King's Crystal is the third episode of the tenth series of Midsomer Murders and first aired on 26th January 2007.
DCI Barnaby and DS Jones investigate the apparent murder of Peter Baxter, the accountant for the now-bankrupt King Crystal company in Midsomer Magna. There are many possible suspects. The King Glass factory was owned by brothers Alan and Charles King. Six months after Alan's death, however, his widow married Charles, much to the dismay of her son Ian. The young man may have inherited his father's shares in the company but his uncle Charles and Baxter have excluded him from the development of their future plans. With the company under protection, the workers, led by Jack Tewson, have lost not only their jobs but their pensions as well and are convinced Baxter had his fingers in the till. Finally, there is Baxter's daughter Sophie whose ex-boyfriend James Taylor had frequent run-ins with her father. When a second murder takes place, Barnaby seems no further ahead than he was at the outset. It is a local production of Hamlet, however—with daughter Cully in one of the lead roles—that sets him on the path to solving the case...
Tropes:
- Accidental Murder: Peter Baxter died as a result of getting into a struggle with Ian King while holding the Masonic dagger he'd been using to try and force open a filing cabinet at the King's Crystal factory. In the scuffle he ended up falling and getting impaled on the dagger.
- Does This Remind You of Anything? / Shout-Out: Plenty allusions to Hamlet:
- The head of a manufacturing firm with the last name "King" is killed by his brother who then marries his brother's widow.
- The son of the first man is handsome and broody.
- The broody son is being pursued by a girl whose father is stabbed to death in the episode
- The broody son also has a university friend who is trying to help him and keeps trying to persuade him to leave the emotional madhouse he is in.
- There is also a production of Hamlet within the episode as well, and the broody son deliberately chooses the play to be performed for much the same reason as Hamlet chooses one in the play.
- Freemasons: Charles King is part of a Masonic lodge, and it's revealed that Jones is an inactive member too, with his continued membership granting some insight and an opportunity to snoop (but ultimately rendering him Persona Non Grata for spilling lodge secrets freely to the outsider Barnaby). While a Masonic dagger is what kills Peter Baxter, it's ultimately a Red Herring, the dagger simply at hand in an Accidental Murder.
