Death in Paradise season 14 episode 8 sees a number of characters at a crossroads, as DI Mervin Wilson (Don Gilet) attempts to leave Saint Marie once again, only to find yet another obstacle keeping him on the island just a little longer — perhaps long enough to consider making his stay a more permanent one.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington), having officially been offered his job back, considers what his future holds — but what will his decision be?
Read on to discover what happened in the finale of Death in Paradise season 14...
As a paperboy rides through Saint Marie delivering the latest edition of the local paper (front page headline: NEW COMMISSIONER ALMOST LETS KILLER WALK FREE, while an editorial inside asks IS STERLING FOX UP TO THE JOB?), DI Mervin Wilson (Don Gilet) talks in voiceover to his late mother Dorna (Judith Jacob), saying that he finally caught her killer, and he wonders if he might even have been able to save her if he'd got here sooner.
We see DS Naomi Thomas (Shantol Jackson) and Officer Darlene Curtis (Ginny Holder) officially closing the Dorna Bray case file and putting it into the filing cabinet at the police station, before we finally get to Mervin at his mum's grave, telling her he's heading back home to London. He places some flowers on her grave and tells his mum that he hopes she can find some peace now, before popping his hat back on and walking away.
Back at the beach shack, Mervin is packing up his cases and loading them into a cab while talking to a friend back in London, seeing if he wants to meet for a curry when he gets back — although his friend seems to have a fairly busy social calendar. Mervin closes and locks all the doors and shutters, says goodbye to Harry the lizard, ends his phone call, and takes one last look at the shack before closing and locking the door.
At the police station, Mervin says goodbye and thank you to the team — and Darlene and Naomi affectionately tease him that they're not used to hearing him say "thank you". Mervin confirms he is genuinely grateful for their help in solving his mum's case, and Naomi tells him she's glad they could help. Mervin asks if there's any news about the Commissioner's job, and Darlene says that he's gone to Jamaica today to have lunch with the chief, which Mervin perceives as a good sign. He hands over his keys, just as Sadie Jones (Insomnia's Lyndsey Marshal) walks in saying that she needs to report a missing person. Mervin leaves, looking slightly bereft that there's a case kicking off that he won't be a part of. (A true case of be careful what you wish for, there.)
At the airport, Mervin is on the phone to his boss, saying how much he's looking forward to starting back at work, when an announcement comes over the PA system asking him to report to the information desk. There's a call for him, from Naomi, informing him that a body has been found... on the floor in the beach shack.
When Mervin returns to the shack, his first question is who this person on the floor is. Naomi says that they're still waiting on a formal ID, but they believe she's Rosa Martinez (The South Westerlies star Lily Nichol), a volunteer at the Marabar Turtle Conservancy, which is 12km away. Sadie, who runs the conservancy, took all the volunteers out for work last night, and Rosa didn't turn up for work this morning, nor was her bed slept in. She thought it was out of character, which is why she came to the police station to report Rosa missing.
There was no answer when she tried calling Rosa's phone, and it doesn't seem to be anywhere in the shack either. There's bruising around Rosa's neck, implying that she was strangled. Her body was found by the cleaner, who picked up the keys from the station. Mervin's befuddled: he locked the shack thoroughly before he left and there was no one here at the time. Naomi asks him if he's sure about that, and Mervin insists that he's positive. Darlene says that there are no signs of forced entry, and Mervin starts to inspect the body before Naomi firmly tells him to stop — since Mervin was the last person in the shack before the body was discovered, he's officially a suspect.
A little while later, Mervin is sitting outside the shack being questioned by Naomi — and it's not a huge surprise that he doesn't adapt especially well to being on the other side of the table for once. He says that his cab driver came in and picked up Mervin's bag before he locked up at 9:30 am, so will be able to confirm that nobody else was there, that he and Naomi saw each other when he came to the police station to drop his keys off immediately afterwards, and then he went straight to the airport.
