Murder Is Easy ending explained: Who was the killer? (2024)

Murder Is Easy spoilers follow.

Perhaps the main takeaway from Agatha Christie's latest Christmas adaptation is that murder is indeed fairly easy if you're in a humdrum village like Wychwood, because by the second episode the bodies really started to tot up.

In each instance the police ruled out murder and deemed the deaths to be various accidents, in a sort of Hot Fuzz-style stab at keeping things hunky-dory in the parish 'for the greater good'.

As the two-parter raced to a conclusion, there were several people with the finger of recrimination pointing in their direction. Our citizen detective Fitzwilliam (David Jonsson) noted that half the village were away on Derby day when Miss Pinkerton (Penelope Wilton) had been mowed down in London.

But one person more than others – Lord Gordon Whitfield (Tom Riley) – seemed the obvious option, in part because he was just so odious. So was it him that done it?

Who was the Wychwood murderer?

When Rivers (Jon Pointing) shows up bludgeoned to death, Fitzwilliam spies the heel of a woman's shoe nearby his body. So either the murderer is a man trying to frame a woman or the murderer is indeed a woman, if that narrows things down.

The residents of Wychwood continue to fall by the wayside at a clip during the episode, as the not-so-good Dr Thomas (Mathew Baynton) falls down the stairs mid-party, having turned woozy and developed neck sores while wearing a scarf Rose (Phoebe Licorish) gave him. So could it be her?

The women from nearby Ashbottom think the murderer is taking a 'loose lips sink ships' approach to their victim selection – again landing suspicion on Lord Whitfield, who is extremely conscious of making Wychwood a respectable place for so-called respectable people.

When Fitzwilliam joins Lord Whitfield for lunch, he does just about everything to frame himself as the killer, with some nonsense about how he had done right by his divine creator with the murder of his enemies. Surely a justification that would hold up in court.

That and the fact we learn Miss Pinkerton's killer was driving a Rolls Royce, such as the Lord has. So it seems like it should be case closed when the women of Ashbottom all hear Lord Whitfield confessing to the crimes. What's more, the Rolls' registration number given on the scene matches – you guessed it – Lord Whitfield's.

But if all this seemed a little too convenient a conclusion for an Agatha Christie tale, it soon proves to be just that, when a hulking curved knife is found to have vanished from its box. Come to think of it, where is Bridget?

It turns out she's with Miss Waynflete (Sinead Matthews) sipping a rather ominous cup of Lapsang Souchong tea. The murderer was a woman after all.

Once Bridget starts to look a little worse for wear, Miss Waynflete drags her out to the woods to do away with her. The hair-raising knife makes a reappearance as Miss Waynflete lays out how she did each murder – arsenic, rat poison, pushing people, clubbing others.

How did she get away with so many crimes? Because she was treated as a "dour, pointless old maid" in a place where "murder is easy". Why did she do it? The whole thing boiled down to a bird.

Before Lord Whitfield wangled his way into becoming Lord Whitfield, he was just Gordon and a good friend of Miss Waynflete's, who was set to cross the Atlantic to go to school in America. But that never happened because Gordon told her father she had crushed her pet bird – with her bare hands – and she was sent to a psychiatric institution instead.

To wreak revenge she set about a murder spree in little Wychwood, all the while framing Lord Whitfield for the crimes so he too could be locked away.

At this point the police finally show up, having done virtually nothing to help through the entire two-episode run. As Miss Waynflete is led away to a cop car, her smug smile vanishes.

As Murder Is Easy draws to a close the only question remaining is what will become of Bridget and Fitzwilliam, as he is beckoned back to Whitehall. After the possibility of romance, the two decide to part ways, with Bridget keen to make the most of her newfound independence after breaking off the engagement to the godawful Lord Whitfield.

Fitzwilliam decides to journey to Africa instead of London – but not before he has laid a bouquet of flowers on Miss Pinkerton's grave. If only she had been slightly clearer as to who she suspected the killer was when they first met aboard the train to London, we might have significantly reduced the body count.

Murder Is Easy is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.