Wild Harvest

A landlord found dead in his own woods is the sort of thing that sets a whole village talking, and Wyvern House provides the setting for it. The body is that of the man who owns the place, and the way he died is brutal enough that nobody in the surrounding countryside feels entirely safe. The woods are thick enough to hide a great deal, and they have clearly been doing so. Which is roughly the point, and the episode knows it.

Barnaby and Nelson arrive to find a community that has already made up its mind about everyone else. The investigation fans out across the usual suspects, and the script, from Rachel Cuperman, Sally Griffiths and Caroline Graham, makes sure the list is long. Arabella Weir's Angela Linklater and Clive Wood's Johnny Linklater head one household, with Tyger Drew-Honey's Ferdy completing it. Sharon Small's Ruth Cameron, Marc Elliott's Nick Iver and Lucinda Dryzek's Amy Strickland all circle the case in their own ways. Renny Rye directs, and he gets the tone right: sunny enough outside that the shadows read as odd rather than obvious.

The pleasure here is watching Barnaby refuse to let the small-town paranoia do his job for him. Everyone has a theory, and nearly everyone has a reason to want the landlord dead. There are no witnesses, or none who will admit to it, and the woods keep their own counsel. The body is the one fact nobody can argue with, so the case comes down to whose story about that morning holds up. It is the kind of case where everyone lies about something small, and the small lies are the way in.

Fiona Dolman's Sarah and Tamzin Malleson's Kate Wilding keep the domestic side ticking over. And the episode earns its keep by remembering that a murder in a wood is still a murder, however pretty the trees are.

A tidy, uncomfortable little mystery, and one that knows exactly what it is doing.