Murder on the Wusterhausen Express
Aug. 14th, 2021 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mildred_of_midgard posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
rheinsbergAuthor: selenak, mildred_of_midgard, cahn
Original discussion: https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/185265.html?thread=3385009#cmt3385009, https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/185754.html?thread=3392410#cmt3392410
mildred_of_midgard's prompt: Poor Gundling. AU where he offs FW!
Spoilers for Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Don't click if you might want to read that book unspoiled someday!
Mildred: Oh, you know that Agatha Christie book where the answer is *everyone* did it? We could come up with one like that for FW!
Selena: Can Hans Heinrich join, too? He has the impeccable loyal subject reputation and all those Prussian historians claiming he was okay with FW killing his son because law, but in the AU, that's just the cover while inwardly, he's lost his struggle to forgive.
And yes, I know which Christie book you mean. Everyone who doesn't, look away for my title suggestion for the AU is a spoiler:
.
.
.
Murder in the East Prussia Express Carriage?
Mildred: Yes! All right, I'll start the list of murderers:
Fritz
SD
Gundling
Hans Heinrich (and stepmom--I haven't read the Christie in 20 years, but there's at least one married couple, right?)
Potsdam Giant(s)
Doris Ritter
Rottembourg
Continue!
Selena: Not G2, because while he'd love to, there's no way he'd keep it secret or would let go of the chance to do it mano a mano. Also, it occured to me that depending on how much of an AU we want to make it, there's the timing problem - Gundling dies in April 1731, at which point Doris Ritter is still locked up in Spandau. (And Fritz is in Küstrin.)
HOWEVER. Instead of Gundling, we could have his widow. Anne de Larrey lived until 1744, so in rl, she did have the pleasure of outlasting FW, and I like to think she cheered in 1740, too. And then I wondered what the ideal time and place would be. And who would be Poirot - i.e. the excentric foreigner who gets underestimated, solves the case yet because he understands the motive(s) doesn't present the true solution to the police. In order to have some suspense and make it believable that people like Fritz (the new King, after all!) and SD talk to this person instead of saying "begone, pleasant!", it would have to be someone whose testimony could not just be dismissed, should they uncover the truth. Someone of some social standing, in a word, which limits the choice severely. And it should be an occasion where there are a lot of people present in a limited space. This can't literally be a carriage, of course, and there are no trains. Are you guessing where I'm going with this?
....The time: 1732. The place: Fritz' engagement party to EC. Poirot: the visiting Duke of Lorraine, Franz Stephan, who technically is outranked by SD and Fritz, BUT since it's an open secret he's engaged to MT, it's also an open secret he's the Emperor's future son-in-law and likely the next Emperor himself. Also Fritz actually likes him. So it's believable that SD and Fritz would answer questions he asks (not truthfully at first, of course! but that they'd bother in the first place).
Doris Ritter spent two or three years in Spandau, I'm not sure which, but she could have been released on the occasion of the engagement party. She and Anne de Larrey could both be undercover as someone else - it's been many years since I read the book/saw a film version, but you're right about the husband and wife, but wasn't there also one who'd been the maid of the mother of the child and who had now a new identity? So anyway, no one pays much attention to maids and governesses, and I bet FW would have forgotten what Anne looked like since he probably didn't meet her often, if at all, and never met Doris Ritter.
Which reminds me: yet another possible murderer, or at least helper: Fräulein von Pannewitz! We could let the punching happen a year earlier.
(I thought of Voltaire as an alternate Poirot, but while he's certainly clever enough to solve the crime, and excentric enough, there's that power differential again!)
Mildred: Hmm, yes, I was thinking of collecting everyone over the course of his reign in a semi-crackfic, but if we're trying to pin this down in time and make it a serious historical AU, then okay.
Is FS going to be okay with it, though? Because that's also a key plot point to the final resolution, as I recall. I feel like FW miiiight have an incentive to go..."No, ganging up on even your crazy abusive monarch is not okay."
Fräulein von Pannewitz! Yes, perfect!
but wasn't there also one who'd been the maid of the mother of the child and who had now a new identity?
I vaguely recall something like this, yes.
Selena:
Hmm, yes, I was thinking of collecting everyone over the course of his reign in a semi-crackfic, but if we're trying to pin this down in time and make it a serious historical AU, then okay.
