A Worm in the Bud

A woman found dead in Setwale Wood looks like a suicide, and for a while everyone treats it as one. Then a technical detail undoes the whole theory: the suicide note was sent by email after her body had already been sighted. Dead people do not send mail, as a rule. But the timing of that message opens the case right back up.

It is a neat piece of misdirection, the kind Midsomer does well. The apparent note gives everyone a comfortable explanation, and the inquiry would have closed on it if not for one timestamp. Barnaby, who has never trusted a convenient explanation in his life, does not need the email to know something is off. He and Troy start pulling at the thread, and the usual village figures come into view: Hannah Harrington, whose connection to the dead woman proves central, Denise Fielding, Victoria Bartlett, and further out Caroline Harrington, Sean Fielding, Edmund Nelson and Jonah Bloxham. Joyce Barnaby, as ever, provides a steady anchor in the middle of it all.

Michael Russell and Caroline Graham wrote the episode, and David Tucker directed. John Nettles is his usual methodical self as Barnaby, with Daniel Casey's Troy alongside and Jane Wymark as Joyce. The cast includes Gillian Barge as Hannah Harrington, Rosie Cavaliero as Denise Fielding, Wendy Craig as Victoria Bartlett, Janie Dee as Caroline Harrington, Charlie Hicks as Sean Fielding, Ian Driver as Edmund Nelson and Ian Hogg as Jonah Bloxham.

The whole episode hangs on a single, simple fact: the order in which two things happened. Midsomer loves that. Give it one misplaced piece of evidence and it will build a full murder investigation around it. Nothing in these villages is ever as straightforward as it first appears, and the email is the worm in the bud that ruins the whole clean picture.