MIDSOMER MURDERS
THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT
DETAILED SYNOPSIS
Undertaker Patrick Pennyman is killed in his funeral parlour in Fletcher's Cross one night while local medium Rosetta Price conducts a spiritualist meeting nearby. Despite his wife Janet's claims that he was respected in the community, he had a reputation as a skinflint and fell out with his former partner James Griss two years earlier.
Barnaby discovers many villagers, including choirmaster's wife Sylvia Burgess, are bitterly opposed to Rosetta's Spirit of Friendship Group. James Griss, now an enthusiastic supporter of Fletcher's Cross railway heritage site, tells the detectives Pennyman used to steal valuables from coffins.
Joyce Barnaby has befriended Elizabeth Key, a former Midsomer resident who has recently returned to the area. Barnaby encourages Joyce to go to a spiritualist meeting with Elizabeth - but she's scared when Rosetta seems to single her out as the wife of an 'avenging angel'!
Meanwhile in the village Janet is given crystal healing by Anne Marr, whose brother Thomas helped Pennyman on a part-time basis.
Elizabeth's parents died recently and she tells Joyce that the spiritualist church killed her mother. After her father's death, her mother sought comfort from Rosetta but what she heard at the meetings frightened her and made her ill. Elizabeth wants to expose the spiritualists and also find who took an antique brooch from her mother's coffin.
Joyce promises to ask Tom for help but after she goes home, Elizabeth is killed. Barnaby is sure there must be a link between her murder and Pennyman's. In a bid to find out, he accompanies Joyce to a spiritualist meeting. But that night there's another killing.........