Case 6: Crooked House

In the sprawling and twisted halls of Three Gables, Aristide Leonides—the wealthy and controlling patriarch of the Leonides family—is found dead in his bedroom.

Though he appeared to have died of natural causes, it is soon revealed that his eye medicine had been laced with eserine, a fatal poison. The bottle had been tampered with, and the entire household quickly falls under suspicion.

Your mission: Use SQL to reconstruct the sequence of events, verify alibi details and uncover who murdered Aristide Leonides in his own home.

About this case

Based on Crooked House (Agatha Christie, 1949). A wealthy patriarch dies under mysterious circumstances in his sprawling family home. His medicine bottle has been tampered with—and everyone in the household is a suspect, from his greedy relatives to the loyal household staff.

What you'll practise

This advanced case demands sophisticated SQL skills:

WHERE with multiple complex conditions — to track access to the poisoned medicine
ORDER BY — to sequence household movements and identify key moments
Complex relationship filtering — tracking who had motive, means, and opportunity
Multi-condition logic across family relationships — connecting motives to suspects

The database

You'll query the suspect_info table, tracking family relationships, financial motives, household movements, and access to the victim's medication. Family secrets and hidden resentments run deep.

Difficulty

Intermediate to Advanced. Requires strong mastery of AND logic and the ability to combine multiple filtering conditions. The household is large, the motives are varied, and red herrings abound.