Grantchester Recap: Will’s Spiral Finally Begins — Hallelujah!
It’s not that we wish ill on the good vicar. It’s that Grantchester’s Season 8 trailer did such a good job of teasing Will coming undone that we’ve been waiting for it for weeks. We’re still not at the point of him standing, face bloody and grinning, in an alley itching for someone to clobber him again, but we got our first indication of what will lead him down that dark road — pills.
Episode 4 began with Will spending more time at Leonard’s halfway house now that Bonnie and Ernie are both away with her parents. A ping-pong match between recovering alcoholic Keith and young Italian immigrant Alfio (aka Alfie) got heated, complete with name-calling and punches thrown. Meanwhile, Mrs. C and the new housekeeper, Martha, got into it in the kitchen. A woman named Judith had been staying at the house for three weeks now and seemed happy to flirt with fellow ex-con Mikey and Will while deflecting attention from older resident Duncan. Leonard believed a woman would have a calming effect on the men. Ha!
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Alfie wanted to confess to Will. Guilt was making him suicidal. Before he went to prison, he had fallen in love with a woman he’d been seeing in secret. It all got to be too much and he broke it off, hurting her deeply. At night, she comes to him and says, “A life must pay for a life.” He had a bottle of pills to stop his mind from racing, but he didn’t trust himself not to use them to end his suffering. He insisted Will take the bottle, and said he wants to be a good person like him. Then, he asked to pray with the vicar. Will tried, but he fled instead. At the church, he prayed alone: “God, help me. Help me to hear you again. Help me.” So he’s been lying this whole time about talking to God about the accident? He hasn’t wanted to admit to anyone, even himself, that his faith is failing him? As he told Alfie, before you can accept forgiveness from God, you must grant it to yourself. Will still can’t.
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Leonard agreed to spend that night at Daniel’s home. The next morning, they arrived back at the halfway house to find Keith on the floor — hungover but alive. Alfie wasn’t as lucky; they found him seated in a shed, blood dripping from his wrists. Everyone assumed it was suicide, and Will felt he’d failed Alfie, until Geordie did some actual sleuthing: The small amount of blood meant Alfie was already dead when his wrists were slit. Alfie was struck on the back of the head with a spade that had been wiped clean (the other shovels were caked in mud). Leonard wanted to believe that it was a robbery gone bad. Daniel’s camera was missing, so perhaps Alfie had interrupted a stranger in the act. But Geordie wanted to question the residents. Lady of the night Judith was MIA, but Mikey claimed he’d been out with a friend last night and Duncan said he’d played cards with poor sport Keith, who’d locked Duncan in his bedroom after losing. Keith couldn’t confirm that because he’d blacked out.
Geordie questioned Leonard’s business model: no files kept on past crimes (for a clean slate, Leonard said), no curfew, and no alcohol ban. Geordie’s fight with Will over whether a chance at redemption should come with some rules was cut short when they discovered a bottle of chloroform in Alfie’s room. More questioning followed: Farmer Duncan wouldn’t reveal why he’d served time, Mikey had been some kind of booze runner, and Keith was a veteran who admitted he thought Alfie (and Mussolini) had a lot to answer for. That earned him a trip to the station along with Leonard and Daniel.
Elliott is gunning to close the halfway house for good, but Miss Scott suggested that the boss’ current foul mood was more about the date who ghosted him last night after she failed to return from the restroom. He had Larry question Leonard and Daniel. Leonard lied and said he spent the night at the vicarage with Will, talking about prayer group, while Daniel said he was home alone reading The Heart in Exile, a trailblazing 1953 novel billed as the first gay detective story. Geordie and Will interrogated Keith, who told them that when he returned from the war, he was spat on. So yes, he had joined a gang to survive, but it wasn’t who he was now. He’s not a killer, just a man who gets violent if the booze doesn’t make oblivion come soon enough. He said two days ago he walked in on Alfie holding a knife on Judith and stopped him from killing her.
Will went back to the house with Daniel and Leonard. Martha was cleaning the front door, which had been egged. Then a brick was thrown through a window. The neighbors’ fear and frustration is growing. Leonard didn’t want to call Geordie, though. He’s trying to downplay the severity of the situation so the residents don’t feel bullied out of their home. Will found Judith in Alfie’s room with money tucked in her bosom. She claimed she hadn’t stolen Alfie’s wallet unlike everything else that Larry pulled from her bag, including Daniel’s camera. She said she owed Alfie, and seemed genuinely surprised to hear he was dead. She hadn’t murdered him.
“If I killed every man who had a knife to my throat, I’d be a bloody mass murderer,” she said. There was no time to digest how sad that statement is. She had some explaining to do: Some posh guys had refused to pay her, so she’d asked Alfie if he could rough them up a bit. He said he didn’t want any trouble, but she thought she could make it worth his while and leaned in to kiss him. He pulled back, and she just thought he was shy, so she tried again — and that’s when he pulled out the knife. He was terrified and wanted her to leave, then Keith intervened. Judith was annoyed that she was stuck at the halfway house until the murder was solved. Stay too long, she said, and people inevitably try to convert you (looking at you, Will!), or they become “Tarzan the Protector” like Duncan. He hadn’t been hitting on her, he’d been warning her about the evils of men, especially Alfie.
