My Interactive Murder Mystery WHODIDIT?

[Ali]

I wasn't sure about posting this, because self-promotion is so gauche. But since it's the last day for people to get involved...



It's all on twitter, and you can vote for who you think did the murder until midday tomorrow:

https://twitter.com/MisterABK/status/1253625098256465920

- Alasdair

[Privateer Puddin']

Fully fledged FMV game when?

[Snarky]

I've been poring over the testimony and clues. My findings:

ABK was last seen alive at some time around 16:40 (according to Sooty), storming past Fanny after an argument with Sooty, in which he threw a shiny object into a shrubbery. According to Primm, at 17:10 someone rang the bell in the suppository, and when Primm arrived there he found ABK dead.

The suspects are…

Sooty Baumgartner (wife)
Opportunity: After the argument with ABK she spent some time "mauling the topiary" (searching for whatever ABK threw), according to Primm. She claims to have stayed in the garden until going into the drawing room at 17:10, but Wirral testifies that he looked for her and she wasn't there. There is plenty of time for her to have gone into the suppository and killed ABK before going to the drawing room.
Motive: The argument with ABK. The object he threw was probably his wedding ring. A letter found in the wastebasket in ABK's suppository reads "As our discourse grows more tempestuous, I find the ardor of my love dims in proportion." This points to the idea that ABK wanted to divorce her.
Clues: Primm claims to have smelled her perfume in the suppository, proving she had been there. The wedding ring (that ABK threw?) was found on his hand, with a fingerprint in his blood. The letter in the wastebasket.

Primm (butler)
Opportunity: He claims merely to have "gone about his duties"; none of the other witnesses place him anywhere before the murder. He could have murdered ABK at any time.
Motive: Unclear
Clues: Primm claims ABK told him to expect a letter for his solicitor. There was an ink stain on the desk, under the victim's hand, and an ink-blotted envelope in the waste basket.

Fanny Price Drizzle (niece)
Opportunity: After ABK rushed past her (at 16:40 according to Sooty), she says she went into the drawing room (she says at 16:50), and was shortly thereafter joined by Mr. Croup (at 16:50 by his testimony). From that time until 17:10 they provide each other with an alibi. If Sooty's time is correct, there are ten minutes unaccounted for when she could have murdered ABK.
Motive: Ensure continued funding for her research on orphans; stop ABK from investing in the salt and vinegar mine
Clues: None?

Josiah Croup (neighbor)
Opportunity: He spoke with Wirral some time earlier that afternoon, storming off after Wirral congratulated him on the reopening of his salt and vinegar mine. His whereabouts are then unaccounted for until 16:50, when he joined Fanny in the drawing room.
Motive: A business dispute over the purchase of the land with the salt and vinegar mine.
Clues: He claims that he declined to sell the land for the salt and vinegar mine, but Wirral's testimony indicates he didn't know that it had been reopened, and Primm says that ABK was hiring people to work the mine. Also, Primm testifies that in the drawing room after the murder, his hair was slicked back (unusually), and Wirral reports that someone was using hot water at 16:50, indicating he was taking a shower. The ink-blotted envelope could be the contract for the sale of the land.

Wirral O'Reilly (handyman)
Opportunity: Wirral claims that after washing the pigs at 16:50, he went to the garden, couldn't find Sooty, then went into the drawing room to join Fanny, Croup and Sooty, before Primm came and reported the murder. This testimony is contradicted by all the other witnesses, who do not report Wirral in the drawing room until after Primm announced the murder. (It's also implausible that a handyman would join the owners and guests in the drawing room, but realism may not be our guiding star here.)
Motive: ABK threw out his old ma, letting her freeze to death.
Clues: The contradictions in the testimony.

Alan the Raven (pet bird)
Opportunity: Does not physically have the ability to stab a man to death with a letter opener in the shape of a large knife.
Motive: Unknown
Clues: None?



