Recap / Endeavour S 2 E 03 Sway

It's never the one you haven't met. Only the one you can't forget.

The department store episode.

November 1966. When Vivienne Haldane is found murdered in her house, she becomes the third victim of a serial killer who strangles married women with a silk stocking and removes their wedding rings after death — though the women are unknown to each other. Separated from her husband, Mrs. Haldane had a secret lover, referred to in her diary as 'X'; like one of the other victims, she was seen getting into a green car.

The stockings are a unique brand, Le Minou Noir, and have only one retail outlet in Oxford, Burridge's department store. Here, Thursday is shocked to find that widowed Italian saleslady Luisa Armstrong is a former partisan he met in the war but believed to be dead. Morse interviews the stockings' supplier, shifty Joey Lisk, who later tries to force himself onto Gloria Deeks, an attractive assistant at the store who has many admirers.

With the discovery of a fourth corpse, the evidence seems to point to Lisk — but when an employee of Burridge's is found dead, it becomes clear that somebody at the store is the real killer, and is trying to frame Lisk.

This episode contains examples of:

• Blind People Wear Sunglasses: Talfryn Pugh, the blind piano tuner, wears dark glasses.
• The Con: Jellicoe, the store detective at Burridge's, has one of these on the go — he apprehends middle-aged women in the store, plants evidence on them and accuses them of shoplifting. When he threatens to call the police, they offer to pay him off, and he takes their money and lets them go. Things go awry when he picks Win Thursday as his latest victim; she calls his bluff, which results in Morse coming over to the store and uncovering the scam.
• * Continuity Nod: The Diana Day poster continues to get defaced. Back in "Trove", Miss Day had launched the summer collection at Burridge's.
• Creator Cameo: Colin Dexter can be seen on the bus that Win and Joan catch.
• Foreshadowing: Norman Parkis is stated to have spent part of his childhood at Blenheim Vale, an institution that features in the next episode, "Neverland". This is also hinted at in the following exchange between Morse and Jakes:
  Morse: Didn't you go to Sunday School?
  Jakes: [grimly] You don't want to know where I went.
• During the War: Appropriately given that this episode is set in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday, several characters reminisce about what they did in World War II.
  • Fred Thursday spent part of it with the partisans in Italy. Luisa Armstrong was one of them.
  • Win Thursday was back on the home front. Fred was flown home specially for a meeting in London; while Win knows it must have been very important because was Fred wasn't an officer, she has never been told what it was all about.
  • Charles Highbank was in the Merchant Navy. He fell in love during this time, although he never told the object of his affections about his feelings (possibly because he knew that said object would never reciprocate said feelings because he wasn't gay, although this is inferred rather than stated outright).
  • Brian Quinbury was an RAF pilot. He lost a leg, but has never forgotten what flying felt like.
    Quinbury: I turned 20 that month. Can you believe it? Throwing a machine around the sky at 360-odd miles an hour. My son's a year older now than I was then. He doesn't even drive yet.
    Morse: It must have been terrifying.
    Quinbury: Later, perhaps. When the piano stops and the beer runs dry, but not in the moment. It happens so fast. Then it's over and you find yourself alone out on the edge of it. The light up there, my God, and this patchwork below. You fall in love.
    Morse: With what?
    Quinbury: England.
• Green-Eyed Monster: The motive for the murders. Roy Huggins is out to get Joey Lisk because he had an affair with his wife. However, rather than just trying to kill Lisk, he finds out about some of Lisk's other lovers and kills them instead, in the hope that the police will eventually figure out that Lisk is the link between the murdered women, and arrest him.
• Headscratchers: Just how much does Win Thursday know about what Fred got up to when he was serving overseas During the War? Particularly concerning his relationship with Luisa...
• Hidden Depths: The fact that Fred Thursday spent part of the war in Italy with the partisans indicates that he was probably in Special Forces. Not even Win is entirely sure what he did.
• Holiday Episode: Counts as this since, there isn't a subtrope for the uniquely British Bonfire Night (5th November) and Remembrance Sunday (the Sunday nearest 11th November, which in 1966 was 13th November).
  • Expecting trouble on Bonfire Night, Bright has several constables go out on the town in "mufti" (ie. plain-clothes). This leads Strange to apprehend Lisk as he's trying to rape Gloria in his car.
  • Appropriately given the references to World War II, this episode is set in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday. Most of the characters are wearing poppies, and a sales assistant at Burridge's is reprimanded for turning up to work without one.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Lisk appears to do this at the start, although it's soon revealed that he's talking to himself in a mirror in imitation of the Michael Caine character in Alfie.
• Mundane Solution: At one of the victims' homes, a clue is discovered in the form of what appears to be a mathematical symbol that's been chalked on a wall. Morse and the less cerebral Jakes have different ideas about what it means; Morse reckons it's the infinity symbol, while Jakes thinks it looks more like "an eight that's had one too many". Turns out, Jakes is right — it was from a box chalked with the number eight that had been put on its side and leaned against the wall, which ultimately helps to link Roy Huggins with the murder victims.
• Red Herring: Joey Lisk, all to obviously — to the point where he could be considered a Creepy Red Herring. That said, the actual murderer is setting him up to be the fall guy.
• Schlubby, Scummy Security Guard: Mr Jellico, the store detective at Burridge Department store initially appears simply smug and humourless but is secretly running a racket where he picks random middle-aged women and accuses them of shoplifting. He then plants the evidence on them and threatens to call the police, terrifying them into agreeing to pay him off. His plans go awry when he picks Win Thursday as his latest victim, leading to her calling his bluff and Morse arriving at the store, who quickly uncovers his scam.
• Shout-Out: A few, as ever.
  • There are plenty of nods to the work of Alfred Hitchcock:
    • Gloria is very much a Hitchcock-style blonde femme fatale.
    • One of the characters is called Norman. And he owns a stuffed crow. Also, the way in which he is killed (stabbed with a pair of long-bladed scissors) has echoes of Dial M for Murder.
    • The murderer's modus operandi (strangling women to death with an item of clothing) is very reminiscent of Frenzy — as is the fact that he's trying to frame someone else, and that someone else duly comes to the attention of the police.
  • Lisk, the smarmy love rat and Red Herring murder suspect, knowingly styles himself on the Michael Caine character in Alfie which was released in 1966 — the year in which this episode is set.
    Lisk: You see, the way I look at it, when it comes to birds, there's two types of men in this world. Them that's got it and them that don't. Know what I mean?
  • Other nods to Michael Caine include Lisk's taste in cigarettes (French ones, as smoked by Harry Palmer, Caine's character in The Ipcress File) and the name of DI Chard (it's the name of Stanley Baker's character in Zulu, Caine's first big movie).
  • The set-up at Burridge's may remind some viewers of Are You Being Served?, especially given the presence of a Camp Gay sales assistant.
  • The doomed wartime romance between Fred and Luisa has clear overtones of Brief Encounter.
  • At his wedding anniversary party, Fred Thursday quotes from the policeman's chorus in The Pirates of Penzance.
    Thursday: "A policeman's lot is not a happy one", I'm told, but the lot of a policeman's wife hardly gets a mention...
  • A character called Pugh who happens to be blind is a clear nod to Blind Pew from Treasure Island.
• Story Arc: Morse mentions to Strange that things have "gone missing" from the evidence room, linking this episode with the two previous ones in this series, which both hinted that Morse's activities are being secretly monitored by the Freemasons. However, it is significant that, despite his dislike of Freemasonry, Morse does trust Strange to "keep an eye" on things, even though he knows (and disapproves) of Strange having recently become a member of the order.