Beyond Paradise season 3 episode 3 recap: Death by chocolate

Beyond Paradise season 3 episode 3 sees a local chocolatier falling under suspicion when several of her customers are poisoned — but is she responsible for their tainted treats, or is someone else setting her up?

Meanwhile, DI Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) and Martha Lloyd (Sally Bretton) face their first major parenting hurdle when foster daughter Rosie (Bella Rei Blue Stevenson) visits her birth mother in prison, and Archie Hughes (Jamie Bamber) tries to impress DS Esther Williams (Zahra Ahmadi) on their second date.

Read on to find out what happened in Beyond Paradise season 3 episode 3...

We begin with a mouthwatering montage of chocolatier Gabriella Dalmori (Phoenix Rise's Alicia Charles) crafting her artisan goods. Martin Gaffney (The Pact's Matthew Gravelle) comes into her shop to say that a few of the local shopkeepers are meeting up later at Kitty Jay's — but Gabriella gives him short shrift and tells him to get out. On his way out, he crosses paths with Kenny Pluckley (The Stranger's Brandon Fellowes), who does Gabriella's deliveries. She tells Kenny that people have gone wild for her special offer, and that she needs him on his A-game today. Kenny loads the chocolates into his van and speeds off down the street rather haphazardly, which Gabby watches with a sigh.

Kenny delivers the first box to Sherie Howard (Holly Atkins), and asks her to sign his clipboard and mark the time of delivery on it as well. The next delivery goes to Dr Lionel Jennings (The Wheel of Time's Abdul Salis), then the third goes to Lizzie Dyer (Bebe Sanders). We then go back to Sherie's house, where her dog finds her collapsed on the floor with the remains of her box of chocolates scattered next to her.

Meanwhile, DI Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) is making pancakes for his foster daughter Rosie (Bella Rei Blue Stevenson) and fiancée Martha Lloyd (Sally Bretton), but has unfortunately sprinkled them with salt rather than sugar. To their credit, they both carry on eating politely. Rosie is fairly quiet, because she's due to be visiting her birth mother later today. Humphrey gets a call from DS Esther Williams (Zahra Ahmadi) and heads out to meet with her at Lionel Jennings' house, where she informs him that they've just had their third suspected poisoning of the morning — with the other two already being treated in hospital.

Esther fills Humphrey in that Lionel is a psychotherapist who moved down from Edinburgh a couple of years ago, and was found by his cleaner this morning. They go into his study, where Humphrey spots that Lionel's pet goldfish isn't looking very healthy either. Esther finds the box of chocolates from Dalmori's, and spots that only one has been eaten. Humphrey sees that there's a card with them with a handwritten note: "Life is like a box of chocolates... you never know what you're gonna get." They identify this as a quote from Forrest Gump (which Humphrey asserts is Tom Hanks' best movie, followed closely by Splash, although frankly I think this is an egregious erasure of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). Esther says she'll get Kelby to check if the other victims ate chocolate too, and Humphrey asks her to find out who else received chocolates from Dalmori's, in case other people are also being poisoned at this very moment.

At Ten Mile Kitchen, Martha is opening up to Anne Lloyd (Barbara Flynn) about how things are going with Rosie; Martha's been trying to get her to open up, but it's not proving very effective. She explains that Hannah the social worker will be taking Rosie to the prison, but that she's heard that these visits can be quite traumatic for children. Anne encourages Martha to make sure that she doesn't forget to look after herself too in the midst of all of this, and then announces that she's off to her rumba class. (The most sensual of the latin dances! Anne, you saucepot.) Martha's confused, because she thought rumba was on Tuesdays, but Anne cheerfully waves and exits without answering. As Zoe Williams (Melina Sinadinou) passes, Martha notes that her mother is behaving oddly, then she goes over to see Rosie, who's sitting at a nearby table drawing a picture of herself with her birth mother in Spain — apparently her mum promised to take her there one day. Rosie asks Martha if she thinks her mum will be in handcuffs when she goes to the prison, and Martha says that she doesn't think that will be the case. Rosie worries that her mum is "a baddie" and Martha assures her that her mum is just going through a difficult time right now.

