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'Do you ever stop to think, Amy, that but for you Ralph might still have been alive?'
-Honoria Lyddiard in 'Written in Blood'

 Title: Written in Blood
First broadcast: 22nd of March 1998

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

Location(s):
Midsomer Worthy

Summary:
The Midsomer Worthy Writer's Circle is debating their choice for their annual invitation for a reader to attend a meeting. When one of them suggests Max Jennings, the circle's chairman, Gerald Hadleigh, has serious objections but refuses to tell why. Max Jennings is invited and accepts the offer, but Gerald asks Amy Lyddiard, an other member of the club, to not leave him and Jennings alone. Amy tries to do so, but fails, and is persuaded by her sister-in-law Honoria to go home. The next morning, Hadleigh is found with his skull bashed in with a candlestick, and all his clothes have been stolen. When Barnaby and Troy start their investigation, they soon find there was more, a lot more, to Gerald Hadleigh than met the eye. Later, Max Jennings is found dead also and the plot thickens...

Solution

The murderer of Gerald Hadleigh is Honoria Lyddiard. She was besotted about her late brother Ralph (and had not buried him, but kept him embalmed in her house), but she found out from an old 'Navy News' that Hadleigh had known her brother.

When she went to visit him that night, after Jennings had left, she found him dressed up as a woman. Hadleigh told her Ralph was a bisexual and that the two of them had had sex, after which Honoria had bashed Gerald's head in with the closest thing she could get her hands on - a candlestick.

The murderer of Max Jennings is Gerald Hadleigh. Hadleigh had lived in Ireland when he was young, and he was sexually abused by his father. Eventually, he shot him and fled to Dublin. Later still, he went to England and fashioned himself an entirely new identity. At some point, when he was drunk, he told Max Jennings his life's story. Jennings subsequently turned it into a best-seller book, but hadn't told Gerald that he had used his story for his own purpose.

After Jennings returned to Gerald's house that evening after the Writer's Circle meeting, Gerald poisoned Jenning's drink. Jennings was even described as 'drunk' by Laura Hutton, who had been spying on Gerald (whom she was in love with) that evening. She didn't know it was the poison taking it's effect.