In Alfie’s wallet, they found a faded newspaper clipping announcing the suicide of a young woman named Heather and a separate photo of her. Miss Scott’s research had shown that Alfie served three years for robbery and that he’d been questioned over a girl’s death but was released. Will theorized that Alfie was reminded of this woman and all the pain he caused anytime he got close to someone, which is why he chose to avoid people. If Geordie had only been looking up at Will at that moment, maybe he’d have seen that Will was speaking about himself. Will again went to the church and prayed for God to show him the way, but Mikey showed up. He admitted he’d lied about his alibi; he’d been with a college girl, one of three women he’s been seeing. He didn’t want any of them to find out about his past: “Hell hath no fury like three posh birds scorned,” he said.
Back at the halfway house, Mrs. C, Jack and Daniel offered to give Leonard some time away to think about closing his doors permanently. Jack was even going to put the residents up at a hotel. Leonard said no. Later, Daniel asked him to at least take time off to develop rules for the house, but Leonard just wanted to blame Daniel for Alfie’s death: If Daniel hadn’t convinced him to spend the night at his place, maybe Alfie would still be alive. Leonard thought if anyone would be supportive of him, it’d be Daniel. Good for Daniel for finally standing up for himself: He reminded Leonard that he took over running the café for him, that he went through the questioning at the trial and still deals with a target on his back, and that he’d had one week in Morocco where he didn’t have to compete with Leonard’s guilt for abandoning God. Daniel left, maybe for good.
Miss Scott found out that Alfie’s job had been in agriculture in a town called Stanley, and, curiously, there was no police file on farmer Duncan. He’d never served time. Geordie went to the halfway house, where Leonard told him that he should just go ahead and sign the neighbors’ petition to have him closed. It has 147 signatures already. They spoke to Duncan together: Duncan explained that he’d been homeless and had lied about being an ex-con to get a room. He said he’d caught Alfie staring at Judith, lusting, but reminded the detective that he’d been locked in his bedroom all night and couldn’t fit through the keyhole. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching Monk reruns and that show loved to have a killer with a seemingly airtight alibi cockily remind Mr. Monk that he couldn’t have been in two places at the same time, but at that moment, I suspected Duncan was Heather’s father and that he’d killed Alfie. Still, Duncan insisted he’d never even been to the area of England where Geordie thought Alfie had farmed and said the ticket Geordie spotted for an upcoming trip was just for Duncan to visit old farming friends up north and look for work.
Geordie went to update Will and found him taking out his existential crisis on the go-kart he was building for Ernie’s birthday. Will said he feels like Alfie’s death was divine retribution, and perhaps it’ll happen to him, too. Geordie told him that he understands what it’s like to suffer, too, and also what it’s like to have a friend who reminds you who you truly are. Geordie reminded Will how many people he helps every day, including him. Surely that restores the balance: “He’s on your side. We all are,” he told Will. “But you need to talk to me, or to God, to Bonnie. Otherwise, it’ll rot inside.” Geordie suggested Will steer clear of Leonard’s place for a while, but Will said it had helped to be there. He understood the men’s quest for redemption. So what had Duncan been searching for, Geordie wondered. He’d ruled out a connection between Alfie and Duncan, but then Will told him there was a Stanley in Scotland. Rookie mistake, Geordie! Off they went to make phone calls.
Right after we watched Martha give Leonard her resignation, their contacts confirmed Duncan was Heather’s father. At the halfway house, Will cleverly called Martha by her real name, that of Heather’s mother, and she turned around. In the interrogation room, the parents told a tragic tale: They only found out about Alfie after Heather’s death. They refused to believe she’d committed suicide. So when Alfie left Scotland, they assumed this immigrant had made advances toward her, which she refused, and he’d killed her. They wanted “justice and the truth,” and when they found out where Alfie was, they posed as a housekeeper and ex-con and waited for their moment. With only passed-out Keith at the house that night, they chloroformed Alfie, dragged him to the shed, slapped him around, and tried to get him to confess to the murder. When he wouldn’t, they killed him and made it look like suicide. But they were entirely wrong. Their local minister told Will that a week before her death, Heather and Alfie had asked him to marry them in secret. The minister wouldn’t, knowing how much Duncan would disapprove. A few days later, Alfie broke off the relationship. The next day, Heather committed suicide. Even after hearing that, the mother felt no regret. In their eyes and the eyes of God, she said, Alfie took their daughter from them and he can never be forgiven. Damn this woman for many reasons, including that her words erased Geordie’s progress in the battle for Will’s soul.
Will may have raised a glass as Geordie toasted closing the case — “To the work we do. It can redeem us” — but his fake, fleeting smile was back. At home, Will tried calling Bonnie but Ernie said she had indigestion after eating 32 pickles and was resting. Will tried to write her a letter, explaining that he missed talking to her and that if he didn’t deal with this guilt now, he was afraid it would contaminate everything he loves. But he just crumpled up page after page. Then, he took the bottle of pills that Alfie had given him from his desk and popped two of them.
At the church, Will kneeled at the altar, once again bathing in the light of the stained glass windows. He probably told himself that he’s trying to quiet his racing mind so he can hear God again, but really, he just wants oblivion to come at this point. What happens when the pills don’t bring him peace and he adds them to the list of reasons why he won’t be a good father? We’ll find out next Sunday when the season’s final two episodes air back-to-back. Also on the agenda: Geordie’s decision on retirement, and our verdict on whether he can recover from his lackluster response to Cathy’s promotion news. (Shame on you, Geordie.) What are your predictions? Join the congregation in the comments and share your thoughts.
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