Over at the police station, Esther and PC Kelby Hartford (Dylan Llewellyn) have confirmed that nobody who received a delivery of chocolates from Dalmori's this morning has been taken ill, other than the three they already know about. It appears each victim only ate one chocolate before they passed out, so it would make sense that the poison was in the chocolates. Margo Martins (Felicity Montagu) gets off the phone with the hospital and announces that digoxin — a medicine normally used to treat heart failure — was found in the blood of all three victims. Lionel is on a ventilator, and Sherie and Lizzie aren't in a fit state to be questioned right now. Humphrey says they need to look into the victims' backgrounds to see if this was a targeted attack or if they were chosen randomly, and they need to figure out who sent them the chocolates.

Humphrey and Esther go to Dalmori's to question Gabby, who's distraught about the fact that this is likely to be the end of her business (in fairness, she does also express sincere sympathy for the people who ended up in hospital, and I suspect most people in Gabby's position would probably be more focused on the immediate threat to their livelihood). Humphrey asks if there's any chance the chocolates were contaminated with the medication during the manufacturing process, and Gabby explains that she doesn't have anything like that on the premises. The chocolates were made this morning, after an online order was placed by someone called William Marshall last night. The note that Humphrey and Esther found in Lionel's house was written by Gabby, although it was nothing to do with her — her website gives you the opportunity to add a personalised note with the delivery, and she just copied out what was written on the order. The shop was closed while she was making the chocolates, so the only other person who came in was Martin. Gabby explains that he owns the fudge shop down the street, and she believes he's had it in for her ever since she arrived. Gabby says that she believes a person's favourite chocolate reflects their personality, and that she can usually guess what it is. She thinks Humphrey's a cherry liquor man, although he says he's more of a raspberry cream. Esther, naturally, doesn't have time for this sort of airy-fairy nonsense, but she's nonetheless slightly offended when Gabby guesses that her favourite chocolate is a walnut whip.

Down at the fudge shop, Martin admits that he and Gabby have had their differences, but he thinks it's bizarre that anyone would believe he would poison people over it. He says that his profits are up and he's opening a new shop soon, so he doesn't see Gabby as competition. However, he does imply that Gabby has got a few people's backs up since she arrived, since she's one of those city types who think they know everything. (Esther, with a pointed look at Humphrey, relates to this all too easily.) Humphrey admits he has a difficult history with fudge: he once ate five packets of it on a family holiday to Margate and spent the rest of the week in bed. Martin offers them a complementary bag of his new batch of rum and raisin to take with them.

As they leave, Esther says she was getting lady-doth-protest-too-much vibes from Martin, so Humphrey suggests they check his finances and see if they back up his story. Esther's phone rings, and she steps back to take the call — it's Archie Hughes (Jamie Bamber), and she tells him to be quick. He says that he'd like to see her again, properly, tonight. Esther replies that she's washing her hair, but Archie isn't that easily dissuaded. She agrees, a little reluctantly, so Archie tells her to meet him at 7:30pm at the Trellick Steps and to wear trainers. Esther warns him that if he's expecting her to do any form of exercise, she won't be held responsible for her actions — but she's smiling, so she's clearly intrigued on some level.

Humphrey and Esther's next stop is the Porter's Arms pub where Kenny works occasional shifts. He claims not to have interfered with the chocolates in any way, and says he'd have no reason to: "Gabby's a bit la-di-da, but she's all right for a grockle". He adds that nobody else had access to his van, as he was on a tight schedule and Gabby doesn't like it when he's late, so he didn't make any unscheduled stops. Esther asks him if he's still working at Willow View, and Kenny says that he keeps trying to leave because the pay is rubbish, but he'd miss "the old dears". As a final question, Humphrey asks Kenny if he saw Martin in Gabby's shop. Kenny confirms that he did, and that the atmosphere was quite frosty: "they used to get on like a house on fire, but then something changed".

