The Book Barn is On the Case! Whodunit Challenge Thread 2

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Book Barn is On the Case! Whodunit Challenge Thread 2

«‹›4 »

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Van Dine posted:

Thank you for mentioning that! This book is really delightful, and hearing that there are more of them is excellent news. I have to wonder how, for example, Julia would handle investigating a crime? Assuming that Julia does not find herself in prison forevermore at the end of this book.

Given her immense talent for keeping up with her correspondence, I think Julia would be pretty good at solving a mystery from her prison cell.

Anyway! You may now read to the end of Chapter Thirteen. All previous discussion may be despoilered.

# ? Oct 12, 2014 20:45

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 6, 2024 12:01

Hiowf: Jun 28, 2013; We don't do .DOC in my cave.

So according to chapter 12 we already know all that is needed to solve the mystery at the end of chapter 11 - though I'm not clear whether the letter in chapter 12 counts as part of that or not. I wouldn't move much further now until we can at least try to come up with a consistent theory!

There's also only 2 suspects remaining, which might have cooperated.

The Major ends up with Ned's holdall and apparently didn't steal it, which is suspicious. That seems to imply Kenneth gave it to him?

I made notes earlier that Eleanor's "oversight" regarding the tax and marriage might be false (page 87), and that Kenneth was planning to marry her for tax purposes, but Ned knows about it and might have evidence of it (and has to be eliminated - he's in the Revenue, after all). But where does that leave the Major and Bruce?

Hiowf fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Oct 14, 2014

# ? Oct 14, 2014 13:35

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Skuto posted:

So according to chapter 12 we already know all that is needed to solve the mystery at the end of chapter 11 - though I'm not clear whether the letter in chapter 12 counts as part of that or not. I wouldn't move much further now until we can at least try to come up with a consistent theory!

Maybe, maybe not, but there's going to be one more update before it becomes time to lock in your final answer, and then one more update providing the solution.

# ? Oct 15, 2014 04:50

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

I'm caught up, but I don't have access to my notes. Will do a big speculationpost/infodump later.

# ? Oct 18, 2014 17:28

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Is everyone else caught up? Should I wait a bit longer or do we want to go for the penultimate post and the accusation lock-in?

# ? Oct 18, 2014 17:37

Hobnob: Feb 23, 2006; Ursa Adorandum

I'm caught up, just not had the time to do a post with my speculations.

# ? Oct 18, 2014 18:26

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

It'll probably be a day or two before I'm able to assemble my thoughts, so I don't mind falling behind by a segment.

e: I went ahead and added the next book in this series to our to-read list.

# ? Oct 18, 2014 19:42

Mecca-Benghazi: Mar 31, 2012

It just seems too easy that we've narrowed down to just two people who obviously know way too much.

One thing that's confusing me: how does Tamar know the Major didn't steal the holdall? I guess like Skuto said Kenneth might have let him have it, but Tamar's figured something out. :argh:

# ? Oct 18, 2014 23:13

Hobnob: Feb 23, 2006; Ursa Adorandum

Mecca-Benghazi posted:

It just seems too easy that we've narrowed down to just two people who obviously know way too much.

One thing that's confusing me: how does Tamar know the Major didn't steal the holdall? I guess like Skuto said Kenneth might have let him have it, but Tamar's figured something out.

That's what I was thinking too. Suddenly we have only two suspects and that seems too trite for a murder mystery.

The only thing about the holdall I can think of is that it's actually the Major's, but he labelled it with Ned's name because he was using it to smuggle something suspect back into Britain. Then if it was caught in customs, he wouldn't be fingered. I don't know how Tamar would know that for sure, though.

Hobnob fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Oct 19, 2014

# ? Oct 19, 2014 00:00

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Let's move ahead, then.

You may now read to the end of Chapter Seventeen. This is the final update before the solution is revealed. Please state your Final Accusations before the next update!

