streak
Red-Handed
The case
The company man was found dead at the clock tower.
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 poison bottle was never at the back office.
What they each said
Kit: “I was at the garage.”
Ada: “The brass key was in my hands.”
Cira: “I was with Gus.”
Mira: “Ask Cira — we were together.”
Gus: “I spent the whole evening at the back office.”
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 medium Red-Handed
Medium adds a fifth suspect and a third thing. The extra object is what lengthens the chain: working out who carried it usually settles where somebody was, and knowing where people sat rules out who could have been carrying it.
Forensic lines stop naming people directly and start describing them. When a line says whoever carried the lantern is tall, you resolve it against the character sheet — the sheet is always on screen, so the inference never depends on memory.
There are 600 medium cases. Every one has exactly one arrangement that fits, proved by a separate program before it ships, so no case ever needs a guess.