Cast:
Cully Barnaby...................Laura Howard
Joyce Barnaby..................Jane Wymark
Tom Barnaby....................John Nettles
Gavin Troy........................Daniel Casey
Location(s):
Raven's Wood (or Strangler's Wood), location unknown
Summary:
Nine years ago, three girls were raped and strangled in Raven's Wood, thereafter nicknamed Strangler's Wood by the locals. Now the body of Carla Constanza, a Portuguese model working for the local tobacco company, is found in the woods under similar circumstances. After the au-pair of the owner of the company (Bill Mitchell) is run over by a car and injected with pure nicotine, Barnaby strongly suspects the Monarch Tobacco Company is somehow involved with the deaths. While the police make their inquiries at the Fox and Goose Hotel (where Carla stayed shortly before her death), Carla's doctor, mr. Aycott, dies after he is burned alive. Barnaby must hurry to find the killer, but meanwhile there's another death - apparantly unrelated to the previous murders...
The murderer of the three girls in Raven's Wood is Leonard Pike, a local. He was later killed himself The murderer of Leonard Pike is his mother, Dorothea Pike, nine years later, after the discovery of Carla Constanza's body. Dorothea knew what her son had done to the three girls, and thought that he'd started again. She stabbed him dead while he was having a shower. The murderer of Carla Constanza, Anna the au-pair and dr. Aycott is Bill Mitchell. Carla was used as a model for the tobacco company's advertising campaign, but shortly after Carla became very ill from her smoking. Wanting to prevent her from making it public she had fallen ill from the very thing she promoted, Bill decided to kill her. Anna, the au-pair, found out about what her employer had done and tried to blackmail him. Subsequently, Bill knocked her off the road in his car and killed her with pure nicotine he'd gotten from the cigarettes-company. For good measure, dr. Aycott (who knew about Carla's condition) was disposed of too. |