# ? Oct 19, 2014 01:42

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

OKAY, assembling my thoughts from 11-13 before diving into 14-17.

Story reconstructed by Julia and Marylou

Got up late because she was busy seducing the hotel staff.
When she emerges from her room (around 10 AM?), she sees Major Bob closing the door to his own room. She stays in her room, waiting for him to leave.
Checks again 0.5 cigarettes later, Major Bob is closing the door to NED's room. Hides again.
Checks again 0.5 cigarettes later, Major Bob is closing the door to his own room again. Hides again.
Checks a little later, Major Bob is gone.
Finally escapes, flirts with Ned for a bit.
Shanghai'd into a shopping trip with Marylou until midday.
Returns to her room to fetch a guide book. On the way back out, encounters Ned and Kenneth.
Ned acts kind of weird and paranoid, flipping out whens he pats his elbow. (Ned already fears for his life?)
He cut himself while shaving, and didn't eat lunch - Ned was clearly nervous since morning.
Graziella rounded up Kenneth, Sanford and Marylou at 2PM to go to Verona.
Julia successfully seduces Ned.
Julia wakes up at 6 PM, and leaves a note for him inside her Finance Act before leaving.
Marylou, Sanford and Kenneth return from their trip. Kenneth's key wasn't at the desk, suggesting Ned was still in his room. (The door auto-locks when closed)
Kenneth overreacts about Ned's health a bit and insists they get the door open.
When they enter, Ned's dead.

Unless there's some serious shenanigans about, Ned died shortly after 6 PM.

The Arguments of the Vice-Quaestor

Kenneth, Marylou and Sanford all corroborated each others' absence during the time of the murder.
Four chambermaids were settled down from 2:15 onwards, watching the scene.
They observed: Julia and Ned entered around 2:20, Julia left around 6:15, Eleanor returned around 7:00, Major Linnaker returned around 7:05. Nobody else entered or exited the area until they were asked to open the room.
The notion of somebody entering by window is right out, because it was still light out, and they would have been spotted.
Therefore, the only suspects are Bob, Julia and Eleanor.
Anyone lurking in the area before 2:15 could not have known that Ned was going to be going back, so their purpose could not have been murder.

So, possibilities. The evidence is pretty drat strong that it's one of those three, which is why I can't help but try to think of ways it could have been someone else.

The last point from the VQ is the most dubious one - it seems doubtful, but someone could have already been in the area before the guardian chambermaids arrived.

Questions

The Major's actions appear to be: Leave room, enter Ned's room for 5 minutes, leave and return to his own room. What was he doing in Ned's room? The door auto-locks, too - does he have Ned's key?
Why might somebody have already been around the rooms before 2:15? Why would they then kill Ned, who they couldn't have known was going to be there?
If Ned feared for his life, why did he suddenly decide to get it on with Julia, then pass out for a few hours?
Whose movements aren't known during the crime?

On the third question, as well as I can sort it out:

Julia: Was with Ned up until right before the crime, then left at 6:15. Suspicious, but almost certainly not the culprit.
Eleanor: Entered at 7:00. Do we know what she was up to all day?
Bob: Entered at 7:05. Do we know what he was up to all day? What's his relation to Eleanor?
Kenneth: Was out in Verone until the body was found.
Marylou: Was out in Verone until the body was found.
Sanford: Was out in Verone until the body was found.
Graziella: Was out in Verone until the body was found.
Bruce: I have this name in my notes but I can't remember who it is at all. Who's Bruce, and what has he been up to?
Ned: Dead.

There's a lot going on here, and it's not all in place yet. Time to dive into the final segment.

# ? Oct 20, 2014 22:04

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

Also, does anyone want to volunteer to run the next round? I'll start reading one of the Simon Brett books soon, so I can run the round after that. We've got 13 books lined up in the OP.

