D.e.a.t.h in Paradise season 14 episode 3 recap: who killed Susie Montagu?

D.e.a.t.h in Paradise season 14 episode 3 sees a business launch take a terrible turn on Saint Marie when the founder dies just as she’s about to launch a new product — and although it seems like she died of a tragic allergic reaction, it soon becomes clear that there was foul play involved. Meanwhile, DI Mervin Wilson (Don Gilet) finally gets the go-ahead to dig deeper into the mystery of what happened on the day his mother Dorna Bray died. Here’s what went down in D.e.a.t.h in Paradise season 14 episode 3…

We open on an idyllic beach, where Susie Montagu (Georgia Maguire) is arriving at her company Healing Skin and talking excitedly on the phone about launching a new moisturiser, Pelure. She greets Carrie Standish (Sex Education‘s Patricia Allison) and reveals that a client have upped their order to 800 jars of the new product; Carrie is delighted and embraces her. Daisy McCrae (Love Rat‘s Imogen King) pops her head in and says that she’s just finished setting up, so it’s probably time to start serving drinks. Susie tells them both to head out, and she’ll see them out there.

Susie heads out to the crowd and is greeted with a smattering of applause before launching into a speech about how she’s been plagued by allergies and illness all her life, until she moved to Saint Marie. She says that being able to help others like her through the products Healing Skin creates has changed her life, and she wants to thank everyone who’s been on that journey with her. Later, she shows Carrie a promotional video that she’s recorded as Daisy brings her a glass of champagne. But after just one sip, Susie starts coughing and then choking. She wheezes for someone to get her EpiPen and Daisy runs off to fetch it. Carrie injects her, but the shot doesn’t work — and Susie stops breathing.

Later, Mervin attends the crime scene as DS Naomi Thomas (Shantol Jackson) joins to brief him on the victim: Susie is 35 and collapsed with breathing difficulties, dying before the paramedics arrived. It seems that she died from anaphylactic shock, as the staff said she had a very severe peanut allergy. Mervin notes a nasty bruise on Susie’s leg where she was given the EpiPen injection and wonders why it didn’t work. He wonders what she could have ingested to trigger the nut allergy, and Naomi gestures to the spread of snacks that were laid out for the product launch.

Mervin and Naomi question Carrie and Daisy, who confirm that everyone at Healing Skin knew about Susie’s nut allergy and that the caterers had been carefully briefed. Carrie adds that the drinks were from a nearby bar, who had also been warned about Susie’s allergy. Mervin looks through Susie’s bag and finds Susie’s diary, which has an infinity symbol on the cover, and enquires about what Pelure is made of, with Daisy explaining that it contains naturally-shed snakeskin. Mervin sees a snake in a glass tank and recoils, to Naomi’s amusement. Daisy, clearly still emotional, shows them the promotional video that Susie made earlier that morning, in which she says that Pelure makes your skin feel like velvet. Daisy tells them that Susie was really nice, and you wouldn’t find anyone with a bad word to say about her. Well, we’ll see about that.

Mervin heads outside with Susie’s diary and shows Naomi an important clue within: Susie was on an intermittent fasting diet, and she hadn’t eaten anything to eat that morning. He tells Naomi to call Officer Darlene Curtis (Ginny Holder) and get her to get everything from the buffet table tested. He asks Carrie and Daisy if Susie had any next of kin they need to speak to.

At a restaurant near the sea, Mervin and Naomi interview Susie’s husband, Steve Montagu (Changing Ends‘ David Mumeni), and ask him about Susie’s history with anaphylactic shock; he confirms that she’d had a few similar attacks in the past but the EpiPen always helped. Naomi confirms that one was administered, but it wasn’t enough. Steve starts to cry, and Naomi suggests they complete the interview later, but Mervin wants to get it finished. He mentions Susie’s intermittent fasting, and Steve says she was always careful about what she ate. Naomi says Susie was meant to fast this morning, so is there any chance she might have broken it? Steve says Susie was the most disciplined person he ever knew — if the diary said she was to be fasting, then she would have been fasting.

