HINT! ep3: Will They, Won't They

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number.

The tinkling, clunking piano continues to play, echoing through the high ceilings, the parquette floors,

as

Susie Scarlet

looks around nervously.

You're pen pals with Morlene?

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

often seen gallivantering around the town with 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 was 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 through 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.

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, oh, it wasn't actually Marlene saying all of those things.

It was Rutherford saying she said all those things.

So when I confronted him, I...

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 were perhaps close with Marlene and she had 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 go to the press with this.

And it would.

It's hard enough as it is.

There just simply aren't roles 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 too risque, but

I had to get a hold of them

at any cost.

But I...

I didn't kill him.

I...

She points to the piano.

I...

If you would like, one one of you,

go ahead and bring the candlestick over here.

Uh, yeah, I'll

look to see if either of you wants to join me because we've been using the buddy system the whole time.

I'll come with you.

Uh, and I'll pop into the lounge.

Uh, 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 um

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 all still feel like a mystery to me

um

okay i'm just gonna 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 gonna hike them up a little little bit.

Like, sorry, sorry, this is not

uh, 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 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 our wits about us and we'll figure this out.

Yeah.

And then, yeah, go into the lounge and grab the candlestick.

Is 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.

And they come back with it.

So you return, and Miss Scarlett holds out her hand.

May I?

All right.

Well.

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 as 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, just on a whim.

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 other?

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 thing.

The photos I'm going to place to one side, but I'll look through the contracts.

There's there's gold bars in here that I'm gonna leave but I'll look through the contracts in here and see if there's anything in the contracts is this all new to you Cass

oh um a hundred percent I mean as you all know I haven't represented uh the the body corporation

since I worked for my father who passed away a couple 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 rifle through them and see who the contracts were with or what they might have anything to do with.

They are various various things i think they are um

different contracts that he's had um with people that you've known in the past that he's been friendly with again

his large s

of of giving uh a a club membership or uh or you know a piece of land and contracts that he's signed with these people um that he's given gifts to but it seems like he's had to do quite a lot 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 extranational corporation research and development, let me see.

And he looks through it, and

most of it, you know, 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.

Hmm.

Well, it's a good thing Germany has a good liberal government.

Fucking Krauts.

I will listen.

I served in the war, you know, you know.

I'm not talking about you, Fred.

You're not a Krauts.

They're Krauts.

You're Fred.

Completely different condiment.

You're mustard.

It was moussillard at one point, yes.

Okay.

I'd I'd like to grab the photographs

and walk over

and hand them to Susie.

I.

I'm sorry,

I thought you didn't like me.

I don't have to

like somebody to believe that they shouldn't be hurt.

Thank you.

I thank you.

Um,

And,

you know, if you do write to Marlene, please.

Well, I don't know what's going to happen after all this, but I'd love to sort of at least feel like I can also be a pen pal of hers.

I'll.

I'll give you her address.

You should write her a letter.

Thank you.

So you

made the player piano play.

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

didn't have time to, you know,

I didn't have time to grab them and move the candlestick 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 unfolded.

Leave out no details, Lizzie.

Well, I

was in the lounge after everybody else had left.

I was sulking, but then I

realized that the candlestick was the same one that was used in the piano.

And so I grabbed it, pocketed it, kept it under my dress for the entirety 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 candlestick

would activate the safe.

I knew that he had gone to a safe and

grabbed the candlestick.

I didn't know where it went.

How did you know that?

As you guys are talking, Mrs.

White kind of like stiffens and then leaves the room.

Uh, I'll dirt my law.

You can come with me.

I'm going to dart after Claudette.

Yeah, Fred also comes because I was.

I think it wise that none of us should leave the room.

What is happening?

Miss Peacock, you stay with Miss Scarlett.

Oh,

right.

Storming out.

It's not a sprint, but it's...

We were trying to find fingerprints or evidence on the candlestick, 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 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

drunkenly patting Miss Scarlett on the shoulder, saying, 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 nods in agreement.

All right, so we check for more fingerprints on...

or blood and the others what of the gun

i don't 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 for the piano.

There's other octagonal instruments, essentially, or no?

No,

we were focused on finding the candlestick because it went missing.

But if that's just Scarlett figuring out her whole deal, that's fine.

But that means we're still looking for the blunt instrument that killed Rutherford.

So the gun is missing because there was shots fired, clearly.

And the candlestick was missing because Miss Scarlett took it 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.

Understood.

Let's go ahead and dust for Prince.

And I take out my notebook and

put the fingerprints out in front of you.

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?

Uh, yes.

Very good.

Um, so you two two head off to the dining room.

Uh, you two are here, uh, and you're fingerprinting the weapons?

Yeah.

Okay.

