HINT! ep3: Will They, Won't They

This is the sound of worlds beyond the number. The tingling clunking piano continues to play echoing through high ceilings. The pocket floors as Susie Scarlet looks around nervously. Your pen pals with Marlene? Yes. What has she told you about me? Oh, uh, let me be so clear. I'm not here to put any additional heat on an acquaintance that has nothing to do with tonight. Why don't you tell us your relationship with Marlene Brown? Well, as some of you might know, Marlene Brown was a often seen galvanjering around the town with a body not as a romantic connection as many in the press assumed, but as a confidant of sorts, I think he liked having a friend who is a little queer, if you will. Well, when I met the two of them, everything was fine, Dandy. Marlene and I were very close. And then suddenly I was hearing her, she was saying terrible things about me behind my back, at least according to Rutherford and from other friends. And we grew quite distant and then she was gone back in New Hampshire. And I thought that it was her. She was as Mr. Body used to say a little crazy. But now I was given to understand recently that it wasn't her at all. It was Rutherford and his fragile little ego. And so when he and I struck up a romance, you know, I had feelings for him. Yes, he's awful. But he was so charming and he knew exactly what to say. And then when I confronted him, I suddenly heard from a friend that it wasn't actually Marlene saying all those things. It was Rutherford saying she said all those things. And so when I confronted him, it seems that yes, he'd done that on purpose. He'd created distance and I threatened to tell her. And I'm sorry, she turns to you. Mrs. White, I thought that you and perhaps close with Marlene and she'd said some things to sort of poison the well as it were. And well, it was all him. And he threatened to go to the press with this and it would, it's hard enough as it is. They're just simply aren't rules for someone like me. And there would be no kind of career for someone like me if I was, well, he had photographs of us, you know, nothing, nothing to, but I had to get ahold of them at any cost. But I didn't kill him. She points to the piano. I, if you would like one of you, go ahead and bring the candles stick over here. Yeah, I'll look to see if either of you wants to join me because we've been using the body system the whole time. I'll come with you. And I'll pop into the lounge on the way. Just okay, how are you feeling about all of this? I don't know. It's, we've taken in so much these passages, the candlestick not being there reappearing. I think, I think that Mr. Green is on to something. I think there is more to this than just a gunshot. But where it comes in, how it comes in, when it comes in, where it comes in, those things also feel like a mystery to me. Um, okay, I'm just going to confide in you since I trust the two of you the most and you a little more than Cass. When we were looking for my purse. There's a moment where we separated and he was very eager to get into the dining room by himself. And, uh, and my pant legs are kind of rolled up. So I'm just going to hike them up a little bit like, sorry, sorry, this is not. Oh, I, uh, I didn't. And I'll show you the bottom of the like chef's knife. Oh, I just, I'm a little skittish. There's a murderer, a foot. Yeah. It's right to be careful. But, um, I mean, that Mr. Green is good with his words. But I mean, he and Mr. Body clearly had something of a moment before we all parted from the dining room. Yeah, I just, yeah. I still, I trust him. Everyone's, everyone's got reasons and everyone's got secrets. And I just wanted you to know everything. I appreciate that. Put a hand on your shoulder. We'll keep on with us and we'll figure this out. And then yeah, go into the lounge and grab the candles, take us anything else out of place. No, not since you were last there. No, new things have shown up or disappeared. All right. Good day, good day. And I'm going to grab it from the bottom or everyone else has touched it. Oh, God. Now my fingerprints are on it. I'm going to go to jail. I'm going to pick them back with it. Say your turn and Miss Scarlett holds out her hand. May I? All right. Well, uh, and she moves over to the piano. There is, as you see, an octagonal dent indentation in it where it looks like something needs to go. And you notice that the brass candlestick tapers down into an octagonal shape. She places the candlestick into the indentation and you see the painting of the incredibly haughty looking cherubs, pops open, hinged on the left. I knew it was in here. What do we see inside of the or behind the portrait? If you open up the painting further, you see that this was a wall safe, essentially. It's not, of course, in any sort of safe that requires a combination. If somebody happened to put something octagonal in that indentation, it would have been very easy for them to see just the random gold bars and loose contracts and a number of photographs ranging from rather risque all the way to actually kind of sweet. It's his trophy collection. What was it? What was it, Susie, that you wanted? You said that you were going to tell her unless he did and then he threatened to go to the press, presumably with this blackmail material. Yes. What was it you wanted him to say to Marlene? Tell her that I had feelings for her and that he was the one that ruined it all. He did. Wim, he just ruined what could have been something very special and I'm worried that she'll never see me the same way again because, well, I'm sure he's painted me quite cruelly to her. Is there a fireplace or anything like that in this room or is there any of that? There's no fireplace. There's candles on the walls. This is an electric light room but there are candles sort of for show. I'll