streak
Red-Handed
The case
A shot was heard at the tailor shop. The company man did not get up.
Everyone gave an account, and one of them is false. Whoever gave it was alone at the scene. That person is the killer.
What the investigators established
▸ The glass plate was found at the lighthouse.
▸ Nothing puts the tankard at the tailor shop.
What they each said
Ora: “I never went near the tailor shop.”
Ada: “The tankard was never in my hands.”
Cira: “Ask Ada — we were together.”
Mira: “Cira and I were together the whole time.”
Drag each suspect into a chair, and each object into the room it was found in. Tapping works too.
Marrow Bay and the people in it
Every case is drawn from the same small town. You will meet these sixteen again and again — the same trades, the same grudges, the same debts. Read them the way a consulting detective would: as character, not as evidence. Nothing here places anybody anywhere, and a baker is as likely to be at the ferry dock as behind the counter.
Up before dawn, so sees everyone who moves. Still sore about last year’s pie judging.
Has a key to every door in town, and swears that means nothing.
Tends every animal in the bay — and every hive of Gus’s. Knows all the back paths.
Owes Jax more than a season’s wages. The ferry runs anyway.
Sells flowers to people who feel guilty. Business is good.
Can fix anything with an engine, and charges whatever the day allows.
Keeps bees and grudges. Only one of the two stings.
Runs the library, and the quietest gossip network in the bay.
Winds every clock in town, so knows exactly when everything happened.
Keeps the saloon, and keeps the book of debts. Half the town is in it.
Reads nobody’s letters, and somehow knows all their news.
Mends coats and hears confessions. Neither one leaves the shop.
Photographs everything, and has not spoken to Ada since the judging.
Mends shoes, and can tell where a person has walked from the mud on them.
Extends credit and collects favours. The ledger is memory.
Keeps the light, sees the whole bay, and admits to nothing.
About easy Red-Handed
Easy cases give you four suspects, three rooms and two things to place. Six placements and four short statements — enough to learn the shape of the reasoning without keeping much in your head.
The move to learn here is the contradiction. Take every account at face value and look for two that cannot both be true: three people claiming a room with two chairs, or somebody vouching for a person who says they were alone. One of those two is lying, and — this is the useful part — everybody else is telling the truth.
There are 600 easy cases. Every one has exactly one arrangement that fits, proved by a separate program before it ships, so no case ever needs a guess.