So you fingerprint the weapons and on the wrench, uh, which is in the glass case still,

you notice that uh the the case still has fingerprints that are unfamiliar, do not match any of the sets here.

Do the fingerprints uh give any like understanding of how to open the case?

Uh, yes, yes, it just the glass slides out, you know, just as a normal sort of frame.

Um, and you see.

I'll take out a pocket handkerchief, lift the wrench out and hold it in my pocket handkerchief for you to dust.

Yeah, uh, 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, uh, especially at like little joints, uh, I would probably like grab your hand just to press in a little bit to see if you like fleck off any like dried blood.

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.

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 I'm looking up, I'll go,

all right, do these prints that don't match seem similar to the ones that I'm guessing are Rutherford's, or are they different from Rutherford's?

Yes, they are similar.

Are they similar to Rutherford's?

I would bet this is this is Rudd's prints.

Oh, oh, that makes sense.

Uh, 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 a pipe, uh, it is a heavy metal cylinder, patina green with age.

And this,

it has raised lettering on it.

It reads I-M-P-V-E-S-P-V-I-I-I-I

T-I-M-P-V-I.

All uppercase letters.

So the Romans.

You wouldn't see four I's in a row.

No, not if it was a real number.

But again, this can't be...

It cannot be one Roman numeral, but I wonder if it...

You went to...

You went to...

Like,

the boys' finishing school.

The Hutchings Institute for Cultured Boys.

You watch her try so sincerely to not scream laugh at that.

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 learn to care for the Shetland ponies.

There was a lot.

What's a Shetland pony?

Shetland pony?

It's a long-haired miniature horse from Scotland.

Why?

Why?

Well, that's culture, Claudette.

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.

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 can't, 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.

Roman Empire plumbing.

Yeah, workers of the world unite.

You know what?

We should go talk to the professor.

Okay, um, do we want to check if

bl

Yeah, we can check for blood, but I think that the president will probably, you know, he's a student of the antiquities.

Some Roman numerals might fall more within his wheelhouse.

Okay, um, while this is happening in the dining room,

Professor Plum leads Colonel Mustard into the dining room.

Are we looking for more of Rutherford's little secrets?

Not this time.

We're looking for those of his associate, Mr.

Green.

Cassidy.

Yes.

Do you suspect him?

Miss White told me that he was very eager to get in here.

Hmm.

My hope is to figure out why.

He was last seen with Mr.

Body and in this room.

Yes.

All right.

I'll search, split up and search.

Please, let's be thorough.

All right.

Um, you're both looking around.

Do you take...

What do you what?

Where do you?

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 that's where we had all been sitting.

I think I moved 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 sheaf of papers.

I uh 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 Ulysses Green.

He found something.

I did.

He 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?

It 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, Fred.

It is damning, and Mr.

Green will need to explain himself.

I should think so.

Oh, and um

about the

what I was doing during that time.

I uh I don't know if you,

any of your friends who saw service ever had them, but sometimes I get these episodes.

I

can't

see right.

I can't.

Everything feels...

It's hard to breathe, and

I

didn't want to.

It's quite embarrassing.

Something that I'm sure will go away with time.

I hope so.

But I've met many other men who served who have similar experiences, and it's nothing to be ashamed about.

Yes, I went well.

I've been through a lot, Fred.

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, so.

I'll push open 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.

Miss 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.

Very gentlemanly of you.

I took a knife.

Do you still have it on you?

Uh.

She does.

Yeah.

I'm gonna 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 very wealthy man.

If a court would honor it.

I understand.

And I step away from the side and like split the difference between like 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

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 legal matter.

And 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 the cops came.

Well, the three of you were seemingly above suspicion, or so 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 would be quite foolhardy yes let's say i did it

that means in the intervening hour between dinner and when the gunshots were heard i would have found some

blunt instrument or 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.

By your logic, Mr.

Green, 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 the 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.

He does have the limp.

You mean you physically cannot pull a trigger?

Not without being physically ill, no.

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 blackmail 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.

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 crueler court than 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

wait you have kids are you married yeah i have three kids you have three children

what of your wife what you've never seen 37 year old lawyer oh i just they're never at the party.

I never, yeah, I never

bring my kids to work with me as I run around pimping and wheeling and dealing drugs.

Yeah, but you don't talk about your wife or anything.

And speaking of wife, I love you.

I love Martha very dearly.

I know she'll bring it up.

Martha.

Martha.

Martha.

Martha.

Martha Green.

Martha.

Did she take your name?

No, she kept her own name.

Martha Chartreuse.

Oh.

And not to pry or anything.

She's a French lady.

Not speaking of French and not to fry.

Do you...

Are you...

Is there a...

Mr.

White?

I...

Um...

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.

Any good gentleman wouldn't bother a young lady with an engagement ring on.

Yeah,

I feel

well.