Naomi says that the cleaner got to the shack at around 10:30 am, so we're looking at about an hour's window in which the body turned up. Mervin's brain is already racking through all the potential scenarios: Rosa was killed either inside the shack, or killed outside and then left in the shack — but the bit that doesn't make sense in either scenario is that the door was locked from the inside, so how did the killer get out? Mervin says that "we" need to speak to the cleaner to check her story out, and Naomi informs him that there is currently no "we" in this situation, not until Mervin has been properly eliminated from their inquiries. Mervin's frustrated at the prospect of a murder that he's not allowed to investigate — almost as much as when he had to take down his satellite dish and wasn't able to watch Day Of The Match (thanks, Naomi!) any more.
Inside, Darlene and Officer Sebastian Rose (Shaquille Ali-Yebuah) are processing the crime scene, and Seb tentatively brings up the matter of him nearing the end of his probation period — tomorrow, in fact. Darlene admits that the fact slipped her mind, since there's been so much going on recently, but promises to speak to Mervin about it, since he's still technically their boss while he's on the island. Seb's taking photos of the corpse when he notices something on Rosa's hand.
Naomi confirms Mervin's alibi with the cab driver, officially eliminating him from the inquiry. She assumes he'd want to get the next flight back to London, but Mervin's already full of excitement for the unsolved case; besides, he's already missed his flight. (Really starting to think that Saint Marie is like the Village from classic 1960s TV show The Prisoner; I wouldn't be the least surprised to see Mervin being pursued by Rover the balloon next time he tries to get to the airport.)
Mervin and Naomi head to the Marabar Turtle Conservancy to speak to Sadie and her husband Callum (Bridgerton's Rupert Young). Sadie says that Rosa had been with them for about three months, and she thinks Rosa was from Belize; Callum admits that they have around 30 volunteers at any time, and it's not always easy to keep track of them.
Sadie says that Rosa was quiet and diligent, and spent most of her time at the conservancy — she doesn't think she knew anyone else locally. Sadie explains that they went for some drinks at Stingrays the previous night for one of the volunteers' birthdays, and the next morning the girls in the hut saw that Rosa's bed hadn't been slept in — and that she'd also missed her morning beach patrol. Mervin asks what exactly that involves, and Sadie tells him that they closely monitor the turtle nests around the clock to protect the eggs from poachers and predators. Callum adds that they've been here around 10 years — he was in the UK before that, but felt that he could make more of an impact in Saint Marie. It seems he was right, because since arriving, there's been an increase of 27% in Saint Marie's turtle population. (Although there's just been a decrease of approximately 3% in the number of alive volunteers at the conservancy, which isn't great.)
After finishing with Callum and Sadie, Mervin and Naomi catch up with Seb and Darlene, and Seb tells him that he found something interesting: the number 4431C was written faintly in biro on Rosa's hand. Mervin sends Seb and Darlene to Rosa's room to see if they can find what the number refers to, while he and Naomi will go and speak to the other volunteers. On the way to Rosa's room, Seb is stopped by one of those other volunteers, Estelle Laroche (Magpie Murders' Nia Anisah), who's kind of flirty. Seb gets very shy around her pretty quickly, but Darlene has no time for any of this nonsense.
Meanwhile, Naomi's got something that could be a lead: one of the catering staff heard Rosa and Estelle arguing yesterday, after Estelle found Rosa in her room. Rosa claimed she was there to ask about swapping shifts, but Estelle accused Rosa of stalking her. That ties in with something that Darlene found while searching Rosa's room: a copy of the rota with circles around Estelle's name every time she's on the list.
Mervin and Naomi check in with Estelle, who says Rosa was "weird" — she asked lots of questions but gave nothing away. She admits that the stalking accusation might have been a little extreme, and explains that Rosa seemed lonely when she first arrived, so Estelle took her out a few times, but she became a bit too attached. and then she found Rosa in her room, so she was obviously alarmed. However, Estelle claims they quickly made up after that fight, with a little help from tequila.
The team review a video taken by Callum featuring the Marabar volunteers (and some very cute baby sea turtles!), where he's explaining that the baby turtles imprint on the beach so that they can find their way back when they're fully grown to nest their own eggs. Rosa's impressed — except she's not Rosa, apparently. Naomi and Darlene have discovered that there's no record of a "Rosa Martinez" entering or leaving Saint Marie in the last year, and none of the Rosa Martinezes from Belize that they've found are a match for the victim.
