low water is out. the boss sent us to a drowned town. ok so
the dam operator is called walt and i'm calling him dam walt and nobody can stop me
theories go here. i have none. i have a periscope
I've been up with this since ten and I'm not sorry.
What I have so far, for anyone who wants to check me. Millbeck was flooded in 1961 when the dam went in. Everyone was moved to the new town up the hill, the graves were moved, and the church was emptied and closed. There's a lovely, awful newspaper page about the last service, with a photograph of people carrying the pews out. So there should be nothing in that church but silt.
And yet there's a man in it. He's in the belfry, not the nave, which I think matters. He's wearing a nylon windbreaker. I owned that windbreaker. I owned it in about 1985.
So he isn't from Millbeck's last day. He got in afterward, which means at some point the water was low enough to get in. That feels like the first real question.
marguerite_s wrote:at some point the water was low enough to get in
That's the puzzle, and it's a good one. Two documents:
The belfry door sill is at 1,112 feet. You want the stretches where the reservoir was below that. Don't read the log front to back. Ask Marlowe for it sorted, she'll give you the yearly lows if you ask for exactly that. I asked for "the answer" first and got told, politely, that I already had everything the answer needed.
his watch is digital. so not 1961 no matter what
bramble out here solving it on a smoke break with one sentence
Millbeck, from the survey and the 1958 street plan. Church at the bend in the river road. Old shoreline dotted.
Attachment no longer available: millbeck-map.jpg
Thank you for this. Seeing the street names on it made it a town instead of a puzzle. There's a post office.
Good morning. I am still at the gauge log. I have been copying the lowest reading for each year into my notebook, which is slow, but I like to see the numbers in my own hand. I am up to 1974.
I asked Marlowe whether I was going about it the wrong way. She said I was going about it a slow way, and that slow wasn't wrong. I thought that was a fair answer.
Lou
Let me register that the "level puzzle" is a spreadsheet with a story painted on it. Fifty years of daily readings is not a clue, it's homework. I got through it by asking the AI to summarize it, which I'm aware undercuts my position in the other thread.
The church drawing is beautiful though. Somebody on their team can draw.
For anyone who wants to check without spoiling the work: there are three windows when the belfry door was above water. 1977, 1987, and now. 1977 was eleven days in January, with the reservoir frozen over. Add bramble's watch and it's August 1987.
Building on k.oduya. Once you have August 1987, the county sheriff's missing persons sheet opens up in the evidence. One entry that month: Dale Embry, 41, last seen August 14, 1987, reported missing by his brother Walter. Walter Embry is the dam operator.
I'd like to be careful about what that does and doesn't tell us. It tells us Walt knew his brother was gone. It doesn't tell us he knew where.
it's dam walt. the man literally controls the water. case closed
I tried to get Marlowe to say Walt's name back to me as the answer. She said she'd tell me who did something as soon as I could show her, and not before. So I'm working on showing her.
It's three in the morning and I have a theory, so you'll have to forgive me.
I don't think Walt killed him. Look at the bell. The 1961 newspaper page says the bell was left in the tower because it was too heavy to bring down, and that it was cast with the names of the families who paid for it. Embry is on it. Third line.
I think Dale rowed out to the church on his own. It was the first time in twenty-six years you could get inside it. I think he went to see his family's name. And something happened in that belfry that nobody planned.
I can't prove a word of it yet. I'm going to bed.
marguerite_s wrote:It's three in the morning and I have a theory
every great marguerite post starts like this and i'm here for all of them
the name on the bell. yes.