A little mystery challenge by me

[AC-Phoenix]

(Challenge might be a bad word for this - its just a mystery for you to solve. There is really nothing to gain besides personal satisfaction

This is a mystery I posted in an MMO guilds forum today, and told them to post it here too as people are more versed with Mystery through Anime/Manga/Light novel here.
So if the story I wrote is too hard I'll get that feddback here too.

Please note though that it was not meant to be hard in the first place, the first attempt was even to easy and my test-reader solved it a bit too fast for my taste so I had to add a few elements to make it harder (This is the same my guild got though).
Have fun discussiong it; I'll post the soltuion as soon as my guild had enough time to think about it.
Please also excuse the skeletal structure of the story, it was meant to be short, this does btw mean that you can't solve the 'why dunnit' you got enough clues to solve it though. -> No decalogue violations either.

In case you have any further questions - shoot




This is the story of an old mansion.
It once belonged to an unscrupulous man whose wife died within 4 years after they moved in.
However, he got engaged to his maid only a just few months later...
The other servant's started to gossip and silently accused him of murdering his wife, yet none of them had the courage to speak up.
Years passed and one day, when his (new) wife wanted to bring him his afternoon tea, she couldn't open the door. She knocked and knocked but no one opened. Eventually one of them got the master key and opened the door. There they have found their master - With the only key(bar the master key) in his cold hands and a kitchen knife stuck in his heart.
People immediately suspected the Butler, who held the master key, though the crime was not possible for him as he was in the dining room with the rest of the household - for several hours he had a watertight alibi and the key has never left his possession.

After this people believed that the man was killed by the ghost of his first wife, whom their master has indeed murdered many years before, as they found out from his dairy. Eventually they have abandoned the mansion and it stood empty for over 40 years and people whispered that the murdered lady's ghost still resides there - waiting to kill the next unfaithful man, locked in the study.

After 45 years of being forsaken, a rich family has moved in with their servants:


- The Master (38), an architect and hobby marital artist
- The Mistress (30), a fashion designer
- The Butler (55), servant and the master's sparring partner
- The Maid(20), servant, pretty small
- The Cook(31), servant

A year later the mistress conceived a healthy boy.

They should live there happily for the next 16 years to come, until that faithful night, when the rain was so strong that the streets were flooded and the phone was out of order, and only the internal line still worked.
Due to the heavy storm, there was no way in and outside the mansion, even their mysterious guest, whom they have given shelter could no longer leave.
Yet, everything was peaceful in there, and after dinner at 18:30, they all split throughout the mansion, shortly after the master took off to do some work in the study and the lady to sleep while asking the maid to bring her some of the sleeping pills the doctor has prescribed her, since she had trouble sleeping again. - the Maid did so 15 minutes later.

An hours has passed and it was now about 20:00h; The mistress was sleeping sound in her bedroom after taking the pills, the cook was in the kitchen late, like every night, looking for a knife that got lost about a week ago; The guest and the son in the dining room; Both the butler and the maid waited in the ready room for orders, until they took off to prepare a tea cart and get tea and snacks from the kitchen since her master has pre-ordered some an hour ago for 20:40(order to bring tea at 20:40 came therefore on 19:30), as the butler has told her.
Eventually the maid left the kitchen to bring the tea at 20:20. 5 Minutes later the butler left and went back to the ready room.

Around 20:45 the cook and the son came up because they have heard a loud knocking sound for a while now.
There, in front of the study they saw the maid and her tea-cart outside the study, knocking at the door, loudly shouting "Master, master are you alright?"
When they asked what was up the maid said that she has just brought up the tea, but the door was closed, the last thing she heard was a terrible scream from inside, she couldn't get in though because the door was locked, which was strange since he usually never locked the door.

in the meantime, the guest and all the other residents, bar the wife who still slept have arrived.
After another 5 Minutes of knocking on the door they decided that the son should wake up the mistress too, and open the door using the butler's master key as soon as she has arrived.
In there they found the master lying in a pool of blood - with a knife in sticking in his chest. Immediately the maid ran over to feel his pulse, but it was already too late. The mansion's master was dead.

When the son ran over to help the now shocked maid back on her fleet he gasped and pointed at something laying in the blood, next to the victim's upper body.
There- next to the dead man's body was the only key, bar the master key to the study, lying in the pool of blood, together with some china shards...
While everybody else was shocked and blamed the previous mistress' ghost from the past, the guest chuckled and said:"Don't be deceived. Our culprit is out of flesh and blood, and definitely no ghost."
The crying mistress locked at him with a mixture of tiredness and anger and shouted:"Oh and who might you be to know this?!"
With a calm voice he answered:" Dan Nonac, detective. Now let us stay calm and analyze the facts. first I need to know where all of you have been in the 1 1/2 hours."
After everyone has told him, where they claim to have been, he chuckled again.
"This case is clear", he said and suddenly pointed at the murderer, "the culprit is you!"