take a look through the photos. I'm going to place to one side but I'll look through the contracts. There's gold bars in here that I'm going to leave but I'll look through the contracts and you can see there's anything in the contracts. Is this all new to you, Cass? Oh, 100%. I mean, as you all know, I have a lot of things to do with the contracts. I haven't represented the body corporation since I worked for my father. I've asked a couple of years ago. And most of us who have any amount of wealth tend to keep it in banks and contracts with lawyers, you know, and not in some insane painting here. It makes sense for the photographs to be hidden in a vault because the photographs, even though they implicate Miss Brown and Miss Scarlett, are illegal. It's blackmail. The gold bullion I can't speak to, although depending on where it comes from, perhaps it's stolen. And these contracts, and I just want to write with them and see who the contracts are with or what they might have anything to do with. They are various things. I think they are different contracts that he's had with people that you've known in the past that he's been friendly with. Again, his largest of giving a club membership or a piece of land and contracts that he's signed with these people, that he's given gifts to. But it seems like he's had to do quite a lot of gift giving that involves signatures from people. I would like to walk the contracts over and put them on, close the piano and put them on the back of the piano and look to Claudette and Arnold and Fred as well and say, this is all Greek to me, but maybe some of you would recognize some of the names of anyone he's on business with here. Fred, you in particular, if there's anyone here that seems like they might be the major domo of some extra national corporation research and development. Let me see. He looks through it and most of it, this looks like it's all very personal, but yes, he holds up. There is one in, I read German still, and this one is a contract with, it looks like some sort of German government official for research into chemical weapons. Well, it's a good thing, Germany has a good liberal government. Fucking crowds. I will, listen, I served in the war you know, you know. I'm not talking about you, Fred. You're not a crowd. You're not a crowd. You're a crowd, you're a Fred. It's completely different, condiment, you're mustard. It was moose a lot at one point, yes, but okay. I'd like to grab the photographs and walk over and hand them to Susie. I, I'm sorry, I thought, I thought you didn't like. I don't have to like somebody to believe that they shouldn't be hurt. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And you know if you do write to Marlene, please. Well, I don't know what's going to happen after all of this, but I'd love to sort of at least feel like I can also be a pen pal of hers. Yeah. I'll, I'll give you a address. You should write her a letter. Thank you. So you made the player piano play. I, you knew where the safe was. You found the photos. I was in the middle of searching through them when I heard the gunshots and I, I, I, I didn't have time to, you know, I, I didn't have time to grab them and move the candle stick back and, you know, why don't you take this from the very beginning? All right. Starting at dinner, walk us through the events as they unfold. Leave out no details, Susie. Well, I was in the lounge after everybody else had left. I was sulking, but then I realized that the candle stick was the same one that was used in the piano. And so I, I grabbed it, pocketed it, kept it under my dress for the entirety of the, of the very awkward dinner and then moved straight to the ballroom. I flipped on the piano playing switch so that it would seem as if I was just playing the piano and I had to figure out how the candle stick would activate the safe. I knew that he had gone to a safe and grabbed the candle stick. I didn't know where it went. How? How did you know that? As you guys are talking, Mrs. White kind of like stiffens and then leaves the room. I'll start as law. Do you need to come with me? I'm going to start after Claudette. Yeah. Fred also comes because I think it wise that none of us should leave the room. I, what is, what is happening? Miss Peacock, you stay with Miss Garland. Oh, right. Storming out. It's not a sprint, but it's, we were trying to find fingerprints or evidence on the candle stick. If that's why she took it, but there's two other things that could have been used as a weapon and returned quick enough. There's a wrench and a pipe. And that's what she's storming back to go check. I'll, I'll rush back into the lounge, I think, with you to go check these other objects there. Scarlett is back with Mrs. Peacock in the ballroom. Yes, she's, she's drunkenly patting Miss Scarlett other shoulders, I think. And as you leave, she's saying, oh, back in my day, you know, I was no stranger to correspondence. And as you sprint towards the lounge, mustard, mustard nods in agreement. All right. So we check for more fingerprints on or blood. Yeah. The others. What are the gun? I have no idea where the gun is. But your belief is that some of these other objects may have been used because they would fit the opening of the secret compartment from the piano. Is there other octagonal instruments, essentially, or no? No, we were, we were focused on finding the candle stick because it went missing. But if that's just Scarlett, figuring out her whole deal, that's, that's fine. That means we're still looking for it, the blunt instrument that killed Rutherford. So the gun is missing because there was shots fired clearly. And the candle stick was missing because Miss Scarlett took it for, for activating the safe. And then made a big, I hate to use the phrase, hysterical mess to give herself maybe enough cover to get