# ? Oct 20, 2014 22:06

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

quote:

Bruce: I have this name in my notes but I can't remember who it is at all. Who's Bruce, and what has he been up to?

Julia recounted partially overhearing a conversation between Eleanor and Kenneth in which she complained about someone named Bruce and his theft of an armchair and a rococo looking-glass.

ProfessorProf posted:

Also, does anyone want to volunteer to run the next round? I'll start reading one of the Simon Brett books soon, so I can run the round after that. We've got 13 books lined up in the OP.

I should let someone else take a turn for now, but I have another suggestion to make if people liked this book: Stop Press, by Michael Innes.

quote:

The Spider began his career as a common criminal. Or perhaps as almost a common criminal, for it is arguable that from the first the scale of his operations lifted him slightly out of the rut. He did little practical work himself and into the normal haunts of his kind�pot-houses, thieves� kitchens, shady pawnshops�he was never recorded to have strayed. He lived, much as a morally blameless rentier might live, in a largish house in the country, with an establishment running to a butler, two footmen, and a secretary. The secretary it is true was blind, which is unusual and slightly sinister in secretaries: the tap-tap of his stick as he went about his employer�s confidential commissions was one of the most effective strokes in the d�cor of the Spider. But the servants were wholly normal and wholly unsuspicious of their master�s real profession. Sitting in a library of old books the Spider controlled from afar a nefarious organization of surprising complexity. This, presumably, is why he was called the Spider. He was fond of quoting from the poet Pope, of whose tangled bibliography he had a connoisseur�s knowledge�and to unruly lieutenants he would point out in a coldly terrifying way that his touch, infinitely fine, felt at each thread and lived along the line. He kept a private wireless transmitter concealed in a cocktail cabinet.

About halfway through his career the Spider underwent a change of character. Hitherto businesslike and almost conscientiously diabolical, he now became intermittently chivalrous. More than once he was known to free a beautiful girl from the embraces of a brutalized accomplice and deliver her unscathed to an opponent�an opponent who, although boneheaded, was bronzed, gentlemanlike, and himself much too chivalrous to enlist against the Spider�s organization the prosaic assistance of the police. About the same time the Spider developed a philosophy of property. He would compare himself now to Robin Hood and now to the oil and steel kings of the United States. He took from the rich and gave to such people and causes as a really wise and nice man would give to. This went on for some years.

Then came a further change. It seems to have been the result of a confused period of gang-warfare in the course of which the Spider acquired a machine-gun and an armoured car. They proved unsuccessful investments�England was too small for them�and for a time the Spider appeared to be getting nowhere. This check precipitated the crisis. There is no record of it, but the struggle was doubtless severe. The Spider emerged with moral perceptions which were wholly orthodox. His passion for the perpetration of crime became a passion for its detection. His old way of life ceased to exist except in so far as it gave him useful insight into the minds of his new quarry. The rich now came to him fearlessly and he solved their strangest perplexities with unfailing success. Those who had not known him for long wondered why he was called the Spider at all, and one or two who had read Swift thought he might better have been called the Bee. He was now wholly on the side of sweetness and light.

He began to keep bees. He improved himself in the art of music and became a finished executant on the clarinet. And in other ways his domestic life was modified. His house, though still in the country, was smaller. The books were even more in evidence and to Pope had been added Shakespeare, Wordsworth, St. John of the Cross, Hegel, Emerson, and Donne. The Spider had grown remarkably literary: sometimes more literary than anything else. The wireless transmitter had disappeared. In its place the Spider had found a bosom friend, a retired engineer who accompanied him everywhere and wrote down everything he said, always without any inconvenient penetration into why he was saying it. But the engineer, though not clever, was literary too. He and the Spider were never so hot on a trail that they would not stop to bandy a little poetry by the way. The poetry was delightful in itself. And it served to distinguish the Spider in what was becoming a seriously overcrowded profession.

...

