Who killed Richard Poole in Death in Paradise — the killer and the motive

He was stabbed in the chest with an ice pick by Helen Reid — a woman posing as his old university friend Sasha Moore — because he'd rumbled her secret.

The case in brief

• The victim — DI Richard Poole, the show's original detective, killed at his own reunion party on Saint Marie.
• The killer — Helen Reid, played by Helen Baxendale.
• The weapon — an ice pick, in full view of the party.
• The motive — silencing the one man who'd spotted an identity theft.

The impostor at the reunion

One of Poole's visiting university friends wasn't who she claimed. The real Sasha Moore had died in a car crash; her sister Helen survived it, let the authorities believe the body was hers, had cosmetic surgery, and stepped into Sasha's life — including the small fortune from the sale of her software company, and her husband James, who went along with the whole scheme.

Poole grew suspicious and set a quiet trap. He bought a copy of Le Rouge et le Noir, a book he knew the real Sasha had read — and the fake Sasha failed to recognise it. Knowing she was about to be exposed, Helen suggested a game of charades, which Poole predictably sat out, then brought him crisps on the veranda and stabbed him.

The man who solved his own murder

His replacement, DI Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall), cracked the case using the trail Richard had left — including the evidence he had already sent home for to confirm his theory. As Goodman puts it in the episode:

"He has, in essence, solved his own murder."

Why was Poole written out?

Ben Miller chose to leave. The show films in Guadeloupe for months at a stretch, and he wanted to be nearer his young family — so the writers gave his detective the one exit that fitted: a murder mystery of his own. It wasn't quite goodbye, though. Miller returned as Poole in flashback scenes for the show's tenth series in 2021.

Not a bad final case. Even if he wasn't around to take the credit.