The Made-to-Measure Murders

It starts with a heart attack. A local tailor dies, and for two years that is all it is. For a village that prides itself on routine, that is a long two years of nothing. Then his widow is murdered on her way to the vicarage, and the vicar himself is killed shortly after receiving a mysterious letter. Whatever began with one man's heart giving out has finally caught up with the rest of the parish.

Barnaby and Jones are left to unpick a chain of events that reaches further back than anyone in the village wants to admit. The widow was heading for the vicarage when she died, and the vicar's letter arrived before the killer did, which gives Barnaby two thin threads to pull and a village full of people pretending not to know which way they lead. The tailor's shop, with its measuring tape and its gossip, is the kind of place everyone in the parish passed through at some point, which means no shortage of conversations and very little in the way of truth. The Woodleys are never far from the inquiry: Sonia, Matthew and Luke. Beyond them stand Beatrice Daniels, Morris Bingham and Edward Milton, each holding a piece of a history no one has bothered to sort out until now. Joyce lends a hand at the edges, and Dr Bullard supplies the medical detail, which is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in this one.

Andrew Payne and Caroline Graham wrote it, and Peter Smith directed. John Nettles and Jason Hughes carry the investigation, with Maureen Beattie, Philip Bretherton, Karl Davies, Sonya Cassidy, Richard Cordery and James Wilby filling out a cast that knows how to keep a secret.

And death arrives slowly in this one, on a timetable set two years earlier. The village only notices when it is far too late.