Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 17: Four Body Problem

Arthur Greene and Sons is an elite and historic Harlem funeral home where reputation is everything and nothing can be permitted to crack the veneer of perfection. Fourth-generation funeral director Arthur (David Alan Grier) explains in voice-over that a person can have two or more weddings in a lifetime but everyone has only one funeral, and that tailoring a sending-off to the deceased's aesthetic and values is worth the time, effort and money. That standard is the basis of the boutique business and the reason he moves from being fed up with his nephew Russell to killing him.

Russell has promised to expose what he believes is the family business's role in a decade-long cover-up of novelist N.D. Longacre's faked death, and he does it by invoking the dubious testimony of his grandfather, who is in an assisted-living home weathering dementia. Arthur kills Russell with a shovel, bundles the corpse into the handy coffin in the hearse he drove over, takes it unsuccessfully to a local crematorium, and then stashes his nephew in one of the funeral home's cold-storage drawers. His drive is to protect both the funeral home's reputation and his father's legacy.

The morning after Russell's death, a video of him auto-posts to his channels telling followers and friends that if they are watching, he must be dead. Of the many who paid attention to him in life, only his friend and fellow alternate thinker Barb (Jenn Harris) pursues the truth with anything like his tenacity. Elsbeth and Captain Wagner are both skeptical that there is anything there, but Barb goes off to interview the dead man's uncle at his place of business.

Elsbeth is paired with a new-to-her uniformed officer, the very chatty Officer Chandler (Ethan Slater), who the recap says gives her a real run for her money verbally. Kaya, meanwhile, is manning the tip line, and is reminded that showing up in person to address a caller's concerns saves time and builds relationships with residents.

One tip, from Mrs. Henderson, insists Russell is alive because he keeps stealing food from her kitchen; the lead comes to nothing because the intruder is a massive, brazen raccoon. Following Barb's suggestions and leads, Elsbeth eventually visits Arthur's father, Randolph. By then she knows that N.D. Longacre's cousin and pallbearer was suspicious of how light the casket was, starting the rumor that Longacre was not in it and therefore still alive, and that Randolph confirmed to Russell that Longacre was not in her casket.

She then learns that Arthur solemnly promised his father that no one would open Longacre's coffin for any reason — necessary because Randolph, his mind clouded by grief for his dog Polly and by the dementia that forced his retirement, had accidentally sent Longacre's body to the crematorium when he meant to send the dog. The exhumation shows Polly was buried in Longacre's casket, and Arthur could not bear to strip his father of his dignity.

Following her nose to a funeral where Arthur has convinced the dithering family to cremate rather than bury, Elsbeth has her most down-to-the-wire crime-proving moment yet: had she arrived a minute or two later, all evidence of Russell sharing a coffin with an actual client would have gone up in flames. In the final moments, Captain Kershaw calls Captain Wagner to warn him that reopening a murder investigation into a sitting judge with a sterling reputation is extremely dangerous, returning the episode to the season's endgame.

The evidence nearly disappears. Arthur has convinced a dithering family to cremate rather than bury, and Russell's body has been placed in a coffin with an actual client; Elsbeth reaches the funeral in time, and had she arrived a minute or two later all evidence of Russell sharing that coffin would have been destroyed. The cover-up behind the murder is also fully exposed by then: N.D. Longacre's cousin and pallbearer had found the casket suspiciously light, Randolph confirmed to Russell that Longacre was not in it, and the exhumation shows that Randolph's dog Polly was buried in Longacre's casket after Randolph accidentally sent Longacre's body to the crematorium in his grief and dementia.

Whether Russell was right about a decade-long cover-up is answered in a narrower form inside the episode: the family business did bury a dog in a novelist's casket, and Arthur killed to keep that from being opened or discussed.

Unresolved inside the episode: the ending cuts to Captain Kershaw's call warning Captain Wagner that reopening a murder investigation into a sitting judge with a sterling reputation is extremely dangerous, so the Judge Crawford storyline is left open with three episodes of the season remaining. The legal outcome for Arthur, and any consequence for the funeral home's reputation, is not shown.