I was actually going for happy medium of serious and crack. :) But if you want to collect people from his entire life, at least one of the teachers thrown down the stairs or out of the window or what not should make it on the list.
FS as the detective:
Is FS going to be okay with it, though? Because that's also a key plot point to the final resolution, as I recall. I feel like FS miiiight have an incentive to go..."No, ganging up on even your crazy abusive monarch is not okay."
Well, it would set a bad precedent if it became known he okay'd it. But since he wouldn't tell anyone, it's not. Also, consider the alternative. The Clement Plot was fake and still caused lots of trouble between Vienna, Berlin and Saxony until FW had calmed down enough to accept Eugene's pledge that the letter was forged etc., and even longer till he warmed up to the Saxons again. If the Emperor's future son-in-law officially accuses the Queen Mother and the new King of in armed-to-the-teeth Prussia of having been involved in a plot to assassinate the previous King, what would that produce? Definitely not Fritz calmly surrendering himself to the Diet and the Emperor for judgment. More like every single Protestant German principality accusing the Catholic Habsburgs to spread lies in order to hand over Protestant Brandenburg-plus-Prussia to a Catholic tool, and likely war within the HRE. At a point where MT's Dad needs every prince on his side he can get since his people are still trying to get everyone to sign on the Pragmatic Sanction. Nobody wants war (well.... so FS thinks!). And FS is canonically a guy who urged MT to let things go re: Silesia, to reconciliation, and who wrote to his son Leopold about the advantage of putting yourself in the others' shoes, taking a step back, seeing it from their pov, etc. So I think him discovering the truth but not letting on what he figured out (since he's seen as a lightweight anyway) would be ic enough for a fanfiction!
Mildred: But if you want to collect people from his entire life, at least one of the teachers thrown down the stairs or out of the window or what not should make it on the list.
I was thinking of the defenestrated chamberlain! If nothing else, that allows us to put that ridiculous story into the hypothetical fic. :D
Nobody wants war (well.... so FS thinks!).
Ha!
Fritz: Speak for yourself. :P
FS: if you think it's plausible enough for our semi-crackfic, I won't argue. So, assuming we have a body with 14(?) stab wounds, how does that work out in terms of preventing European war?
Selena: Well, that would be outside of our fic, but: if FW dies (in whichever way) in the spring of 1732, MT's Dad is alive and well for eight more years. However, August the Strong is about to kick the bucket in 1733, thereby triggering the War of Polish Succession. My guess would be Fritz is going to use that chance for a land grab then, though whether through Silesia or Jülich and Berg, or by declaring his own candidacy for the Polish throne as a third candidate (hey, why not? He's harmless recent victim Crown Prince Fritz! Vote for him, he's no threat, and he has some nice soldiers to protect your borders! He has money, too, maybe enough to outbid Brühl!), who knows.
Mind you, in one respect I can see this whole AU as being bad for Fritz: no Rheinsberg years where he can relax and be happy and live how he likes (minus being married). He has to go to work as a monarch right away.
Back to the story. I went and looked up the Christie original's wiki entry to refresh my memory, and was v. v. amused the entry even has a map showing whose room was where vis a vis the victim. But this reminded me: as Morgenstern's "Day in the life" narration shows, FW didn't sleep alone, especially not in the 1730s when he was sick so often. He didn't just have servants and pages in the next room, which Fritz (and every other monarch) also did, he had at least one in the same room.(Which many, though not all of them did.) And this Leibjäger would presumably be a young man, so he can't be replaced by one of the older crowd, but we can decide that this is a representative forcibly drafted Potsdam Giant.
But if the engagement party is the occasion, it's a good excuse as to why everyone is in the same palace. Poirot got the cabin next to the victim by coincidence, but FS might get a room near FW because as the Emperor's not so secret future son-in-law, he's a guest of honor.
BTW: another consequence of the much stabbed dead royal body: maybe Team Brunswick rethinks the engagement? (If not, Fritz could still dissolve it, as in rl he and EC wouldn't get married until a year later, which was the normal engagement time.)
Mildred:
Well, that would be outside of our fic, but:
Well, I phrased it badly, but what I was thinking was that part of the conclusion has to be: "We have a royal body with umpteen stab wounds, who takes the fall?" I assume everyone shrugging publicly and the conclusion being "We have no idea, moving on," is not a good idea. If only because it keeps people wondering and investigating and pointing fingers!