Mr. Richard Eliot, the creator of the Spider, had not meant to do it. Or not as much of it as he eventually found himself doing. The first Spider story, he would say in that allusive literary way which was growing on him, had come into the world with the same apology as the baby in Mr. Midshipman Easy: it was only a very little one. And, curiously enough, it had been the product of unnecessary fastidiousness.

# ? Oct 20, 2014 22:16

Hiowf: Jun 28, 2013; We don't do .DOC in my cave.

Ned killed himself.

Here's what I reconstructed:

- aunt Tiverton died, leaving art collection
- Richard Tiverton lives in Cyprus, has to leave for inheritance tax reasons, was in Venice
- Eleanor interested in aunts art collection, has to marry for tax reasons, knows about it how?
- Bob the Major interested in art for cheap & stealing, knows about it how?
- Kenneth in charge of sorting through collection, refused to do so on the cheap (page 84)
Had to abandon sculpture because of Tiverton leaving Cyprus, might have money problems, Eleanor taking all his profits.

Strong statement that none of this is reason or contributing for the murder! What other motives are there that we know about? Taxes! The book doesn't stop talking about them.

- Eleanor told something to (Ned? Major?) she shouldn't have.
Kenneth has to keep something locked up now.
Bruce makes Kenneth angry at Elanor wrt selling on the cheap.
Eleanor doesn't know a guy named Bruce, but Julia heard her say
she had some stuff stolen by him.

I'm thinking Julia misheard this conversation (she was listening in), and that Bruce isn't a person. Maybe it's the UK's IRS, and Eleanor was complaining about how much she'd been taxed?

I mentioned before that I suspected Kenneth was going to marry Eleanor for tax reasons. Now, going back:

- Eleanor told Ned she puts her holidays down as business expenses for tax. This is the thing she told Ned she shouldn't have.

The moments before the murder Ned is very nervous, I'm going to guess he's found out that Kenneth is going to marry Eleanor for reasons of tax avoidance. So he says, screw it, sleeps with Julia, then kills himself.

Marylou is asked to investigate and will confirm it was impossible for someone else to have crossed the bridge unnoticed. (It's the only way I can explain the strong suggestion on p262) How will they prove it was a suicide, though?

# ? Oct 24, 2014 10:20

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

I don't buy the suicide theory. No weapon was found at the scene. Did Ned stab himself in the heart, throw the knife out the window, then lie down to die comfortably? Even if it's possible, why would he do all that?

Quinn2win fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Oct 27, 2014

# ? Oct 24, 2014 18:24

Hobnob: Feb 23, 2006; Ursa Adorandum

(Ha, I got the explanation for the Major's holdall mostly right, even though I missed that he must have been carrying hand luggage.)

This one's a bit of a stumper.

Bruce I'm pretty sure now is a red herring, given the flat dismissals it's been getting from anyone. It was from Julia overhearing a conversation, so maybe it's not reliable.

Talking of Julia, is she so other-worldly that she missed that she woke up next to a dead body? I have no answer to this one.

It's spelled out twice now that it's not Eleanor or the Major's interest in the Tiverton legacy that leads to the murder, but that's a carefully worded statement, and I'm always suspicious of those. Could it be due to one of the other suspects' interest?

The obvious link would be Kenneth, who's evaluating the collection. He's not doing so well for income, thanks to Eleanor, so maybe he figured he could miss-evaluate some rare piece, acquire it somehow (through Ned?), then sell it off for its true worth. Perhaps that was the big money earner that he and Ned were alluding to, then Ned got cold feet (maybe explains why Ned was so nervous?), and he murdered Ned to stop him talking. However he seems well out of the way in Verona during all of the action.

Likewise Marylou, Sanford, and Graziella, all in Verona. I wonder what the point of getting Maylou back to Italy is. I guess it might be so she's in the right place to be captured by the police, but OTOH why would she agree to go back in the first place if she's the murderer. Alternately it might be so that her husband could be caught doing something while she's away, but again he's also ruled out by the time evidence.

