History Recap / EndeavourS2E01Trove

May 1966. After several months spent recuperating on light duties with the County force following the events of "[[Recap/EndeavourS1E04Home Home]]", Morse returns to Oxford and witnesses a pageant, held to mark "nine hundred years of history", disrupted by two events. The first is when feminist Kitty, daughter of by-election candidate Barbara Batten, sprays beauty queen Diana Day with red paint, the second is when an unknown man falls to his death from a roof. Initially deemed a suicide, the deceased had a host of fake identity cards and had scrawled a message on a motel notepad, D DAY FRIDAY 98018.

-->'''Morse''': The ''Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum'', to give it its full title, appeared 335 years before the events with which this exhibition is concerned took place. Venerable the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede Bede]] may have been, but not clairvoyant. ''[Copley-Barnes looks annoyed that he has met someone who knows even more than himself, while Jakes smirks in the background]''

* DeadPersonImpersonation: Archie Batten turns out to be a case of this. As a soldier during the war, he was on long range patrol with his commanding officer when the latter was killed. Seeing a chance to escape his unhappy family life at home, he stole the officer's rank and identity. In this episode, it comes back to bite him when he has sex with Frida Yelland, ''who turns out to be his daughter''; they met at a beauty contest and she got talking with him because she was trying to find out more about her biological father, who as far as she knew was killed in the war while serving in Batten's unit -- and, as she used her stepfather's surname, Batten didn't make the connection until she mentioned her actual father's name just after they'd had sex.

When Bernard Yelland comes to Oxford in search of his runaway step-daughter Frida, Morse believes that FRIDAY actually reads FRIDA Y, while D DAY could refer to Diana Day. A diversion from these mysteries is provided by the theft of an Anglo-Saxon jewel, the Wolvercote Trove, from the local museum. The dead man is revealed to have been a London-based private detective, Pettifer, who was not above blackmailing his clients and may have been involved in the burglary. Morse, meanwhile, works out the significance of the figures and exposes secrets of the great and good to discover who killed Pettifer and Frida.

* CreatorCameo: As Morse and Thursday walk away from the museum after investigating the scene of the trove heist, they pass Creator/ColinDexter sitting on a bench.

* GrammarNazi: Morse picks up on Archie Batten's poor punctuation.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Muriel Todd. If she had not hired Pettifer to follow her husband, he (Pettifer) would not have witnessed the Frida Yelland murder, would not have tried to blackmail Val and so would not have been murdered.

* ArtisticLicenceHistory: Morse himself is guilty of this when he tells Katty Batten that the ''Rokeby Venus'' was vandalised by a suffragette in 1913; that actually happened in 1914.

* AlwaysMurder: Come on, did you ''really'' think Pettifer's death was a genuine suicide, or that the investigation into Frida Yelland's disappearance would not result in the finding of her corpse? The fact that Morse, being Morse, doesn't believe for one minute that the former was suicide is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by Jakes.

** Morse encounters (and, to the delight of Jakes, verbally gets the better of) arrogant academic Matthew Copley-Barnes, who appears in the [[Series/InspectorMorse original series]] episode "The Infernal Serpent". He is [[Monster/{{Morseverse}} not nice]].
** The stolen jewel, the Wolvercote Trove, forms part of an Anglo-Saxon belt buckle. Its corresponding part is the titular jewel in the [[Series/InspectorMorse original series]] episode "The Wolvercote Tongue".

* BeautyContest: These play a significant part in this episode. Diana Day, the model who is attacked by Kitty Batten, has recently won the Miss Great Britain contest. A regional one, Miss Oxfordshire, is organised by Val and Muriel Todd; Frida Yelland had taken part in one of the heats and is revealed to have met Archie Batten there, he being one of the judges. To say that Morse is not keen on these an understatement; while attending Miss Oxfordshire, he compares them to a 'best cow' contest at a county show he was taken to as a child.

* BittersweetEnding: Barbara Batten wins the by-election, but finds out the unsavoury truth about her husband (who has been arrested for conspiracy to murder), tearing her family apart. She does appear to reconcile with her daughter, though.

* BeautyContest: These play a significant part in this episode. Diana Day, the model who is attacked by Kitty Batten, is the reigning Miss Great Britain. A regional one, Miss Oxfordshire, is organised by Val and Muriel Todd; Frida Yelland had taken part in one of the heats and is revealed to have met Archie Batten there, he being one of the judges. To say that Morse is not keen on these an understatement; while attending Miss Oxfordshire, he compares them to a 'best cow' contest at a county show he was taken to as a child.

* SlummingIt: Thomas, Defarge's assistant, is actually the son of a marquis.

* GrammarNazi: Morse picks up on Archie Batten’s poor punctuation.

* AlwaysMurder: Come on, did you ''really'' think Pettifer's death was a genuine suicide? The fact that Morse, being Morse, doesn't believe for one minute that it was suicide is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by Jakes.

* NeverOneMurder: Two. As is standard for an ITV cop show, the second body is found just before an ad break.

* HiddenInPlainSight: Two gold torques that were among the items stolen from the exhibition are clearly visible on the model's arms when Thursday and Morse visit the photography studio, although their focus is on Delfarge and not the photo-shoot which is happening in the background.

* RedHerring: Contrary to what Morse thinks, Matthew Copley-Barnes had nothing to do with the theft of the artefacts from Beaufort College or the deaths of Frida Yelland and Pettifer. The notion of the theft being connected with the murders is also one of these; turns out, the only link between the two is the fact that the sewer in which Friday's body was hidden just happens to be the means by which the thieves gained access to the college.