So who takes the fall?
Mind you, I'm reminded of this one line from Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys:
Major F.E. Garrett...took over the government...and ruled the country with a rod of iron until his unfortunate death from falling out of bed several years later. He fell out of bed hard enough to break a number of bones, despite the presence in his bedroom of an entire squad of soldiers, who testified that they had all tried, but failed, to break Major Garrett's fall, and despite their best efforts he was dead by the time that he arrived in the island's sole hospital.
FW's death could be like that if we leaned toward crackier and less political.
I always thought of the Gaiman passage as surrealist humor until I read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and ever since then I've been like, "Oh, yeah, the Praetorian Guard would totally have done that." (I realize that Gibbon's scholarship is out of date and not all things attributed by him to the Praetorian Guard are still attributed to them, but still. I could see this happening to a Roman emperor.)
Cahn: So I never replied to this on the other thread but this is AWESOME and I think this is a GREAT CRACK IDEA :D and someone should write it for me.
(But I also think Voltaire would work as a guy whom Fritz would talk to, if not SD... the problem is that I find it completely unbelievable that he could find out a murder happened and keep his mouth SHUT about it, even if part of him thought justice was better served that way.)
Also, in canon there's one guy who actually doesn't participate on purpose, right? It would be fun if that were Fritz... so he's at least technically free of patricide/regicide (which idk, would FS have more problems with that than with the other guys doing it? At first I thought he might, since Fritz actually becomes king from it... but I could see it both ways, maybe it's worse if it's the subjects). And then of course Fritz goes on to, well, as you say below :)
Mildred: Also, in canon there's one guy who actually doesn't participate on purpose, right?
CLEARLY I need to reread this. It was one of my favorites, and now it's salon-relevant. :D I'll see if I can find it as a library ebook.
Anyway, you may be right, but all I remember is someone not participating and their spouse participating instead. Which could be all wrong! My Agatha Christie-reading days were long, long ago.
Agreed on Voltaire! That was the whole premise behind his role in "Grind". :P
Cahn: Yeah, "on purpose" might be a somewhat ambiguous way to put it... My vague memory was that it was agreed by the murderers (possibly not by the person themself? I forget) that the spouse participate precisely so that the one who didn't participate didn't have to be guilty of the actual murder. Which I think would hit two different buttons I have, a) that everyone was willing to protect Fritz that way <3 and b) that Fritz then goes on to be a magnificent bastard ;)
Heh, we have a few Christies but for some reason this is not one of them... I may get it from the library, I really like this one too :)
Selena: I remember it being the spouse insted of the actual person-with-a-motive, too. And yes, Voltaire just would not keep his mouth shut. Also it's questionable whether he'd go anywhere near FW's Prussia in the first place, since he doesn't know Fritz yet, so has no incentive.
However: if I recall correctly, 1733 is when Émilie/Voltaire become an item. You could therefore, in theory, in 1732 have Émilie as a visitor, and her motive for going anywhere near FW's Prussia might be she wants to have a look at Leipniz' manuscripts/letters at the Academy, and since she's not a mouthy poet who in 1732 I think is still in England in exile, and is a travelling French noblewoman instead, she could show up without having to fear getting into trouble. Her reason for keeping the secret might be emotion felt when laarning how FW treated scholars...
But Émilie or FW, we do neet a fall guy. Poirat's alternative explanation for the police was to pin it on an anonymous murderer who managed to get away, but that clearly would not work in a case of regicide (which has the hang, drawn and quartered penality, let me remind you, a simple beheading won't do), and neither FS nor Émilie would pin it on someone they know to be innocent.
A convenient guy to pin it on would be someone who commits suicide over a different issue entirely which the detective learns of in time to declare this person has been the killer and must have killed themselves either in repentance or to escape the horrible penalty. Hm.
Though I also like all the broken bones from Gaiman. Or maybe the murder is accomplished by everyone adding some arsenic to FW's beer and tobbaco?
