Review: Miss Scarlet and the Duke, Season 1, Episode 4: Memento Mori

Now THIS was a fun episode. 

(I mean, if you consider death photography, ghosts, seances, and the like to be fun). 

I have to admit that the idea of death photography (by the way, that was a real thing that the Victorians did; look it up!) is pretty creepy, and the atmosphere of this episode was pretty hair-raising (how could it not be with all those pictures of dead people around). However, all and all, I thought this episode was all good fun. It was basically the perfect campfire ghost story with a great twist at the end. 

In case you need a quick recap, in this episode, Eliza is hired to investigate the case of a death photographer who is mysteriously receiving doctored photos of his dead wife. Naturally, that causes the photographer and his new fiancée some justifiable distress. Amelia, the fiancée, believes that Catherine, the photographer's dead wife is delivering the photos through ghostly means. Her mother, who is a medium, encourages this belief. At first, Eliza is stumped, but she manages to solve the case just as Amelia—frightened and exhausted—is about to leave her fiancé. It turns out that Catherine left a stack of unmarked envelopes with her young daughter before she died, giving the little girl instructions to deliver them after she was gone. The child had innocently been delivering the photos to her father, not knowing what the envelopes contained. 

At the same time, Eliza discovers that Amelia's mother has been committing fraud and has her arrested. (I have to admit that I was a little disappointed about that. It's true that she was lying, but she really wasn't doing any harm.)

Meanwhile, the Duke has been tapped as the subject of a story in the Illustrated Police News. His boss tells him that Duke needs to mention his name in the story in order to get a promotion. However, when Duke realizes that the promotion isn't coming after all, he decides to feed the reporter the story of Eliza and the death photographer. The episode ends with Eliza examining the paper. As she enjoys this moment of happiness, the photo of Eliza and her father falls off the wall, revealing a hole in the wall that contains a secret journal. 

Personally, I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see what's in that journal. I assume it belonged to Eliza's father, and, based on the fact that it was so well hidden, it probably doesn't contain cheerful news. I'm guessing that the last two episodes of the season will be devoted to exploring what's in that journal. It might even have something to do with her father's death. 

Speaking of this episode, however,  I was pleasantly surprised to see the Duke sharing the spotlight with Eliza. It was a very sweet and kind thing to do. I was a little annoyed with him in the last episode, but he has redeemed himself here. My hopes are restored!

I was also super amused by the Duke dragging the reporter all around town in the hopes of interesting him in one of his boring cases. One thing this show does really well is subtle humor!

However, as I said above, the star of this episode was the mystery itself. It was unique and fun and truly an example of original storytelling. It's been my favorite episode of the show thus far! I'm looking forward to seeing what the final two episodes have to offer!

Rating: 10/10