Blue Herrings

A visit to his convalescent aunt puts Barnaby in the middle of a nursing home where the residents keep dying, and nobody seems to want to talk about it. The deaths look natural enough on paper, but there are too many of them, and the home's quiet routine starts to feel like a cover for something worse. Barnaby is there to visit family, and the deaths are somebody else's problem, until he notices the pattern. The deaths are spaced out enough to look like bad luck, and that is precisely the problem.

The investigation unfolds at a gentler pace than usual, which suits the setting. The residents are a wonderful collection of characters: Alice Bly, William Smithers, Arthur Prewitt, George Watson, Celia Armstrong and Pru Bennett. They all have histories, and they are all careful about what they say in front of the new visitor. The staff hold their own secrets. The clues, such as they are, sit among the pills and the visiting hours, in small kindnesses that might be anything but kind.

Hugh Whitemore and Caroline Graham wrote it, Peter Smith directed. John Nettles and Daniel Casey are Barnaby and Troy, Jane Wymark and Laura Howard the family, and the home is populated by Phyllis Calvert's Alice Bly, Nigel Davenport's William Smithers, Geoffrey Bayldon's Arthur Prewitt, Mary Wimbush's George Watson, Gudrun Ure's Celia Armstrong and Angela Down's Pru Bennett. The nursing home setting is a rare one for the show, and it gives the mystery a confined, almost claustrophobic feel.

It is a contained story, and the smaller scale suits it. A place meant for rest becomes the scene of a quiet malice, and Barnaby's visits to his aunt give him a personal stake the usual cases lack. Everyone at the home has a reason to keep their mouth shut, and the killer is relying on exactly that. The most unsettling mysteries often hide behind the most ordinary routines. And a nursing home, it turns out, is a perfect place for them.