Mildred: I vote for stab wounds or broken bones. The reason the Christie is so satisfying is that everyone gets to take a blow at the bastard. Arsenic, for all its logistical advantages, just doesn't have the same visceral oomph. Or maybe that's just my inner murderer speaking. :P
Selena: There's truth in that.
selenak, mildred_of_midgard, cahnOriginal discussion: https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/185265.html?thread=3385009#cmt3385009, https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/185754.html?thread=3392410#cmt3392410
mildred_of_midgard's prompt: Poor Gundling. AU where he offs FW!Spoilers for Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Don't click if you might want to read that book unspoiled someday!
Mildred: Oh, you know that Agatha Christie book where the answer is *everyone* did it? We could come up with one like that for FW!
Selena: Can Hans Heinrich join, too? He has the impeccable loyal subject reputation and all those Prussian historians claiming he was okay with FW killing his son because law, but in the AU, that's just the cover while inwardly, he's lost his struggle to forgive.
And yes, I know which Christie book you mean. Everyone who doesn't, look away for my title suggestion for the AU is a spoiler:
.
.
.
Murder in the East Prussia Express Carriage?
Mildred: Yes! All right, I'll start the list of murderers:
Fritz
SD
Gundling
Hans Heinrich (and stepmom--I haven't read the Christie in 20 years, but there's at least one married couple, right?)
Potsdam Giant(s)
Doris Ritter
Rottembourg
Continue!
Selena: Not G2, because while he'd love to, there's no way he'd keep it secret or would let go of the chance to do it mano a mano. Also, it occured to me that depending on how much of an AU we want to make it, there's the timing problem - Gundling dies in April 1731, at which point Doris Ritter is still locked up in Spandau. (And Fritz is in Küstrin.)
HOWEVER. Instead of Gundling, we could have his widow. Anne de Larrey lived until 1744, so in rl, she did have the pleasure of outlasting FW, and I like to think she cheered in 1740, too. And then I wondered what the ideal time and place would be. And who would be Poirot - i.e. the excentric foreigner who gets underestimated, solves the case yet because he understands the motive(s) doesn't present the true solution to the police. In order to have some suspense and make it believable that people like Fritz (the new King, after all!) and SD talk to this person instead of saying "begone, pleasant!", it would have to be someone whose testimony could not just be dismissed, should they uncover the truth. Someone of some social standing, in a word, which limits the choice severely. And it should be an occasion where there are a lot of people present in a limited space. This can't literally be a carriage, of course, and there are no trains. Are you guessing where I'm going with this?
....The time: 1732. The place: Fritz' engagement party to EC. Poirot: the visiting Duke of Lorraine, Franz Stephan, who technically is outranked by SD and Fritz, BUT since it's an open secret he's engaged to MT, it's also an open secret he's the Emperor's future son-in-law and likely the next Emperor himself. Also Fritz actually likes him. So it's believable that SD and Fritz would answer questions he asks (not truthfully at first, of course! but that they'd bother in the first place).
Doris Ritter spent two or three years in Spandau, I'm not sure which, but she could have been released on the occasion of the engagement party. She and Anne de Larrey could both be undercover as someone else - it's been many years since I read the book/saw a film version, but you're right about the husband and wife, but wasn't there also one who'd been the maid of the mother of the child and who had now a new identity? So anyway, no one pays much attention to maids and governesses, and I bet FW would have forgotten what Anne looked like since he probably didn't meet her often, if at all, and never met Doris Ritter.
Which reminds me: yet another possible murderer, or at least helper: Fräulein von Pannewitz! We could let the punching happen a year earlier.
(I thought of Voltaire as an alternate Poirot, but while he's certainly clever enough to solve the crime, and excentric enough, there's that power differential again!)
Mildred: Hmm, yes, I was thinking of collecting everyone over the course of his reign in a semi-crackfic, but if we're trying to pin this down in time and make it a serious historical AU, then okay.
Is FS going to be okay with it, though? Because that's also a key plot point to the final resolution, as I recall. I feel like FW miiiight have an incentive to go..."No, ganging up on even your crazy abusive monarch is not okay."
Fräulein von Pannewitz! Yes, perfect!
but wasn't there also one who'd been the maid of the mother of the child and who had now a new identity?
I vaguely recall something like this, yes.
Selena:
Hmm, yes, I was thinking of collecting everyone over the course of his reign in a semi-crackfic, but if we're trying to pin this down in time and make it a serious historical AU, then okay.
