Episode 64: The Woman in The Altogether

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE... SIMON SAYS, COLOR ME DEAD.  The story behind that enigmatic half-joke will be revealed!

Lauded painter—and resident of Cabot Cove—Simon Thane (Foster Brooks) is found stabbed with a carving knife after a tense dinner with friends, and purportedly his last piece leads the way to the killer— but it goes missing, too.  Immediate suspects are a study in class struggle; as "the girl" Irene Rutdlege (Tess Harper), who the Thanes employ as housekeeper and cook, is spotted late at night, spattered with blood; plus there's always his affluent guests of the evening, who include our liaison between worlds, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury).

Power couple The Selbys (Dick Sargent and Ann Dusenberry), pass-around party bottom art dealer Felix (Leonard Frey), and The Wife (Diane Baker) are all on the list, but Sheriff Tupper (Tom Bosley) is content to let Irene swing for it as long as he gets to adopt Irene's precocious adolescent child (Chris Hebert). Throw in a mysterious stranger who peers from car windows (Steve Inwood), and the plot thickens like oil paints left out overnight.

Viktor and Petra deconstruct the complications of hero worship, maternity fraud, emotional affairs, and Jessica's search for the owner of a lighter that might bring it all together.  It's a wowza of a killer's confession, an anthology of women's hairstyles of the era, and a preponderance of handsome Cabot Cove deputies we only see once.