Humphrey returns to the police station triumphantly with his bag of rum and raisin fudge and drops it on Margo's desk, only for her to announce curtly that she "can't stand the stuff". Kelby doesn't want it either. Humphrey says he assumed they all liked fudge, and Margo snorts that this is typical: "years, we've spent fighting this kind of prejudice!" (Not to perpetuate West Country stereotypes, but I'm Cornish and would never pass up free fudge. Just saying.)

Kelby updates on the victims' key details: Sherie is 42, lives quite near Gaby's shop, has her own hair salon which Margo tried once and was left looking like a labradoodle. Lionel is 54, moved down two years ago to start up his therapy practice. (Margo claims to have tried this once too: "load of old baloney".) Finally, Lizzie is 24 and works at the Erotic Emporium. (Margo does not comment on whether she's ever been there.) There's no obvious connection between the three of them, but oddly William Marshall — who ordered and paid for the chocolates — died a few weeks ago. To further confound things, the lab have tested the other chocolates and there was no digoxin in them.

This isn't the outcome Humphrey's expecting, and he reasons that it must mean that the only chocolate that was poisoned was the one the victims ate. Esther points out this means the poisoner had a 1 in 6 chance of success in each case — it's not impossible that they would have got lucky once, but three times? (Indeed, that would be a 1 in 216 chance of that happening, if I've done my sums right.) Humphrey asks Margo to check with the hospital to see if the victims ate anything else this morning. They consider looking at Gabby as a suspect again, and Esther points out that Gabby was very quick to cast suspicion on Martin, so maybe there's more to their relationship? Margo says that she's never much liked Martin, so she relishes the opportunity to have a deep dive into his finances. Humphrey gets Kelby to check the CCTV on the street just to check whether Kenny tampered with the chocolates.

The good news, so to speak, is that two of the victims are now recovered enough to be questioned, so Humphrey and Esther head to the hospital. Sherie doesn't know Lionel or Lizzie, and can't think why anyone would have wanted to poison her — she admits she can be a bit temperamental at work but people know her bark is worse than her bite. She hasn't eaten anything else today, either.

We don't see Lizzie Dyer's interview, but Esther tells Humphrey that she was still too weak to be of much help, though she did give them her phone to examine. Humphrey has been examining the medical reports, which show that the victims each ingested around 5mg of digoxin - not enough to kill them, but enough to inflict serious harm. So this leaves the team with two big questions: how did the poisoner get the poison into the chocolates, and how did they ensure that all three victims would eat the only one that was poisoned?

Meanwhile, Kelby has received a call from Reverend Kate (Holby City's Chizzy Akudolu, reprising her role from the 2024 Christmas special), so he pops over to the church to see her. Reverend Kate notes that she hasn't seen him much in church lately, and Kelby apologises that he's been busy with work. Reverend Kate wonders if this has anything to do with a certain Chief Superintendent Woods having a new boyfriend, and Kelby does a fairly poor job of pretending he didn't even know about it. Reverend Kate assures him there are plenty more fish in the sea, but Kelby laments that he's "here, holding my rod, and nothing's biting". He apologises for the overshare, and she offers to show him what she called about.

Anne is seeing her GP — not, as it happens, at rumba class after all — about the mole that she found. Dr Hodges (DI Ray's Syreeta Kumar) wants to refer Anne to the hospital swiftly for a biopsy so they can work out what's going on. Anne worries that it was Corfu that did it — she baked in the sun every holiday for years. (For a moment there, I thought she was talking about when she was Aunt Hermione.) Dr Hodges assures her that there are lots of factors in play, and tells her not to jump to any conclusions until they've had a proper look at it. She asks if Martha will be able to go with her to the hospital, as it's best not to go through something like this on one's own, but Anne's reluctant to involve Martha so soon after losing her father. Dr Hodges counsels Anne as her friend, rather than as her GP, that it's fine to ask for help. Anne assures her that she's a "tough old bird".