it returned without arousing any suspicion. Let's, let's go ahead and dust for prints. And I take out my notebook and play a put the, the fingerprint sound for it. Can the two of you do that? Oh, sure. I want to look over the dining room. Yes, absolutely. And you can come and meet us there with any revelations you have. Okay. Fred, do you mind giving me a hand? Yes. They're good. So you two head off to the dining room. You two are here and you're fingerprinting the weapons? Yeah. Or, okay. So you fingerprint the weapons and on the wrench, which is in the glass case still, you notice that the case still has fingerprints that are unfamiliar. Do not match any of the sets here. Do the fingerprints give any like understanding of how to open the case? Yes. Yes, it just the glass slides out, you know, just as a normal sort of frame. And you see all taken out a pocket hankerchief, lift the wrench out and hold it in my pocket hankerchief for you to dust. Yeah. And I'll dust it while also trying to check like crevices for like blood that was harder to like wipe away or like dried blood. So like as you're holding it, especially at like little joints, I would probably grab your hand just to press in a little bit to see if you like, flick off any like dried blood. You, I am very distracted in this moment as we are as you are doing this. You don't find any blood on the wrench. You do find again that same set of fingerprints that was on the outside of it, but does not match any of the guests at the mansion. Okay. Um, well what do we do if we find prints that don't match? And she has not let go of your, your hands holding the wrench. As I'm looking up, I'll go, all right, these prints that don't match seem similar to the ones that I'm guessing are rutherford or are they different from rutherford? Yes. They similar to rutherford. I would bet this is, this is Rudd's prints. Oh, oh, that makes sense. And I think at that she'll like, let your hands go and then moves over towards the pipe. Uh, you examine the pipe. Um, it is, I'm running out of flour. Yeah. Um, it is pipe. Uh, it is a heavy metal cylinder patinaed green with age and this, it, it has raised lettering on it. Uh, it reads I am p, V, S, P, V, I, I, I, I, I, T, I, M, P, V, I, we, all uppercase letters. So the real mess. You wouldn't see four eyes in a row. No, not if it was a real number, but again, this can't be the, it's, it cannot be one one Roman numeral, but I wonder if it, you went to, you went to, like the, the boys finishing school. The Hutchings Institute for Culture Boys. She, you watch her try so sincerely to not scream laugh at that. The young, the youngest and most cultured boys are brought to Hutchings to continue their acculturation. It must have been very nice for you. Actually, it was grueling. We had to, we had to learn to care for the Shetland ponies. There was, there was, it was, yeah. What's the Shetland pony? Shetland pony. It's a long haired miniature horse from Scotland. Why? Why? Well, that's culture. That's culture. That's a smaller than normal horse. And speaking of culture, you would know that yes, this is Roman Latin, but it's not actually any words or numbers. It might be abbreviations as we're sometimes stamped onto pieces of public property. So, as we look at this, this is made, this is industrial. It's part of the pipe. It is, yes. So I'm like, this is not like the writing at the base of the statue. This was made by the factory. So it's not one of Rutherford's dumb codes. It means something else. Oh, and if you cared to look, the placard next to it would say Roman Empire plumbing. Yeah, workers of the world unite. You know what? We should go talk to the professor. Okay. Do we want to check if blood? Yeah, we can check for blood, but I think that the person will probably, you know, he's a student of the antiquities. Some Roman numerals might fall more within his wheelhouse. Okay. While this is happening in the dining room, Professor Plum leads Colonel Mustard into the dining room. I was looking for more of Rutherford's little secrets. Not this time. We're looking for those of his associate, Mr. Green. Oh. Cassidy. Yes. Do you suspect him? Miss White told me that he was very eager to get in here. My hope is to figure out why. He was last seen with Mr. Body and in this room. Yes. All right. I'll split up in search. Please. Let's be thorough. All right. You're both looking around. Do you take what we're doing? I think I think we'd probably take the room in half. So I think I'm looking, I think after doing a pretty, I feel pretty good about the table as with that's where we had all been sitting. I think I move through the table and then also to any of the, you know, any of the cabinetry and things. You find on the shelf with the China just above eye level a sheath of papers. Oh. I pulled them down and take a look. What does he see? You see the last will and testament of Rutherford Q body and the establishment of a trust for whom the primary beneficiary is one, Cassidy Eulizzi's green. He found something. I did. It comes over to look good. Lord. I'm not incorrect in my assumption. This is damning. This ink is fresh. He had him sign a will, making him out to be a very large beneficiary. You would seem that way. And then, but that would be, that would be madness. And then to just hide this here surely he would have hidden something far better and then, and then, I mean, to have the audacity to murder him right afterwards. I don't know for it. It is damning and Mr. Green will need to explain himself. I should think so. Oh, and about what I was doing during that time. I don't know if you and your friends who was also a risk, never had them, but sometimes I get these episodes. I can't see, right? I can't. Everything feels hard to breathe and I didn't want to. Quite embarrassing. Something that I'm sure will