Murder In the Saloon Coupé

Detective game.

Three passengers are traveling in the luxuriously furnished saloon car of an international express train: the famous Czech police inspector Trachta, the industrialist Meyer, who manufactures everything to keep you warm (fur coats, rum, fireclay bricks), and the factory owner Bierhanzel, a manufacturer of hair thickening ointment. At the Istanbul station, the inspector's student, police trainee Jindřich Hlaváček, who is finishing his thesis on train crime, joins the trio.

The journey proceeds smoothly until factory owner Bierhanzel gets a toothache. The train steward—a sort of conductor for the rich—rushes over with a hand drill, and the factory owner feels much better after the procedure. Soon the pain disappears completely, as Bierhanzel dies. This is how Jára Cimrman dramatically opened his detective play Murder in the Saloon Car, in which he drew on his experience from police service on Vienna's "number four." We learn about his criminal and criminalistic career through a series of well-informed lectures debating with Austrian high school professor E. Fiedler.