Mervin and the team review the suspects so far, and Darlene insists that she knows Valerie, the cleaner who found the body, and that she wouldn't hurt a fly. (I love that a character witness from Darlene is apparently enough to completely eliminate you from the inquiry, even though she's been wrong before.) Callum, a marine biologist from Bristol, set the conservancy in 2012, and apparently the organisation's finances are in poor shape. Sadie grew up in Manchester, originally came to Saint Marie as a volunteer, and ended up staying. She does have a criminal record, and spent time in prison for fraud in 2008. Estelle was born in Saint Marie, has been working at the conservancy for a couple of years, and looks after her father who has Parkinson's. Seb's charmed by this revelation and, it seems, by Estelle in general. Mervin says they still need to know who wanted to kill Rosa, how her body ended up in the shack, and why her body was there. Naomi wonders if it was intended as a message to Mervin, or to the police in general, but there's no indication of a connection between Rosa and any of them. She also raises another important issue: where's Mervin going to sleep tonight? Mervin seems alarmed the offer to stay at Seb's mum's house, so Naomi suggests an alternative.
Of course, she's booked him in at Catherine's Bar, where Catherine Bordey (Élizabeth Bourgine) is checking to see if Mervin's settled in. He asks if she has an ironing service, and she warns him not to push his luck. She tells Mervin that she's pleased he's still around, and she's here for anything he might need — bar the ironing. Mervin thanks her, and says he won't forget what she did for his mother's case. Commissioner Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington) arrives, in casual clothes with a big smile on his face, and says that he's been offered his job back.
Catherine gives him a hug, and he asks Mervin if he still intends to leave Saint Marie once the case is solved. Mervin says that "short of a hurricane", there's nothing to keep him here (bit unwise of him to tempt fate like that, given how all of his previous attempts to fly home have gone). Catherine ushers Mervin over to the seating area, and asks Selwyn if he would like some champagne to celebrate. Selwyn declines, and Catherine reminds him that the Chief Commissioner treated him very badly — but he won in the end.
The next day, Mervin returns to the shack, which is still cordoned off with crime scene tape. He heads inside to inspect it with a torch, and notices something of interest on the bookcase: a postcard sent to DI Neville Parker from his sister Izzy. (If anyone's collecting Death in Paradise trivia, the shack's address is 1 Beach Road, 1450 Honoré, Saint Marie.) A little while later, Naomi arrives at Catherine's, where a somewhat disgruntled Catherine informs her that Neville is currently in the kitchen, instructing her chef how to make a full English. Right on cue, Mervin emerges with his breakfast and he tells Naomi about the postcard: when he left the shack, the picture of Manchester on the front was facing outwards, but when he went back, it was the other way around. It's the only thing in the shack that seemed to be out of place, so Naomi plans to dust it for prints and see what comes up. Naomi, meanwhile, did a search for Rosa Martinez with all the travel agencies, and discovered that she was booked on a plane to Belize last week — and Sadie was the one who booked the ticket.
Over at the station, Seb is still trying to work out the relevance of "4431C": he's ruled out it being a postcode or a telephone number, and it's unlikely to be the number of one of the turtle nests since Marabar only log them with numbers, not letters. Darlene tells him that she has spoken to Mervin about his probation review, and he said that they will discuss it once the case is solved. Mervin and Naomi arrive, and Darlene hands Mervin the post-mortem that confirms strangulation as the cause of Rosa's death, with a time of death somewhere between 9am and 11am. There were lacerations to her head, caused by a blunt object, which show traces of orange fiberglass. Darlene says that fiberglass is used to make things like surfboards and hot tubs. She also adds that she paid a visit to Stingrays bar, where Rosa was having drinks with the other volunteers the night before she died; upon checking the CCTV, she saw Rosa in a clinch with Callum.
Callum turns up at that moment, and explains that he and Rosa were freeing a turtle named Dorothy from some netting one night, and got unexpectedly close, which led to the two of them sleeping together. He says that he and Sadie have an open marriage (or, in his words, "we go by the rules of the animal kingdom"), and the fact that he was sleeping with Rosa wasn't particularly a secret. Naomi asks if this was the reason Sadie wanted Rosa to leave, and Callum says no; it was a financial issue arising from Rosa not having paid for her stay at the conservancy. Mervin decides that they need to go and check Callum's account of events against Sadie's.
