The Moonflower Murders ending ties up not only the murder of Frank Parris but how Alan Conway’s story hinted at the truth.
From wondering where Moonflower Murders was filmed to being curious about its connection to Magpie Murders, the new BBC series has sparked plenty of intriguing questions. It’s based upon Anthony Horowitz’s book of the same name and follows his Magpie Murders protagonist Susan Ryeland after she has begun a new life running a hotel in Crete with her partner Andreas. She soon finds herself drawn back to England thanks to her former role as Editor of the late Alan Conway’s bestselling Atticus Pünd detective stories as she’s approached by a couple whose daughter Cecily has disappeared.
Cecily had said that she’d read something in Atticus Pünd Takes The Case, which revealed the true identity of the murderer of Frank Parris who’d been killed at the family’s hotel. Persuaded to investigate by the promise of money that she desperately needed to mend her hotel, Susan flew back in search of a murky truth. Along the way she delved back into the Atticus novel and here we reveal who the killer was, what the clues were and how the Moonflower Murders ending is different to Anthony Horowitz’s book.
*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
Moonflower Murders ending explained: Who is the killer?
Like all the classic whodunnits we know and love, the Moonflower Murders ending featured a gathering of the suspects as editor-turned-hotel-owner-turned-sleuth Susan laid out her solution and explained that Aiden MacNeil killed Frank Parris. Aiden also killed his own wife Cecily Treherne after she came to the realisation that he was Frank’s murderer and not Stefan Leonida who worked at the Treherne’s Branlow Hall Hotel. Her phone call to her father Lawrence sharing her discovery was overheard and Aiden knew his secret wasn’t safe anymore.
He had murdered Frank Parris because the unlikeable former businessman had known him in the days when he’d worked in London as a sex worker. Parris had paid to sleep with Aiden, who had used the name Leo at this time, and Alan had known the two of them too.
As soon as he’d read of Frank’s murder and gone to the hotel and seen Aiden, he’d worked out that Aiden had been responsible and had hinted at his crime in his book. Cecily had seen the dedication "For Frank and Leo" in Alan’s Atticus Pünd Takes The Case and her mind had immediately known it meant her husband, because she was a huge believer in star signs and his was Leo. When Parris arrived at the hotel and recognised Aiden, he leapt at the chance to taunt him and to assert control over him one last time.
In front of Cecily, Frank Parris had passed Aiden his room key pretending it had been broken when actually it was just his way of ensuring he could come and see him the night before the couple's wedding. He hadn’t considered that Aiden "wasn’t going to play his game" as Susan put it, and Aiden had set about murdering Parris and incriminating Stefan, whom he’d drugged that night.
Aiden had used the antique Irish brooch that was displayed on the landing of the hotel and had spiked Cecily’s dog Chase with it, causing him to bark in pain. Branlow Hall’s night manager Derek heard and came upstairs, just in time to see "Stefan" with his tool box walking down the corridor.
This had actually been Aiden who’d killed Parris and then used Cecily’s something borrowed (a fountain pen) to suck up some of the blood and then dot it in Stefan’s bed as he lay asleep. Everyone was horrified as Susan detailed what had happened and although Aiden initially denied it, it became apparent that she’d got her facts right.
Aiden had been friends with Stefan once but then he’d found out that Stefan and Cecily had had an affair. The imprisoned Stefan was the biological father of Cecily’s daughter Roxana and he’d been pressured into falsely confessing by Detective Superintendent Locke.
Susan revealed Roxana means "brightness" or "dawn" in Romanian and when she visited Stefan in prison he’d said "The one brightness in my life. The one dawn that gives me hope, has been taken from me."
"At least there’s one good thing that’s left out of all of this. I hope it’s a consolation to you," she gently told the shocked Lawrence and Pauline.
After unmasking Aiden MacNeil as the killer, Susan and Andreas went back to Crete with the money they had desperately needed for the completion of the investigation. Susan then set about going back through the book to try and find any other possible clues she’d missed.
What clues did Alan Conway leave in his book?
Susan had worked out that Aiden was responsible for the murders thanks to a series of clues left behind by the late Alan Conway, who had been killed in Magpie Murders. In his book, Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, Alan had not only dedicated it to Frank and Leo, but had put lions and lion references throughout the text, mirroring the constellation of Leo.
The character of Algernon Marsh’s number plate had L10 in it, the local pub was the Red Lion and Melissa James’s house had a picture of Bert Lahr in it who played the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. The local church is also dedicated to St Daniel who went into the lion's den and Melissa James had turned down appearing as Eleanor of Aquitaine in a film - the mother of Richard the Lionheart.
She’d also recognised that Alan mentioning the opera, The Marriage of Figaro, was significant as Frank had lied about going to see the opera the night he died. The opera focuses on a count who’d persistently demanded his wife's maid sleep with him on the night of her wedding and this was what Frank had wanted to happen with Aiden.
The final, obvious clue was only revealed to the audience at the end of the Moonflower Murders ending and Susan never realised it herself. As she burnt all her notes, preparing to turn her back on the mystery and Alan Conway forever, it was shown that the name of one of the Atticus Pünd Takes the Case killers, Madeline Cain, was an anagram of Aiden MacNeil.
How was the ending different in the Moonflower Murders book?
The Moonflower Murders ending kept the same killer as the book - Aiden MacNeil - as well as the same killers in Atticus Pünd Takes The Case - the doctor Leonard Collins and Pünd's assistant Madeline Cain. However there were changes made and there were several more clues left behind in Alan Conway’s writing that Susan uncovers at the end.
For a start, Susan does realise that Madeline Cain is an anagram of Aiden MacNeil and she also references how Melissa James’s home Clarence Keep is named after Clarence - a character in a 1960s film.
In the Moonflower Murders book, Atticus Pünd Takes The Case has Melissa being the owner of a pet Chow Dog called Kimba. Not only is the breed also known by a name that translates as a "Puffy Lion Dog" but Kimba is a white lion in a fictional Japanese series. Algernon Marsh drives a Peugeot whose symbol is a lion and the doctor's wife Samantha Collins had just started reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to her two children.
Alan had also made all of the APTTC characters’ names linked to both famous crime writers and the people at the real hotel. In the book’s version of Alan’s novel, the husband of film star Melissa James is called Francis Pendleton and he is killed by Madeline Cain because she believed that Francis had murdered her favourite actor. Francis is based on Frank and Madeline Cain being an anagram of Aiden’s name makes it very clear that Aiden killed Frank.
These clues weren’t the only way that the Moonflower Murders ending was ever so slightly different in the novel. After Susan revealed Aiden to be the killer he managed to escape the hotel and later wrote a cruel final letter to Lawrence Treherne confessing to being motivated by money and to not even liking Cecily, let alone loving her, before being killed by a train.
In the BBC adaptation Aiden isn’t presented as quite so twisted and he cried as he told Cecily’s parents that he "didn’t want to" kill their daughter, adding, "I loved her. I tried to love her". He is arrested and will spend the rest of his life in prison for his crimes, as referenced by Andreas to Susan at the end of Moonflower Murders.
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