises Kelby on a job well done, and Kelby asks if they couldn't have done it without him, admitting that Margo has him worried about redundancies. Humphrey assures him that CS Woods is intelligent enough to know the difference between the price of something and the value of something.
Esther suggests they head to the school to search out more information about Father Michael and the mysterious Marie, and they start with Father Brian. Father Brian knew Marie Trevellan: she worked in the library at the school until very recently. Humphrey says that they suspect Father Michael was planning to leave the school and move in with Marie, and Esther asks whether it's possible that Father Michael stole the money from the safe to pay for his deposit. Father Brian says that he doesn't think he would've been driven to steal that amount of money, and tells them that Marie left in September last year.
Over at Ten Mile Kitchen, Zoe is helping with the clean-up and restock of everything, and Martha thanks her for all of her help. A cover of 'Three Little Birds' by Bob Marley is playing in the background, which is part of Zoe's playlist: she tells Martha that Esther told her it was the song he sang to her the first time that he held her. She wonders if it's soppy to listen to it, but Martha tells her that when you lose someone, "you need to take whatever you can of them and keep it with you".
She tells Zoe that she's sure her dad would be proud of her, and Zoe sniffles: she asks Martha to stop being nice to her, and admits that the break-in was her fault. She and a few of her friends needed somewhere quiet to revise, and Zoe had the keys to Ten Mile Kitchen. She was trying to impress this boy Jack, who promptly invited everyone on his football WhatsApp group and suddenly it became a party. She tried to shut it down, but nobody listened to her and they ended up trashing the place.
Martha, it turns out, had already worked all of this out. She saw Zoe's hoodie hanging up yesterday, and remembered that she'd left wearing it the night of the break-in, and arrived without it the following day. (Clearly Humphrey's not the only ace detective in that household!) Martha admits that she's a little angry with Zoe over it, but she also vividly remembers being a teenager trying to impress a stupid boy — she likes having Zoe working for her, and didn't want the two of them to fall out.
Zoe asks if Martha is going to tell Esther, and Martha says Esther probably has enough on her plate and doesn't really need to know about this. (Some absolutely lovely work from Sally Bretton and Melina Sinadinou in this scene by the way. We say this every week, but as much fun as the cases of the week are, this show really shines in the more human, emotional moments.)
Back at the school, Esther and Humphrey are working through the implications of Father Michael and Marie becoming a couple: he's a Catholic priest and the school's already suffered a blow to its reputation, so they would have felt compelled to keep their relationship a secret.
Humphrey notes the formal tone of the texts between them and the fact that Marie's number wasn't stored in Father Michael's phone, suggesting that the two of them had broken up when those messages were sent — presumably having broken his vow of celibacy and risked his career, Father Michael had gone into damage limitation mode. Esther wonders what could have been so important that Marie needed to meet Father Michael right away when she sent that last text.
Humphrey has a sudden brainwave: the reason he couldn't sleep last night was because he was so used to being rocked to sleep like a baby by the water when they were living on the houseboat. The timeline of Father Michael's and Marie's relationship runs that she left the school and got back in touch with him nine months later with important news: that he was a father. Humphrey thinks that Father Michael's midnight wanderings to the beach were because he was secretly meeting Marie and their baby.
The reason Roddy didn't see Marie on the beach when he saw Father Michael must have been because she was exhausted from looking after a newborn on her own, so when they met up, Father Michael would look after the baby alone to give her some respite — and Esther realises that the marching on the spot was what Father Michael did to get the baby to sleep. Margo calls with an address for Marie Trevellan: Old Harry's Farm.
Humphrey and Esther are confused by this given that Harry said his daughter was dead, but Margo explains that Marie is Harry's granddaughter. Realising that Harry was lying to them about living there alone, Humphrey and Esther head to Old Harry's Farm.
On the way, Humphrey explains to Esther that if Harry had mentioned Marie's existence to them, it would have led them to the truth: he lost his daughter and raised his granddaughter as his own, even naming his fishing boat after her. But when he learned that Marie and Father Michael were planning to move in together, Harry realised that he'd be left with absolutely nobody to take over the farm — and that he'd be left there on his own.