As it turns out, Callum wasn't lying: Sadie knows he sleeps with the volunteers sometimes, and she does it as well. Although she bought a ticket for Rosa to go back to Belize, it had nothing to do with Callum: Rosa hadn't paid for her accommodation, and she refused to hand over her passport for an ID check, so Sadie asked her to leave. When Rosa said she didn't have any money, Sadie paid for her plane ticket home — but Rosa told her a story about a bad ex who would make it dangerous for her to go home, so Sadie relented. She insists that Rosa's murder has nothing to do with her or Callum, but Mervin and Naomi aren't convinced. Naomi wonders why Rosa was so keen to hide her identity.
Mervin gets a brainwave, and Naomi finds him in Rosa's room, under the bed. He explains that when he was growing up in care homes, the other kids were always nicking his things, so he would hide anything precious between the slats and the mattress. Sure enough, that's where he finds "Rosa"'s passport, which reveals her real name as Leah Francis, as well as the fact that she's from Dominica, not Belize. This helps the team to pull together a clearer picture of her: she's 28, an only child whose parents are both dead, and worked as a journalist for a news website called Project Classified, focusing on investigative stories. She told her boss that she was here working on a story, so could that be why she was killed?
Meanwhile, Seb's had a breakthrough with the number written on Leah's hand: part of it had been rubbed off, so it was actually 44310, not 4431C. He read Callum's research proposal that he submitted to the council, and noticed that there was a map of the coast inside — and 44310 refers to one of the buoys just off Saint Marie. But what was the significance of that particular buoy to Leah? Mervin adds that now that they know Leah was a journalist, they can assume she wasn't stalking Estelle but trying to get information out of her. Seb thinks this has to be a coincidence, because Estelle doesn't seem like the type to be involved in anything dodgy. (His eyes don't actually turn into giant love hearts when he says this, but they might as well.) Mervin suggests that Darlene and Seb go down to the beach when Estelle is on duty again tonight and see what they can find out, and Darlene offers to speak to the coastguard about the buoy on the way.
Mervin's staying late in the office, rewatching the video of Leah, when Selwyn comes to see him and suggests that a break from the case might help him to see things more clearly. They head out onto the veranda for a beer and "one of Winston's accras", which Selwyn offers from a paper bag.
Mervin tries one and is moderately impressed, which is pretty high praise coming from him. Selwyn mentions that Winston, the current operator of the accra stand, is part of a long dynasty, and Mervin admits he was always jealous of families like that when he was growing up. Selwyn asks Mervin why he decided to look for his mother, and Mervin says he spends his working life trying to solve problems — but outside of work, there's always been a big question mark about who he was. When he was little, he'd wonder about his parents, and whether they had anything in common, but there was always an emptiness inside him that never went away. He came to Saint Marie to try and resolve that, and feels that he has, "in some ways". Selwyn gently notes that Mervin has opened the door onto his past, but seems to be closing it again and walking away. Mervin explains that he knows where he comes from now, and why his mum gave him up — now he's planning to go back to how things were before. He says his life is predictable — eat, sleep, work, repeat — but Selwyn suggests that it doesn't have to be. He asks Mervin to reconsider his decision to go back to London, because he thinks he's at the beginning of his journey, not the end.
Darlene and Seb are carrying out their late-night stakeout, when Seb spots lights down by the water. He goes to investigate, and the light is coming from a torch held by Estelle (not nearly as bright as the torch Seb is carrying for her, eh? Eh?), who says she saw lights on down here and came to check for trespassers, since they've had a few of them recently. She says that the barrier has come loose, and asks Seb to hold her torch while she goes to get some wires to fix it. Except that's not what she's planning at all: she disappears and doesn't come back.
The next day, Mervin goes back to his mother's grave to ask her for some advice, since he's thinking about staying in Saint Marie on a more permanent basis, since he thinks it's probably a bad idea. He notices some fresh flowers that have been left there, and fishes out the card that's with them. It reads, 'Rest in peace. S."
