Killings at Badger's Drift | Written in Blood -->
Episode Index
Main Page


Katherine and Michael Lacey

'£500,-, Mrs. Lessiter. That's what it'll cost to keep me quiet. Otherwise, I'll have a story to tell, haven't I?'
-Iris Rainbird in 'Killings at Badger's Drift'

 Title: Killings at Badger's Drift
First broadcast: 23rd of March 1997

Cast:
Cully Barnaby...................Laura Howard
Joyce Barnaby..................Jane Wymark
Tom Barnaby....................John Nettles
Iris Rainbird......................Elizabeth Spriggs
Gavin Troy........................Daniel Casey

Location(s):
Badger's Drift

Summary:
An elderly lady living in the village of Badger's Drift is found dead with a broken neck. According to her friend, she was murdered, but Troy remains sceptic. Soon, however, Barnaby and Troy discover that looks can be deceptive when it comes to the idyllic surface village. Many of it's inhabitants are carefully trying to conceal their secrets. Then Iris Rainbird and her son Dennis are murdered in a brutal fashion; in Mrs. Rainbird's notebooks they find that she had been blackmailing the murderer of Emily Simpson. Barnaby knows whoever is it behind will stop at nothing to get away with it. Bit by bit they reconstruct the past of Badger's Drift, including a two-year old murder. They even make an arrest, but they seems to have made a mistake...

Solution

The murderer is Katherine Lacey. She and and her brother Michael had been having an incestuous relationship since they were 17. When Emily Simpson was in the woods one day, she saw them having sex. The siblings wanted to silence her, so Katherine broke her neck with a hammer.

However, Iris Rainbird and her son recovered the cloth the two had had sex on in the woods, and blackmailed them. Katherine went over to their house, disguised as a man. Once inside, she stabbed Iris and Dennis Rainbird dead, put her bloodstained clothes in a basket, went outside and pretended to have just arrived.

Meanwhile, Barnaby had discovered from Mary Sharpe, the old nanny of Katherine and Michael, that the two practised incest. He also realized they had shot Bella Trace in 1994, so Katherine could marry the rich Henry Trace and inherit his money.

While Barnaby was heading back to Badger's Drift, Mary Sharpe warned Michael Lacey, after which he took his sister to the woods, were they both committed suicide.