EXTRA! EXTRA! NEW TOP NOB AT DON HALL FOUND DONE IN

From the Midsomer Inquirer, Evening Edition, 28th August

The sense of fear and unease which has hung over Midsomer for the last week came to a terrible close this evening when the body of a man in his forties was discovered at the old manor house, until recently the home of Colonel Don. Tongues are wagging in Midsomer Montague tonight as police closed off the Don Hall area to search for a possible murderer, after suggestions were made informally that the dead body is none other than Brother Buckland, Colonel Don's heir. 

Workers installing an organic swimming pool at the million-pound manor dialled emergency services just after 4.30pm today when they became alarmed at the lateness of tea. After venturing upstairs, Carmela Richards, 48, a neighbour, said, "They came running downstairs shrieking about blood. I went to their aid, ran up and entered the bathroom. I saw him just lying there, and at first I thought that Brother Buckland had probably just been trying out a bit of this fashionable new 'gloveless pruning'. Sadly, that wasn't the case. He'd been murdered in cold blood, strangled around the neck until the life was sucked from his body."

It appears that yet again the curse of the Dons has struck. Don Hall has long been said to suffer under a curse placed on the family by a beetle-loving entomologist in the nineteenth century, who fell out with the victim's ancestor William Buckland after he ate a particularly valuable specimen from the top beetle prof's collection. Brother Toby Buckland, a divine belonging to the United Ethical Church of Devon, had only been in residence at the Hall since last night, after being unexpectedly favoured last month in the Colonel's Will and Testament, and it seems as if the curse has acted on the Hall's new occupant quicker than ever before.

Police are said to be "flummoxed" by the crime scene: "It's almost the perfect crime," said a police insider this evening, "This person definitely knew exactly what they were doing." The only evidence as to the murderer was a slightly used-looking piece of knicker elastic with some paper strands attached, found in a nearby flowerbed, although the search for clues goes on tonight as darkness falls.

If that weren't enough bad news for one day, "Tibbles", a mixed-race cat who had been a favourite of the late Colonel Don, has been found drowned in a lavish garden pond adjoining the house. Medics tried to revive the cat but unfortunately the emergency services were called to the scene just too late. A spokeswoman for the Anonymous Cat Defence League said "It's completely indefensible. It's one thing to murder a person, but to drown a cat, who's never done any harm to anybody? I don't know what the world is coming to when this kind of thing goes on right under your noses." A press conference on both cases will be called first thing tomorrow.