The top suspects by this analysis are Sooty Baumgartner, Josiah Croup and Wirral O'Reilly. They each have a compelling motive, definite opportunity, and evidence against them.

My theory:

Spoiler

Josiah Croup murdered ABK, having just sold him the land with the mine cheaply, then learning that the mine was reopening. He waited for ABK in the suppository and killed him there shortly after 16:40. In doing so, he tipped over the ink bottle, blotting out the sales contract and the envelope ABK meant to use to send it to his solicitor. He took the contract and threw out the envelope. Because of the ink and possibly blood on him, he went to wash up. Then he joined Fanny in the drawing room shortly after 16:50.

After her fight with ABK in the garden, Sooty retrieved the wedding ring ABK had thrown away, then went to try to reconcile with him. She found his body. Overcome with grief, she replaced the wedding ring on his finger, leaving the finger print. She rang the bell, then quickly went to join the others in the drawing room at 17:10.

I have no explanation for the inconsistencies in Wirral's testimony.

[close]

[milkanannan]

That was amazing! So disappointed I missed it as it was unravelling. I'm sure that took loads of work, but any chance of another one coming round?

[Ali]

Snarky's analysis is impressive!

All I'd question is some of the timings. Fanny says she saw ABK at 4.40, but Wirral reports them arguing for 5-10 minutes. She could be reporting the start, rather then the end time of their conversation.

[Snarky]

Thanks!

Fanny says she saw ABK at 4.40, but Wirral reports them arguing for 5-10 minutes. She could be reporting the start, rather then the end time of their conversation.

Yeah, the timeline is tricky to reconcile, and you've left yourself quite a bit of wriggle-room, particularly since many times are given approximately (and some might be lies). A lot of stuff has to happen between about 16:40 and 16:50. I made a table to try to work it out. Ultimately I decided to go with the one time that is explicitly stated rather than try to infer, calculate or interpolate a value â€" given that we don't know the layout of the grounds or mansion, it's practically impossible to estimate how long things "should" take.

Using a later time (e.g. 16:45) for when ABK was last seen alive in the garden doesn't leave Croup a lot of time to kill him in the suppository, wash up (certainly not shower) and make it into the drawing room ahead of Fanny (just realized I had that the wrong way around before) at about 16:50, so that's problematic for my theory, but with a bit of goodwill and suspension of disbelief I think it works. Ultimately I think you can fudge it in different ways so that any of them could have had the opportunity, so the precise time probably doesn't matter so much.

I am very curious about how you'll incorporate the vote on which suspect to accuse into the resolution. Is there a correct answer that we will have got right or wrong, or is it a Clue situation where you'll pick the guilty party depending on what we voted?

Looking forward to the reveal!

[Snarky]

Ah! I should have realized the quibble was meant to be a hint that there was something fishy about the timelines. 

And as a fan of the genre I should also have realized…

Spoiler

that the guilty party would be the suspect who wasn't obviously implicated by any of the evidence. (Though nothing really points to Primm, either.)

[close]

I actually noticed the spelling of "ardor" when I typed up the post above, but never twigged that it was meant as a clue.

Exceptionally well done, Ali! A proper mystery with a satisfying solution. As far as I've seen, nobody put together the full answer (even if they guessed the right suspect)â€"that would have taken some leaps of speculation!

[Ali]

It's been very hard to judge, because I was writing it as I went (with a plan). But I could only test it on my partner. So there are a few things I would have changed, if I'd had a chance to playtest:

Spoiler

Originally, Fanny was going to say how much money she receives from ABK, and Primm would have mentioned the mine work costing the same amount. I was convinced that would be totally obvious. I wanted some ambiguity, but only one or two people made that exact connection. So it was obviously too vague.

