An inspector arrives in a village to investigate the apparent suicide of a man who is found hanging from a windmill during a Michaelmas celebration. While he investigates what he suspects is actually a murder, nine other murders are committed and a barn catches fire.
Eventually even the inspector works out that the only person left in the village is the murderer. His assistant, who is even stupider, is amazed.
I have better things to do than watch Inspector Barnaby as he struts his stuff in "Midsomer Murders", and so I left Padma to her TV series while I read "Caddie" which I had picked up at the Vinnies op-shop, not because I didn't already have it but because I didn't have yet in this particularly attractive binding by "The Collector's Library of Australia's Great Books".
"Caddie", which is in the same pantheon as "We of the Never Never" and "The Harp in the South", is the fictionally embellished autobiography of Catherine "Caddie" Edmonds, who worked as a barmaid in Sydney during the Great Depression. Published anonymously in 1953 under Edmonds' nickname, which was coined by a lover who likened her to "the sleek body and class of his Cadillac motorcar", it was made into a feature film in 1976 which, for once, I had watched before I ever read the book.
And, for once, you would be right to judge a book by its movie because both are equally entertaining. Oh, and I did half-listen to tonight's "Midsomer Murders" which made mention of the Japanese art of kintsugi. I had to look it up - or google for it, to use today's verbed-up brand name; you may wish to do the same - and found it to be a lovely metaphor for healing and recovery from adversity and indeed for life itself. Thank you, Inspector Barnaby, I've learned a new word tonight!
