S7E20 Get A Clue

Mysteries to Die For

Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.

I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you in the heart of a mystery. All stories are structured to challenge you to beat the detective to the solution. These are arrangements, which means instead of word-for-word readings, you get a performance meant to be heard. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes.

This is Season 7, Games People Play. Games are about competition conducted according to rules with participants working toward a goal. Games are a part of every culture and are one of the oldest forms of social interaction and engagement. Games can be fun, challenging and exhilarating. They can also be intense, cutthroat, and lethal. This season, our authors have fashioned deadly games and unscrupulous villains to test your detection skills.

This is Episode 20, where the classic mystery game Clue is the featured game. This is Get a Clue by Chuck Brownman.

Deliberation:

Games are Andy Clay’s life but he’s stumped when he’s asked to help solve the murder of Gene Dockary and then Noah Whitmore. Detective Lansing isn’t helping him, so we have to. Here are the suspects in the order they were interviewed:

• Ruth Dockary, Gene’s wife and co-host of the weekend

• Steve Joseph, a thin, nervous man

• Kate Joseph, Steve’s strong, domineering wife

• Barbara Whitmore, Noah’s wife, co-owner of the inn who worked with Ruth on planning the weekend

• Paul Marcus, a nuclear bioengineer who is CEO of a medical start up.

Here are the clues:

• Five former Denver-area neighbors gathered at a small inn for the weekend. Ruth and Gene were hosting the getaway. Ruth worked with Barbara on the idea of the Clue game. Barbara supplied the props used by their guests.

• Gene Dockary was found strangled in the library with a rope. The library was accessed only through the game room. The killer needed strength to strangle Dockary but could have been male or female.

• Clue game cards Mrs. Peacock, the candlestick, and the study were found in Gene Dockery’s pocket. The cards did not come from life-sized Clue game.

• Gene Dockary was not playing the Clue game and was noted to be in a bad mood, going as far as snapping at Barbara Whitmore when she checked in on him.

• Gene Dockery was a salesman / developer who was working to get investors for the technology Paul Marcus was developing. His friends Steve and Kate Joseph invested.

• Steve and Kate Joseph were upset with Gene, who was pressuring them for additional investment funds.

• Paul Marcus had argued with Gene the prior week when Gene had made promises on Marcus’ technology that went beyond the terms of their agreement.

• When Gene Dockary was killed, the other guests had been moving throughout the rooms. Paul Marcus did not go into the library, purposely avoiding Gene.

• Noah Whitmore was found stabbed in the kitchen with one of his own cooking knives. The knife did not come from the closest knife block but one farther away. The kitchen was accessed through the sunroom and through the door to the second floor.

• Whitmore was found by Ruth Dockary. Barbara and Kate were upstairs together when Ruth screamed. Steve and Paul Marcus were in the sunroom.

• Noah and Barbara Whitmore claimed not to have met any of the guests prior to their arrival. The weekend was set up via email with Ruth Dockery, who thinks she picked the inn off a travel website.

• Noah Whitmore was about 20 years older than his wife. They bought the inn five years ago and have had little time to do anything else. Before the inn, they owned a restaurant in Denver.

Andy has rolled the dice, now who do the clues point to?

ABOUT Clue

The game of Clue had a simple beginning. Anthony Pratt, a British factory worker and musician, created a way to pass the time in air raid bunkers during WWII that took the concept of a game he played at parties and reduced it to a board. In the game called Murder, players would run around the host houses, sneaking up on other players, who would scream and “die”. In turning into a board game, Mr. Pratt borrowed the dice and token moving action of Lido (think of the game Sorry) and the detective novel concepts of suspect, weapon, and location. During the years of 1943 – 1945, Mr. Pratt and his wife, Elva designed the game board and the rules.Mr. Pratt patented the game and sold it to Waddington’s in the UK and Parker Brothers in the US.

Interesting tidbits:

• The game was released as Cluedo in England but Clue in the US as Lido wasn’t / isn’t a well know game here

• Pratt’s original concept had four more characters: Mr. Brown, Mr. Gold, Miss Grey, and Mrs. Silver. Nurse White was renamed to Mrs. White and Colonel Yellow renamed Colonel Mustard.

• The original concept had two additional rooms: the gun room and the cellar

• The original concept had some different weapons including a bomb, syringe, shillelagh (which is a wooden walking stick), a fireplace poker.

• Differenced between UK and US editions including lead piping vs lead pipe, spanner vs wrench, and dagger vs knife

• In the UK, the victim ws known as Mr. Black. In the states, he was Mr. Boddy. In the 2023 update by Hasbro, the victim is known as Mr. Boden “Boddy” Black, Jr.

Unlike some of the other games we’ve featured, Clue was constantly updated for the times. The rules of the game stayed basically the same but the character depictions, like on the box cover, were updated for the styles and tends of the times. Characters were given back stories and some had major career changes. There is a lot more to the history of the game Clue. Check out the links in the shownotes.

https://www.history.com/news/clue-game-origin-wwii

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluedo#:~:text=Cluedo%20(%2F%CB%88klu%CB%90,the%20United%20Kingdom%20in%201949.

ABOUT Chuck Brownman

Chuck Brownman has spent the last twenty-five-plus years working on becoming an “overnight writing sensation.” Concentrating on writing mystery / suspense short fiction, his work has been published in several anthologies, including those listed at the top of the episode. In his “real life,” Chuck is a Houston-based corporate and energy attorney, advising and working for some of the country’s most entrepreneurial companies. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Law, and has spoken at legal seminars for many years.