Back at the station, Kelby tells Margo that someone has been in the graveyard at the church every Thursday night and leaving a big mess behind them — beer cans scattered everywhere, pulling up flowers from the graves etc. He's volunteered to spend the night in the graveyard to see if he can catch whoever it is in the act, and Margo questions the wisdom of sitting there in the dark, surrounded by dead people.

Humphrey and Esther return, and Margo confirms that she's had no luck finding a link between the three victims. However, the CCTV is in from the street outside, and shows Gabby opening up at 6:30am, and Martin going into the shop roughly 90 minutes afterward, and Kenny arriving a few minutes later. Then Martin leaves, shortly followed by Kenny, who drives straight to Sherie's house, which can just about be seen further down the street — meaning he had no time to poison the chocolate before Sherie ate them. Humphrey says that this means that Martin had the most opportunity other than Gabby — but how did he do it without Gabby noticing?

Kelby, meanwhile, isn't having much luck getting Lionel's secretary to release his patient list, so he decides to go round in person and attempt to talk her round, just in case one of the patients is connected to the other two victims. Esther reckons Sherie is the kind of person who makes enemies easily, and suggests Margo check in with her employees at the salon. Humphrey gets a call from the Chief Superintendent — we only hear his side of it but it appears somewhat brusque.

Meanwhile, Gabby is locking up her shop for the night when Martin approaches and asks her what she said to the police. She tells him she didn't say anything that wasn't true, and he asks if she really thinks he would do that to her. Gabby says that all she knows is that he was there this morning — it's some coincidence.

Margo has the results of Martin's financial checks: it turns out building work on his new shop has ground to a halt, and he's been refused a bank loan, so apparently he isn't quite as successful as he was letting on. Margo has also heard on the local grapevine that he's going through a nasty divorce, because he was having an affair with Gabby: his wife threw him out when she found out, and Gabby dumped him shortly afterwards. Martin has been reduced to living in his shop, so he's definitely got motive for wanting revenge on Gabby. Humphrey leaves to help Martha make Rosie's tea, and Margo quizzes Esther if she has any big plans for tonight; Esther makes the correct decision not to share details of her personal life with Margo, and says that she'll be washing her hair. Kelby, meanwhile, is packing his essentials for his stakeout, and Margo teasingly warns him not to forget the garlic.

Kelby sets up camp in the graveyard, and is quickly startled by birds taking off from the trees, which doesn't seem hugely promising in terms of his ability to stick it out in a graveyard once it gets dark. Meanwhile, Archie has taken Esther on a coastal hike to show her "the best view in Shipton Abbott". (Oh, I've fallen for that chat-up line before...) When they get there, Archie tells her that he used to come there a lot when he was a teenager, smoking cigarettes and listening to The Cure like a "walking cliché". He says that he went a bit mad for a while when his parents got divorced, and Esther says she knows how that goes. Archie asks her what she was like at school, and Esther admits she was a goth — "spiky dog collar and everything". Archie insists on seeing the photos, but Esther tells him she burned the evidence. Archie opens his rucksack and pulls out a bottle of champagne. Esther seems impressed, but tells him it'll take more than a picnic and a sea view to fully win her over. She asks if this is where he brings all the girls, and Archie says no, only her: "Funnily enough, I want to impress you [...] As much as I hate to admit it, I care about what you think." This all feels a bit too intimate for Esther, who says she needs to head back as she's got an early start tomorrow.

And over at Humphrey and Martha's, Rosie has returned from visiting her mother but is acting out, throwing a tantrum about being given peas with her dinner. When they go up to her room to check on her, they discover she has scrawled "I hate pees" [sic] on her wall. (Humphrey: "Rosie, you know thats not OK. There's an 'a' in 'peas'.") Martha gives Rosie a warm smile and suggests that they get her ready for bed and read a story together, and Rosie screams "you can't tell me what to do! You're not my mum!" The look on Martha's face says it all: shocked, hurt, utterly thrown.

Some time later, Martha has managed to calm Rosie down, and her parental confidence seems a little bit restored, but it's clearly been an emotional experience. She tells Humphrey tearfully that Rosie is missing her birth mother a lot, and the guard had to separate them when it was time for her to leave. Humphrey hugs her and tells her things will be OK — they'll get Rosie through this.

