Bantling Boy

A successful racehorse, Bantling Boy, has been left to a syndicate of four people in the will of its owner, Hartley of Bantling Hall: his son Bruce Hartley, his doctor John Osgood, his nurse Joanna Craxton, and his former gardener Trevor Machin. When local businessman Sam Tate offers them £500,000 for the horse, Bruce Hartley stops them selling it; later that night he is found dead. Then, one-by-one, the others die in almost identical attacks, and the horse sickens. Barnaby dismisses the idea that it is groom Jake Foley, even though he has been accused of horse-doping in the past, and concentrates his enquiries on the inhabitants of Bantling Hall.