The time is the problem for all of these. From the autopsy (died no later than 3PM, possibly earlier) it could conceivably be that Ned was killed before the tour group left for Verona, but then are we to take that Julia hallucinated sleeping with Ned later? It doesn't really work.

I guess if I had to pick one I would say Kenneth, with, say, a sculpting chisel (sharp and pointy). He's the only one I can come up with a possible motive in killing Ned. However I have no idea how he would do it give the timeframe.

Hobnob fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 00:25

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

Okay, let's consider the contradiction. I'm not good with motives, so I'm focusing on the "impossible" crime aspect.

Julia goes to bed with Ned around 2.
Julia wakes up next to Ned around 6.
Autopsy reports that Ned died around 3.

Possible explanations:

Ned died while Julia was sleeping and she didn't notice.
This has a number of problems. Julia sleeping through Ned's murder? Julia not noticing that he was dead? If he had been poisoned or something that would be one thing, but he was stabbed in the heart. That would be a bloody affair, and I don't buy that she wouldn't have noticed, no matter how dim she might be.

The person next to Julia when she woke up was not Ned.
Does anyone else look like Ned in this story? I can't get a decent explanation out of this one.

Ned did not die at 3 PM.
The autopsy being wrong would be unfair, especially since the examiner wasn't a named suspect. Tossing this one out.

Julia didn't wake up at 6.
I can't get a way to make this one work, either. Not well enough to cover a three-hour time gap.

Julia lied in her letter.
There hasn't been any evidence of this, and if she's not the killer, then why would she?

Ned died via some subtle method at 3 PM, and then was stabbed after 6 PM.
These are getting more ridiculous as I go.

poo poo, I can't come up with any plausible explanation. This is one slick murderer.

Quinn2win fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Oct 27, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 01:01

Hiowf: Jun 28, 2013; We don't do .DOC in my cave.

Who identified the body as being Ned?

Your analysis seems correct, which leaves only 2 possibilities:

a) Someone got to the annexe unnoticed anyway. I suspect that may be the reason why Tamar wants to send someone to investigate. There's also a statement early in the book that there's a place on the terrace where you can hide and observe who crosses the bridge that may be related.

b) The maids are right and no one got in or out. Given the characterization of Julia, I wouldn't have put sleeping besides a corpse behind her, but when it is brought up her friends dismiss it outright as something that wouldn't happen even to her, so I think we can scratch that.

So what other theories are there? She slept with someone pretending to be Ned, in the "wrong" room, who slipped away while she was sleeping, killed the real Ned, went back, then used the confusion after the discovery of the corpse to get away. The problem is that this requires assuming she didn't notice she had the wrong person. If Ned had a twin brother it wasn't even hinted at, so this is quite the stretch.

An alternative: observe that Ned is always referred to as Ned and the victim as Edward Watson. What if those aren't the same person? IIRC Kenneth/Eleanor discovered him (with Eleanor remarking something about not being the first to see it) and they're pretty suspect. I haven't fully ran through the relevant parts with this theory, but with the suicide thing shot down I don't see a ton of other options. Maybe the Major is in on it, and that's how he knew about the exhibition in Venice? He'd have known it safe to grab the tags then. And if "Ned" is in on the fraud he may have been nervous not because of feeling in danger but because he knew the thing was going down that day.

The narrator mentions that after chapter 12 the investigation is just there to confirm hypothesises, and mentions Kenneth being in charge of the collection as relevant. I can't really piece those together, though.

I'm sure the taxes thing is relevant. Death and taxes.

Hiowf fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 08:17

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

I like the theory that Julia was in the wrong room, actually - did she ever see the body? Do we know for sure it's the same person?

I only have about half a theory here, but I do remember that Marylou is the one who found the body. This feels like a decently plausible lead.

