Plot

Barnaby finds connections between a supposedly haunted forest, the traceless disappearances of two couples and a gang of antiquity thieves.

Postman Sam Nelms' morning delivery takes a strange turn when he discovers the occupants of neighboring cottages, the Goodfellows and Thomases have vanished, leaving half-eaten breakfasts on the table. Some years earlier the Thomases' son died in nearby Monks Barton woods,believed to be haunted, and flamboyant psychic Cyrus LeVanu arrives to perform an exorcism in the woods. The corpse of a known antiques burglar and those of the Thomases are discovered whilst Stanley Goodfellow is found,raving and apparently mad. An antiques theft ring is exposed,headed by the next victim, who manufactured ghostly noises in the woods to scare people away from his misdeeds. Barnaby knows who the killer is by now but the location of Stanley's wife,alive, by Cyrus's psychic powers shows that talking to the dead may be possible.—don @ minifie-1

DCI Barnaby and DS Jones investigate the disappearance of four people who seem to have just vanished. Nesta and Stanley Goodfellow and Molly and Colin Thomas rented cottages near Barton Woods. Dr. Bullard knew the Thomases as he performed the autopsy some years ago on their 10 year-old son Peter who got lost in the woods and died of hypothermia. The cottages are owned by Lynton Pargeter who lives in the nearby priory and is an avid collector of antiques. The woods are believed to have spiritual connection with monks who were once slaughtered there during the Middle Ages and is used by a well-known psychic, Cyrus LeVanu. The body count rises quickly when the police find an unidentified body in the woods and Molly Thomas shot in the back with a shotgun in her cottage, but only a few hours before being found. Stanley Goodfellow is found alive in the woods but seems to have gone mad. The third of the missing foursome is also found dead in the woods leaving Barnaby with a very short list of suspects. He knows several of the locals were dealing in stolen antiques and the solution to the murders must lie there.—garykmcd

Tom and Ben investigate the disappearance from their cottage homes of the Thomas and Goodfellow couples, discovered by dodgy mailman Sam Nelms, all five of them involved in petty thefts, generally linked to the local antiques dealer and/or avid collector Lynton Pargeter, who owns both cottages and lives in the splendid manor build on the former priory, whose last monks, slaughtered by Tudor troops, are believed in the village still to haunt the surrounding Monks Barton forest, where the Thomas's runaway son Peter (then ten) died years ago from hypothermia and crackpot medium Cyrus LeVanu now performs his purifying rites, with Pargeeter's permission and to public acclaim, to the open fury of vicar Wallace Stone, who treats his wife like a maid and ignores her affair with Sam. Molly Thomas is found shot in the back with a shotgun in her cottage, Stanley Goodfellow apparently mad in the wood, where an antiques burglar's corpse in found, while his wife Nesta Goodfellow remains missing and an elusive masked man in a dark van escapes the detectives time and again. The rich but spooky manor proves the crossroad of crimes and the site for the last murder.—KGF Vissers