Death's Shadow

Tom and Joyce Barnaby are renewing their vows for their twenty-fifth anniversary when a murder gets in the way. The victim has been killed with an Indian sword in Badger's Drift, which is not the sort of thing that waits politely for a celebration, and Barnaby is soon torn between the family occasion and a case that keeps pulling him away. An Indian sword is not the sort of weapon that comes up in an ordinary inquiry, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. The renewal ceremony keeps getting postponed, and Joyce bears it with the patience of a woman who has been married to the job for twenty-five years.

There is a second mystery running underneath, and it is the more unsettling one. Five children, members of a secret society, peel away from the rest of the pupils and head for the woods. They gather at a ruined greenhouse and begin smashing the windows with bricks. Simon, one of the eldest, hands a brick to Felix, the youngest and most vulnerable of the group, who lobs it at the glass. Nothing about it is quite right, and the conspiratorial air around the children hangs over the episode long after the sword murder takes centre stage. The scene is all the more sinister for being so ordinary, and it stays with you.

Anthony Horowitz and Caroline Graham wrote it, Jeremy Silberston directed. John Nettles and Daniel Casey lead, with Jane Wymark and Laura Howard as Joyce and Cully. The suspect pool includes Richard Briers' Stephen Wentworth, Judy Parfitt's Angela Wentworth, Julian Wadham's Simon Fletcher, Dominic Jephcott's Richard Bayly and Christopher Villiers' David Whitely, with Barry Jackson's Dr Bullard in attendance.

The tension comes from the collision of the two stories: a quiet family milestone set against sudden violence, and a group of children who are up to something nobody has explained. It leaves you with the feeling that in Midsomer, secrets are always simmering. And the anniversary party will just have to wait.