Quinn2win fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Oct 27, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 11:15

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

Do you think it's OK to stop spoiling anything at this point? We're kind of into final discussion mode.

Here's another inconsistency: The state of Ned's body.

According to Julia: "Ned, lying beside me, still looked so peacefully asleep that tender-heartedness prevented me from waking him."
According to Marylou: "I kind of remember thinking, 'he doesn't look too comfortable lying that way, I don't know how he can breathe with his face in the pillow like that'. And then I saw the blood."

At this point, I think we can safely say that Julia didn't awaken next to a corpse and confuse it for a sleeping person. This is the heart of what we must solve: The victim died before 3, but the person sleeping next to Julia was alive at 6. By this, I say we have to pursue the theory that they were not the same person.

That's where it gets tough, though:

Julia was head over heels for Ned, and was basically staring at his face for the entire book, both before the incident and after the incident.
Julia was around Ned and Kenneth at the same time, so it's impossible that Julia and Kenneth had totally separate ideas about who Ned is.
Kenneth was present when the body was found, and didn't say anything about it not being Ned. Marylou was there as well, and she didn't notice anything odd, either.
Nobody in the story was described as looking anything like Ned.

So how could they be different people? What the hell is going on here?

Quinn2win fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Oct 27, 2014

# ? Oct 27, 2014 03:50

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

I think it's okay to remove all the spoilers. I'll post the final update once people seem to be done with their last hypotheses.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 03:59

Hiowf: Jun 28, 2013; We don't do .DOC in my cave.

ProfessorProf posted:

According to Marylou: "I kind of remember thinking, 'he doesn't look too comfortable lying that way, I don't know how he can breathe with his face in the pillow like that'. And then I saw the blood."

Marylou was there as well, and she didn't notice anything odd, either.

Given that he was lying face down, it'd be hard to recognize the face.

Still the problem remains: either she slept with someone pretending to be Ned and he needs a twin brother, or Ned was in on it from the beginning, but then who is the corpse and how did they get it there?

# ? Oct 27, 2014 08:31

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

poo poo. Are we out of theories?

If it comes down to it, I'll make this my fallback half-theory:

Julia saw "Ned" alive at 6 PM, Kenneth and Marylou saw "Ned" dead shortly after.
The Ned that Kenneth and Marylou saw died three hours before Julia saw him alive.
Therefore, Julia's Ned and Kenneth's Ned are somehow different people.
Kenneth interacted with the same Julia that she slept with, shortly before, so he saw Julia's Ned.
Kenneth interacted with the Ned who the autopsy said was already dead when Julia's Ned was alive.
Kenneth interacted with both Neds, and also is the only one who knew Ned before all of this.
It doesn't make any sense for Kenneth to not notice anything strange going on here.
Therefore, Kenneth is the most suspicious.
Therefore, Kenneth is the killer.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 00:26

Hiowf: Jun 28, 2013; We don't do .DOC in my cave.

Page 175, 222: Kenneth only one close to the body, "With a sheet over him, thank god"
Page 202: Additional motive for Kenneth.
Page 174: Police searched annexe but it's mentioned the murderer could have slipped away. (Didn't they say the opposite earlier/later? Or was that only for *getting in*.)
Page 170: Of course Kenneth is worried :-)
Page 159: They have coffee on the terrace overlooking the bridge when "Ned" agrees to sleep with her.
Page 171: "wasn't too much light in the room"
Page 158: Plaster to cover up a difference?

Maybe this is what was referred to as "curious passage of people over the bridge":
Page 154: "Ned" is on the terrace alone.
Page 156: Kenneth and "Ned" are crossing the bridge away from the annexe.

Too bad Marylou took her on a shopping expedition so that's not as solid as it should be.

Kenneth has good motives (several ways he could make money illegitimately that Ned might have found out about - selling art work under price, cheating taxes) and given the impossibilities we've found no better explanation than that he intentionally misidentified the victim.

