During the early days of the Covid lockdown, I was extremely pregnant, extremely anxious, and very soothed by watching Murder, She Wrote. The 1980s detective drama stars Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, a successful mystery writer who also happens to be better than any sheriff at solving a local murder. Jessica lives in Cabot Cove, Maine, a bucolic, coastal locale, and—judging from the number of murders she is tasked with solving—the most dangerous place in America.
Because Cabot Cove can’t play host to a murder every single week, the show often journeys farther afield. Jessica has more friends and nephews than a Kennedy and always happens to be visiting one of them at the time of a ghastly crime that only she can solve.
For one 1987 episode, tellingly titled, “A Fashionable Way to Die,” Jessica travels to Paris, and the show’s crew joined her, with much of the episode filmed on location in the city of light. The first glimpse of Jessica is striding up to the foot of the Eiffel Tower in a pearlescent pink pleated skirt suit, entering the landmark’s iconic restaurant, Jules Verne.
The episode has all the ingredients of must-see TV: a climactic scene set in the actual Vogue World: Paris war room (otherwise known as the Westin Hotel ballroom), a scurrilous, womanizing loan shark who from the first scene in a Montmartre cabaret club is clearly the soon-to-be the murder victim, a lanky model-of-the-moment with a past she wants to keep hidden, an American fashion designer in desperate need of cash, and a charmant French detective who describes Jessica as the “le Watson” to his Sherlock—all set against the Hausmannian backdrop.
The designer, Eva Taylor, owns a boutique and fashion label called, The Taylored Look–a pun I can’t imagine a French passerby would clock, but I digress. Her flamboyant nephew is her aide de camp and the two of them are preparing for her runway show in a flurry of bravado: “Givenchy, move over!” the nephew crows as they adjust a shapeless sequin shift on a mannequin.
Eva has even secured the model of the moment, Lu Waters, to walk the show, but Lu demands a fee of $10,000, money Eva does not have. She asks Maxim Soury, the loan shark, to loan her money for this “investment” and instead he offers a Faustian bargain of money in return for 50% ownership of Eva’s business. Yes, this is a set-up for Eva’s motive when she becomes the prime suspect after Maxim is shot twice in his hotel room, but it also accurately reflects the financial pressures and agonizing business decisions facing designers both real and fictional.