Case 3: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

At Styles Court, a quiet country manor in Essex, Emily Inglethorp was found dead in her bedroom around 5 a.m., poisoned by strychnine. The door was locked from the inside.

Suspicion quickly turned toward those closest to her—her much younger husband Alfred Inglethorp, her stepsons John and Lawrence Cavendish and other members of the household.

Your mission: Use SQL to cross-check alibis, analyze the timeline of events and uncover the truth behind Emily Inglethorp’s murder.

About this case

Based on The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Agatha Christie, 1920). A wealthy widow is poisoned in her locked bedroom at a country manor. Her much younger husband becomes the prime suspect—but is he really the killer?

What you'll practise

This intermediate case deepens your SQL skills:

SELECT + multiple WHERE conditions — to isolate suspects with both motive and access
ORDER BY — to build detailed timelines of movements
BETWEEN — to check alibis against narrow time windows
Complex AND logic — combining multiple filters to eliminate suspects

The database

You'll query the suspect_info table, tracking each person's relationship to the victim, their stated alibi, and suspicious details about their movements. The schema is shown on screen throughout—you never need to memorise it.

Difficulty

Intermediate. Requires comfort with multiple AND conditions and filtering by time. More data to sift through than Case 2, with trickier alibis to verify.