go away with time. My hope so. But I've met many other men who served who have similar experiences and it's nothing to be ashamed about. That's how I went. I've been through a lot for it. When I heard those gunshots, I, you know, it brought me back. Me and Claudette want to go find the professor and we know that he's in the dining room. Okay. I'll push up in the door and go, Professor, I and my eyes zero in on the case folder and I go stock still. I bump into you following you into the room. What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? Mr. Green. Colonel Mustard moves to you and sort of gently ushers you towards our side of the room, closes the door behind you. This white had instructed me that you were quite insistent to make it to the dining room. To recover your handbag, Mrs. White, you were also alone in the kitchen. Sorry, gentlemen, may I have you? I took a knife. Just to have it on you? She does. Yeah. I'm going to turn and say, Professor, I see you have discovered a legal contract signed into effect this evening. The contract the Professor holds, Mrs. White, names me as the primary beneficiary of Rutherford's last will and testament. And now you have become a very wealthy man. If a court would honor it. I understand. And I step away from the side and split the difference between Plum and Mustard and you. I'm shaking very subtly looking at the Professor holding it. And I think that I have a look in my eye both of that thing you are holding is my doom. And also I want that. I don't want someone else to hold it. I don't want someone to rip it up. I don't want someone to burn it. And I just go, I may have omitted some level of the truth from our earlier conversation. The conversation that I had with Rutherford when the two of us were the last left here in the dining room was an honest accounting of what I spoke to him of. It was not a full accounting of what I spoke to him of. About a month ago Rutherford reached out to me asking to retain my services as his personal attorney, not for my firm to come back and represent the body business empire as it had under my father for Rutherford's father's long tenure as the head of that industry. I inquired as to why or what personal services Rutherford might require and he wanted me to draft him a will which is a perfectly simple leo matter. Have you drafted a will with yourself as the primary beneficiary at his request, Colonel? Now in all fairness, I can't think of anything stupider than crossing the line on the biggest payday of your life and then immediately killing him. Also no one's worked harder to try to find who the murderer is. All he would have had to do is sit back and watch us scrabble over the remains until the cops came. Well the three of you were seemingly above suspicion or so you vouched for each other because there were shots when you all were together and now you're saying that if we were in cahoots I wouldn't have sent him to go find a contract that would get any of us in trouble. Colonel, please your station implies some level of military intelligence and that is deeply unstrategic. That means in the intervening hour between dinner and when the gunshots were heard I would have found some blunt instrument a some other way of killing my best friend like a brother to me ending his life somewhere silently and then in the lounge with Claudette and the professor I would have needed an accomplice to fire that gun. They watched me in the lounge when the gunshots went off so even if I did it I didn't do it alone. And we were the last ones to get to the study. Why are you a logical drink? Do you believe now that the murderer is not one person but two? It's possible. In fact I would say it the only way someone could have done this altogether we've seen blood in the kitchen drops in a study leading to the white rhino. That means there was some trail of blood either on the murderer's person or on rutherford's that got through that passageway. Someone cleaned it up or attempted to clean it up in the kitchen and didn't quite do a full job. Now the things that have made sense to me thus far are this. Fred you're the only person with the physical capacity to get a dead body out of the kitchen through the tunnel to that study, prop them up at the desk and fire. You were in the hall for an hour. Colonel that doesn't add up. The Colonel looks at plum. I am physically incapable of doing such things. I have not fired a gun since the war. I does have the limp. You mean you physically cannot pull a trigger? Not without being physically ill-known. You may laugh young lady but when you've seen the kind of things that I've seen I you would want nothing to do with any kind of violence ever again. I'm not even saying that you pulled the trigger. There's another possibility here. If we believe Susie and that her look, there have been some double dealings tonight. I won't lie about that. Susie was trying to get her hands on that black male in that closet. She put on the player piano to cover her steps. I absconded from Claudette in the kitchen to come in here and hide the will. That's true. I hid it because I knew its discovery would paint me as suspect number one. And I panicked. I was the reason I've pushed so hard for us not to call the police is that even if we find the murderer and they go to jail, if I don't... If you don't know who did it, you might be a part of a conspiracy to do murder and it would invalidate the will. There is no cruel record in the court of public opinion. Even if I illegally inherited this thing that my father spent his whole life building on behalf of other men, if I don't, if it's not above board, if it's not clean, it'll never matter. They'll talk about me, my kids, our family forever. We have kids, are you married? Yeah, I have three kids. You have three children. You have three children. What