Murder on St. Malley's Day

For this one Barnaby leaves the villages behind and drives up the hill to an exclusive private school, where a boy is murdered during the traditional annual race on St Malley's Day. The setting is all blazers and Latin mottoes and a hundred years of quietly convinced self-regard. But the school does not want the police poking about in its history, and the investigation meets with a polite, immovable resentment. Institutions like this one protect their names before they protect anything else.

The race gave the killer a crowd and a distraction, and the school community closes ranks in that particular way which has nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with tradition. Barnaby works through the faces: Marcus Heywood, Jonathan Eckersley-Hyde, Martin Fulmer, Ray Starkey, Anthony Talbot, Daniel Talbot, and a doctor with a quiet manner. Troy is alongside, Joyce provides the usual anchor at home, and the real work is in unpicking which of the polite, capable adults is lying.

Andrew Payne and Caroline Graham wrote the episode, and Peter Smith directed. John Nettles and Daniel Casey lead the cast, with Jane Wymark as Joyce. The supporting players include Nicholas Audsley as Marcus Heywood, Desmond Barrit as Jonathan Eckersley-Hyde, Tom Beard as Martin Fulmer, Eamon Boland as Ray Starkey, Roger Brierley as the doctor, Jeremy Child as Anthony Talbot and Sam Crane as Daniel Talbot.

There is a satisfying chill to the school setting. All that ceremony and tradition, and underneath it the same grievances that fester in any Midsomer village, just better dressed. The race is run, the boy dies, and the school's first instinct is to protect its good name. A boy is dead, and no amount of tradition will explain that away. The show lets the thought stand on its own, and it is damning enough.