Elsbeth Season 3 Episode 20: That's All

The Hotel Reilly is one of the finest hotels in Manhattan, so fine that a select few live there permanently - among them cabaret legend Ruby Lane and Sebastian Mason, a small-scale English duke. Ruby has not been all right lately: Mason is planning a move that will likely cost her the home she lives in, and she decides that problem has a fixable shape - a solid strike to the head.

Ruby bludgeons the duke with her own award, then stages the scene as a slip in the shower that cracked his head on the tiles. The staging fights her the whole way: she is not strong enough to break the towel bar on her own and the room is too well-maintained, so she uses the hotel's shoehorn to pry it off and her trophy to hammer it, leaving the shoehorn's monogram all over the base - and the duke's preference for morning baths over nighttime showers contradicts the scene she built.

Money is Ruby's other tell. She does not have enough cash to pay for room service and snatches up food from the carts, a clue to the debt she is badly in; hotel resident Monty Blakemont III, who wants the long-time residents to pay their accumulated debts because he has a thing about freeloaders, is himself pirating the streaming service in his room. And Jolly, who knows Ruby's routines, later tells Elsbeth that her cocktail glass is always filled with water - the blunt-speaking souse is a cultivated image, unlike his own glass.

The alibi collapses on television and habit. Ruby said she was watching her episode of Father Crime when the duke died, but her big scene - playing a nun playing guitar and singing before a group of orphans - was cut, so she would have known that if she had actually been watching. Jolly is especially displeased that Ruby did not bring out her award during her second set the night of the murder, a break in ritual that is what allows Elsbeth to catch her.

And the "Vernon" phone number on Ruby's wall turns out to be the duke's, a clue Jolly unlocks by naming the songwriters - Irving Berlin and Vernon Duke - behind the songs Ruby sings.

Around the case, Elsbeth handles her own changes: a New York View article reports that Alec Bloom is doing well as mayor and has started seeing a mysterious brunette, and although she was the one who turned him down, she quietly relates to Ruby Lane about being yesterday's news.

Kaya begins a new undercover position, and Teddy, after considering a ring hidden in a frozen pizza, is convinced by Wagner - fresh off reminiscing about his own proposal to Claudia - to go big: he books a private event at the hotel cafe and sings Frank Sinatra's "That's All" to Roy, and Ellie Montclair immortalizes the moment by painting the couple on the wall.

The finale lands its punchlines: Ruby is arrested and replaced at the hotel cabaret by Katricia from Lavish Ladies, exactly the reality-star-singing-Sondheim outcome she joked about; and in the end Monty is seen having pilfered the tiny Titian painting from the duke's room.

Ruby's staging fails on its own details. She wanted the duke's death read as a shower fall that cracked his head on the tiles, but she could not break the towel bar alone, so the hotel shoehorn and her trophy left the shoehorn's monogram all over the base; the duke preferred morning baths to nighttime showers; and the Father Crime episode she claimed to be watching cut her big scene, which she would have known had she actually watched. Jolly adds the habit evidence - Ruby did not bring out her award during her second set the night of the murder - and the "Vernon" number on her wall turns out to be the duke's, via the songwriter Vernon Duke. The motive is the home itself: the duke's planned move would have cost Ruby the residence, and she was already badly in debt.

The closing threads: Ruby is arrested and replaced at the cabaret by Katricia from Lavish Ladies, the reality-star outcome she joked about; Teddy sings "That's All" to Roy and proposes with the couple painted onto the cafe wall; and Monty is seen having pilfered the tiny Titian from the duke's room.

Unresolved within the episode: the episode does not detail the exact arrangement by which the duke's move would have displaced Ruby, Kaya's new undercover position is mentioned but its assignment is not shown, and Elsbeth's feelings about Alec Bloom are left as she states them - unresolved within the episode.