As they approach the police station, Mervin notes that it’s curious that Susie had a successful business but her husband is working as a waiter. Darlene is outside, on her way to Healing Skin, but warns them that Commissioner Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington) is not in a good mood today. Sure enough, inside, Selwyn is giving Officer Sebastian Rose (Shaquille Ali-Yebuah) a roasting over multiple noise complaints that his secretary has been fielding regarding a rave on Turtle Beach. Seb looks it up on social media and says admiringly that it “sound like a mad party”. Selwyn irritably dispatches Seb to break the party up, and after he leaves, Selwyn says he did have another reason for his visit to the station: he has got a search warrant for Mervin’s mother’s house. However, he reminds Mervin that this case must be treated like any other, and cannot become “a personal crusade”, so he and Naomi are to be kept in the loop at every step. Mervin suggests they go to his mother’s house right now, as they can’t take any further actions on the Susie Montagu investigation until the post-mortem results come in.

Mervin and Naomi pull up outside Dorna’s house, but Mervin needs a moment before going in. Naomi gently reminds him that they don’t have to do it, but Mervin briskly says it’s fine: “like the Commissioner said, it’s just another case.” They go into the house and search for any evidence that Dorna would have known the storm was coming. Naomi asks about Dorna’s life, and Mervin explains that Dorna was born in Saint Marie and then moved to Antigua, only returning recently when her father got sick — this is Mervin’s grandfather’s house. Naomi asks Mervin if he has any siblings, and Mervin bluntly tells her that while he understands her professional curiosity as a detective, his personal history is not relevant to the case. They carry on searching in silence until Mervin finds Dorna’s laptop — it’s password-protected, but Naomi knows a guy who will be able to get them access.

Over at Turtle Bay, the rave is in full swing and Seb is on the phone to Darlene asking what he’s supposed to do. Darlene — who has her hands full bagging up the buffet at Healing Skin — tells him to use his initiative for once. Seb heads into the party and attempts (very quietly) to tell the ravers that the party is over. He tries raising his voice, and still nobody listens to him, so he turns the music off, grabs a microphone and identifies himself as a police officer. But he gets absolutely nowhere, and calls Darlene in a panic for back-up. While he’s waiting for help to arrive, he spots a small clear plastic grip-seal bag on the ground with a pill inside, which has the same infinity logo that we saw on the front of Susie’s diary.

The next morning, Seb thanks Darlene (who he calls “Auntie D”) for rescuing him the night before, and she tells him it’s fine — and also not to call her “Auntie”. Mervin and Naomi arrive; Naomi asks if everything went OK with the rave and Darlene quickly shuts Seb down, telling Naomi that it’s “all good”. Darlene shows her the bag that Seb confiscated, saying that the symbol doesn’t match anyone they know so there may be a new supplier in the area. Mervin makes the connection with Susie, acknowledging that the symbol itself is fairly common but seeing it twice in two days seems like more than a coincidence. Plus, there are a lot of numbers recorded in the diary, which might mean something. Seb offers to conduct inquiries to see if anybody knows anything.

With the post-mortem and the lab results now in on the Susie Montagu case, the team brief each other: Naomi reveals that significant traces of peanut oil were found in Susie’s mouth, specifically her gums and tongue. Given the severity of her allergy, the coroner is satisfied that she died as a result of fatal anaphylaxis. Darlene says that the lab results confirm Susie’s EpiPen worked correctly: the amount of adrenaline in her system matched the dosage given by the pen, and it should have been effective. However, none of the food or champagne contained any traces of peanuts. Naomi adds that the post-mortem noted the significant bruising on Susie’s leg, presumably resulting from usage of the EpiPen. Mervin remembers that Carrie said she’d not used one before, which might explain why she was a bit rough in handling it. But here’s the clincher: the post-mortem confirms Susie’s stomach was empty, and she hadn’t eaten for at least 14 hours, so she was definitely fasting. So why were there traces of peanut oil in her mouth? They know she can’t have eaten it by accident, so someone must have deliberately put it into her mouth — and that makes this an official murder investigation. Mervin tells Darlene to get the incident board set up and look into anyone who might benefit from Susie’s d.e.a.t.h. He even remembers to say please… with minimal prompting.

Selwyn returns to his office and listens to a voicemail from the Chief Commissioner, who thanks him for his steadfast service to the island and his gracious conduct throughout this process, but there’s nothing he can do about the restructuring: it all comes down to budget, and the decision is final.