Something that nags me a bit is that the "Ned" Julia first flirts with does seem to be well versed in tax law which does seem to suggest that was Edward Watson of inland revenue.

We're more certain of who was the killer rather than who was the victim?

# ? Oct 28, 2014 10:48

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

I guess it doesn't look like any better theories are coming forward.

Kenneth's my vote. Should we see how badly we did?

# ? Oct 30, 2014 01:43

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Very well, then. You may now read to the end of the book.

Your accusation is correct as to the killer, and you came close to figuring the whole thing out!

# ? Oct 30, 2014 02:41

Van Dine: Apr 17, 2013

I foolishly read too far by accident quite some time ago, so missed out on the theorising. Caught in the "I'm tired and I need some light reading, so I'll read to the end of the current allotted chapters, oh wait how far did I overshoot that?" trap. It's such a pleasant book to read.

I've got to say I'm really impressed by how well people guessed the culprit! Very nice work. And people also guessed that something had to be up with Ned that could make the corpse somebody else.

I liked this book so much that I've already bought the next book in the series (but am not reading it yet) and would be quite keen for it to be a future selection for this thread. I want to see Julia trying to solve a case where (I assume) she's not a suspect. Unless her being a suspect turns out to be a running gag.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 02:58

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

This was one of the best books we've hit in the history of the thread.

My only problem with the final explanation, admittedly my own fault rather than Caudwell's, was that I have no recollection of who the hell Richard Triverton is.

So! What's next, thread?

# ? Oct 30, 2014 04:54

Hiowf: Jun 28, 2013; We don't do .DOC in my cave.

ProfessorProf posted:

My only problem with the final explanation, admittedly my own fault rather than Caudwell's, was that I have no recollection of who the hell Richard Triverton is.

It's covered in several places in the book, though I do agree you need an almost - and I'm going to be mean - Agatha Christiesque leap to make that connection. At least the murderer was solvable through basic logic reasoning. Good job on eliminating the impossibilities.

quote:

So! What's next, thread?

I haven't read any of the books in the todo list so I could lead either one you decide on.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 11:40

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

Well, the only book on the list I've read is Murder on the Orient Express. If we don't want to dive into that experience, we'll need a different host, or I'll need to quickly read one of the Simon Brett books.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:41

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Skuto posted:

It's covered in several places in the book, though I do agree you need an almost - and I'm going to be mean - Agatha Christiesque leap to make that connection. At least the murderer was solvable through basic logic reasoning. Good job on eliminating the impossibilities.

Well, once you figure out the murderer it's not such a huge leap to guess that the body was switched with that of the rich person who is determined to spend the rest of his life in isolation whose estate the murderer was tending to. It does require a small leap, but in the end I think the solution is fair.

I don't know if people want me to keep going or not, but I don't mind leading a book by Rex Stout or Ngaio Marsh as suggested.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 23:38

Hiowf: Jun 28, 2013; We don't do .DOC in my cave.

Rand Brittain posted:

Well, once you figure out the murderer it's not such a huge leap to guess

Well, yes, you can guess, but no more. That's my complaint about the Christie novels and the leaps they make. There's generally no firm evidence for them so you're always guessing and not solving :-)

The book never answers how the Major found out about the estate.

# ? Oct 31, 2014 00:08

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

Well, no other volunteers are coming forward, so feel free to lead us for round three as well! I'll read another book to run after this one.

# ? Oct 31, 2014 21:04

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

All right, then! My pick for Rex Stout is going to be Murder by the Book. We mentioned The League of Frightened Men before, but I think this one provides a better whodunnit and follows the standard Wolfe format without Wolfe breaking any of his personal rules. The audiobook read by Michael Pritchard is also excellent if anybody wants to try following along that way.

Kobo link
Amazon link

To start off, we're going to read to the end of Chapter Four.

# ? Oct 31, 2014 21:25

Hiowf: Jun 28, 2013; We don't do .DOC in my cave.