Over in the graveyard, it's turned dark, and Kelby hears someone moving around in the distance. Unfortunately, his torch chooses this exact moment to stop working, so he attempts to sneak up on the suspect slowly in the dark... just as his phone goes off, and Kelby's forgotten to silence it. Spooked, the graveyard vandal makes a run for it and Kelby gives chase, but trips on the uneven ground. The mysterious figure gets away — but leaves behind a ring of keys in their haste to escape.

The following day, the chocolate box poison plot has made front page news in the local paper. Margo is reading it in the police station as Kelby tells her that being in the graveyard all night with nothing but his own thoughts gave him a lot of time for reflection about the infinite nature of the human soul. (No, seriously.) Esther arrives, and Margo notes with interest that she's done her hair nicely. Kelby hands Esther the keys that he found in the churchyard last night.

Humphrey arrives, and is alarmed to see that the case has made it into the papers. He says that they need to make significant progress on the case before CS Woods (Jade Harrison) checks in — but it's too late, because she's already there, requesting an update. Kelby takes it upon himself to summarise the case for her, and does it very coolly and succinctly, which she's very impressed by. (I like that this season we're seeing more and more of Kelby being genuinely good at his job and not always being the comic foil — especially in situations like this.) Humphrey and Esther mention that Martin is their prime suspect for now, but as they don't currently know how they did it, they're pursuing other leads, including a possible link between the three victims. CS Woods asks him if she can have a quiet word away from everyone else, but for once he's not actually in trouble: she asks how his fostering placement is going, and says that she knows it's a lot to take on in addition to a demanding job. She tells him that she's keen to support him and Martha, and he just needs to let her know if he needs more time off or increased flexibility. She finishes by telling him that Kelby is a very talented officer, and they're lucky to have him.

Anne's doing a bit of gardening and trying to make Martha feel better about things with Rosie. She tells a story about a time when Martha was little, and rescued a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest — she cuddled it, fed it, and housed it in a cardboard box, until one day when unfortunately the cat ate it. It's not the most heartwarming of stories, admittedly, but Anne's point is that Martha needs to acknowledge that she can't control everything, and she can't fix all of Rosie's problems. Martha asks why Anne didn't come in to say goodnight, and Anne brushes her off, saying that Martha had her hands full, and shouldn't worry about her — she's having a lovely time on the boat with Selwyn the duck. Rosie comes out, in a much better mood than yesterday, and apologises to Anne for drawing on her wall. Anne assures her that it's fine, and she didn't much like the old colour anyway. Rosie sits down with Martha, and tells her that even though she's not her mum, she's "proper nice". Progress!

Things are surprisingly quiet at the police station — at least until Esther gets a message from Archie, requesting another date tonight and sending her a link to 'Boys Don't Cry' by The Cure, which Esther accidentally plays out loud to the entire room. She's rather embarrassed, and quickly puts her phone in her drawer after silencing it. Margo looks at her, curiously, so Esther quickly gets back to the task in hand and asks if there was a Monica working at the hairdressers because a few months ago, Lizzie was texting a friend called Mon G. Margo checks her files and confirms there was a Monica Grey who was let go from Sherie's salon recently. She was also a patient of Lionel Jennings. Humphrey wonders if Monica Grey could be behind all three poisonings, but Kelby points out that is unlikely — because she's buried in the churchyard where he spent last night.

Kelby takes Humphrey and Esther to Monica's grave, and says he's 99% sure that the figure was placing a bunch of roses on it before they ran off. Humphrey says they need to find out more about Monica Grey, so they go back to the hospital to speak to Lizzie. Lizzie tells them that Monica was her best friend from school, and they stayed close after they left — they'd often go to the Porter's Arms for drinks, but then Monica grew quiet and reserved. She adds that Sherie, her boss, was "a bit of a cow" and always on Monica's case, eventually firing her for apparently no reason. Monica took that hard, so Lizzie tried to cheer her up with a girls' trip to Marbella, but Monica changed her mind about going. Lizzie was annoyed because she'd already booked it and spent her savings on it, so she went by herself. Monica called her repeatedly while she was gone, but she didn't pick up — and then Lizzie heard that Monica was dead.