I was actually going for happy medium of serious and crack. :) But if you want to collect people from his entire life, at least one of the teachers thrown down the stairs or out of the window or what not should make it on the list.
FS as the detective:
Is FS going to be okay with it, though? Because that's also a key plot point to the final resolution, as I recall. I feel like FS miiiight have an incentive to go..."No, ganging up on even your crazy abusive monarch is not okay."
Well, it would set a bad precedent if it became known he okay'd it. But since he wouldn't tell anyone, it's not. Also, consider the alternative. The Clement Plot was fake and still caused lots of trouble between Vienna, Berlin and Saxony until FW had calmed down enough to accept Eugene's pledge that the letter was forged etc., and even longer till he warmed up to the Saxons again. If the Emperor's future son-in-law officially accuses the Queen Mother and the new King of in armed-to-the-teeth Prussia of having been involved in a plot to assassinate the previous King, what would that produce? Definitely not Fritz calmly surrendering himself to the Diet and the Emperor for judgment. More like every single Protestant German principality accusing the Catholic Habsburgs to spread lies in order to hand over Protestant Brandenburg-plus-Prussia to a Catholic tool, and likely war within the HRE. At a point where MT's Dad needs every prince on his side he can get since his people are still trying to get everyone to sign on the Pragmatic Sanction. Nobody wants war (well.... so FS thinks!). And FS is canonically a guy who urged MT to let things go re: Silesia, to reconciliation, and who wrote to his son Leopold about the advantage of putting yourself in the others' shoes, taking a step back, seeing it from their pov, etc. So I think him discovering the truth but not letting on what he figured out (since he's seen as a lightweight anyway) would be ic enough for a fanfiction!
Mildred: But if you want to collect people from his entire life, at least one of the teachers thrown down the stairs or out of the window or what not should make it on the list.
I was thinking of the defenestrated chamberlain! If nothing else, that allows us to put that ridiculous story into the hypothetical fic. :D
Nobody wants war (well.... so FS thinks!).
Ha!
Fritz: Speak for yourself. :P
FS: if you think it's plausible enough for our semi-crackfic, I won't argue. So, assuming we have a body with 14(?) stab wounds, how does that work out in terms of preventing European war?
Selena: Well, that would be outside of our fic, but: if FW dies (in whichever way) in the spring of 1732, MT's Dad is alive and well for eight more years. However, August the Strong is about to kick the bucket in 1733, thereby triggering the War of Polish Succession. My guess would be Fritz is going to use that chance for a land grab then, though whether through Silesia or Jülich and Berg, or by declaring his own candidacy for the Polish throne as a third candidate (hey, why not? He's harmless recent victim Crown Prince Fritz! Vote for him, he's no threat, and he has some nice soldiers to protect your borders! He has money, too, maybe enough to outbid Brühl!), who knows.
Mind you, in one respect I can see this whole AU as being bad for Fritz: no Rheinsberg years where he can relax and be happy and live how he likes (minus being married). He has to go to work as a monarch right away.
Back to the story. I went and looked up the Christie original's wiki entry to refresh my memory, and was v. v. amused the entry even has a map showing whose room was where vis a vis the victim. But this reminded me: as Morgenstern's "Day in the life" narration shows, FW didn't sleep alone, especially not in the 1730s when he was sick so often. He didn't just have servants and pages in the next room, which Fritz (and every other monarch) also did, he had at least one in the same room.(Which many, though not all of them did.) And this Leibjäger would presumably be a young man, so he can't be replaced by one of the older crowd, but we can decide that this is a representative forcibly drafted Potsdam Giant.
But if the engagement party is the occasion, it's a good excuse as to why everyone is in the same palace. Poirot got the cabin next to the victim by coincidence, but FS might get a room near FW because as the Emperor's not so secret future son-in-law, he's a guest of honor.
BTW: another consequence of the much stabbed dead royal body: maybe Team Brunswick rethinks the engagement? (If not, Fritz could still dissolve it, as in rl he and EC wouldn't get married until a year later, which was the normal engagement time.)
Mildred:
Well, that would be outside of our fic, but:
Well, I phrased it badly, but what I was thinking was that part of the conclusion has to be: "We have a royal body with umpteen stab wounds, who takes the fall?" I assume everyone shrugging publicly and the conclusion being "We have no idea, moving on," is not a good idea. If only because it keeps people wondering and investigating and pointing fingers!
