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Brendan
Don't have the full clue in front of me but think I parsed it as the r moving from a type of wheat (source of dough) to the 'seven'.

Ah, that's great, I wondered why "the" was there - Many thanks Muraria:-)

Thanks to Muraria and drxx I persevered with this and have now returned to find I still have not worked out the first four letters for 22a because I cannot solve both 15d and 17d. I know it’s a long shot because you will all be at Wimbledon, but please will someone help me?
15d: Prepare to work at paper (paired with 17d: reportedly half bring stick in the mud for writing.
I have ?O?O and DE??
I might have something wrong so humour me….
22a: I have ????VIRI

All correct so far, jogamel. Words to swap are the last one of 15 dn and the fourth one (all of it) of 17 dn. The latter provides the definition of 15 dn (someone old-fashioned), the two identical halves of which are defined in Chambers as 'to prepare' and 'to work at'. The answer to 17 dn is an old pre-metric size of .

HTH

Don't know what happened to the rest of previous post! Should read "... pre-metric size of *swapped word*".

jogamel,
Your 22a seems to be right.
I have first 4 letters for a type of wheat missing R in the middle.
VII is 7 and it adopts R.

It was ever thus, but I had rejected this answers you all led me to. So thanks everyone.

I have a full grid and I know perfectly well what's going on ... but I can't do any of the post-gridfill bits. I've tried shouting and screaming at my box (as if it's their fault I do a double-fault) but my doing so is as helpful as it was to Mr K in SW19.

If you find 'one of these pieces of evidence' everything else fits neatly in/through it.

Took me a while to spot the piece of evidence - having seen the 10 letter object quite quickly. It all works out very neatly.

Slightly deflected earlier by the term 'murder' in the title as there is a geographic link with what appears to have been a murder or murders.

Nice puzzle. Enjoyed it. 👍