The Creswell children Murray ( Jack Hawkins) and Rupert ( Ben Lamb) put on a united front, though Murray's wife Clemmie ( Claudia Jolly) and Rupert's fiance Sarah Clamp ( Katie Goldfinch) clearly dislike each other.

There is an anonymous typed note to Bell that his wife was cheating, which came with a 'Happy Families' card, part of the collectibles that come with every box of Creswell chocolates. Potter says typed notes of this type have been flying around the village, each with a Happy Families card attached. But Mary Jane's brother insists his sister wasn't that kind of girl, and Morse, naturally, is not convinced either. Box and company, naturally, want to call this open-and-shut: Jealous husband murders wife, wife's supposed lover, then himself. Rennett is found in the bedroom of the house, having committed suicide after killing Creswell. The former is discovered after the local Constable, Potter ( Oliver Farnworth), reports her husband, Rennett, was seen driving fast, shotgun in hand, in the direction of Creswell Manor. (The ugly view of Downton Abbey on full display here.) The latter is found first when his horse returns riderless and is quickly identified as a murder by DeBryn, one blast to the chest to knock him off the horse and second to the face at point-blank range.

This week's Endeavour opens with an actual bang, first in the small town of Chigton Green, where Mandy-Jane Bell is cut down with a shotgun on her way to work at Creswell Sweets, and then again during a morning of foxhunting at Creswell Hall, when factory owner Greville Creswell turns up having taken a shotgun blast to the skull. Morse and Thursday team up to solve a poison pen case on Endeavour, but as the investigation of Fancy's murder comes to a head, they find themselves on opposite sides.

Poison Pen by Mary Towne