I've known about the ring for a while and the use for it.

And I'm sorry I've never mentioned my kids.

No.

Kelly, Forrest, and Mint are the love of my life.

I'm going to hit Brennan.

I always liked the name Kelly.

Kelly, she's a woman.

Mint is a psychotic name for a child.

Oh, little minty.

Can we say that?

No, little Minty.

You call him Little Minty.

Well, it's short for Montgomery.

Oh.

Murder you.

Mintgomery.

All right, we're going to take a little break here for a second.

I think that to recover from

things were at the height of their tension.

Eric said, I have a wife and kids, and we have to be.

I'm sorry, wife.

Oh my god.

What?

Exit.

Full record scratch moment.

This is when Taylor would run in and go, stay in it, stay in it, stay in it.

He's not here.

Yellow.

He's not here.

Oh, Taylor's not here.

We can get back to it.

We can get back to it.

Okay, he doesn't even know.

You're right.

It would be strategically insane for you to

have him sign this will and and then immediately knock him off.

Yeah.

The argument I got into with Rutherford before all this happened was

telling him that this is insane.

This thing, and you're 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

told him it was insane.

Why I have been out of, I've been outside of the business in the rain, currying 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 dirigueur for him.

Yes, but those people got their houses or their cars or whatever it is while they were alive.

Poor Cassidy has to wait until he's dead 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.

It 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 it by letter.

You know,

I had just gotten through.

I hadn't been able to talk to him in person about the insanity of all this.

And I was trying to say, look, before we do this,

invite me back into the business.

Hire 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 sat for them on his shelf.

That is true.

But

it feels like maybe he was putting you on a different kind of shelf.

Feels 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?

If 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 signing 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.

Not 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 Kakamame

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.

Alright, we still have a smoking gun to find then.

Where are we not?

Where have you not searched?

Well, we've been in the library, but we haven't combed it over.

And billiard room as well.

The billiard room as well.

I checked the billiard room, and I did 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 a room that none of us had eyelined to might yield some answers.

All right, worth a shot.

Should we get those?

Might be worth two.

I think Plum is going to look to Mr.

Green.

It's a sign of 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

spill on that contract, it would be the destruction of my future.

I'm gonna look over the briefcase.

Does it have a number code or a key?

Hmm.

It does not.

It doesn't lock.

Nope.

Fair.

Well, then.

Arnold, do take care with that.

I.

I think that money would be better spent by you.

Or not spent.

Such as it were with Rutherford.

All right, shall we

pass by the ballroom,

pick up the ladies, and head to the billiard room.

Very good.

Uh, so you walk

over to the ballroom, and uh, 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, um, 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 ladies' 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.

We'll see who inherits what.

Well, at the very least, you can redo some of this terribly hacky decor.

I uh I will take it under advisement.

Imelda, 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.

Uh, and you all move towards the billiard room.

Uh, 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 that the Roman numerals strike?

Oh, um, yeah, sorry.

Uh, I

guess I've just been wanging it around and gesticulating with a metal pipe.

Yeah,

is this the new murder suspect weapon?

Not that I can tell.

Uh, did we, we, did we spend any time trying to like blood check it?

No, you just, uh, you checked the wrench and dusted the wrench, and now the pipe is okay.

Do you mind holding it?

Oh, sure.

I took Latin in

college.

Uh, okay.

We we all took it in college

and Greek.

Yes, not fluent, but

I can speak it.

Oh,

that's the opposite.

No, yes, I took them in college anyway.

Uh 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.

Um and this is it's a segment of the pipe.

You know, the pipe cuts off before,

you know, it looks like 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 the sense is the composition of the residue?

It is rusted metal.

Is it 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 kind of abbreviations of words.

Yes, got it.

You would know that likely the IMP might stand for Imperator, like the Emperor.

The V-E-S-P might be like the name of the Emperor and Vestation.

You wouldn't know that.

Who said that?

Um, I get the sense that this is um the historical markings for the

whoever was ruling Rome at the time of its construction.

Oh.

With the residue on it, I'm going to say, oxidized.

And are we, can we, can we look over it for any trace of blood?

Uh, yes, if you look, do you use your

yeah, I'll use my magnifying glasses, use my spectacles to kind of look in and uh yeah, 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 once we're 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 Vs, there is a smudge of blood.

Well,

I think we may have found our murder weapon.

So the gun is

the gun is a cover.

The gun is a.

Or perhaps even just the second act to this, our first act.

So are there

two murderers?

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 telegraph to the two of you by like 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 hand.

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.

It's like the grip you would need on this pipe to actually like bludgeon someone to death for it.

And thinking of the matting.

Under the nails too.

Under the nails as well.

Under the nails.

I don't actually even need to swab it.

We just want some indication that someone who has not yet held this pipe.

