Miss Scarlet airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous episode and other seasons.
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Now that she has worked a case with Alexander while also carrying on a clandestine romance with him, Eliza has the opposite problem from before: she wants Alexander to give her more work. But he doesn’t want to show favoritism – and Eliza has been charging a lot lately.
He also fears that a colleague has found out about his relationship when the new detective George Willows asks him if it’s okay for a detective to be romantically involved with someone with whom he works – but Willows is asking on his own behalf, having gone on several dates with the new clerk Isabel Summers.
Eliza and Alexander soon find themselves involved in the same case even without Alexander employing Eliza. The famous racehorse Trafalgar Spring has been stolen from Lord Roberts’ stables before it was due to be transferred to his recently divorced wife. She had won the horse in the acrimonious divorce settlement, and is offering a £100 reward for the horse’s safe return. Clarence convinces the Lady to employ Eliza by also offering his services as an accountant to help hide the Lady’s assets in order to protect them from an appeal of the divorce settlement by her husband.
Lord Roberts, meanwhile, is leaning on his connections to the queen and the prime minister to pressure Alexander into devoting his time to the case. The Lord suspects his groundskeeper stole the horse, and has summarily fired him.
Eliza tries to get information on the case from Alexander, but he refuses to share. She offers to stay with his daughter Sophia when he is called away for work at night, and resists the temptation to read his case files. Instead, she reads to Sophia in bed and falls asleep herself in a chair next to Sophia, where Alexander finds her the next morning.
He was called to investigate a dead body found not far from Lord Roberts’ stable. The dead man is Jack Lawson, Lady Roberts’ horse trainer. His body is near some carriage tracks.
Lawson was banned by Lord Roberts from his estate after the divorce, but Lady Roberts says she heard a rumor that her ex-husband had recently approached Lawson about his services.
Eliza knows that Alexander was called to a crime related to the theft of Trafalgar Spring, but he won’t share details. Clarence has heard that both the Roberts have been struggling to keep house staff after their very public divorce, so Eliza pretends to be a prospective nanny to the two Roberts sons. While “watching” them in a trial period, she explores Lord Roberts’ estate, including his stable, where she is found by the housekeeper. She is ushered into the house, where the boys she’s supposed to be supervising break a vase, bringing Lord Roberts out – along with Alexander, who is questioning him. Alexander is frustrated both by Lord Roberts’ complaining and insinuations against his wife, and by Eliza’s insertion of herself into the case.
Lady Roberts is also pushing, and impatient with Clarence’s slow work on her accounts – but her finances are in disarray, as he notes, listing several odd payments. Then she receives a ransom note for Trafalgar Spring. Upset, she insists that Eliza pay it and retrieve her horse – without telling the police. Eliza will still get her fee.
Eliza wants to tell Alexander, while Clarence argues against it – and finally realizes that Eliza is in a relationship with Alexander. He berates Eliza for all the risks involved in such a romance.
Despite Clarence, Eliza decides to tell Alexander about the ransom note, with help in her decision from Ivy. But while Eliza waits for Alexander in his office, Willows drops off an autopsy report for Daniel O’Dwyer, a name Eliza recognizes as the recipient of one of the unusual payments discovered by Clarence in Lady Roberts’ accounts. She takes the report and leaves.
O’Dwyer is the real name of Jack Lawson, who changed his name when he left Ireland for London with gambling debts and charges of race fixing. The autopsy shows that he was likely killed by a kick from a horse.
Clarence apologizes to Eliza for his outburst, and tells her she deserves to be happy. She then explains that she has determined from the font that the letters on the ransom note were all cut from the same newspaper, which is only sold in two postal districts. She and Clarence search a map of the area to figure out where Trafalgar Spring could be held.
She then calls reporters to Scotland Yard, where they see her ride up on Trafalgar Spring. The publicity will get her more work – and she also makes sure to praise Alexander’s role in the investigation.
It turns out that both Roberts had involved Lawson in shenanigans involving Trafalgar Spring: Lady Roberts had paid Lawson to steal the horse, while Lord Roberts had recently sold him property in London for a very low price. Lawson betrayed both of them, deciding to sell the horse on the black market. When he was accidentally killed while taking the horse, the horse dealer he enlisted to help panicked and took Trafalgar Spring himself, writing Lady Roberts a ransom note to try to salvage the situation.
In exchange for her silence about the Roberts’ involvement, Eliza demands that Lord Roberts drop his appeal of the divorce settlement and Lady Roberts pay Eliza her full fee – plus a bonus. They accept.
Eliza and Alexander happily go to dinner together in an out-of-the-way area, figuring that they will eventually be found out anyway.
Ivy is slightly less happy in her relationship, as Potts has taken up housework in a way that annoys her as he awaits an apology from his boss, Wormsley, and an offer to return to work. Potts is upset by the lack of word from Wormsley – until he starts writing his memoirs, throwing himself into the task with diligence. When he asks Ivy to read the dense beginning chapters, she starts encouraging him to go visit Wormsley and apologize himself to get his job back. Instead he buys a typewriter so that he can write even more, without hand cramps.