When a rich rowing club member is found murdered, Murdoch investigates the dark secrets of the city's wealthy elite. Although the death looks initially like a hazing ritual gone wrong, the detective soon realises it was actually a crime of passion.
Tropes:
- Framing the Guilty Party: Hamilton Kane, the rowing team's coach, attempts to frame Horace Briggs, the club gardener, for the murder of Richard Hartley under the belief that Hartley was killed in a rowing club initiation gone wrong. Murdoch's investigation proves that Hartley actually survived the initiation and Briggs really did kill him, albeit later and for unrelated reasons.
- Lie Detector: The episode opens with Murdoch demonstrating a device of his own invention called a pneumograph which, as the name suggests, measures the suspect's breathing. Instead of lights, however, his machine has blue liquid that rises in a spiral-shaped tube. Despite not having any of the other measurements of a polygraph, it appears to be nearly infallible... providing Murdoch is asking the right questions. Murdoch himself is the subject in this demonstration, which is very much Played for Laughs. Of course Dr. Ogden walks in, the questions get very personal, and Murdoch is embarrassed by the accuracy of his own invention.
- The Olympics: This episode focuses on a rowing team at a country club and rivalry for a place in the men's eights team: a wealthy club member demands the talented gardener give up his seat in the boat, but the coach and the other team members know they need the gardener (who holds every rowing record at the club) to have a shot at qualifying for the Olympics. Guess who dies?
