Wearing a cape and carrying a carpetbag, Quentin sneaks down the main staircase. Intent only on escape and the safety of his own skin, he has forgotten even Beth. Even though he is ready to travel, he has not even begun to walk the long road that awaits him.
I liked that, DL, and no he hasn't. What if he'd fled a couple minutes earlier?
Farewell, poor, poor Jenny. I caught her grabbing the button off Quentin's coat this time. His motivations, and the facts of the event, are a big mess of utterly cold-blooded, callous pre-meditation, self-defence, maybe even protection of a mate, and impulse rage, of the kind that later causes people to say to incredulous juries that it was as if their bodies acted on their own to murder. Don't tell me this isn't an adult show.
Marie Wallace (plus makeup people) is really good at looking disturbingly, actually dead.
The viewers find out through Edward's and Beth's conversation afterward that Quentin and Jenny had real children. It was strange hearing the music for a big revelation without any surprised reaction, because both parties already knew about it.
These scenes mostly have Beth and her reactions as their focus. Terry Crawford makes it all real and human. Every time we're tempted to look on all this as just some costume-murder-mystery, like a game of Clue or something, Terry has some reaction/moment that get through to us with a jolt, yes, these are real people, and
this is what it would
really feel like to be in the middle of a real murder.
Beth is being pushed to her absolute limit, but she's staying together, to her credit. Without any intention to, with her having had every intention of
stopping this thing from happening-- suddenly, not only has it happened before she even knew it, but she's in it up to her neck. As she said, she found her own self-interest wishing for it, against her will... sort of. That alone doesn't make her culpable, but to her conscience (and any jury) it does. Therefore she has to protect herself and Quentin, who again, is in this semi-pre-meditated, semi-heat-of-the-moment, semi-self-defence position. So she joins the conspiracy, dishonoring herself and wronging Jenny's family.
Edward makes Beth take the bloody knife and orders her to wash it, and put it back with the other knives in the kitchen. Having given the masterful order, he walks off, having cleaned
his hands of it. So with the knife in her hand, alone, with all these convolutions and implications crowding into her head and our heads as viewers at that moment, there's nothing else to do but sob in horror, still standing there with the knife, about to perform her next little household task.
Damage control planning session in Drawing Room... Ed is aghast at Magda being Jenny's sister and that Jenny was a gypsy, berates Q for marrying her... Quentin says to him, "Edward, this is no time for you to be socially offended." Good line. Ed ploughs ahead with his slapped-together on-the-spot cover-up plan, not knowing or caring that the gypsies can take revenge against Quentin.