dex wrote:Venn emptied the strongbox.
I'd resist that, though I see the appeal.
Look at quietcartographer's plan of the lobby again. The desk can't see the stairs. But there's a mirror on the first landing, and from the stool behind the desk, sitting, not standing, you'd see the turn of the stairs in it. Venn's notebook says he sat down at 2:10 for the first time all night. His knees, he says.
I think the forty minutes is a man who saw something in that mirror and sat very still.
Updated. Mirror sightline from the stool added.
Attachment no longer available: carrow-hotel-floor-plans-v2.jpg
That mirror. Oh no.
Part three, Dawn, came out this evening and I've finished it, and I've now cried in front of my husband over this game twice in one year. Spoilers for the whole ending:
ostrander was right about the mirror. Martin Carrow emptied his own strongbox for the insurance. Mr. Lisle was his man, paid to stay one night so there'd be a stranger to blame. Lisle came down, hung up his key at 2:46 and walked out the front door, and Venn logged it. Then Carrow, upstairs in 512 by then, rang the desk at 2:49 and asked the time, so the record would say Lisle was still in his room. Venn saw him go up in the mirror. He knew all of it.
And the last puzzle isn't a puzzle at all. At ten to seven Marlowe gives you the ledger and asks what Arthur writes on the last line before he hands it in.
I had him write the truth. "Mr. Carrow, 512, 2:49." And underneath, "Goodnight, Carrow."
We disagreed on the last line. T wanted the truth. J wanted him to write the weather, "rain, stopping," and let the morning shift and the insurance people work it out for themselves. Marlowe let us type both and then asked us to choose one. We chose J's. We're still talking about it.
The ledger reconciliation is the best puzzle Tess has written, and I'm including the bell.
One bug, reported to support: if you open the switchboard log before you find the clock note in part one, the 2:49 entry already shows the corrected time, which gives the game away early. Hard to hit unless you go through the evidence out of order. I go through everything out of order.
I finished The Night Porter this morning. I had Mr. Venn write the truth as well. Then I sat a while.
Thank you to quietcartographer for the plans. I could not have done the mirror without them.
Lou
lou finished. arthur deserved better than that hotel and he got lou, which is the next best thing