Echoes of the Dead is the third episode of the fourteenth series of Midsomer Murders and first aired on 20 April 2011.
Dianne Price is left dead in the style of the Brides in the Bath murders of almost a century earlier. Blessed be the Bride is scrawled in lipstick on her bathroom mirror. Her grieving flatmate Jo, who works at a donkey sanctuary run by hard-drinking Liz Tomlin and her antagonistic son Sam, takes the opportunity to escape her voyeuristic landlord Bernard Flack to move in with vet Fran Carter but Fran too is killed, also in a copycat murder from the 1930s, again bridal-related. Pub landlord Matt Rowntree, an ex-cop, is married to Nikki, a former madame whose girls specialized in dressing up fantasies which arouses Barnaby's suspicions but then an elderly couple are slain, with Just Married written on their car and Bridal Suite on the door. Bernard's voyeurism actually saves Jo's life as he calls the police to arrest the murderer, out to claim a fifth victim.
Tropes:
- Awful Wedded Life: A former magistrate who performed countless marriage ceremonies now sneers about the whole concept.
- Deadly Bath: Dianne Price is found submerged in a petal-strewn bath, dressed as a bride. (Though she is killed by strangulation.)
- Dead Man's Chest: Fran Carter's dismembered body is placed in a wicker hamper and left in a railway station.
- Egocentrically Religious: The Fundamentalist, hitherto regarded as a naïve, gentle, and innocent Noble Bigot type at worst, turns out to be a Serial Killer. He tries to keep his act up and comes across as a Tragic Villain Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, a mentally disturbed type who honestly thought he was doing the right thing ("saving" sinners by killing them, so they stop sinning), but Barnaby calls him out as a narcissistic bastard who knows full well what he is doing and was just killing people he didn't like For the Evulz. However, he is still presented as a believer, just one who happened to think murder made him like God.
- Happily Married: A rare example of this trope in the series, with an elderly couple who cheerfully spend all their time watching a TV blaring away. It may be a deliberate lampshading that it turns out they never actually got around to getting formally married.
- Kavorka Man: The awkward and taciturn villager who runs the local petrol station has at least two women openly flirting with him; it's not clear if he ignores them or is painfully shy.
- Jack the Ripoff: Barnaby recognises the murders as recreations of famous murders of the early 20th century, except for the last one, which he's not able to place. When the murderer, David Orchard, is caught, Barnaby asks about it, and David shrugs and says, "I was in a hurry and I couldn't think of anything".
- The Peeping Tom: Landlord Bernard Flack keeps making excuses to visit the property he rents to Dianne and Jo so he can spy on them. Bernard's voyeurism actually saves Jo's life as he desperately flags down a passing patrol car after he witnesses the murderer out to claim a fifth victim.
- Red Herring: Flack is seen with a saw before one is used to dismember Fran Carter, but he's not the murderer.
- Seen It All: Subverted in this case by coroner George Bullard, who normally is quite cheerful and jokey when doing his job: Fran Carter's being dismembered actually gets to him.
- Sinister Whistling: At the end of the episode, as he stalks his latest victim trying to bludgeon her to death with a sledgehammer, David Orchard happily whistles "Here Comes The Bride" to himself.
- Theme Serial Killer: David Orchard, who based his murders on old murder cases, such as George Joseph Smith.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The poor sod who makes the cheerfully casual comment that he and his "wife" never actually got legally married, leading to them both being offed by a deranged serial killer.