Nick Turner is a character appearing in the episode Hidden Depths of the ITV crime drama Midsomer Murders.
Nick was the victim of an elaborate con scheme by his acquaintances, solicitor Jack Wilmot, historian Otto Benham, and former low-rating game show host Mike Spicer. Jack found an empty wine cellar in the basement of an outbuilding at a property he and his wife Antonia Wilmot share with Nick and his wife Felicity Turner. Otto decided to embezzle Nick, alleging there was a stash of wine in the cellar, despite a convincing stage set in that cellar. Jack sweet-talked Nick into believing a buyer wanted the wine, and one real bottle was given to Nick for evaluation. An impostor "agreed", and Nick gave 50,000 pounds to the grift which he thought was a partnership. The imposter alleged an increase in payment, which elevated the embezzlement to 150,000 quid, which Nick, a solicitor himself, stole form his clients to pay. Jack then staged a van explosion to get rid of the evidence and trick Nick while the conspirators kept the money.
Nick realized the scheme by means unknown and decided to kill the three out of revenge, in elaborately planned and staged murders as added mockeries against them all, using them also to get his money back. Felicity was privy and complicit in the scheme, hoping to run off with Nick after they collected their payday. Felicity seduced Jack up to the attic, where Nick knocked him out with a cricket bat. They tied and gagged him to a bed, changed his clothes to one of Nick's outfits, and waited for the day Nick was to disappear. Nick went up to the attic, dragged an unconscious Jack up to the roof, screamed in a fake "struggle" and dropped Jack face first onto the patio gravel below. Felicity ran to the body and covered it while faking tears, preventing Antonia from looking at her dead husband. Felicity had earlier asked the gardener, Steve Hope, to specifically waterproof a bench out of site to prevent them being caught.
Nick then, in dark clothes and a balaclava, broke into Otto's house and drugged his wine in the decanter. Nick stole the white line machine Steve was to use on a field, painting concentric targets in his lawn. Otto stumbled outside from the site and passed out. Nick pinned Otto to the ground by his limbs with croquet arches, Otto's catapult at the ready with bottles of wine in a wheelbarrow. Otto's wife Bernie Benham was restrained in her wheelchair, which she was restricted to from a riding accident, and wheeled her to the bedroom window to observe the spectacle. Otto was furious and horrified, but Bernie, having hated the marriage, was not only amused, but directing the catapult verbally. Nick took Bernie's word and launched more bottles, which smashed wine and glass over and over all over a crying Otto, where he die from his injuries.
Needing to buy time for Mike as the final target, Nick locked Tom Barnaby, Dan Scott, and Antonia in the empty wine cellar, where they were found by Antonia's friend and Nick's former colleague Jane Hampton and subsequently released. In the meantime, after Nick had constructed a full telly set mock-up, he broke into Mike's house and knocked him out with a frying pan. Placing his head inside the box, a camera trained om him, Nick recorded Mike being asks questions and slowly having wine poured over him, until his head submerged and he drowned. The set was lifted, spilling the wine all over the floor, and the detectives were left to find the scene too late.
Knowing the couple needed to collect the life insurance policy, Barnaby deduced their hideout was the house of Felicity's parents. Nick and Felicity wined and dined while watching the tape of Mike's prolonged murder, giggling and laughing the whole way through. While discussing how they should've recorded Otto and they'd need to be apart for the rest of their plan until they could meet again, the detectives walked in, retained the tape as evidence, and arrested them both to take them into custody.
Victims[]
- Jack Wilmot - Lured to the attic of his house, knocked unconscious with a Cricket bat, stripped and dressed up in identical clothes that Nick would wear that morning. Then he was gagged and tied up, knocked out again, taken to the roof and finally dropped from the roof head first onto a stone patio to make it appear Nick was the victim.
- Bernie Benham - Restrained to her wheelchair with duct tape, them carefully transported to her bedroom window overlook Otto's murder. She was complicit by directing the trajectory of the murder weapon.
- Otto Benham - Drank drugged wine, lured outside of his house where he collapsed onto a white target that was drawn on his lawn and pinned to the ground by croquet hoops. Then he was woken up and slowly killed by having bottles of wine thrown at him with an antique catapult.
- DCI Tom Barnaby - Locked for nearly a day in a basement wine cellar; rescued by Jane Hampton.
- DC Dan Scott - Locked for nearly a day in a basement wine cellar; rescued by Jane Hampton.
- Antonia Wilmot - Locked for nearly a day in a basement wine cellar; rescued by Jane Hampton.
- Mike Spicer - Knocked unconscious with a pan, tied up and had his head put into a modified TV set. Then he was recorded and forced to take part in a Q and A, each "wrong" answer resulting in the TV set being slowly filled with wine, eventually drowning him. The "game" was named "MIKE SPICER'S GAME FOR YOUR LIFE", a pun on the show Mike used to present "MIKE SPICER'S GAME OF YOUR LIFE".