of your wife? What? You've never seen anything like that. 37-year-old lawyer. Oh. I just, they never at the party. I never, yeah, I never, I never, never. Bring my kids to work with me as I've run around pimping and wheeling and dealing drugs. Yeah, but you'll talk about your wife or anything. And speaking of wife, I'm not... I love Martha very dearly. I don't still bring it up. Martha. Martha. Martha. Martha Green. Martha. Martha Green. No, she kept her own name. Martha Shartruse. Oh. Oh. And not to pry, or anything. She's a French lady. Not speaking of French. She's not to pry. Do you argue, is there a Mr. White? I, um, phew. There's not. But the ring. Um, I came into some money when I was in Paris, but there was no marriage. It just seemed easier to explain. Ah, yes. Um, gentlemen won't, uh, uh, any good gentlemen wouldn't bother a young lady with an engagement ring on. Yeah. I, I feel, well, I've, I've known about the ring for a while and do you support it. And I'm sorry I've never mentioned my kids. Kelly Forrest and Mint are the love of my life. I'm like, I'm gonna hit Brandon. I always liked the name Kelly. Kelly, she's a wonderful girl. Mint is a psychotic name for a child. Oh, little Minty. No, little Minty. You call him little Minty? Well, it's short for Mint Gumbery. Oh, yes. Oh, man, are you? Oh, Mint Gumbery. All right, we're going to take a little break here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Things were at the height of their ten chip. I have a wife and kids, and we were, I'm sorry, what? What? I see full record scratch moment. This is when Taylor would run in and go stay in it, stay in it. Yeah! He's not here, y'all. He's not here. Oh no. He's not here. We can get back to that. We can get back to that. Yeah. Oh my god. Uh, you're right. It would be strategically insane for you to have him sign this will and then immediately knock him off. Yeah. Yeah. The argument I got into with Rutherford before all this happened was telling him that this is insane. This thing, and are you still holding the contract? I am. I look at it and you can see my hand twitches in a like striver way. I just want that so bad. That's my whole future and I go, I, I, I told him it was insane. Why I've been out of, I've been outside of the business in the rain, curing his drugs and alcohol for years. Hold on. What's insane that he would be gracious with you. Like he's been gracious to so many of his friends and I gesture at the other contracts of like him being generous with people. In a way that's like, this is de-regor for him. Yes, but those people got their houses or their cars or whatever it is while they were alive. The poor Cassidy has to wait until he's dead for it for his dreams to come true. It's not even the waiting till he's dead. It's the fact that it's too big to be a favor. If you look at these contracts, there is something that he gets out of this. What does he get out of leaving everything to me? All it does is call me into question. He says, what did Cassidy Green have on Rutherford that this would have happened in this way? I was trying to find a moment. I had only had it by letter. I had just gotten through. I hadn't been able to talk to him in person about the insanity of all this. I was trying to say, look before we do this, invite me back into the business. I or me as a legal advisor, inside counsel, do something that makes this start to make sense. And Claudette, I know you know only too well that Rutherford wanted everyone to shine in the exact place he set for them on his shelf. That is true. It feels like maybe he was putting you on a different kind of shelf. He was like, you're the only one who actually genuinely feels bad he's dead. Maybe that's something to do with it. I do. Could he have been setting you up? Do you remember? I almost gave up the game when we walked into the study for the first time. I asked before I could stop myself, I blurted out and asked if he knew. If somehow because it didn't because the timing on the one hand, yes, why would I kill him immediately after assigning the will? But on the other hand, it why to put it in the other direction, why would he make me create this will on the night that he died? It's too coincidental. In a way that implicates me, but in a way that implicates somebody, the coincidence is too great. He died on the, he pressured me to do this cockamami trust. And somehow he dies that night, something foul is at work here. And again, I am implicated. But by God, we were in that lounge and somebody who wasn't the three of us fired that gun. All right. We still have a smoking gun to find then. Where have you not searched? Well, we've been in the library, but we haven't combed it over. At billiard room as well. The billiard room is well. I checked the billiard room and nothing so far. And actually the billiard room. The billiard room may have been one of the only rooms that none of the rest of us were in. And if none of us saw Rutherford for that hour before the gunshots were fired, maybe checking the room that none of us had eye-lined to might yield some answers. All right. Worth a shot. Should we get the... Might be worth too. Not. I think Plum is going to look to Mr. Green. He's assigned a trust. I'd like to hold on to these. I will take my briefcase, put it on the table, open it up, and slide the open briefcase over to you, and say, you're welcome to do so, Professor. I'd ask that you put it in that briefcase. If a cup of tea or some cigar ash were to spell on that contract, it would be the destruction of my future. I'm going to look over the briefcase. Does it have a number code or a key? Hmm. It doesn't lock. Nope. Fair. Well, and Arnold, do take care of that. I think that money would be better spent by you. Or not spent. Such as where with Rutherford. All right. Shall we... Think we've