3515 Thats How We Know It Was Murder
Still here! Still okay! Still real busy.
BUT, new strip today, better late than never!
-Rich “BK” Morris
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Still here! Still okay! Still real busy.
BUT, new strip today, better late than never!
-Rich “BK” Morris
Captain Carruthers did it.
Very clever of her.
Certainly nobody would suspect her, given she was somewhere completely different when it happened.
t!
The Knights Who Say Ni! will back me up.
Hmmmm So the killer not only knew that prattwood is lethal to elves, but ALSO knew wood elven resistance to it, huh? And so needed another way to finish the job, hence the (ahem) pinpoint shot through the canthus to hide the fact of that knowledge.
Perhaps didn’t know it, thats why they tried it. They used something else after figuring out it doesn’t work. Unless, of course, prattroot was used not to kill her, but to frame Maula. Which would indicate not only uncommon knowledge about the plant and its effects on the various races, but also on the habits of the tournament-participants.
Doubtful, there were either three separate killers, or the victim survived both the poisoning and the harpsichord, leading to the "third time’s the charm" stab to finish the deal.
Once they find the book that promises to unlock the riddle, Carruthers may end up throwing it at the culprit. Or culprits.
Has anyone considered suicide?
Lol, that wasn’t meant as a generic question… 😀
Wow, talk about awkward wording xD
I think I saw some theories to that effect under earlier pages?
Was also wondering, considering Cadugan is half-elf, being human would have conferred any additional resistance, but that is something he’d also want to keep to himself.
Plus, wanting an entire pharmacological breakdown regarding pratroot’s effect on various fantastic species in the middle of an entertaining whodunnit is not only one *heck* of an ask–but might might *might* interrupt the flow–somewhat. 😀
I shall keep my opinions to myself and just compliment you on how this continues to develop. Well done. 😉
The main reasons we aren’t likely to provide a complete product monograph (aside from not knowing!) is that (A) I try to create as small a footprint in Rich’s world as possible, and (B) he likes to leave doors open for future stories!
But we truly do appreciate your excitement. Thanks.
t!
‘NOW you tell me…."
This strip is *chef kiss* for a mystery. Answers several questions while raising more! My brain is both soothed and churning 🙂
i love how you set up the questions, seemed to answer them, shift intellectual or emotional focus, and then really answer them with a thump! And without contradicting anything prior, but showing how Cadugan was aware of the level of truth. Hallmarks of the better mysteries 🙂
and of course, it still leaves everyone as a potential suspect, as he could’ve told Maula, and obviously somebody knew.
Yes, I’m including even Cadugan as a suspect- his motive is to annoy Runtherd for being a "royal pita" by upsetting political balance.
I notice that Captain Carruthers now says "the killer" and not "Lady Bloodhand". The mystery has deepened from her point of view as well.
I’d love to hear Cadugan expound on how deeply pratroot puts a wood elf under. Could they be mistaken for dead by a casual observer? By a non-wood-elf doctor? (And if so, could Taurenil have been trying to fake her own death?)
I’m really interested in seeing the expressions on the doctor and the abbot, and anyone else who comes to learn that the pratroot didn’t kill Taurenil. It would be a real kick in the gut if one thought one’s greatest crime was evidence tampering, and it turned out the victim was alive and well until you tried to "conceal" her manner of death…
So lets see. This is a good whondunnit, I feel we have most, if not all, the clues we need to solve the case in the first arc (as it should be!). We still need the interviews to begin to understand why, and therefore who.
The murder killed in a way that any form of reincarnation would be impossible, just in case. But to hide the way of murdering they made it appear as if it was done with Prattroot, probably done to implicate Bloodhand.
To further keep the ruse going, they made it appear they threw a harpsichord on top, the way a murderer who used Prattroot would. It would ensure that people noticed the murder, an hour was set, and investigation would look at the obvious, but not beyond. When people find out that she was dead when the instrument fell on her, they’d blame the herb. You’d need someone who realized it wasn’t the fall on the head, but realized it couldn’t be poison that would move on to look into the next area, the chances of this happening would be very rare, but Cadugan isn’t just any detective.
So now onto the mistake. The obvious one is that this reveals that it had to be someone who knew of Bloodhand’s beef and that she consumes prattroot. Not everyone would be knowledgeable in this.