Back at Healing Skin, Naomi tells Mervin that she’s just updated the Commissioner, and notes that he doesn’t seem himself lately. Mervin comments (accurately) that Selwyn is hardly a barrel of laughs at the best of times; unlike Susie, who, if the pictures on her desk is anything to go by, was happy all the time. Naomi says that Susie’s life in the UK was miserable and full of illness and pain, but moving to Saint Marie gave her a new lease of life — Mervin, of course, still isn’t convinced that Saint Marie has much to offer beyond sunshine and mosquitos. Mervin looks at the jar of Pelure that Susie was using for her promotional video, and notices that the lid is screwed on properly, which it wasn’t in the video. Naomi suggests Susie might have closed it properly after she finished filming.

Mervin and Naomi speak to Daisy again to find out more about who Susie really was. Daisy says that they’re an open book at Healing Skin, so Mervin and Naomi are free to look around. However, we then see Daisy in Cassie’s laboratory frantically shredding documents. Meanwhile in Susie’s office, Naomi discovers legal papers revealing that Susie was in the process of divorcing Steve.

They return to the restaurant where Steve works and questioning him about his reaction — given that he wrote “NO” on the papers in red pen, it seems the split was far from amicable. Steve sits down with them and says that things were great when he and Susie moved to Saint Marie — the cold weather back home made Susie’s illnesses worse, but when they came to the island on holiday she was like a different person, so they decided to make it their home. As Susie got better she wanted to help others, but it took over her life, and they drifted apart. Steve moved out about a month ago, by mutual decision, to give them both a bit of space, but then Susie filed for divorce. Mervin asks if Steve stood to lose out financially from the divorce, since Susie’s business was about to take off, but Steve protests that he loves Susie and wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. He does know, however, that Susie and Carrie had a big falling-out about a month ago.

Outside the restaurant, Mervin takes a call from Darlene, who tells him that she and Seb have been looking into Healing Skin and found two things that might be significant: Carrie was registered as a new director one month ago, and one week later, she was removed. Naomi wonders if that’s what Steve heard Susie and Carrie arguing about, and Mervin asks what could have happened to get Carrie removed from the role so swiftly. Darlene and Seb explain that Pelure’s brand name was lodged with the patent office last year, with Carrie named as the inventor. Mervin theorises that Carrie was given the directorship as a thank you, and Naomi adds that Carrie stood to benefit in a major financial way if Pelure was a success. So why did Susie change her mind?

Back at Healing Skin, Carrie downplays the whole thing: she says that while she created Pelure, everything she does at the company belongs to Healing Skin, not her. She was as surprised as anyone when Susie made her a director, but claims that Susie later decided to wait until Pelure had launched to see how it did, and to give her an idea of how many shares to give Carrie. Naomi says that as a director, Carrie would have made a lot of money from Pelure, whereas now she gets nothing. Carrie scoffs that if she were interested in money, she’d still be working in Big Pharma: she’s here because she believes in the mission, and only Susie knows why she made the decisions she did. Which is unfortunate, what with Susie being dead and all. After Naomi and Mervin leave, Carrie gets a text from Steve saying that they need to talk.

As they leave, Naomi warns Mervin about his manner with the suspects and says that he’s coming close to being outright rude to them. Mervin, however, assures her that this is all a deliberate gambit on his part: if people get riled up, they lose their composure and say things they didn’t mean to. He walks over to the jeep and tells her that he wants to drive this time, as he doesn’t get to drive much in London. Naomi very reluctantly hands him the keys, reminding him that they drive on the other side of the road over here. Mervin starts the vehicle and struggles with the gears, saying that he’s used to automatics. Naomi offers to show him the knack, but Mervin insists on working it out for himself — and ends up accidentally putting the jeep in reverse and backing straight into a bollard, leaving a nasty dent.

Arriving back at the police station, Naomi points out that she’s been driving the jeep for years without incident, while Mervin managed to damage it within seconds. The team gather to update on the case, and Seb has tracked down a number for the dealer who distributes the drugs with infinity symbol markings. Mervin assumes that Seb has already called and pretended to be an interested client to gather more info, which Seb has absolutely not — but makes the very valid point that he is still very new to all of this. Mervin instructs him to text the number asking about supplies for a party, and arrange a meet, with Darlene as back-up to make the arrest as soon as the merch changes hands. Mervin’s keen to act quickly, because if the symbols are connected, the dealer might have known Susie — and might have intel on what happened to her.

Seb and Darlene go undercover to meet the dealer, and Seb is not doing the best job of keeping cool. The dealer turns out to be Daisy, who wants to know how Seb got her number. Seb comes up with a fairly elaborate cover story, which Daisy seems to buy — but when he’s getting the money out, he accidentally drops his police ID card on the table on the table, spooking Daisy. She makes a run for it, but luckily quick-thinking Darlene stops her. She makes the arrest, but is clearly unimpressed with Seb’s performance in the sting.

