Faithful unto Death is the third episode of the first series of the popular ITV crime drama Midsomer Murders and was first aired on 22nd April 1998.
A craft centre in the old mill at Morton Fendle is losing money. Several locals have invested in the business and believe they have been swindled by Alan Hollingsworth, the man behind it. When Hollingsworth's glamorous wife, Simone, goes missing, DCI Barnaby believes she has been kidnapped and puts Hollingsworth under observation. However, Hollingsworth evades the police, carrying a bundle of cash, and a woman neighbour who follows him to his rendezvous is killed in a bizarre road accident. Then Hollingsworth is found dead, and Simone turns up alive. Barnaby guesses she and a friend faked the kidnapping, but he cannot prove it.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Medicine: Haloperidol is available in tablets or liquid solution (to be given by injection, either IV or IM), not in capsules. So it wouldn't have been "opened" and dispersed in liquid. However, the tablets could be crushed and added to liquid (taking a while to fully dissolve) or the liquid solution added to drink.
- Could Say It, But...: After Barnaby finds out that he was given drug-laced brownies, he visits the elderly couple in question and claims to be investigating reports of drugs being grown in the area, using very pointed phrasing to make it clear he knows about their illegal activities and is giving them a warning to stop before he has to throw the book at them.
- Faked Kidnapping: Hollingsworth is sent photographs of Simone bound to a chair and looking bruised and battered, along with ransom demands (and the usual exhortation not to contact the police). Simone is actually the mastermind of the scheme, and is using it to extract cash from her husband before he is murdered.
- I Have Your Wife: Hollingsworth is sent photographs of Simone bound to a chair and looking bruised and battered, along with ransom demands (and the usual exhortation not to contact the police). Simone is actually the mastermind of the scheme, and is using it to extract cash from her husband before he is murdered.
- Just One Little Mistake: The killer plants evidence of her crime in her friend's purse right before Detective Barnaby gives The Summation, then wryly asks him if he has any evidence. He tells her that he had searched that same purse shortly before she arrived, then looks in the purse and pulls out the evidence, prompting her to incriminate herself. On the way out, he admits that he was bluffing.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Implied. Simone gets off scot-free thanks to Sarah Lawton taking the blame for her and walks away with over three hundred thousand pounds of ransom money... leaving Sarah behind to spend the next twelve years in jail. At first, it looks like Simone really is going to get away with everything, but then Troy reveals to Sarah that her lover has shacked up with Vince Perry - her other accomplice in the murder - proving that Sarah was being manipulated all along. In the finale, Sarah calls Barnaby from prison, and it's implied that she provides him with the information that will get Simone arrested.
- Luck-Based Search Technique: Troy is searching an attic when he backs into a wall, and falls straight through the secret door he was searching for.
- Mushroom Samba: Straight-laced Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby tries some (special) brownies while interviewing a possible witness and subsequently comes over all giggly and walks along the top of an ornamental wall, all the while attracting confused looks from his Sergeant and the Coroner.
- Vehicular Assault: The killer murders Brenda Buckley by using their larger, more powerful car to force her car to collide with a trailer full of logs, killing her.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: The killer uses make-up to fake bruises and persuade her lesbian lover that her husband has been abusing her, and uses this to incite the lover into killing the husband.
