This article contains spoilers for The Woman In The Wall episode 4.
In The Woman in the Wall episode 4, Colman made some shocking discoveries about his own personal past and uncovers the source of his recurring nightmares of Father Percy and the tunnel.
Meanwhile, Lorna continued to search for more information about what happened to her daughter, Agnes, and the other missing children during their time at the convent and found evidence that could mean her daughter is still alive.
Here's what happened in The Woman In The Wall episode 4.
Missing records
We joined Lorna and Colman moments after she confessed to murdering and hiding Aoife Cassidy's body in The Woman In The Wall episode 3's dramatic conclusion. Colman tries to get Lorna to reveal where Aoife's body must be, but she just says she doesn't know.
Massey and other members of the Garda arrive to investigate; on the scene, Massey admonishes Colman for antagonizing Lorna and breaking into her home without a search warrant. He orders Colman to leave town and return to Dublin.
Niamh drops by to ask Lorna if the rumors of her murder confession are true or not. She also advises her to stay at home and not go anywhere, though Lorna promptly ignores this instruction and sets out to check the veracity of her daughter's death certificate.
En route, Massey spots her walking down the street; she tells him to look into the woman 'pretending to be Aoife Cassidy's daughter', though he tells her he regards anything she says skeptically given they didn't find a body in her home.
First, Lorna pays a visit to the graveyard, searching for her daughter's burial record. The priest there can't find any mention of Agnes Brady, but directs her to check the county records instead. The clerk she speaks to there also can't find any mention of Agnes Brady in their records; she demands access to the written archive, but he refuses to allow her access.
Colman's return
Colman returns to Blackrock in Dublin and heads back to Father Percy's home, where he has a memory of celebrating making Detective with him, and telling Percy he wants to find his birth mother. Percy seems unwilling to help, telling him he didn't know anyone at Lazarus House, the home Colman came from.
After a family birthday celebration, Colman suffers the same nightmare in the tunnels; his mother walks in and comforts him, saying that he used to have the same nightmares when he was brought back from Lazarus House. When Colman asks if Father Percy had anything to do with where he was born, his mother just says Percy gave them the number for the House of the Sacred Shepherd.
Elsewhere, Niamh attends a speech given by James Coyle. She talks to him about Lorna and wants to help get her some answers. He tells Niamh he's got a meeting coming up with a Judge about a hearing that could see the government formally recognize the convent as a Magdalene Laundry... but he warns that working too much with Lorna could destabilize this.
Colman phones Massey to tell him he was adopted through the House of the Sacred Shepherd, meaning that they had to be operating illegally at least a decade after they formally closed. Together, they reckon this could mean the organization helped move hundreds of children around.
Lorna's discovery
Lorna breaks into the archive room and steals a bunch of records. Her search for info about her daughter doesn't turn up anything. After drafting in Michael's help, she decides to cross-reference the death certificates she found in a stash with the woman pretending to be Olivia Cassidy. Together, they find that only 3 of the 298 children have burial records... so what happened to those other children? She believes their bodies must be buried somewhere, and resolves to find them.
Colman, meanwhile, finds a photograph of Bishop Brendan Rice (of Lazarus House) together with Father Percy. When he goes to visit Rice, he receives a very frosty reception after mentioning the House and demanding info about what happened to him. At the station, his superior orders him to hand over his work and cease his investigation, as Brendan Rice has filed a formal complaint against him.
Frustrated, Colman searches Lazarus House for more information, and ends up in the very same tunnel from his nightmares after the ground collapses under him.
Under Eileen's thumb
Lorna returns to the convent and crosses paths with Sister Eileen. Lorna is clearly still intimidated by the Sister, and the elderly woman blasts her for blaming the convent for losing her daughter. She tells Lorna that she is the one who failed Agnes, not the Sisters and that Lorna wasn't even capable of recognizing the baby as her own when she was given a chance.
After their confrontation, Eileen calls the Garda. Massey takes Lorna to the station and tells her he's not going to keep letting Lorna off the hook. She recalls how Massey once brought an escaped Clemence back to the convent, and tells him how she was punished, though she also passed him a list of the children with no burial records.
Colman has a frank conversation with his mother about the circumstances of his adoption, and if they even tried to find his birth mother. After learning he was kept in what she calls the 'reject room', Colman realizes he was wrong about Father Percy. Then, he goes to the national archives, searching for any mention of Catherine Ivers or Colman Ivers, under the guise of investigating Lazarus House.
After finding his own death certificate, Colman returns to Kilkinure to show it to Lorna. Since he was ruled dead as Colman Ivers, but is clearly still alive, it's possible that Lorna's daughter could be, too.
The Woman In The Wall continues Sunday at 9 pm on BBC One. Previous episodes are available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