So I think Fred and Imelda and

Susie.

Oh,

and so you swab the three of their hands

and you come away with nothing.

Claudette?

Mr.

Green?

Yes.

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 hand.

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.

I only had.

Sure.

I'm happy that I held it the whole time.

Yes, I never picked it up.

Right.

Yeah.

Then, no, you don't have any in your hand, but you notice that like when you're rubbing it, it's it comes off fairly easily.

Yeah.

Was Was there anything on Green's hands?

No.

No, there was not.

Susie, walk us again through the timeline very briefly.

After dinner, you

straight to the ballroom with the candlestick.

I'd had it all the way through dinner, and you know, it took me a minute to figure out

the piano.

And then,

you know, I

placed it, but by that time, it was already

the gunshots.

How did you know to look in the ballroom for the safe?

Had 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 thing.

That's correct.

And you used the playoff piano to cover your tracks

i didn't want him to hear me and think that i was looking when did you decide when did you replace the candlestick oh that was um after

um and she looks at uh fred muster at this point she says

well when i was um

being hysterical I did take that opportunity to run it back.

Candlestick went back.

I'm sorry.

I I.

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?

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?

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 corridor other than you moving him.

That's true.

I think that

I probably

am one of the few men here that has the physical strength for it,

save for yourself and the professor.

Have we investigated the actual Billiards room yet, or no?

You had not.

If you'd like to give it a cursory glance.

Yeah, I think so.

I think I'll give it a glance as I look at it and I go.

There's nothing here but the

secret panel that unlocks the bar that you have so thoughtfully packed with gins.

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 requisitioned 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 you 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?

It 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, Imelda.

And they're just

glassy eyes.

Very good.

Like,

and I'll walk into the library 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 the splinters,

was clearly 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,

it 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 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?

Probably pretty close to the hour.

Sometime between 11:50 and 11.

So you were in the kitchen for a while and then taking a smoke break for a while.

Drying 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 in the lounge together.

Um

as you're talking, Miss Scarlet is looking at the mantelpieces,

poking at them.

Say something, C's.

I...

This is...

I don't know.

It's just...

I know he had them put in special.

Is there something

here?

What do you mean?

The

mantelpieces, the science and imagination, and

are we looking at some

Roman historical figures up here on these busts?

There is Sir Isaac Newton on science, and on

both sides, there are two muses, one on each of the mantelpieces.

The one on imagination is holding a tome.

The professor, you would know this to be Calliope,

the muse of epic poetry.

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.

I hate this man.

He was disgusting.

Crate in the sack, though, right?

There is a tiny eye roll of commiseration.

So you think there's something

on the mantle, Miss Garland?

Yes.

I don't want to fondle the naked muse, but what if it opens a door?

No.

Oh, here, you fondle.

Do you know which one this is?

You can fondle Urania, and

I'll fondle Calliope.

Okay.

I'll fondle Sir Isaac Newton.

Fantastic.

He liked it.

How do you like them, apples?

Oh, a gravity joke.

I think we're ignoring the gravity of the situation.

Professor,

you fondle with both hands

Calliope.

nothing happens actually, you know what

Claude doesn't she's obsessed with like her hand being unclean and like 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 then I'll just turn to the group.

It's a chef thing

Being 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 uh toilet near the kitchen uh just outside between the kitchen and the ballroom uh

and uh mustard points at the he's like oh the one sorry sorry no i just i'm a little weird about this and uh

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 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 happened somewhere, and I haven't seen any evidence of it yet.

So she's,

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 happened.

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 back in the army.

He was our chef, actually.

And

he also had had a thing about needing to stay clean.

And

even even in the trenches in Europe, he managed to keep his hands spotless.

I'm 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.

I wouldn't blame you if you did laugh at me.

It's quite laughable that a colonel.

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 the 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 well, not to,

you know, call into question your

cleanliness 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, Imelda, 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 Imelda.

And as we're kind of like searching throughout, I'm going to turn to the Professor and just say.

Trying to keep an eye out for the thing.

He has funny.

We've left the hall and the library for the longest.

These are 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 it 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 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, seating 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, going to 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 an 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 bottles, young man, because I know how to hold it.

I'm just gonna nod and say,

Fred, you said he had something called a limp.

Or that he had a problem

firing weapons.

He does have a limp with his leg.

The um 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 he knew that it was a dead body?

Or do you think he was.

do you think he could actually

pull the trigger?

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 Scarlet is

slowly moving towards.

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.

Eureka, there it is.

That was Abria Iyengar as Miss White, Lou Wilson as Professor Plum, Brendan Lee Mulligan as Mr.

Green, and Erika Ishii as everyone and everything

else.

Hint was edited and designed by Kate Sanders.

Music appears courtesy of artless.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.