Bitter Pill (Season 2, Episode 9)
Premise: A pharmaceutical founder and his wife, a philanthropist, die in what looks like a murder-suicide, and the fight over a science centre’s land points to someone in their circle.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 9
- Starring
- DS Henry Graff (Aden Young), DS Frankie Bateman (Kathleen Munroe), Insp. Vivienne Holness (Karen Robinson), DCA Theo Forrester (K.C. Collins), Mark Yohannes (Araya Mengesha), Dr. Lucy Da Silva (Nicola Correia-Damude)
- Guest stars
- Christopher Shyer as Declan Carr, Morgan David Jones as Bruce Lacy, Kate Hennig as Didi Thorpe, Joanne Boland as Nancy Fogel
- Director
- Renuka Jeyapalan
- Writers
- Seneca Aaron & Jillian Locke
Summary
The Case
“Bitter Pill” begins in the home of drug-company founder Stanley Thorpe and his wife, Didi, where decorator friend Bruce Lacy is fussing over a fixture when his husband, Declan Carr, arrives. Stanley clashes with a departing chemist and turns down his brother, Reed, who wants money for another invention, and at a children’s hospital auction Didi pays $200,000 for a painting Bruce loves, then keeps it. The next morning Bruce and Didi’s assistant, Kate Weir, find the couple dead, Didi strangled and Stanley with his wrists cut.
It looks like a murder-suicide, but marks from bindings, two severed nerves and polypropylene fibres under both victims’ nails point to a killer in a clean-room suit who left by a basement window the cameras miss. The suspects pile up: chemist Mishra, whom Stanley had just freed from a lawsuit; protégé Jason Roy, now interim CEO, who lied about his alibi to hide insider trading before Helix’s sale to Bayer; and Reed, who inherits the sale proceeds and admits holding back Didi’s letter asking that the money go to her charity, Share Science.
The letter shows Didi wanted $500 million to protect the Toronto Center for Science, built on land Stanley gave her, from developer Nancy Fogel, who offered each Share Science board member $100,000 to sell. Bruce was the other holdout, yet the sale goes through after the deaths. Scene photos show Didi was posed like the auction painting, and the auctioneer recalls a man matching Declan berating Didi after she bought it.
The Interrogation
In the loft Bruce and Declan have just bought, the detectives say Nancy paid Bruce to switch his vote, that Didi refused Bruce a $200,000 loan the day she bought the painting, and that Declan left his Kitchener motel on the night of the murders. They suggest he hid in Didi’s car, changed into a clean-room suit, killed her and then waited for Stanley, after Nancy offered him $100,000 of his own if he could change Didi’s mind. Declan breaks down, asking whether Bruce gets to keep the house if he confesses, and is handcuffed as Bruce demands the truth.
The ending
Spoiler: No trial is shown. In the final scene Nancy’s file has gone to the Fraud Squad, which may slow her plans for the science centre, and the episode closes with an invitation to visit its butterfly garden before it goes.
Suspect’s fate: Declan Carr, arrested.
Why it stands out
- Real names run through the case: Helix is being bought by Bayer, the auction raises money for the Hospital for Sick Children, and Didi’s will sends her art collection to the AGO in Bruce’s name.
- Reed’s failed business is shown in his own commercial for “Reedware”, a line of supposedly unbreakable plastic goods.