A Sacred Trust

Vandalism and violence have a way of landing differently when the target is a nunnery. This one sends shock waves through one of the county's most cloistered convents, and Barnaby and Jones get the fallout rather than the simple crime. A place that runs on prayer and routine doesn't usually make for a Midsomer crime scene, which is exactly why it does. The convent is the sort of place that keeps its own counsel, which is a problem for a detective.

The investigation has to peel back layers of piety to get anywhere. But the nuns themselves are the obvious witnesses and, as always in these stories, the least reliable ones. Duncan Hendred hovers at the edges of the community, and Tamsin Bickford, Mother Julian, Sister Catherine, Mother Thomas and Mother Jerome each have their own version of what the peace was like before it broke. Barnaby treats the cloister's silence as a suspect in its own right.

Neil Dudgeon's Barnaby and Jason Hughes's Jones do the patient work, with Fiona Dolman's Sarah Barnaby and Tamzin Malleson's Kate Wilding in the usual orbit. Jamie Blackley plays Duncan Hendred, Martha Mackintosh Tamsin Bickford, and the convent's seniority is in the good hands of Joanna David's Mother Julian, Fiona Glascott's Sister Catherine, Susan Sheridan's Mother Thomas and Rosalind Knight's Mother Jerome. Rachel Cuperman, Sally Griffiths and Caroline Graham wrote it, Renny Rye directed.

There's something quietly satisfying about watching a murder inquiry conducted around matins. The setting gives the episode its tension for free, and the warmth comes from seeing the sisters close ranks, for good reasons and bad. It doesn't go in for the showy set pieces the county usually offers; the drama here is all in lowered voices and closed doors. One of the more unusual entries in the season, and one of the gentler ones.