been on. Passed by the ballroom. Pick up the ladies and head to the bill you'd run. Very good. So you walk over to the ballroom and Scarlett and Peacock are there. Peacock has offered her some of the Hemingway flask, and she's taken a tiny nip of it and seems a little calmer and is clutching at the photographs very gratefully. Oh, yes. And I mean, I don't want to tell tales out of school, but you know, a lady's boarding school is... Oh, yes, what did you find this time? Nothing useful. Mr. Green is going to inherit this house. They both stare at you, mouths agape. I... We'll see who inherits what. Well, at the very least you can redo some of this terribly tacky decor. Ugh. I... I will take it under advisement, Melda. Thank you very much. I have thoughts about the conservatory though, young man, you'd better talk to me before you do anything in there. And you all move towards the billiard room. The billiard room other than the bar and the billiard table itself is mostly bare. You don't see much in the way of secrets or riddles or dumb puns, but you can look around if you wish. First of all, I'd like to look over at Claudette and say, do you want to remand the custody of that pipe to our friend the professor here and see if the Roman numerals break? Oh, yeah, sorry. I guess I've just been weighing in and around and gesticulating with a metal pipe. Yeah. Is this the new murder suspect weapon? Not that I can tell. Did we spend any time trying to like blood check it? No, you just checked the wrench and dusted the wrench and now the pipe is... Do you mind holding it? Oh, sure. I took Latin in college. Okay, we all in the college. In Greek? Yes, not fluent, but I can speak it. That's the opposite. No, yes, I took them in college anyway. So it has the raised lettering with the inscription that reads, I-M-P-V-E-S-P-V-I-I-I-T-I-M-P-V-I. And this is... It's a segment of the pipe. The pipe cuts off before... It looks like... So the spacing wise, it looks like there might have been more writing there. It is... Those are not any actual numbers or words. They look like abbreviations of words that might be stamped on, you know, plumbing or, you know, an aqueduct. And you also notice that there is a little bit of green residue in Claudette's hand. I look at the residue. What do I get to sense is the composition of the residue? It is rusted metal. It is oxidized copper. It is oxidized copper. So while it is not, you know, fully powdery, there are occasionally, little crusted bits coming off in your hand. Yeah, she's like obsessively trying to get it off of her hands. And so I understand these to be the abbreviations of words. Yes. Got it. You would know that likely the IMP might stand for a empirator like the Emperor. The V-E-S-P might be like the name of the Emperor and the Spatian. You wouldn't know that. Who said that? I get the sense that this is the historical markings for whoever was ruling Rome at the time of its construction. Oh. With the residue on it, I'm going to say oxidized. And can we look over it for any trace of blood? Yes. If you look, do you use your... Yeah, I'll use my magnifying glasses. I'll use my spectacles to kind of look in and try to examine and see if there is any... And I'll try to handle it with my handkerchief as well and see if there's any indication of blood on this one's where in the billiard room. In the dim light of the billiard room, you can see that though the rest of the pipe is very clean that in between one of the V's there is a smudge of blood. Well, I think we may have found our murder weapon. So the gun is... The gun is a... Or perhaps even just the second act to this first act. So are there two murders or is it the one person who did both? I'm going to start. I'm no longer looking at the conversation, but I will tell you after the two of you by showing you that I'm still trying to rub the patina off of my hand as I start glancing around to try to catch anyone's hands. I'll see that and I'll say I'd like everyone's hands up on the side of the billiard table if you'd be so kind. Palms facing upwards. All right. So everybody puts their hands up. I do one hand at a time holding the briefcase. I like to swab everybody's hands for some kind of copper residue. I want to look in the creases of people's like knuckles. Like the grip you would need on this pipe to actually like bludgeon someone to have for it and thinking of the matting. Under the nails too. Under the nails as well. You have the nails. I don't actually need to even need to swab it. We just want some indication that someone who has not yet held this pipe. So I think Fred and Emelda and Suzy. Oh, and so you swabbed the three of their hands and you come away with nothing. Claudette, Mr. Green. Your hands as well. Oh, she was the first one to do it. She was showing her hand first to like signal to you guys, check everyone's hands. But of course you have it on your hands from having handled. Yes. So what does this... Professor, does the professor have any on his? The professor does not have any... I'm sorry, wait, you touched. You had... No, I only looked at it through. You don't look at it. Sure, I'm happy that I've held it the whole time. Yes, I never picked it. Right. Then no, you don't have any in your hand. But you notice that like when you're rubbing it, it comes off fairly easily. Was there anything on Green's hands? No, no, there was not. Suzy, walk us again through the timeline very briefly. After dinner, you... Straight to the ballroom, with the candlestick. I had had it all the way through dinner and you know, it took me a minute to figure out the piano. Then you know, I... I placed it, but by that time it was already the gunshots. How did you know to look in the ballroom for the safe? Have you seen it before? I had seen him one time when he went to go put a contract away. I saw him