Well, one of the killers, anyway.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder hit Netflix on Aug. 1—and since I’m battling a cold, I was able to binge-watch all six episodes within 24 hours.
But it only took me about 10 minutes into the first episode to narrow down the suspect, despite it taking super sleuth Pip Fitz-Amobi (Wednesday’s Emma Myers) a total of 5 episodes as she pieced together the events leading up to Andie Bell’s death.
This is your spoiler warning—stop reading if you don’t want to find out!
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. Emma Myers as Pip Fitz-Amobi in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. Cr. Courtesy of Joss Barratt/Netflix © 2024
The predictability didn’t turn me off from the series, however, as there was plenty more to uncover aside from the suspect’s identity, including the motive—and there were a handful of plot twists, including the initial suspect. Cara and Naomi’s father, Elliot Ward (Mathew Baynton), being the killer romantically involved with Andie, but not directly (or totally) responsible for her death.
There were a handful of clues that were a dead giveaway to Elliot’s involvement, even if to the naked eye he came off as a loving and caring father.
Let’s break them down!
The First Time We Meet Elliot
There’s nothing about this scene that screams “he’s the killer,” but there was just something off about his behavior. Maybe it was the mention of “tutoring,” or that very subtle but significant change in his facial expression upon seeing Pip’s notebook and handing it to her—how did he immediately know it washers? Either way, from this moment on, I was convinced Elliot was responsible for what happened to Andie.
Pip’s Haunting Memory
It’s also possible that the scene in the kitchen goes hand-in-hand with the setting of Pip’s final memory of both Andie and Sal, which is set in a school where we know Elliot teaches. He had access to all of them as students. And while Pip sees Sal asking for where Andie went, she’s not entirely sure he’s the person she’s running from, nor is she sure he’s the one that made her cry.
Andie’s Risqué Photo
While snooping around Max Hasting’s room, Pip finds a lingerie photo of Andie. Max immediately shuts down any theories about having a relationship with Andie, explaining that he found the photo in the classroom. He doesn’t specify which classroom, and yes, it could belong to a student who dropped it, but how convenient that a sultry photo just happened to be in a classroom where Elliot teaches.
Sal’s Texts
Upon getting access to Sal’s phone, Pip immediately picked up on the grammar discrepancy between his previous texts and the last one sent, confessing to Andie’s murder. Sal’s brother, Ravi, was impressed, highlighting that his brother was the smartest person he knew, but he texted like an idiot using incomplete sentences, slang, and a lack of punctuation. Yet, that final confession was written in perfect English, alluding to the possibility that it may have been written by an English teacher.
Urging Pip to Change Her EPQ
Pip’s mother informed her that Elliot suggested she change the topic of her EPQ, which wasn’t immediately odd since he was her English teacher and cared about her as a student and as his daughter’s best friend since childhood. However, he got a little more insistent on it when he warned her directly at school, explaining that she’s “smart enough to know” that it’s a bad idea. There’s a reason he wanted her to stop investigating–Pip had the skills and guts to expose him as she didn’t just accept anything at face value.
Stop Digging Note
While camping, Pippa found a threatening note under her pillow that read “stop digging Pippa.” While nothing pointed directly to Elliot in this instance, he was aware of their location, meaning he could’ve easily slipped into the tent and left it. She later hacked his printer and found that the note was, in fact, printed from his device, providing all the proof she needed.
Great Gatsby Hotel Reference
The hotel was expensive with a room costing way more than any high school student had, especially someone like Andie, who was desperate for money and selling drugs, therefore, she had to be there with the “Secret Older Man.” And the guest book, signed days before her death, didn’t include their names, but rather a reference to a classic piece of literature, with the names Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchannan from The Great Gatsby. I can’t see a high schooler opting for that reference, but an English teacher? Well, it tracks.
The Final Tutoring Comment
Elliot’s daughter Cara asks him why they have no money when he’s always tutoring—and it onces again brings us back to that moment in the kitchen, suggesting that tutoring is an excuse to get away so no one questions where he is.
Once Pip gets a call from the reactivated number of “Secret Older Man,” she’s shocked to hear Naomi on the other line. And when Naomi tells her it was her father’s old phone, the pieces start falling into the place. The clues were always there, laid out and staring Pip in the face. She then leaves her phone behind in Elliot’s car to track his whereabouts before realizing he’s at the family’s old property that they allegedly sold a few years ago.
In a lapse in judgement, she goes to confront him instead of waiting for the police—though she thankfully texted Ravi the address so they were on the way—and almost falls for his sob story, until she hears clanking in the pipes. She follows the noise to the attic where she finds another blonde girl—though not Andie–trapped in the attic. In addition to Elliot’s confession of having a romantic relationship with Andie, who broke things off with him after falling in love with Sal and then tried to extort him for money, getting pretty violent and banging her head on a countertop (hence her injury), the kidnapped girl, Isla, informs Andie that Elliot confessed to murdering Sal by drugging him with painkillers and then snuffing him with a pillow so that the case didn’t lead back to him and his predatory relationship.
Of course, as mentioned previously, Elliot wasn’t the only killer as he was only half responsible for Andie’s death. He caused her the initial injury, but a confrontation with her sister, Bella, is what led to her death. Bella watched her sister bleed out and choke to death before hiding her body in a cave in the woods. Bella’s revelation as a killer was honestly much more surprising than Elliot’s series of bad decisions—considering the clues were all there laid out in front of us since episode 1.