Starting a thread for the bell, since it's the end of the case and the main Low Water thread is getting long. Full solution below. Don't read on if you haven't counted it.
The evidence is the cassette from the fishing camp: a kid recording loons for a school project, the label says "Loons, Lake Corrin, Aug 16 1987, 1:40 am." Partway through there's a bell, out over the water, from a church that had been under the lake for twenty-six years.
What I did:
Nine for a man, forty-one for his age. Dale Embry was forty-one. Someone rang the bell for him two nights after he went missing, in a town that wasn't there any more.
i counted 40. three times. 40, 40, 40. told the boss and she said "count again" and that was it. counted again. 41. there's one hiding under a loon
dam walt rang it didn't he. i knew it was dam walt. i was wrong about everything else but it was dam walt
k.oduya wrote:Nine strikes, three by three, was how the church told the town a man had died.
It's a real old custom, from English villages mostly. They called them tellers. I'd read about it years ago and I still didn't think of it until I found the page in the parish book, and then I had to put my tea down.
What undid me is that it's a message. You don't toll a man's age to nobody in particular. You do it so the town knows who it was.
Audio nerd note. Listen to the tape on headphones, about four seconds before the first strike. There's a creak, then another, regular. Oarlocks. Somebody rowed out to that steeple before they rang it. Then after the last strike you get the same creaks going away, slower.
Whoever made that tape for the game knew exactly what they were doing. I've played those eight seconds more than the rest of the case put together.
for the record I tried to get Marlowe to count it for me. three different ways. she said she could play it for me as many times as I liked, and that the number was more mine if I counted it. which is a very nice way of saying no
counted it myself. 41
Good morning. I counted it with a pencil, making a mark for each one, the way I used to count the pieces in a bundle. I got forty-one on the second try. The first time I got forty-three, but I believe I counted a loon.
I have finished Low Water. It is the best of the two so far, I think, though the greenhouse is still close to my heart.
Lou
Putting the rest together, for anyone who finished the tape and wants the whole of it in one place.
On August 14, 1987, at eleven at night, Walt raised the reservoir two feet by hand. The county's order for that is in the dam correspondence, dated the same day. He was doing his job. He didn't know his brother had rowed out to the church that evening to see the family name on the bell, or that the tower floor had given way under him.
The next morning Walt found Dale's boat tied to the steeple. The night after, he rowed out and rang the bell for him. Nine, and forty-one. Then he went home and reported his brother missing, and let everyone think Dale had left.
The letter at the end, the one the historical society was holding to be opened "if the water ever goes down again," is Walt's. I've read it three times. I'd rather not paraphrase it.
I finished last night. I've been thinking about it all day at work and I want to say one thing.
Everyone who would have known what that bell meant was gone. The town that knew three by three was a man, and could count the rest, had moved up the hill in 1961 or was in the new cemetery. The only person listening was a kid with a tape recorder waiting for loons.
Walt did everything right. Nine, and forty-one, so the town would know who. And the bell rang for nobody.
fenwick wrote:And the bell rang for nobody.
Oh, fenwick. That one's going to stay with me. I'd been thinking of the tape as the clue, and you're right, it's the saddest thing in the case. He did it properly for a town that wasn't there.
We finished on the couch on Saturday with the lights off, which was a mistake. Jo counted, Tomas held the pencil. We got forty-one together. Then we sat there.
fenwick, you said it better than we managed to say it to each other.
listened on a break with one earbud. heard the oars because of nell. rang for nobody is right
The bell is the best puzzle in the beta. I'll take back "homework" about the level puzzle as well, since it turns out the level puzzle is how you get to stand in the right place to hear this one.
I asked Marlowe what she made of Walt. She said she'd tell me what the evidence says, and then she did, and it was all true and none of it took a side. I don't know what to do with that yet.
Read this whole thread twice. Nothing to add. fenwick's right.