So Old Harry attacked Father Michael and put him in the boat, and he engineered it by texting Father Michael from Marie's phone pretending to be her, asking him to meet urgently — Humphrey worked this out because unlike all of Marie's earlier texts which were grammatically sound and perfectly spelled (because she was a librarian), the last one that she sent was in all caps and contained several spelling mistakes. In other words, as Humphrey puts it: Old Harry is the devil on the rocks.
On the horizon, Esther spots Marie (Kat Dulfer) on the beach, wearing a baby carrier and marching on the spot. She and Humphrey approach her and tell her that Father Michael is in hospital, having suffered a serious head injury, but he's going to be okay. Esther asks Marie if she sent Father Michael a text on Thursday night asking to meet on the beach, and Marie says she didn't — they agreed not to text each other any more because it was too risky. Humphrey tells Marie that they think her grandfather attacked Father Michael — at which point Harry approaches, yelling that it's a lie.
He says he just wanted to ask Michael to leave them be, but he tripped and hit his head. Humphrey and Esther don't believe this version of events, however: Humphrey reckons that Harry went up to the school first, because they know his car is leaking oil (after seeing him fixing it the other day) and when Humphrey and Esther first went to St Barnabus, Roddy was mopping up a puddle of oil in the car park.
Humphrey puts it to Harry that he went there threatening to expose the affair, and since Mrs Goddard wasn't willing to risk another hit to the school's reputation, she panicked and took the fundraising money from the safe to try to buy Harry's silence. It's clear from Harry's reaction that this is what happened, and Marie tells Harry that she doesn't blame him for taking the money — but she doesn't understand why he lured Michael to the beach. Harry tells her that £10k wouldn't have meant much if Marie had left him there all alone.
Getting into his stride, Humphrey theorises that Harry tried to use the £10k to pay Michael off. When Michael refused to take the money, Harry got angry and threw the bag of cash at him — but the impact of the bag hitting him in the chest caused Michael to stumble backwards, hitting his head on the rock. Harry thought Michael was dead, and panicked, so he dragged him across the beach (which is why his pockets ended up filled with sand) and put him in the boat, pushing him out to sea. Harry breaks down, saying that everything got out of hand and he couldn't tell the truth. "You're not the only one," Humphrey says.
And on that note, Mrs Goddard is welcoming some parents of prospective pupils to the school when Humphrey and Esther turn up to arrest her on suspicion of theft and obstructing a police investigation. Having the opportunity to handcuff Mrs Goddard in front of a group of people she's desperate to impress is, we suspect, the most satisfying thing that's happened to Esther all week.
Humphrey goes to see Roddy and thanks him for his essential help in finding Father Michael — and tells him he's unlikely to have any more trouble from Mrs Goddard. Roddy reminds Humphrey that he's still got his phone, and Humphrey returns it to him.
Anne arrives at the art gallery to surprise Richard and strikes up a conversation with fellow browser Penny (Liz Crowther) over one of the paintings while she's looking for him. Penny mentions that she sent her husband Peter off to get drinks 20 minutes ago, and waves him over to join them — except her husband Peter is, in fact, Richard. Both Anne and Peter/Richard are horrified by this turn of events (though likely for very different reasons), and Anne manages to bluff out a cover story to explain them recognising each other, saying they used to work together. An oblivious Penny tries to invite Anne over for dinner, and Anne politely makes her excuses and leaves, shooting Peter/Richard the sort of look that could vaporise a person on the spot as she does so.
As Anne is heading to her car, Peter/Richard rushes out after her, trying to make excuses by saying that he didn't know she was coming. (Not really the issue here, pal!) Anne asks him if any of it was real, and he says — wait for it — that it's "complicated". Anne gets into her Volvo and beeps the horn to prompt him to get out of the way before she puts her foot on the accelerator, which frankly is a courtesy we're not sure he deserves.
Humphrey turns up at Ten Mile Kitchen with takeaway pizzas for him and Martha in lieu of cooking. She tells him that Hannah the social worker called to inform her that the fostering panel have recommended them for approval, and they should get final confirmation in the next few days. Humphrey asks if she's happy, and Martha says she is: she's sorry for having a bit of a wobble, but she knows she really wants this. They're just toasting each other with their wine glasses when Anne appears in the doorway looking upset. Martha goes over to her, and Anne says "so much for being a wise old bird" before starting to cry.