Dykes is Archie. The manuscript contains something that can't be seen, or someone wants to take credit for it and needs to eliminate people who might know he's not the real author.
Joan was not killed by Archie obviously due to timing but also due to the question being asked before the meeting if she'd shown it to anyone else.

# ? Nov 1, 2014 22:28

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

Well this is getting interesting fast.

Putting that list of names here for posterity:

Sinclair Meade
Sinclair Sampson
Barry Bowen
David Yerkes
Ernest Vinson
Dorian Vick
Baird Archer
Oscar Shiff
Oscar Cody
Lawrence McCue
Mark McCue
Mark Flick
Mack Flick
Louis Gill
Lewis Gill

Two Sinclairs, two Oscars, two Marks, two Flicks, two Gills. There's definitely a pattern to the names, but what is it?

Trying to remember the exact sequence of events, but I read the first three chapters a couple days ago. Baird Archer's manuscript was written up last July, shortly before the second(?) victim showed up. None of the people named in the list seem to exist - aliases, or code words. Then, Wolfe's investigation begins, and Rachel gets pushed out a window (or jumps out). Why just then? Why didn't the killer get her during the intervening months?

We need to see the manuscript. There's the package weight discrepancy - do we know for sure that there was a novel manuscript in there at all?

# ? Nov 3, 2014 03:35

Mecca-Benghazi: Mar 31, 2012

Sorry for skipping out on the conclusion to Adonis, I got busy. Great book though, hope we do the others in the series later.

I've got the next book now, but don't wait on me since I'm tied up for the next few weeks.

# ? Nov 3, 2014 06:42

a friendly penguin: Feb 1, 2007; trolling for fish

Yay! I caught this one at the beginning. Although I'm not sure that I would make a good sleuth so I will just try to add a few things that I find curious. We'll see as the book goes on though.

ProfessorProf posted:

Well this is getting interesting fast.

Putting that list of names here for posterity:

Sinclair Meade
Sinclair Sampson
Barry Bowen
David Yerkes
Ernest Vinson
Dorian Vick
Baird Archer
Oscar Shiff
Oscar Cody
Lawrence McCue
Mark McCue
Mark Flick
Mack Flick
Louis Gill
Lewis Gill

Two Sinclairs, two Oscars, two Marks, two Flicks, two Gills. There's definitely a pattern to the names, but what is it?

Trying to remember the exact sequence of events, but I read the first three chapters a couple days ago. Baird Archer's manuscript was written up last July, shortly before the second(?) victim showed up. None of the people named in the list seem to exist - aliases, or code words. Then, Wolfe's investigation begins, and Rachel gets pushed out a window (or jumps out). Why just then? Why didn't the killer get her during the intervening months?

We need to see the manuscript. There's the package weight discrepancy - do we know for sure that there was a novel manuscript in there at all?

I'm listening to the audio version of this book, so thank you for writing all of those down for us to refer to.

I'll be interested to see if the scene with the typists who claimed confidentiality and then to not have typed the manuscript has anything to do with the plot.

And perhaps the pages that the list of names was found between actually is important, unlike what Cramer thought when he initially came to Wolfe. Perhaps that section may be what was missing from the manuscript to cause the discrepancy in weight.

I don't know. These are wild conjectures. The story is just getting started.

# ? Nov 5, 2014 03:47

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Yeah, we don't have any of the meat yet, so we might as well move forward. You may now read to the end of Chapter Eight.

# ? Nov 5, 2014 19:36

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 6, 2024 12:01

Hiowf: Jun 28, 2013; We don't do .DOC in my cave.

Looks like we'll have to wait until chapter 9 or 10 to see some dirty laundry get spilled. I didn't find anything helpful here.

# ? Nov 7, 2014 11:05

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Book Barn is On the Case! Whodunit Challenge Thread 2

«‹›4 »