Mervin arrives at the police station, telling Naomi about the mysterious "S" — he says there's no one in his mum's address book who fits the bill, and he's confirmed with Selwyn that the flowers weren't left by him either. Naomi suggests looking into Dorna's life in Antigua to see if that explains who "S" is, but Mervin admits he's reluctant to open another whole can of worms just when he thought he'd tied everything up. Darlene emerges from inside and says that Seb hasn't shown up for work, and isn't answering his phone. She's just spoken to her niece, who spotted him at a bubble tea café in Port Royale. She thinks Seb's upset about letting Estelle escape last night, because he thinks he's let Mervin down. Mervin tells her to wait there, and that he'll go and speak to Seb.
At the bubble tea café, Seb says he knew it would only be a matter of time before he messed up again: he's been trying and trying, but he's still getting things wrong. Mervin asks him why he wanted to be a police officer in the first place, and Seb says that his mother was always on at him to get off the sofa and make something of himself. Of all the jobs that existed on the island, he thought being a police officer looked cool — and he has been enjoying it, because for the first time in his life he's doing something important, but he thinks he doesn't fit in. Mervin assures him that that's not true — he tells Seb that he just needs to give it time. Mervin adds that Seb deserves to pass his probation, and that he believes Seb has the making of a great police officer, because he's hard-working and he really cares. Seb thanks him, and Mervin suggests they work on recovering last night's mishap. Seb says that the conservancy's boat wasn't moored on the beach last night, so maybe they can get a search warrant, look for evidence, and bring Estelle in for questioning. Mervin's impressed with his thinking.
Seb and Darlene are searching the boat, but haven't found anything useful. Seb attempts to apologise for what happened earlier, and Darlene tells him there's no need: he just needs to promise it won't happen again. Then she spots an orange fiberglass boat hook on the deck, just like the shards that were found in the wound on Leah's head, and tells Seb that they need to speak to Estelle — fast.
Back at the police station, Mervin has just finished speaking to his mum's old neighbour in Antigua, who said a man named Solomon Clarke was looking for her a few months ago; he was an ex-pupil, who wasn't aware that she'd died. So presumably he came to Saint Marie to pay his respects for the final time — case closed, unusually quickly. Seb and Darlene arrive with Estelle, who's a little bit reluctant to co-operate — but when Naomi warns her that means she's looking at a harsher sentence, Estelle cracks and reveals that she's been helping Sadie sell turtle eggs on the black market.
Mervin and Naomi go to speak to Sadie, who admits that she's been secretly shipping the turtle eggs out on the boat and selling them to traffickers who take them to Dominica and then export them all over the world to be eaten, kept as pets, or even used as ingredients in cosmetics. (Blee.) It's all connected to the conservancy's financial issues: she started it six months ago as a way of making some quick cash to keep them afloat, but once she got into it, she couldn't stop. You might think that selling turtle eggs on the black market in order to keep your turtle conservancy running rather defeats the point, but it seems it was about more than that for Sadie: she was in a bad place before she came to Saint Marie, and she didn't want to lose what she had there with Callum.
Sadie was out at sea doing a drop-off (by buoy number 44310, the regular meeting place) when she heard a noise and found Leah on the boat taking photos. Leah admitted to being a journalist, and Sadie tried to grab her phone. Leah went to dive into the ocean and Sadie grabbed the boat hook, intending to use it to block Leah and keep her on the boat, but accidentally hit her on the head. She tried to save her, but couldn't, and had assumed Leah had drowned. She doesn't know how Leah ended up in the shack, and insists she isn't a murderer. Naomi tells Sadie that she and Estelle will both be charged with illegal trafficking, and Sadie will also be charged with illegal assault.
The team are still puzzled by how Leah ended up in the shack, 12km away from where the boat was when she was hit on the head — especially when it was locked. And there's the matter of the postcard, which didn't yield any leads because they were only able to draw partial prints from it. Mervin goes for a walk to clear his head, and runs into Selwyn outside, who asks about "S". Mervin tells him that "S" is Solomon Clarke, his mum's ex-pupil from Antigua, and Selwyn asks if Mervin spoke to him. Mervin says he didn't have time to listen to some random's stories when he's leaving for London soon. Selwyn confirms that Mervin has definitely decided to leave the island, and Mervin tells him that he just doesn't fit in there, just like how nothing fits in this case, where all the pieces are there, but back-to-front.
