week 1 - trial

[productions]

week one trial



[At 9 AM precisely, the old grandfather clock chimes once again, and the doors to the drawing room are opened. They will remain open until everyone has come inside, after which they will shut behind them. It is not possible to leave on your own, although perhaps if you have a specific purpose the hostess will allow you to go. The room is set up comfortably, with several tables by the fireplace set out to assist with the trial. The Hostess will also remain in a seat near the fireplace, next to the scales on the mantle. At lunch, the doors will open to bring in a large meal on an automatically rolling buffet, and at 3 PM, tea and finger sandwiches will be served. You'll be able to enjoy the trial in comfort, of course, but the information cards set out on tables will not allow you to forget your true purpose here.]

victim



suspects



Character Statuses
Setting
Manor Rules
Voting

Comments

[inthebones]

Not if she locked and blocked the door herself. If you're going to ask me where I'm going with this, I don't know yet. But it's a possibility.

We should also avoid leaping to the conclusion that she drowned in the bathtub simply because of the location of the body.

[miraculous]

Drowning was her cause of death, however. If we are to decide the bathroom was not the location of the murder itself, we must look to other places where that could have occurred.

[inthebones]

I can't imagine anyone drawing a bath at 2 o' clock in the afternoon. And it would be a bit odd to keep the water running for the sole purpose of drowning someone.

[A slight pause.]

For those who discovered the body... Was the water from the tap warm, as it would be if she intended to use it?

[miraculous]

I was one of the ones who investigated the body. [There is a bit of exasperation here--not at Susan, but more of an "obviously I shouldn't have or maybe I wouldn't be putting up with being on the suspect list" exasperation.] The water was cold.

[inthebones]

Then I think we can conclude that the bath was drawn for the sole purpose of leaving the body. Even if she had been attacked before removing her clothing, she would have used the hot water tap.

Another reason to turn on the bath would be, perhaps, to obscure some noise.

[throe]

If the autopsy report said she drowned, then why was the back of her head dry? If someone wanted to forcefully drown her by holding her in, wouldn't that part of her hair still have been slightly damp from the struggle?

Going by the timeframe of the report, it wouldn't have been completely dry by the time she was found if her hair was thick enough.

[humanic]

What if she didn't struggle? I mean look, the suicide thing is dumb, there's a lot of easier ways to kill yourself if she wanted to and it's not like we found a last note or anything, but...

[He chews on his bottom lip in thought.] She was a banshee, yeah? Like, I know we're probably all from different places with different supernatural junk, but banshee usually comes with screaming. It'd be way too much of a risk to have her struggle during her murder in case she screamed and alerted someone.

[throe]

[ Oh Stiles, if only you knew that she was thinking of this as some sort of Dungeons & Dragons LARP session rather than actual accounts of the supernatural... ]

Yeah... you're right. The autopsy report mentions her lipstick being smudged and rawness around her lips, which means that someone must have taped her mouth before they did anything else. That way, she wouldn't have been able to alert anyone of what was happening.

But if she drowned... does that mean the tape was removed after that?

[humanic]

[that's cool his entire life seems like a LARP session sometimes]

Susan said water soluble tape had gone missing, yeah? Could be that the water dissolved the adhesive and that's why it wasn't around her mouth.

You're right that the back of her head being dry is weird though, especially if she put up a fight. And there's something else bugging me. You wanna drown someone by force, usually you'd shove their head into a sink or something like that, right? A bathtub would take way too long to fill to that level. Plus her whole body was floating in it, not just her head.

[throe]

That means that the water intake could have been from trying to breathe through her nose, rather than her mouth...

That's right! The bathtub was only slowly draining because of the paper that had been from her mouth was clogging it, which means that she couldn't have been drowned in the bathtub. If you're using a sink to drown your victim, then the one place that will be dry is probably going to be where you place your hand. [ She reaches behind her to touch the back of her head as if to make a point. ]

She was fully clothed and had make-up on, which means she wasn't planning on taking a bath in the first place.

[humanic]

Yeah, that's definitely possible. The killer could have ambushed her when she was looking in the mirror or something. [He nibbles on a nail.] But then why go to the trouble of putting her body in the tub? Ugh, nothing makes sense.

[throe]

Maybe they thought that we'd be distracted by the prospect of her committing suicide out of fear, so they placed her in the bathtub as a means to make it look like she had drowned from inhaling water through her mouth, rather than her nose due to the tape... if we're assuming the culprit knew it was going to disintegrate in the first place.

The 'S' on her hand could have led us to assume the same thing... that it was a suicide, not a murder.

[humanic]

Yeah, I don't get the S either. Smells like a frame-up job to me. If Lydia had the time to write something before she died, why just a letter and not the whole name?

[throe]

[ She nods in complete agreement. ]

Maybe they want us to think that she put it on herself, rather than it being the work of the killer.

After all, someone who cares about their looks so much wouldn't willingly ruin their lipstick like that. [ She is speaking from experience, obviously. ]

[humanic]

Uh...yeah, if you say so. Not sure how much she'd care about ruining her lipstick if she was dying, but what do I know, I'm not a girl.

So if it was put there by the killer, then that makes Susan and Sharon look less suspicious. Not enough to exonerate them, obviously, but the killer wouldn't try to frame themselves. [A scowl.] Unless they knew we'd know it was obviously their work, in which case they might have put it there so we wouldn't suspect them...annnnnd now I'm confusing myself.

[throe]

It may not even have any significance, for all we know it could be a red herring! Left there for the suspect have us suspect it's someone else when really we should be suspecting them, but leaving us to suspect someone else because it couldn't obviously be them for making it so obvious, but... to distract us from something else.

[ Rapture, on the other hand, does not seem the least bit confused at the statement she just made. ]

For all we know, it may not even be an 'S'. It could be a crudely drawn 5 or some other kind of symbol.

[balzams]

[Watching the discussion unfold he pipes up again]

M-Maybe she was drugged first... If that's the case she wouldn't struggle...

We were each given a bottle of chloroform first, right? What if they soaked the tape in it...?

[humanic]

Huh...it'd take a lot of chloroform, but if they wanted to keep her knocked out, that'd be a good way to do it. I checked her room too - other than a missing chair, there wasn't any sign of a fight or anything strange. And it'd explain why there weren't any bruises or scratches or whatever on her body if she couldn't fight back.

[His eyes narrow in thought.] I wonder if the hostess would let us check the bottles of all of our suspects...

[balzams]

I-it would help us figure out the suspect. It's worth a shot...

[humanic]

[He nods.] There's a chance that they thought we'd figure it out this far and filled up their bottle with something else, but at least we can try.

[balzams]

Oh, I didn't think of that...

D-don't mind me, I'm not very good at this sort of thing...

[humanic]

Hey man, you were the one who thought of someone taping something with chloroform to her mouth to keep her under, I didn't even consider that. The whole point of this is so we can all discuss ideas that someone else might not have come up with on their own.

Besides, even if they did do that, we might be able to find a way to tell.