I would have made it more clear that ABK was killed after Fanny claimed to meet Croup in the library. Croup washing up was his alibi for the murder, and as soon as his fake alibi was broken, Fanny was the only plausible suspect left. It was further confused by Sooty lying about when she arrived in the drawing room, but only by a few minutes. It's a pointless lie, designed to distract from her having been in the murder room. It's too small a lie for people to notice it, but big enough to confuse the timeline.

But it was a bit fuzzier than I intended it to be, and most people had Croup washing up after the killing. Which wouldn't have made sense, because if the ink was spilled during the murder, it would have been on ABK's hands. However, it's a bit of a stretch to imagine it drying completely in 20ish minutes...

[close]

But over all, people seem very happy with the result. It was somewhat less fair than the average detective game, but about as guessable as the average Christie-knock off.

[Snarky]

Spoiler

Originally, Fanny was going to say how much money she receives from ABK, and Primm would have mentioned the mine work costing the same amount. I was convinced that would be totally obvious. I wanted some ambiguity, but only one or two people made that exact connection. So it was obviously too vague.

[close]

Oh, I don't know. It didn't strike me as a major leap. (Perhaps in part because it bears a strong resemblance to most of the motives in Knives Out.) And I don't think it's as important for the motive to be deducible from the evidence, either, because human motivations are so complex that you can pretty much always come up with some more or less plausible reason. If you wanted to make a case against Primm, for example, you could always say that… he hated and was jealous of ABK's wife, and when ABK decided to forgive her after their latest spat, the disappointment drove him into a murderous rage.

Spoiler

I would have made it more clear that ABK was killed after Fanny claimed to meet Croup in the library. Croup washing up was his alibi for the murder, and as soon as his fake alibi was broken, Fanny was the only plausible suspect left.

[close]

Hmmaybe. Certainly I think

Spoiler

the false alibis, with two witnesses agreeing on a lie, was the most difficult part to work out, since there isn't anything definitely contradicting it. Was Fanny's description of herself as a no-nonsense girl meant to be a clue that their cover story of having played games was a lie? If so, it was too subtle for me.

[close]

In general, I think a big challenge as a player is intuiting the "rules" of the game, to help decide which things are important and which things are irrelevant. I saw people discussing the lack of ink stains on the victim's hand, but dismissed it as an irrelevant production detail. On the other hand, I thought your mention that "this is a house of liars" might be a clue that there was something false in everybody's testimony, and that the solution would depend on finding and resolving all the contradictions, Phoenix Wright style. (I'm still wondering about Wirral's testimony being contradicted by everybody else. Did I miss something, or is that a loose end?)

But I guess that's part of the challenge!

[Ali]

I don't think Wirral's testimony is contradicted, he says he came into the drawing room (admittedly, implausible!) and Primm told him to "call the police... said there'd been a murder". Which is the same thing as what Primm says. And yes, it is a bit Knives Out-y. I'm plagiarising that, and whatever Christie novels it borrowed from.

Spoiler

The lack of ink on the fingers was deliberate, but you're right. Producing it under lockdown meant there were lots of other small details in the photographs people identified as potential clues, which were purely incidental/accidental.

What should contradict Fanny & Croup's alibi is that she claims to have met him at 4.50, when he was washing. But, it's a leap, because the player has to speculate that he was the one washing. It's not a cast-iron, gotcha contradiction.

[close]

Really good point about the 'Rules'. And the line about lies was misleading, since two of the characters told the complete truth.

[cat]

I think it was great! It was funny and clever, but I had no clue who the murderer was (but I have to confess I didn't put that much thought in it as Snarky)

I often have problems understanding spoken English, especially when dialects are involved, but I had absolutely no problem with understanding here (except for some exotic vocabulary I had to look up). Very well done in this aspect.

Where did you get all those props and that amazing table for the photo - or was this photoshopped?

[Ali]

It was all FAKE! All the backgrounds are free stock images. My desk is much more boring. And tiny.

I really did have to spill black paint and drop an envelope into it, though. For some reason I couldn't make that convincing digitally.