Back at the station, Daisy explains that the drugs are a natural high, made with venom from the same snakes they use at Healing Skin — but you have to get the dosage just right or things can get quite nasty. Naomi asks if Healing Skin is a cover for a drug manufacturing business, but Daisy quickly clarifies that nobody else there knows about her little side hustle. She explains that the money there wasn’t good, and she needed to supplement her income with a few extra hundred per week — she used to work on a snake farm, so she knew how to extract the venom herself. Susie never spoke to her about the drugs, so she assumes that she didn’t know about them as it seems like the sort of thing she wouldn’t have just let pass. But the numbers recorded in Susie’s diary suggest that (a) Susie did indeed know about it, and (b) Daisy was making a lot more money selling snake venom than she’s been admitting to. Panicked, Daisy says that she didn’t do anything to Susie — Susie was good to her, and Daisy’s only crime was, y’know, drug-dealing.

That night, Darlene goes for a walk with Catherine (Élizabeth Bourgine) and vents about working with Seb: she can tell that he’s trying, but she feels more like a babysitter than a training officer. Catherine suggests that Seb just needs more time, but Darlene says that right now it feels like having him on the team just creates more work. Selwyn walks up behind them and asks Darlene if she was planning on sharing these grievances with him. Darlene, chastened, says that it’s nothing really: Seb made a small mistake on the undercover operation that could have jeopardised the investigation, but she has spoken to him about it. Selwyn tells her, rather bluntly, that as his mentor, she should consider the possibility that she’s the problem, and Darlene is clearly stung by his comments. Selwyn says he’d been thinking about encouraging her to study for her Sergeant’s exam, but perhaps that was hasty. He leaves, and Catherine consoles a shaken Darlene.

At the beach hut, Mervin and Naomi sit down with Dorna’s laptop and, in a very sweet moment, Mervin thanks Naomi for helping him with this and apologises for biting her head off while they were searching the house. He explains that he never had a proper family apart from Dorna: he was brought up in care. Naomi expresses her sympathies, and he tells her it’s water under the bridge, adding that he doesn’t know why his mother wasn’t able to bring him up. He has been through Dorna’s browsing history, and found that she viewed a weather warning for the storm on the day she died — so she clearly knew it was coming but went out on the boat anyway. The two of them agree that there’s something suspicious about that, and Mervin suggests they build a timeline of everything Dorna did, and everyone she spoke to, in the run-up to her d.e.a.t.h.

The next morning, Catherine barges into Selwyn’s office and reads him the riot act, telling him that he has never spoken to his officers like he did last night in all the time that she’s known him. She says that if he told the team what was going on instead of pushing them away, they would support him because they are loyal and they respect him: “they deserve the same in return, starting with Darlene”. Selwyn stubbornly starts reading through his papers without responding.

In the police station, Seb is going through Daisy’s phone to see if he can find anything that sheds any new light on the case. He also heard an update from the coroner, which reveals that there were no traces of peanut oil on Susie’s fingers. Mervin admits that there are no traces of it anywhere else on the premises and they have no clue how the killer managed to get it into Susie’s mouth without her realising. Then Seb comes up trumps with a photo from Daisy’s phone — it’s a selfie, but in the background is Carrie, and the arm around her shoulder has the same bracelet that Steve was wearing. The picture was taken a month ago: the same time that Susie filed for divorce and changed her mind about Carrie being a director at Healing Skin.

Mervin and Naomi find Steve and Carrie together, and Steve admits that they had a fling, but they aren’t together any more. Carrie says they were both lonely, and Steve says they aren’t proud of it. Mervin presumes this is why Susie withdrew Carrie’s directorship, and Carrie says that although Susie found out, she ultimately forgave her: the business was too important, and she needed Carrie to be part of it. Mervin and Naomi put it to Steve that if he offed Susie before the divorce was finalised, he’d inherit her business and be free to start over with Carrie. Steve insists that he loved Susie, and Carrie maintains that neither of them had anything to do with Susie’s d.e.a.t.h.

