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

[humanic]

...it explains most of the clues we found. I couldn't get why someone would want to create a locked-room mystery in the first place - it's not like we would have bought that it was a suicide. But if they wanted the bathroom to be clear for that long, it'd be the best way to do it. Anyone who tried to open the door in that time period and couldn't would have just assumed it was occupied. It wouldn't have seemed strange until the bathtub started overflowing, by which point Lydia would have already drowned.

It also answers when Lydia would have written the symbol on her hand, if that really was her. She couldn't have done it if she drowned immediately after she was knocked out, but if there'd been that long a gap...it's possible she would have woken up and after realizing she couldn't free herself....

[He covers his mouth and swallows hard.]

Oh god, I think I'm gonna be sick.

[inthebones]

...

[She certainly hadn't thought of that.]

That would... That would be assuming that she was able to reach her lipstick and write with it, though. ...Possibly she escaped some of her bonds.

[Susan also doesn't look terribly pleased with the idea.]

It still doesn't explain what it's supposed to mean, though.

[terriblesister]

...Would she even be able to write much like that? It could have been all she could do...

[inthebones]

Very true. Some sort of desperate last motion... Any motion would have sufficed, really, just to feel that she was still alive.

[Well this was getting grim.]

[humanic]

Maybe we're going about this all wrong. Maybe it really is just a scribble and doesn't mean anything.

[He brings his notebook up to his mouth without seeming to notice and begins chewing on the edges nervously.]

Look, she was supposed to be intelligent, yeah? If she did wake up before she drowned, she probably would have figured out why she'd been bound that way and what the killer was trying to do. And if her hands had been taped together, she wouldn't have had much room to write anything coherent. Plus that's assuming she saw her killer at all and wasn't knocked out instantly. We don't actually know if she knew who killed her.

So in that case...maybe the scribble was her way of telling us she'd been awake when she died. That this wasn't a case where the death took place immediately after the attack.

Or maybe it really was planted by the killer, I don't know. I actually really freaking hope that it was. Being awake and knowing you were about to die horribly and couldn't do anything about it...she didn't deserve that.

[inthebones]

[A frown as Susan considers this.]

Yes, I understand your meaning. Just to nudge us in the right direction, that she had... died as she had. And of course, the killer couldn't have removed the mark if it were made during that time.

[And she was probably panicked and disoriented, so a meaningless mark was all she could manage under the circumstances.]

I think she could have easily been exposed to the chloroform and bound without seeing her assailant. I would say to examine the bottles, but doubtlessly, the killer has already refilled it with something else, and the smell of chloroform is so overpowering that it will be hard to tell.

[humanic]

[He nods.]

Yeah, I thought the bottles might lead us to something but it looks like the killer already thought of that. I took all the bottles out of each suspect's room and you're right, they're all full.

But I know a bit about how chloroform works. Cop's kid and all. It's not like the movies, it might knock you out pretty fast but you won't stay knocked out for long once you stop breathing it in. To keep her unconscious long enough to set everything up, they'd have had to use a good amount. They might have even taped it to her mouth like Latvia suggested.

In which case...the bottle'd be pretty diluted even if they did fill it up with something else, yeah? Maybe there's still a way we can figure out which one it is.

[inthebones]

...

Well. I suppose we could offer each one to the respective suspect and force them to inhale. If you're innocent, there's no reason for you to mind; it's just a short nap to get away from this horrifically tedious affair.

[It's hard to say whether or not this suggestion is sarcastic.]

[humanic]

Nah, that wouldn't work. If one of you guys did dilute your bottle, you could just fake going unconscious.

...on the other hand, if we could get five innocent people who wouldn't mind being knocked out in the name of science, you could be onto something there. [Yeah he's not being sarcastic at all alas, he actually looks pretty intrigued.]

[mostlymarried]

Weight.

Empty mine, fill it with water. Closest one by weight is the murderer.

[humanic]

Is chloroform that much heavier or lighter than water that it'd make a difference? I don't know that much about it, chemistry's always been a super boring class. Plus our teacher was kinda evil. Anyway, we'd need to find some kind of scale to measure the weight. [lbr he just wants to knock people out FOR JUSTICE]

[inthebones]

We wouldn't need to empty any bottles if we had a scale. We could simply weigh and compare to see if any of them were significantly different from the others.

There were chemical supplies in the study, I believe. Perhaps there's a scale for weighing powders.