While they're at the hospital, Esther gets a call to let her know that Lionel is now out of the woods, so she and Humphrey go over to speak to him too. Lionel says that Monica was referred to him, and to begin with they were making progress, but one day they were in session, doing Phase 3 of CBT, and he asked her some difficult questions which he thought she could handle — but it caused her to shut down emotionally and stop attending her appointments. She took her own life a few weeks later. As they're leaving, Humphrey stops to ask one more question, mentioning that Lionel's goldfish (who, it turns out, is named "Sigmund") looked dead when they were at his house the other day. Lionel's shocked to hear this, saying that Sigmund was fine when he gave him his breakfast — just after he answered the door to Kenny with the chocolate delivery.

Anne heads over to Ten Mile Kitchen for eggs royale with a glass of chablis, and Zoe asks her if it's not a bit early to be drinking. Concerned, she asks if Anne went to the doctor, and Anne tells her that she's going for tests at the hospital tomorrow. Zoe asks if Martha's going with her, and Anne says she doesn't to worry Martha when there might not be any need to.

Humphrey and Esther return to the police station, where Humphrey checks the list of deliveries against the three victims. He asks what all three of them have in common, and Esther ventures that each of them either mistreated Monica or let her down in some way. So the poisoner must be someone who cared for Monica deeply — and thinking back to the Forrest Gump quote, Humphrey puts it into context: Forrest and Jenny were childhood friends who get together too late, when the wheels of tragedy have already been set in motion. Humphrey thinks that Kenny was the one who harboured feelings for Monica — and at that moment, Kelby gets a call saying that the fob on the ring of keys has been traced to Willow View Care Home, where Kenny works. Esther points out that they saw Kenny on CCTV and he didn't have a chance to put poison in the chocolates, but Humphrey shows her the delivery sheet: the three victims all have the time of delivery next to their signatures, but none of the others do. And therein lies the solution.

Kenny went to school with Monica, and had feelings for her for a long time. He worked in the pub that she drank at with Lizzie, so he knew what was going on in her life. After she died, every Thursday night after his shift at the pub, he goes to sit by Monica's grave, thinking about how she isn't in his life any more because of all the people who abandoned her when she needed them. He wanted to hurt them for what they did, so he came up with a plan: his job at the care home gave him access to digoxin, and he used a bank card from a resident who had died recently to pay for the chocolates. The bit they've been missing all along is that the poison was never in the chocolates — it was on Kenny's pen. He carefully added the poison onto it around the tip, always being careful to hold it himself. The reason the three victims were all asked to note the time of their delivery was to ensure they were holding the pen for as long as possible — then, when they went to eat a chocolate, they inadvertently swallowed the poison from their own hands. As for poor Sigmund the goldfish, Dr Jennings fed him after he answered the door, meaning the poison was also transferred to the fish food — making the fish the only fatality. Kenny never intended to kill anyone, but he wanted to make them all suffer for what they had done.

As they wrap up the case, Kelby expresses his sympathy for Kenny, loving someone that much and being so heartbroken. The whole experience has given Kelby a little bit more perspective, and he's decided that there is someone out there for him after all — he's going to sign up for the apps. Meanwhile, Humphrey brings Esther a walnut whip as a present, and Esther — after checking it isn't poisoned — wonders what Gabby meant by her comment. Humphrey suggests that she thought Esther was tough on the outside, and soft and gooey on the inside. As The Cure's 'Friday I'm In Love' plays, Esther leaves work and drives to Archie's house, giving him a big snog on the doorstep. We close with a return to Rosie's bedroom, where Humphrey, Anne, Martha and Rosie all happily grab a roller and paint over the "I hate pees" mural. Personally I'd have attempted to pass it off as a Banksy.