with the candlestick, which I thought was odd. And then I saw him walking into the ballroom, but I didn't know where it went. So you had to spend much of that hour looking for the activation for a way... That's correct. And you used the piano to cover your tracks. I didn't want him to hear me and think that I was looking. When did you replace the candlestick? Oh, that was after... And she looks at Fred Muster at this point. He says, Well, when I was being hysterical, I did take that opportunity to run it back. Candlestick went back. I'm sorry. She said she needed to go use the ladies' room and she must have done it then. When you put it back, did you notice any other missing weapons from the plinths? Uh, the gun was missing. The gun is still missing. Yes. All right. Well, there's no patina on any of our hands, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't easily be washed off. And from what you said, it sounds like they cleaned up most of the blood in the kitchen, no? They cleaned up most of the blood in the kitchen. The issue that we have here is this. Where would Rutherford have been? He was either killed in the study where his body wouldn't need to have been moved or he was killed elsewhere and dragged there. If he was dragged there, Fred, it's hard to think of how he would have been moved through that long cord other than you moving him. Uh, uh, that's true. I think that, uh, I partly, I am one of the few men here that has the physical strength for it, um, safe for yourself and the professor. Looking, have we investigated the actual billiards room yet or no? You had not. Uh, if you'd like to give it a cursory glance. Yeah, I think so. I think I'd give it a glance as I, look, it didn't I go. Uh, there's nothing here, but the, uh, the, the secret panel that unlocks the bar, that you have so thoughtfully packed with jeans. Yeah, I'll go ahead and open that secret panel and take a little look around. You open the panel and there are all sorts of giggle juices. That you yourself had requisition for everybody. And as you look at them, you consider how every ounce of that illegal substance has cost you an ounce of dignity, time, conscience, but we don't see anything out of the ordinary. We still haven't looked over the hall. We still haven't looked over the library. Well, if there's, um, you know, more than just the, uh, current classics, perhaps, we can all split up in that room and discover them together. So sorry, professor. You stepped outside to smoke? I did. In a storm? I was before the weather had turned. I think let's stop by the library and take a look there and maybe, I always hated that library. You should do something now. That's a room you should do something with. So ostentatious. It's a great point, and held a, and they're just, very, very good. Like, um, I'll walk into the library, uh, and specifically, like, take a look at the shattered restaurant on the ground, the model restaurant. The modeled restaurant is, as you can see, from the angles of, of the splinters, was clearly, uh, the state of the art, art deco. Is this, this doesn't seem like very much your style. Oh, um, it's, it's not, uh, he surprised me. With the model and a business plan and contracts. Oh, and expected you to thank him. Yes. Such was his way. Generous. When did you break it, claw? Oh, uh, I came in here during the break. Maybe, maybe 20 minutes. Do I remember hearing any kind of noise that might have sounded like, you know, smashing a model restaurant on the floor? The jazz coming from the ballroom was so loud and distracting that it was hard to hear any of the other sounds in the rest of the house, but you were in, which room? The lounge. 20 minutes after dinner, I would have been in the lounge. You wouldn't have heard anything from the library, no. I'm going to look at Claudette and the professor. How many minutes after dinner did you both join me in the lounge? Well, probably pretty close to the hour. Sometime between 11 and 15 and 15. So you were in the kitchen for a while and then taking a smoke break for a while. Drawing out, yes. Probably half past the hour. So 20 minutes after dinner, that's destroyed and then we spent the last half hour before midnight and the lounge together. As you're talking, Ms. Scarlett is looking at the mantle pieces, poking at them. Say something, Susan. I don't know. It's just, I know he had them put in special. Is there something here? What do you mean? The mantle pieces, the science and imagination. Are we looking at some Roman historical figures up here on these bus? There is Sir Isaac Newton on science and on both sides, there are two muses, one on each of the mantle pieces. The one on imagination is holding a tone. The professor, you would know this to be a colliope, the muse of ectopoetry. The naked muse on the other side is Urania, the muse of astronomy, astrology, and the celestial bodies. And if you look a little closer, you will notice that her breasts are a little shinier and more polished than the rest of her. My hey, this man. He was disgusting. Great and the sack, though, right? There is a tiny eye roll of commiserations. So you think there's something on the mantle, that's got that? Yes. I don't want to fondle the naked muse, but one of the opens a door. Do you know which one this is? No, you can fondle Urania and I'll fondle her earpiece. Okay. I'll fondle Sir Isaac Newton. Fantastic. How do you like them apples? Oh, a gravity job. I think we're ignoring the gravity of the situation. You fondle with both hands, a colliope, nothing happens. Actually, you know what? Claude doesn't. She's obsessed with her hand being unclean and has not moved past it. Are you all right? I would love to go wash my hands. I'll go with you. Thank you. Says mustard. And I'll just turn to the group. It's a chef thing. The clean is important and I don't