IMPORTANT NOTE: Six people (FiBeen, LemmingDancer, PinkFairy23, Ethelfreda, Frienze and I) are playing a fanfic version of MFMM Cluedo. Murdoch Foyle has been murdered in Miss Fisher's House. We must discover the name of the murderer, the weapon and in which room the murder was committed. Every player must 'investigate' by writing a fic (100-1000 words). Each round, more and more clues can be crossed off their list. The first person to solve the mystery will write the story of Foyle's death and earn great praise for their cleverness. If you would like to play your own game please PM GameMaster19 for the rules and instructions.

Author's Note: I'm toying with making it into a real case fic once the challenge is done so let me know what you think? xx DB

With The Lead Piping

It had been a very strange case from the beginning. Which, given the past two years with a certain Lady Detective at his side had been filled with oddments, was no small claim. But then again, how many people who reported to the police that someone was trying to kill them were actually correct? Usually, a diligent but wary constable would be sent to investigate and most of the time discovered spite, paranoia or delusion to be the true cause of the report. And this one had had all the hallmarks of a ranting lunatic rather than a genuine threat at the beginning. And then she died.

Miss Herron, a woman in her late 60s who lived alone, had staggered into City South Police Station six-months ago demanding loudly to speak to a detective because "she was being murdered." In the present tense. It had quickly become apparent that she had at least partial short-term memory loss and difficulty concentrating but on one thing she was emphatic and consistent, someone was poisoning her. But the Detective she'd spoken to, Det. Edward Warren, had leaned heavily towards her problem being alcohol abuse, carefully listing her symptoms as clear evidence to this line of thinking despite her equally emphatic statement that she never touched the stuff. Det. Warren's list included: severe headaches, nausea and vomiting, slightly slurred speech, aggression and irritability, hand tremors, a blackening of the gums around the teeth and an unnatural, greyish pallor to her skin. And, if Jack was honest, the detective had made a good case for it. But by sending her to a doctor who, by way of the accompanying police note, was expecting to find chronic alcohol poisoning had, perhaps unwittingly, guaranteed the diagnosis. The fact that she had returned to the station with increasing frequency and, with declining health, made the same claims had not swayed Det. Warren's conviction she was a drunkard one little bit. A conviction and subsequent lack of action which was currently being reviewed by an increasingly irate Detective-Inspector.

The Medical Examiner had been very damming of that particular "expert's" assessment; pointing out that no doctor worth their salt should take the diagnosis of a laymen (in this case a police detective) as "solid fact" - especially when their patient denied it - they should seek to conduct a thorough, unbiased assessment of the symptoms before reaching any conclusions. The M.E.'s conclusion had been an unpleasant one; chronic lead poisoning. Which, had it been diagnosed when it was reported six months ago, would have been treatable.

So now it was Jack's job to figure out whether it was a deliberate or an unintentional poisoning. He had Constables searching the house room by room for anything and everything which contained lead but he'd saved the kitchen for himself, a hunch leading him to shed his overcoat and jacket, roll up his shirt sleeves, set down his tool kit and inspect the plumbing under the sink. And there it was, as plain as day to a man who'd spent hours watching and helping his father replace the old plumbing when, at nine years old, his family had moved into a big, old and run down house in Richmond. The pipes to the taps, while not exactly new, were all wrong. They should be as straight and short as possible, creating minimal obstacles to the flow of water to maintain water pressure but these had long, tight u-bends so they doubled back on themselves, making them twice as long as they should have been and creating a large area where water sat stagnant in the pipes when the taps were off, creating the best possible scenario for contaminating the water supply. The white oxidisation on the unusually shaped pipes proved them to be lead but worse still he saw they'd been joined to the original copper pipes, a factor which his father had always said seemed to multiply the risk of lead poisoning exponentially. Using the camera Jones had left him to document his findings, Jack quickly took pictures of the pipes and all of the items in the cupboard under the sink before carefully removing them, clearing his path to the pipes. He'd remove one of them for testing at the lab and leave the other for one of his men to process in-situ.

Placing a large container under the sink to catch any spilt water and donning gloves Jack set to work unscrewing the couplings either side of the cold water line's u-bend. With practiced ease he removed the lead section, balancing it carefully as he secured the waterproof oilskin swatches to either exposed end, sealing the contaminated water inside the pipe before performing the same process on the exposed ends of the copper pipes under the sink. What little water that had fallen into the container he would funnel into an evidence jar to be sent away later, for now, he examined the pipe more closely wondering just who would go to such elaborate lengths to give someone such a slow, cruel death.

Jack heard the muffled sound of someone tiptoeing in heeled shoes and smelt the sweet aroma of French perfume but resisted the urge to turn around, knowing how she would enjoy making her entrance with such a line. Smiling to himself Jack carefully put the tools he'd used back in his tool box and picked up the most unconventional murder weapon he'd ever had to log as evidence just as his Lady Detective crossed the threshold.

"I suspect Jack Robinson, in the Kitchen with the Lead Piping!'