streak
Red-Handed
The case
A shot was heard at the ferry dock. The tax inspector 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
▸ Nothing puts the bee smoker at the garage.
▸ The library was clean — no sign of the flower pail.
▸ The rolling pin was never at the garage.
What they each said
Gus: “I was nowhere near the ferry dock all evening.”
Jax: “Wherever the bee smoker was, I was not.”
Nils: “I never left Kit's side.”
Esme: “I spent the whole evening at the garage.”
Ora: “If you find the flower pail, you find where I was.”
Kit: “Esme 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 hard Red-Handed
Hard brings a sixth suspect and spreads the cast across four rooms, so fewer people share a room and fewer accounts can be checked against each other directly. More of the board has to be inferred rather than read.
Expect to test hypotheses rather than spot the answer. Suppose one of your two candidates lied; they were alone at the scene. If another suspect’s account — true, because only one person lies — puts a second body in that room, that candidate is cleared.
There are 600 hard cases. Every one has exactly one arrangement that fits, proved by a separate program before it ships, so no case ever needs a guess.