like this feeling. All right. So Mrs. White, you and Fred Mustard move off towards the restroom. Just looking for a little powder room. And if there is time enough, I don't want to go to a powder room close to here. If I think that maybe the murder happened closer to the kitchen, I'm going to look for a powder room closer to the kitchen. Yes, there is a small toilet near the kitchen just outside between the kitchen and the ballroom. And Mustard points at the, oh, the, the, the, the one, sorry, sorry. No, I'm a little weird about this and I want to see like I would have washed my hands frequently in the kitchen, but I'm trying to like lay a little trail for a clean, a massive cleanup happened here. Am I seeing a linen turnover? Can I check the linen closets? And I know where they all are in and around this area. A massive amount of cleanup happens somewhere and I haven't seen the evidence of it yet. So she's, so you go. She has a bit of OCD, but it's also the like, I need to clean my hand and I need to figure out where this cleanup happens. Right. So you go towards the small toilet closet near the kitchen. And as you go in, Mustard stands outside and he says, I had a friend back in the army. He was our chef actually and he, he, he also had to have a thing about just to stay clean and even even in the trenches in Europe, he managed to keep his hands spotless. Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh earlier when you talked about not being able to pull a trigger. I didn't mean it that way. Yes, well, it's, it's, I wouldn't blame you if you did laugh at me. It's quite laughable that a, that a kernel. No, no, I don't think that's true. I'm just sort of, I know where I was. I was in the lounge with the only two people who could move a body easily. So there's just something not adding up. Yeah, who moved the body, who shot the gun. And if there was a cleanup and I, like, here I opened like powder room, where is everything that cleaned up that blood? He built that kitchen for me. Another one of his terrible gifts. I keep it spotless and I missed blood. Oh, I'll not to, you know, call into question. Flunnliness now, but he points to the faucet in the little toilet closet that you had just been in. And you see that there is a tiny smudge of blood. While we're in the library, we're here with Susie Amelda, and the professor, right? So I'm looking at Susie. And like Susie's story and timeline makes a lot of sense. And I'm looking at Amelda. And as we're kind of like searching throughout, I'm going to turn to the professor. Just say, trying to keep an eye out for him. I think he has funny, we've left the hall in the library for the longest. Here's the two rooms that I think it makes the most sense for us to find that gun in. The shots fired. Nobody could have hidden in the kitchen. They couldn't have run all the way across the house. They had to hide it in a short enough amount of time that they could fire from the doorway twice into the study. And then run back, deposit it and join everybody to be surprised, to be surprised. Unless, maybe if it was two people working together, the bullets, one goes into the wall, the other goes into Rutherford. But maybe that person was there to cover tracks. For somebody else, could be that the body didn't get moved into the study. Perhaps Rutherford moved himself, sitting at his desk. And maybe someone not moving through the halls comes out from that rhinoceros with a pipe. Across the head, earlier in that hour, after he had departed from the dining room, the drips of blood, the matting of the hair, the person walks back from here. Leaving the trail of blood, go into the secret passageway, the blood, and not noticing that the pipe was dripping blood until they get back to the kitchen, where they attempt to clean it up. I'm just going to look at you and look down at the briefcase, you're holding and look back and go. You're the only person who was in that kitchen for extended period of time. The professor's going to take a deep long pull on this pipe. That's an interesting theory, Mr. Green. But of course, I know you didn't fire that gun. And we know that somebody did. Deepen your cups, there, Mrs. Peacock. Deepen my bottle's young man because I know how to hold it. I'm just going to nod and say, Fred, you said he had something called the limp. Or that he had a problem firing weapons. He does have a limp with his leg, the issue with firing the gun is psychological. So you don't think he could kill someone with a gun at least? I'm not a psychologist, I'm a chemist. I wonder if he would feel the same compunction firing at a dead body. Do you think he knew that it was a dead body? Or do you think he could actually pull the trigger? What? Someone cleaned up evidence in that kitchen. And if it wasn't you Arnold, it was someone you didn't see while you were in there. But if it was you, someone still had to cover for you with the gun and we need to find it. And we need to find it now. A silence in the room as you hear only the crackling of the two terrible, gaudy fireplaces. One of which, Miss Scarlett, is slowly moving towards. And she reaches out with one tentative hand and cups the left breast. Nothing. And as she strokes the right, you hear. And the globe that Urania is pointing to slides open. And in it you see not a pistol, but a revolver. Erika, there it is. That was Abrea Irongar as Miss White, Lou Wilson as Professor Plum, Brennan Lee Mulligan as Mr. Green and Eric Yishie as everyone and everything else. Hint was edited and designed by Kate Sanders. Music appears courtesy of artlist.io and the creative commons and the great public domain. Thanks for joining us here on the ghastly grounds of the body estate, but even more wonders await you beyond the veil on our Patreon. Come and join us by the fireside, won't you? We'll see you there.