Simon and Eugene discuss the similarities between Holly Turner and Romana I, whether you could plug a time machine into a 30 amp ring main, and what the conviction rate is like in the world of Crime Traveller.
Episode Synopsis
Holly and Slade are at the bank. Holly is looking for a loan to pay for her expensive electronics addiction and Slade is tagging along because… well, who wouldn’t want to follow Holly around?
Holly has no luck getting a loan, but she does get a lecture from the bank drone on her spending habits.
Slade has better luck, thwarting an attempted bank robbery.
Holly has made a decision, she doesn’t make enough money as a cop to support her habit and she’s decided to quit. Slade tries to convince her not to quit and gives her some alternative ideas, such as having a rich relative die and leave her a ton of cash.
…and faster than you can say, “we’ve got a time machine and could easily arrange this,” Holly’s rich aunt Mary whom she has not seen in over a year has been murdered, leaving her a potential fortune.
Because she’s related to the victim, and in a truly surprising act of identifying and dealing with a conflict of interest, Holly and Slade are not put on the investigation.
This rankles Slade, and he guilts Holly into using the time machine to go back and find out who killed her Aunt Mary, or, better yet, prevent it.
They go back in time to about an hour or so before the murder, and they meet with Aunt Mary at her home, as well as her live-in boy toy, Alex. She is a beautiful, lonely, rich widow after all.
Holly is absolutely dead set against trying to stop the murder until Slade guilts her into trying.
They go to the restaurant, Slade poses as the wine waiter, and Holly poses as a health inspector. They know that Mary was poisoned with potassium cyanide in her wine glass. Between them, Holly makes sure that the wine glass hasn’t been tampered with, and Slade makes sure that the wine bottle is unadulterated.
Slade, hovering near the table overhears a potential motive. The three people Aunt Mary is having lunch with are being blackmailed by her, and they want it stopped. And stopped it is, as Mary gasps and falls dead of cyanide poisoning.
Slade and Holly hoof it back to the station – where Holly is promptly arrested on suspicion of murder.
Boy toy Alex has informed them that Holly and Slade came to visit Aunt Mary just before the murder, despite Holly saying she’d not seen her aunt in over a year. Holly has been identified as the bogus health inspector at the restaurant, and her fingerprints are on the glass where traces of poison were found. Oh, and they know she’s expected to inherit millions, and that Mary was planning to change her will very soon, possibly removing Holly.
Arrested, placed in the holding cells, personal possessions, including the time watch, confiscated, and with only a few hours to go before they are trapped in the Loop of Infinity forever, Slade goes to work to solve the murder.
Slade confronts each of the suspects, and they confirm they were being blackmailed, but each points the finger of suspicion to the next.
The dentist points out that the author of murder fiction novels was the one that suggested the lunch meeting. The author points out that she has no access to potassium cyanide, but the owner of the chemical manufacturing company does. The chemical mogul points out that there’s one more person with a motive – Alex.
With the suspects having done all of Slade’s detective work for him, he questions Alex and decides it must have been him.
Meanwhile, Holly escapes, desperately trying to get back to the time machine before it is too late. One wonders if she’d bother to wait for Slade at this point; however, the question need not be answered as the two of them, in speeding cars, collide head-on with one another.
Back to the apartment they go, just beating out Chief Inspector Grisham who is trapped in an elevator when the time machine blew out the power during an earlier part of the episode.
Synchronized back in their own time, Slade reveals that Alex is the murderer. He poisoned Mary’s medication, and then post-murder placed cyanide in the wine glass to cast suspicion on her lunch companions.
It looks like Alex is out of the will and Holly gets it all… unfortunately, it’s all debt. Aunt Mary was blackmailing the others because she’d gone broke on a bad investment. At least Holly got a cash bonus for false arrest and a raise. Also, she’s still got Slade.
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