Written by: Bruce Lansbury
Directed by: Jerry Jameson
Jessica probes a Monte Carlo murder for which her hotelier friend is a suspect.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Between his Predatory Business practices, womanizing, and his being a Jerkass to pretty much everyone, it comes as no shock that Earl Harper ends up getting murdered.
- Chekhov's Gun: Several.
- During an altercation, Richie Floret, the hotel owner's son, tries to attack Earl Harper with a pair of scissors. It turns up later as the murder weapon.
- Richie's photography hobby and the pictures of characters he's taken turn up important later.
- Several seemingly random characters, from the hotel staff that appears to bug Harper's phone to an apparent Loony Fan that keeps hounding Jessica for an autograph, turn up relevant later.
- The Alexandra stone that Mrs. Harper wore at a party at the hotel.
- Caught on Tape: A key plot point of the episode is a hotel staff who bugs Earl Harper's phone and the murder being audio recorded as a result of it.
- Detective Mole: The murderer is revealed to be the police inspector Jessica has been assisting in the investigation.
- Dying Clue: The dying victim seemingly tells Jessica (in French) that "the recording is in the fish". However, he was actually trying to tell her that "the recording is in the poison" (i.e. hidden in a can of rat poison); the French words for poison (poison) and fish (poisson) are very similar.
- Faking and Entering: Earl Harper's murder was initially made to look like a burglary gone wrong, but Jessica's investigation clarifies that it wasn't.
- Graceful Loser: Inspector Morel is revealed to have committed the two murders and surrenders graciously, with both Jessica and his beloved Annie Floret in his arms.
- Red Herring: Several. The pianist, Peter Templeton, the bodyguard, and Barbara Calloway were initially made to look like possible murder suspects.
- Running Gag: Jessica keeps trying to identify an ingredient that Chef Robert uses in his dish, and Chef Robert is Improperly Paranoid that Jessica is trying to steal his recipe and sell it to fast food chains in the US.
- Shear Menace: The episode's first victim was stabbed with a pair of scissors to the heart.
- Sleeping with the Boss's Wife: Cynthia Harper is having a very obvious affair with the bodyguard that her husband had hired to watch HER. Similarly, Earl Harper has his own girlfriend.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Between his cordial attitude towards Jessica, his love for hotelier Annie Floret, and the first murder victim being unlikable, Inspector Morel ends up being somewhat sympathetic, especially at the end when he surrenders and acknowledges that he has to pay for his crimes.