So who takes the fall?
Mind you, I'm reminded of this one line from Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys:
Major F.E. Garrett...took over the government...and ruled the country with a rod of iron until his unfortunate death from falling out of bed several years later. He fell out of bed hard enough to break a number of bones, despite the presence in his bedroom of an entire squad of soldiers, who testified that they had all tried, but failed, to break Major Garrett's fall, and despite their best efforts he was dead by the time that he arrived in the island's sole hospital.
FW's death could be like that if we leaned toward crackier and less political.
I always thought of the Gaiman passage as surrealist humor until I read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and ever since then I've been like, "Oh, yeah, the Praetorian Guard would totally have done that." (I realize that Gibbon's scholarship is out of date and not all things attributed by him to the Praetorian Guard are still attributed to them, but still. I could see this happening to a Roman emperor.)
Cahn: So I never replied to this on the other thread but this is AWESOME and I think this is a GREAT CRACK IDEA :D and someone should write it for me.
(But I also think Voltaire would work as a guy whom Fritz would talk to, if not SD... the problem is that I find it completely unbelievable that he could find out a murder happened and keep his mouth SHUT about it, even if part of him thought justice was better served that way.)
Also, in canon there's one guy who actually doesn't participate on purpose, right? It would be fun if that were Fritz... so he's at least technically free of patricide/regicide (which idk, would FS have more problems with that than with the other guys doing it? At first I thought he might, since Fritz actually becomes king from it... but I could see it both ways, maybe it's worse if it's the subjects). And then of course Fritz goes on to, well, as you say below :)
Mildred: Also, in canon there's one guy who actually doesn't participate on purpose, right?
CLEARLY I need to reread this. It was one of my favorites, and now it's salon-relevant. :D I'll see if I can find it as a library ebook.
Anyway, you may be right, but all I remember is someone not participating and their spouse participating instead. Which could be all wrong! My Agatha Christie-reading days were long, long ago.
Agreed on Voltaire! That was the whole premise behind his role in "Grind". :P
Cahn: Yeah, "on purpose" might be a somewhat ambiguous way to put it... My vague memory was that it was agreed by the murderers (possibly not by the person themself? I forget) that the spouse participate precisely so that the one who didn't participate didn't have to be guilty of the actual murder. Which I think would hit two different buttons I have, a) that everyone was willing to protect Fritz that way <3 and b) that Fritz then goes on to be a magnificent bastard ;)
Heh, we have a few Christies but for some reason this is not one of them... I may get it from the library, I really like this one too :)
Selena: I remember it being the spouse insted of the actual person-with-a-motive, too. And yes, Voltaire just would not keep his mouth shut. Also it's questionable whether he'd go anywhere near FW's Prussia in the first place, since he doesn't know Fritz yet, so has no incentive.
However: if I recall correctly, 1733 is when Émilie/Voltaire become an item. You could therefore, in theory, in 1732 have Émilie as a visitor, and her motive for going anywhere near FW's Prussia might be she wants to have a look at Leipniz' manuscripts/letters at the Academy, and since she's not a mouthy poet who in 1732 I think is still in England in exile, and is a travelling French noblewoman instead, she could show up without having to fear getting into trouble. Her reason for keeping the secret might be emotion felt when laarning how FW treated scholars...
But Émilie or FW, we do neet a fall guy. Poirat's alternative explanation for the police was to pin it on an anonymous murderer who managed to get away, but that clearly would not work in a case of regicide (which has the hang, drawn and quartered penality, let me remind you, a simple beheading won't do), and neither FS nor Émilie would pin it on someone they know to be innocent.
A convenient guy to pin it on would be someone who commits suicide over a different issue entirely which the detective learns of in time to declare this person has been the killer and must have killed themselves either in repentance or to escape the horrible penalty. Hm.
Though I also like all the broken bones from Gaiman. Or maybe the murder is accomplished by everyone adding some arsenic to FW's beer and tobbaco?
Mildred: I vote for stab wounds or broken bones. The reason the Christie is so satisfying is that everyone gets to take a blow at the bastard. Arsenic, for all its logistical advantages, just doesn't have the same visceral oomph. Or maybe that's just my inner murderer speaking. :P
Selena: There's truth in that.