The other mistake might be that so few people know that wood elves are not killed by prattroot but simply anesthetized. Not a lot of people know this. Finding out someone who could know all of this would shorten the list a lot. That said I do not think the murder had to know this. The needle might have been to ensure they could not be revived, but they did not realize it was what actually murdered them.
The mistakes the murderer did then where, that the harpsichord did not do enough brain damage to prevent reincarnation (which would have been discovered in that case). Next that prattroot, which would have appeared as the initial cause even in that case (due to the smell and tongue) would actually not have possibly been the way to murder Taurenil. Because of this further investigation revealed the apparent true murder method, and revealed a lot about the murderer’s intentions and goals, their misdirect was lost, and now we have a clearer weapon.
We cannot, of course, comment on an ongoing investigation, but I loved reading this.
More than once.
t!
You left out the facts, that originally it was said/thought to be an accident, and that it was Vera Broadwind who insisted on the investigation. If we go with your line of thoughts, the murderer was counting on an investigation, and used prattroot to put the blame on Maula. This opens up a few possibilities:
1) Maula was a random choice. In this case the murderer likely would have been fine with the accident-theory, as their main goal was to kill Taurenil (eventually also to get her book). Closes out Vera as suspect.
2) Maula was a delibarate choice, and in fact, she was the main target. That could be for personal or political reasosns. This would mean however, that seeing it as an accident wouldn’t reach the desired results, and that makes Vera the main suspect. The question is than, how the missing book fits into the story. But than again, it was not necessarily the murderer who took it.
In both these cases, however, the culprit would have known, that prattroot is not lethal to wood elves. Because if they didn’t, they still could have try to poison her, than use the harpsichord to make sure she is truly dead, or to make her death look like as an accident.
Makes sense that wood elves are immune to prattroot
I wouldn’t call that "immune", exactly… more like resistant, maybe?
My money is on one of Justyne’s hairpins were purloined and used as the murder weapon… And the murderer had a direct positive connection to Taurenil’s family.
*Hatpins I ment hatpin… Darn autocorrect! *shakes fist*
At least it didn’t autocorrect to harpoon?
Cue Dramatic Chipmunk!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhBM_Yay6w
I can’t believe nobody’s said this yet.
"Shows what you know. Turns out she was only mostly dead."
And in this case, she really WAS saying "To bluff"!
Unlike ‘Clue’ where you can’t be certain who ‘did it’ because there were several endings and it depended on which copy your theatre got, I seem to recall a movie where ‘everyone did it’ but the name escapes me.
‘Murder by Death’ popped into my head, completely uninvited, but I don’t think that was it and someone else can check, it’s late and if go to imdb right now it’ll be dawn before I get to bed 🙂
Only one that comes to mind is ‘Murder On the Orient Express’. Murder by death was the opposite and a fun spoof of murder mystery movies.
There’s a couple others, where the murder is in effect a lynching committed by many to most of the suspects. But in that case, as in MOTOE, the conspiracy effectively makes them a single corporate entity.
This might be more like the thrillers where there is more than one murder plot going, and the trick is to figure out who got there first.
The more I think about it, the more possibilities come to my mind. AlyxVixen wrote an analysis before, saying Taurenil was standing when she got hit by the harpsichord. How do we know than, that she already consumed prattroot by that time? Cpt. Carruthers needed some time to be informed about the case and to get to the abbey. That time might have been enough for the symptoms of "poisoning" to show, even if she consumed prattroot after the "accident". As such, the murderer could have fed it to her, because she wasn’t killed by the instrument. Or, someone who knew its not lethal to woodelves gave it to her, so the murderer thinks that she is dead. It also could be, that it was indeed the harpsichord that killed her, merely by chance, as a splinter or an otherwise pointy part of it flew into her eye when it crashed.
Anyways, there is a chance, that she was very much alive as she was taken down to the cellar, and she got killed there in her sleep. That would indicate though, that someone suspected or even knew (after an examination) that she is still alive.
Abbott Heigh is definately holding back some information. The question is, whether it is something about her death, her book, or was he trying to hide the fact that she is alive, not knowing that she is already really dead.
Burying her quickly would have made sense too: She could have been freed at a later time point, and as her "killer" would be sure she is gone, she would have been able to move around and do all kind of stuff without anyone noticing it or suspecting her to be behind it. For instance she could have stolen the prizes, so that they are staying in the abbey after all…
When you read a specific hypothesis and think, "Shit – I wish *I’d* thought of that!"
t!
And now I wonder which one you mean, cause I wrote here a few… 🙂