Title: The Quality of Mercy
Directed by: Billie Eltringham
Written by: Alan Plater
Air Date: March 29, 2009
Previous: Allegory of Love
Next: The Point of Vanishing
Guest Starring: Bryan Dick, Ronan Vibert, Daisy Lewis, Maureen Beattie
"The Quality of Mercy" is the second episode of the third season of Lewis, aka Inspector Lewis in the United States.
An Oxford theater troupe is putting on an open-air production of The Merchant of Venice. The director, a post-doctorate Oxford student named Emma Golding, barks out instructions to her actors, including her Shylock, an obnoxious person but talented actor named Richard Scott. Finally it's time for the preview performance, but Shylock misses his cue to enter—because Richard Scott has been murdered!
Detectives Lewis and Hathaway have a wide parade of suspects. There's Emma, who had a brief fling with Richard. There's Joe Myers, who takes on the role of Shylock in the production after Richard was killed. There's also Simon Monkford, a con artist running a hotel luggage scam, who just happened to be in the preview audience for the show—he has no connection to any of the actors, but obviously has a secret of his own. Surely the killer can't be Professor Denise Gregson, who mentors the theater department and boards most of the actors in her house. Maybe the killer is Phil Beaumont, an Oxford dropout, rabid Communist, and would-be playwright who also once dated Emma Golding, and who had a fight with Richard after Richard stole his laptop. An Intrepid Reporter and theater critic, Amanda Costello, follows the story, and for her trouble is also murdered.
Meanwhile, Robbie Lewis lays flowers on his wife Valerie's grave on her birthday. Then, out of nowhere, Detective Sergeant Hathaway gets a break on the hit-and-run death of Valerie Lewis, now dead over five years.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Richard Scott was arrogant and obnoxious, borrowing money from all the men and trying to seduce all the women. In the short time we see him before he's killed he brags about how he's going to be a star and talks about how much he likes Three-Way Sex. He was murdered because he decided to branch out into blackmail.
- Blackmail Backfire: Why Prof. Gregson killed Richard Scott. He stole Philip Beaumont's laptop, found out about the plagiarism and Gregson's blackmail payment to Philip, and tried to blackmail her for more.
- Continuity Nod:
- Hathaway, on the phone with a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, says "We always get our man. Except when it's a woman, or even an occasional transsexual." That last bit about a transgender killer is from Season 2 episode "Life Born of Fire."
- Then there's the unsolved death of Valerie Lewis in the backstory, Hathaway closes the case in this episode when a comment out of nowhere from Simon Monkford's sister reveals that Monkford was the driver.
- Dies Wide Open: Richard Scott, found stabbed backstage between scenes of the play, the knife from the production in his heart.
- "You've just walked into a "Eureka!" Moment." So says Hathaway to Lewis when Lewis steps into Hathaway's office. Hathaway has just found out that Emma Golding's doctoral dissertation ended with the exact same passage, word-for-word, that Phil Beaumont wrote in an op-ed in the paper. Hathaway concludes that Beaumont wrote Golding's whole dissertation.
- Grave-Marking Scene: Lewis lays flowers on his wife's grave, setting up the plot development later, when her death is finally solved.
- He Knows Too Much: Prof. Gregson killed Amanda Costello because she found out that Amanda discovered her secret and was going to write a newspaper article about it.
- Intrepid Reporter: Amanda Costello, sometimes drama critic and also reporter, who gets murdered for finding out the killer's secret and bragging that she'll report it in a story.
- Literary Allusion Title: The quote, of course, comes from Portia's "the quality of mercy is not strained" monologue from The Merchant of Venice.
- The Maiden Name Debate: Lewis and Hathaway do not immediately realize that Prof. Gregson is the ex-wife of Professor Alderson (an archaeologist, who attended the fatal preview), because she kept her maiden name when they married.
- Mathematician's Answer: Lewis, who has come to believe that the murders have something to do with the Edinburgh theater festival where Phil and Richard got in a fight after Richard stole Phil's laptop, asks him about it.Lewis: We'd like you to tell us about Edinburgh.
Phil: It's a big city in Scotland. - Oop North: Philip, a working-class northerner and a political radical, a young communist who seems to hate everybody but especially hates the privileged students who make up most of the kids of Oxford—this is why Philip, a scholarship student, dropped out. Hathaway calls him "an embittered northerner with a chip on both shoulders."
- "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending: A pan up to the skyline of Oxford and the rolling hills beyond at the end, after Lewis and Hathaway have cracked the case.
- The Show Must Go On: Emma uses this exact phrase when trying to talk DI Lewis in to letting the production continue. It turns out that Emma is desperately trying to break into the big-time British theater scene and views this production as her ticket.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode is filled with Shakespeare shout-outs, starting with the production of The Merchant of Venice. There are Shakespeare quotes dropped next to bodies. The actors have a party after the performance at a pub called "Prospero's Bar". Hathaway's crack about how his hunch about Monkford comes "by the pricking of my thumbs" (Macbeth) leads Lewis to say that he's sick of Shakespeare.
- Beyond Shakespeare, Phillip Beaumont and Emma Golding had a game where they dropped famous movie quotes. When asked about his missing laptop and the diary on it, Phil says "Follow the money."
- Summation Gathering: Discussed Trope. Phil walks in to the dining room at Prof. Gregson's boarding house, sees Lewis talking to the other characters, and jokes about how it's like the scene in Agatha Christie stories where Poirot gets all the characters together and gets the bad guy to crack.
- Theme Serial Killer: The killer drops typed Shakespeare quotes by his victims, dropping "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" (Hamlet) by the body of Richard Scott, and "I will lead them up and down" (A Midsummer Night's Dream) by the body of Amanda Costello. This turns out to be an effort fo frame Joe Myers, who acted in productions of both of those plays.
- This Is the Part Where...: Lewis and Hathaway have zeroed in on Professor Gregson as the killer. She tries to fend them off, saying "I suppose this is the moment where I say I can explain everything."