The words "back-to-front" make him think about the postcard, and consider the possibility that he's been looking at it all wrong. He assumed the killer looked at it — but what if it was the victim? He wonders what she might have been looking at, and Selwyn suggests she was looking at the address. Suddenly, everything clicks into place in Mervin's head, and he tells Selwyn that he's a genius. "It has been said," muses Selwyn.
Mervin and Naomi gather Callum, Sadie and Estelle together at the conservancy, and Mervin wastes no time in exposing Callum as Leah's killer. After Sadie hit Leah, she fell off the boat and into the sea and lost consciousness, waking up the next morning, having been washed 12km up the coast by the tide to the beach where the shack is. Dehydrated and disoriented, she wandered into the shack, entering through the open veranda doors while Mervin was carrying his suitcase out to the taxi. Mervin assumes that when he came back in to close and lock the veranda doors, Leah must have been in the bathroom, getting water. When she emerged to find the shack locked up and deserted, she looked at the postcard to find the address of the building she was in, and called Callum — the one person she still trusted — to let him know where she was. That's why there was no sign of forced entry at the shack: Leah let Callum in voluntarily.
Darlene has checked Callum's phone and discovered lots of texts between him and Leah confirming their affair, as well as the call from Leah's phone the morning of her murder. Callum reluctantly admits that when he went down to the shack to pick Leah up, she told him who she really was, and that she'd been working on a story about the conservancy. Leah was going to go public with the story, and even though she promised to keep Callum's name out of it, he knew he couldn't let it happen. Naomi posits that Sadie knew Callum's relationship with Leah was more than just the casual flings he had with the other volunteers, and that's why Sadie tried to make her leave — but Callum refused to get rid of her. Callum says that he asked Leah not to publish the story if she truly cared for him, but she told him she had to do it.
At that point, he started thinking that she wasn't really interested in him, and was only getting close to him in her pursuit of the story. Enraged, he strangled her to death, and then went to lock the front door so that nobody would catch him clearing up the crime scene to remove any traces of his prints. He took Leah's phone, and hid behind the front door when Valerie the cleaner opened it. Valerie was so horrified at the sight of Leah's body that she didn't notice Callum quietly slipping out of the shack through the front door. Darlene cuffs Callum and arrests him. (Arresting three people as a result of one investigation must be doing wonders for Honoré Police's crime-solving figures.)
The team retreats to Catherine's Bar to celebrate a job well done — and Seb passing his probation — with one of her special cocktails. Selwyn arrives in a taxi, and Catherine realises almost instantly that he's there to tell her he's not accepting the offer of his old job back. She asks why not, after he fought so hard to get it back, and Selwyn says he's not entirely sure, but it felt wrong: too much has happened, and he couldn't see a way to getting things back to how they were before. He's taking some time to go and visit his daughter Andrina, and then he's going to see what happens after that. He asks Catherine to promise him that she'll look after herself, and his team, and Catherine in turn makes him promise that this isn't "farewell", but "au revoir".
Selwyn gets back into the taxi and heads to the police station, where Mervin is just locking up. Mervin goes to hand back his keys to Selwyn, ready to return to London, but Selwyn has some news for him: earlier today he called Solomon Clarke, because he thought it was too important an opportunity to pass up. Mervin insists that he's done with Saint Marie, but Selwyn gives Mervin Solomon's phone number and drops a bombshell: Solomon is Mervin's brother. Selwyn departs in his taxi, leaving Mervin on the veranda of the police station, taking in everything he's just learned.
So, that's it for Death in Paradise season 14, but there's so much left to explore if the show returns for a 15th season: will Mervin reach out to his long-lost brother? Who will be the new Commissioner? How will Seb fare as a fully-qualified police officer? And just what does Catherine put in those potent cocktails of hers? Let's hope we find out...
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