After this short story I have two questions for you before the great detective reveals the culprit's identity.

Q1: Who is the culprit?
Q2: What was their modus operandi?

And since I'm no fiend I'll even give you this floor plan.

Spoiler for Floor Plan:

Good luck finding the key element to this case.

yours trolling,

AC-Phoenix(or Dracon in case some people from my guild are here too )

[unsuspectingvisitor]

The maid is the culprit. She made it looks like a closed room with the master's master key. After they opened the room, she then placed the key near the victim and pretend that she had found the master key.

[kona~chan]

The Mistress is the culprit, she drugged the master first with the pills then stabbing him with knife she stole, after locked the door then she pretend to be asleep in her room, as for the key it's just like unsuspectingvisitor said or maybe the son helping her to do it.

[Kimidori]

I think you should post this in General Chat suforum instead of this, there're only a handful number of people visit this Fan Creations subforum a day

[AC-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Kimidori

I think you should post this in General Chat suforum instead of this, there're only a handful number of people visit this Fan Creations subforum a day

It was there and got moved here

To bad i had to keep it short for my guild lol - too many clues to close to another.
It certainly fulfills the requirement of not being to hard, though I have yet to see a 100% solution

[Kaihan]

Fun read, spent some time on it, here my answer:

Sounds like there is two master key, one is the Master holding onto and the other one is the Mistress. So I'm gonna call them master and mistress key to not get confused.
Butler
The Butler goes into the mistress room who is completely knocked out and takes Mistress key from her room (Mistress couldn't hear the banging noise yet the cook who on the other side downstairs can).
Butler goes into the room, kills the Master and lay the Master key on the dead body hand and locks the door using the Mistress key. Returns the key back and goes back to the ready room.

Edt: Mistake, Butler has the key not the Mistress.

[AC-Phoenix]

Only one master key, i just wrote 'bar the master key' to show that its not a Kinzo-like study where the servan'ts master key won't work. The otrher key is the study key.
I also added another 5 words to the story since the complete modus operandi would be wild guessing without them. Sry didn't realize it until I discussed a problem with one of my guildmates theories.

Don't worry though Its still fair to solve without them.

[Kaihan]

My mistake, looks like I misread a part, the Butler has the master key not the Mistress...

[AC-Phoenix]

Solution:

Suspects + why someone could and couldn't have done it, and finally the culprit:

Guest: Knox 7th the detective himself must not commit the crime


Son: Was in the same room as the guest a.k.a the detective; so he basically has the best alibi one can have.

Cook: The Butler has left after him, so he would have had to cross the butler's line of sight to get out of there, same goes for the maid's line of sight. It's also not possible for him to climb up and use a window, as there was no hint that there was a ladder or rope, besides he would have been pretty wet from the storm and there was not enough time to dry himself redress and get up

Butler: was with the cook after the maid left , so he would have had to cross the maid when going up
About the window same as Cook. he was a bit tricky as I deliberately chose his age to be old enough have been there during the first crime, which basically had the same trick.

Mistress: While the question whether she really took the pills is a rightful one she couldn't have done it as the maid said she hear the death scream and was knocking at the door ever since. --> the maid would have seen her fleeing the scene since Knox 3rd states that there must be no more than one secret passage. Combining this knowledge with Knox 9th (It is forbidden for the case to be resolved with clues that are not presented.), you can safely rule her out as culprit.
And while she would have had the opportunity to get out of the window, and entering the study that way too, she would still be pretty wet afterwards, and remember there was no hint that the floor there was wet (not counting the blood here)

Maid:
And here is your culprit.
You can actually rule everyone else out because everyone would have had to cross her way
And now to how she did it.

The first question while solving the whodunit part you should ask yourself is how one could overpower a martial artist such as the victim.
Remember the sleeping pills she had to bring the mistress? She simply put it in the tea. The china shards in the blood are proof that she was in the room, having drugged her master, bigger shards were pretty easy to hide anywhere in the room.
making the martial artist was a way for me to troll people having solved suspect and the main part of how the maid did it a bit since she was described being small and the master a martial artist .

And yes, the maid did of course lie regarding the scream, her master was sleeping after all. I specifically choose prescribed sleeping pills so you could assume that they work fast, and were enough to at least weaken the victim.
Now to the prize question: How the heck did she get into the room.

It's actually pretty easy once you know that she is the culprit, the room was never locked before she entered.
She killed the master using the cooks missing knife and the sleeping pills and locked the door behind her, pretending to have hear a scream and wildly knocking at the door to get other people's attention.
When she got back in she was the first one to run to the Master to get his pulse, this is where she dropped the key in the blood.
Which brings us back to my last sentence in the OP 'yours trolling' well I told you you have to find the KEY element of this case


There was a total of 2 solves, with one being on another forum.