Mervin and Naomi get back into the jeep, with Mervin in the driving seat once again, to Naomi’s obvious discomfort. He starts up the vehicle and puts it into reverse accidentally once again, but this time Naomi is on high alert and manages to stop him. She gets out to inspect the rear of the jeep for damage and sarcastically congratulates him on almost denting the exact same part of the vehicle as before — and Mervin suddenly has a breakthrough. He fires up the jeep, drives it forward ever so slightly, then reverses at speed into the bollard again, to Naomi’s outright horror. He gets out and inspects the damage, and remarks “just like the bruise”. He tells Naomi they have been looking in the wrong place this entire time, and tells her to call Darlene because he needs Susie’s notebook checked again, and he needs the coroner to run one more check.

Carrie, Daisy and Steve are gathered at Healing Skin, where Mervin — no longer protesting about this idiosyncratic way of catching criminals — outlines his case. Two things were bothering him: how did Susie ingest peanut oil when she’d been fasting, and why didn’t the EpiPen work to save her life? The collision in the jeep gave him the answer to both of those questions: the EpiPen didn’t work, because Susie was never in anaphylactic shock. He identifies Carrie as Susie’s killer, but she didn’t do it with peanuts; she did it with snake venom. Naomi picks up the story: thanks to Daisy, they know that snake venom in small doses can bring about a natural high, but if the dose is too high, it can be fatal.

They had assumed the bruising on Susie’s thigh was due to Carrie being careless with the EpiPen, but in fact it was because Carrie had already injected her with snake venom: when Susie came in to tell Carrie about the client increasing their order, Carrie hugged her and took that moment to deliver the lethal injection. The venom would take around 10 minutes to take effect, and would manifest in a very similar way to anaphylaxis; in order to cover her tracks, Carrie made sure that she was the one to inject Susie with the EpiPen when she collapsed, and did so in the exact same spot where she’d earlier injected the venom. She then put peanut oil onto her fingers, and transferred it into Susie’s mouth under the pretext of checking her airways were clear. And because the cause of d.e.a.t.h seemed to be an obvious case of anaphylaxis, the coroner wouldn’t be specifically looking for snake venom in Susie’s system — until the police asked him to look again.

Daisy chips in with the question we’re all thinking: how on earth did Carrie inject Susie with the snake venom in the first place without Susie noticing? The answer lies in Susie’s promotional video for Pelure, which she’d filmed that morning. Carrie knew that Susie would be filming the video before the launch, and added numbing cream to the jar — and then swapped the jars later, explaining why the one in Susie’s video had the cap on loosely, while the one the police found was tightly fastened. Mervin says that Carrie would have known from her time in Big Pharma how lucrative snake venom was as a recreational drug — and when she found out about Daisy’s side hustle, she encouraged her to up production, and then started secretly siphoning off some of the venom for her own use. The numbers found in Susie’s diary were actually in Carrie’s handwriting, and the argument that Steve overheard was about the snake venom sideline, with Susie wanting no part in it. Carrie wasn’t willing to let it go because it was too profitable, and that’s why she killed Susie. Darlene and Seb arrest Carrie (for Susie’s murder) and Daisy (for dealing drugs).

To celebrate successfully closing the case, the rest of the team take Mervin to Catherine’s Bar as per tradition, having lied to him that she would be showing the football in order to get him there. Darlene gives Seb props for using his initiative to uncover some real leads in the case, and Selwyn arrives to apologise to Darlene for the way he spoke to her, adding that he thinks she will make a fine Sergeant one day. He also breaks it to the team that his job is being phased out. Naomi protests that they can’t do that, and Selwyn gently tells her that they can, and they are. He leaves them to their evening, but the celebratory atmosphere is definitely diminished.

Naomi drives Mervin home, and admits she hasn’t really processed the news yet. As he’s getting out of the car, Naomi tells him that she spoke to the harbourmaster who was working the night that Dorna died, and he told her that she called him from the boat during the storm. Naomi gives him a USB drive with a recording of the call on it, but warns him that it’s a hard listen.

Mervin sits on his veranda with his laptop and listens to the recording of the call. It’s Dorna, calling in distress from the boat, revealing that she has no GPS and can’t see land, so she doesn’t know where she is. There’s a muffled scream, and the call goes dead. Mervin takes out his phone and calls the Commissioner, telling him that he was right all along: Dorna’s d.e.a.t.h really was an accident, and he will be shutting the case down. Selwyn tells him it can’t have been an easy decision, but it is the right one. Mervin thanks Selwyn for humouring him, and sits there on the beach, slowly processing everything he has just learned.