WEEK 3 - TRIAL

[productions]

week three 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, as long as you are accompanied by a partner.

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.

At 7 PM, the trial will adjourn for the day. Players will be escorted by the Hostess to the ballroom, where dinner and wine will be served until 10 PM, at which point players will be required to return to their wings in groups with their wingmates and will be locked in their bedrooms until 8:30 AM the following morning.]

victim



suspects



Character Statuses
Setting
Manor Rules
Cheat Sheet
Voting

Comments

[inthebones]

It's so stupid that no one would suspect it. Some sort of reverse psychology double blind.

...There are other means by which the stabbing could have been performed from above, though. ...Tie the katana to a long branch, perhaps.

[souredsweet]

[lastly, Kaoru will be checking to see if there are any obviously fatal stab wounds in the lung/heart area.]

[inthebones]

...Well. Stiles has pointed out something else of note - if the body was quite cold, it could have happened eight or nine hours prior.

Would you say it was about room temperature?

[inthebones]

I don't see how you manage to find all the useful books while I only ever manage to lay eyes on ones with titles like 'The Mysterious Incident With the Pickled Herring'.

In any case, it seems he must have been dead for quite some time, then. Eight to twelve hours - just after midnight, then?

[humanic]

Experience. Lots of experience in reading useless, and sometimes disturbing sexual in a not-fun-oh-god-my-eyes way, material in order to find something that might actually possibly be helpful one day.

...didn't you say you noticed him still alive around then?

[inthebones]

Yes.

I wish they wouldn't stay up so late, but I didn't want to go to bed with any of the people on the lists still wandering around. He went to his room after stopping in the kitchen around midnight, after which I retired as well.

...It's possible he left it again, of course.

[respecting]

I dunno, that makes it sound kinda cozy. This body was cold, yo!

[inthebones]

...Well, it wouldn't be much colder than anything else in the elevator shaft. But I'll take that to mean it had already cooled as much as it was going to.

[respecting]

[well, she didn't say which room.]

Yeah, tha's what I think.

[coca_cola]

Now I wouldn't say that. It's still important we find out what really happened, yeah?

[pandacea]

[She smiles up at him.] Yes, I will not give up yet! I may have been wrong about, but perhaps I will be right the next time!

And you too, Mr. Spain! You are much smarter than I thought you were! [IS THAT...A COMPLIMENT....]

[humanic]

Okay. Just making sure there wasn't anyone else...with him then.

What, for a two AM snack? Or a post-midnight murder run? I dunno if I buy into the whole self-defense theory yet, but you'd have to be a special kind of suicidal to go running around at ideal-murder-o'clock for no reason even if you aren't deadweight.

[humanic]

So either they're really dumb or we are. I don't like the sound of that.

Is the bottom of the shaft that far from the door? The katana's pretty long, yeah? Maybe they could have just...reached down really far and done it....

...ooooooor someone could have just jammed the door with something. Wow, thinking about it now, that's probably the most obvious solution.

[vytis]

A chair from one of the bedrooms, or maybe something from one of the second or third floor rooms, depending on where they were at the time.

[inthebones]

...Perhaps he was very conscientious about dirty plates and wanted to return his as soon as he was finished.

[stiles not having seen dave's room he probably wouldn't find that too funny]

If we assume that Dave was the aggressor, he would have a reason to be wandering about. If we believe that he was always the intended victim, the murderer should have just entered his room while he was asleep and stabbed him in bed. There wouldn't be an ounce of evidence to work off.

[productions]

[There seem to be a few, yes.]

[productions]

[The front is extremely stained, the back significantly less so except around the top of his collar.]

[humanic]

[Stiles' room is also a pigsty stop the prejudice okay]

Maybe our showrunners decided being stabbed in bed would be way too boring and hard a mystery to solve and refused to hand over the tools until the killer came up with something more exciting.

We did find a little blood in his room though, yeah? So something probably happened in there. Unless he gave himself a papercut and we're looking at a red, no pun intended, herring here.

[inthebones]

At risk of repeating your conversation with Lithuania, are we sure something like a chair would keep it open?? ...And would the killer have been sure?

[A slight frown.]

There are some more peculiarities as well about the stabbing, aren't there? The bruising on the front is consistent with the victim having landed face-down - he was found face-down as well. But the stab wounds are also to the front.

If he were stabbed after falling, he should have been stabbed in the back.

[inthebones]

The blood on the comic seems to indicate a spray as well. Not a drip from a papercut or a nosebleed.

...What could have happened in his room that would result in so little blood? If they had fought in the room, there would have been more signs of disturbance - and surely he would tried to call for help.

[humanic]

Yeah, good point. I guess they could have tested it beforehand, but if the chair or whatever lost balance and toppled over, they would have been trapped in there with the body even with freaky hair or wings.

[He frowns as well.] Okaaaay, so he was stabbed first and then dropped? Without getting blood everywhere? Or maybe the killer flipped him over to...disguise the fact he'd been stabbed afterwards....

...or maybe he got poisoned with something that made him stab himself before falling into the shaft.

[aozaki]

[...The collar, huh. Peculiar.

What about the sides? Depending on the tightness of the clothing, does it seem like blood has seeped down from the ribs following gravity any significantly, as if the corpse may have spent some amount of time being laid on its back instead?]

[humanic]

They...couldn't have been on the second or third floor when they went down there though, right? Unless the killer's Beat. But if it's not him, that's a pretty far drop and a really long climb back up.

[inthebones]

...No, he wears dark glasses. The killer wouldn't have been able to reach his eye with thallium.

[A slight pause]

Were his glasses nearby, actually?

[not that this was important at all]

[humanic]

...is there any chance we're looking at chloroform again here? I'm pretty sure Belarus emptied hers, but I don't know about the rest of them.