《Whodunnit ?》Chapter 13 - The Past Haunts
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Giles came rushing out of nowhere to the sound of the guest's cry's, groans and screams. "What's happening? Is everyone alright?"
Jamie gave Giles a clue by simply pointing into the spa. Upon inspection of Talia's body, Giles quickly jumped back into game mode.
"I'm afraid that Miss Hanson has met her end. As you all know now. You will only be able to investigate one area. The crime scene, which is the spa itself. The last known whereabouts, which is Miss Hanson's room and the Morgue, where Miss Hanson's body will lay. Please head back down to the parlor and I will be with you shortly to hear your decisions."
With that. The guests all transcended downstairs and started strategising.
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The trio scattered over to the pool table. Whereas the guests of five hung out by the bar.
"We have a problem now. Only one of us can go to an area." Jamie presented the fact that only one person could go to an area each.
"I want to go to the crime scene, I've got a good eye for detail and I think I can beat anyone who's in there with me." Dan put himself forward for the crime scene, not really wanting to go to the morgue once again.
Natalie scrunched up her face, wondering what was the best place to go to. "I'll go to last known whereabouts."
"Ok," Jamie sighed. "That leaves me with the morgue."
Natalie had a rather bitter facial expression however as she looked at the other alliance. Since Nelson was clearly sorting out his area with the others and not with them.
"What is he doing?" Natalie hissed.
"He better not be playing both sides." Dan inspected.
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"There's only five of us now." Nelson took charge. "So we need to make sure that the people who go to each of these areas make sure that the others don't find the information."
Michelle rolled her eyes at the familiar speech. "Yeah yeah whatever, I want to go to the last known whereabouts."
"Me too." Brianna raised her hand.
"Ok, that's that area sorted. I think that you and me should go to the crime scene." Nelson pointed to his alliance member, Reynold.
"Guess that leaves me with morgue duties." Greg sighed. It was a bittersweet feeling for Greg to have survived. He was thankful that his life was still intact, yet he was upset that his former alliance member had to meet her demise. This made the thought inspecting her body even harder.
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A few minutes later, Giles returned to the parlor.
"Who would like to investigate the scene of the crime. The spa?"
Dan, Nelson & Reynold raised their hands. Sophie guided the men to the slightly damp spa upstairs.
"Who would like to visit the last known whereabouts. Talia's bedroom?"
Brianna, Natalie & Michelle raised their hands. May guided the only girls left in the game up the staircase.
"That leaves Greg & Jamie, please follow me to the morgue."
-
There wasn't a cloth really needed to cover Talia's body, the skimpy bikini was already exposing the young guest on its own. Greg & Jamie approached the body in silence, not in the mood to talk to each other about the game.
The two guests noticed that just like Hannah's body, Talia also had red marks. But these marks were defiantly more severe burn markings than the tiny ones Hannah had in the grill. Talia's skin was practically melting off! There was also white foaming and what looked like vomit in Talia's mouth. Which brought up the possibility of poison to the two investigators.
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"Gross," Greg whispered to himself as he accidentally ran his finger over Talia's shoulder, where the skin bubbled off her like foam and stuck to him.
"What could have caused this?" Jamie queried as he took another angle looking at the dead Talia.
Greg shrugged his shoulders "Well she was in the hot tub right? Maybe she took some beauty product that the killer planted." Greg theorized what he thought could have been a possibility.
"I'm sure someone from our teams will either confirm or deny that theory," Jamie commented as he started inspecting the red marks, instead of the bubbled skin.
"Are these burns?" Jamie thought to himself as he inspected the weirdly shaped marks all over Talia's body.
For the rest of the investigating time, Jamie & Greg found nothing else significant, and just talked about the game until the bell rang, meaning their time was up.
Nelson, Reynold & Dan were all advised to take off their shoes by Sophie the maid before they entered the spa. At first, the men were all confused by the advice, but by the time they had all reached the hot tub they all realized the warning. The floor was soaked!
"This floor is so damp." Dan emphasised on the word 'Damp' as he climbed inside the hot tub (which had thankfully been drained). The footballer quickly noticed firstly why the hot tub overflowed. The jets of the hot tub were all blocked by corks, most likely from the champagne bottles regularly served at Rue Manor. The footballer also noticed that the bottom of the hot tub was slightly melted, the marble material was bubbling just like Talia's skin.
"That's weird." Dan watched the material fall from his fingers, almost as if it was oil. Nelson & Reynold also noticed the melted hot tub material and noted that down internally.
The three then searched in silence, knowing that giving each other information would just hinder their alliances.
"There's dark footprints here." Nelson pointed out black footprints on the damp floor. Reynold inspected the footprints as well, and upon his surprise, the footprints were his size. This made Nelson give him a suspicious look, which he ignored. Reynold felt that maybe the killer had intentionally done this to plant him as the killer, Reynold did have the biggest shoe size in the manor, so this couldn't have been done by mistake (in his opinion).
"Why are they black?" Reynold whispered to his alliance member. Nelson shrugged his shoulders and just carried on looking throughout the spa.
"So guys, how does a hot tub melt at the bottom?" Dan openly addressed the two opposing guests.
Nelson & Reynold ignored Dan's question.
"Wow, Nelson. What's changed now ?" Dan challenged the charity worker, who was now seemingly back with his original alliance.
The two ignored the footballer again.
Dan scoffed and just carried on investigating.
A short time later, the three men were all stuck. Not being able to find any more significant clues in the damp spa.
"There has to be something else right?" Reynold whispered to Nelson as they looked over the sun tanners. Nelson only shook his head, not really knowing if there would be another clue in the crime scene were Talia's body was recently found.
"Wait what's that!" Suddenly Nelson noticed a small, clear test tube. Hidden well behind one of the five test tubes. After a little struggle, Reynold was able to pull out the test tube out of the tight space and inspect it further. The two of them noticed that the test tube was empty, but could see it had been used however since clear droplets were on the brim of the edges.
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"Interesting," Reynold commented as he rotated the test tube in his hands. The two tried their best to cover the test tube from Dan's sight, but it didn't take long for the footballer to crane his head in the direction of the huddled elder men, to see the covered clue.
Nelson & Reynold carefully placed the test tube back in its place just before the estate bell rang. One question which rang throughout the three minds as they left was, what was in the test tube?
The only remaining female guests (Brianna, Natalie & Michelle) easily strolled into Talia's room, making sure to close the door behind them. However, upon closing the door behind them, they saw the first clue.
"It looks like the door handles been ripped off." Brianna pointed out the golden door handle, which was now on the bedroom floor. The girls wondered whether this was because of Talia...or potentially the killer.
"If she did walk to the spa normally. Then why is the door handle ripped off?" Michelle questioned.
Natalie picked up the door handle from the floor. "I'm guessing that she might have been killed in here. I mean why else would it be ripped off?"
Michelle & Brianna nodded, agreeing with the eldest's theory.
After the girls inspected the door, the girls walked over to the open window. They all found it pretty weird how Talia would of had her window open, since anyone who was scared would have normally locked everything in their room in hopes to escape the killer.
Leaning out of the second floor window, the girls all noticed the ruined flower bed on the ground floor. "Wouldn't Giles of like took care of these flowers?" Brianna noticed that it looked like the soil had almost been dug up from the inside.
"You'd think so wouldn't you?" Michelle nodded with Brianna's question about the ruined flower bed.
Natalie quickly pointed out the ladder, knocked over beside the flower bed as well. "Looks like Giles might of tried to do some gardening." Natalie chuckled, imagining the Brit trying to climb the massive ladder. Michelle & Brianna chuckled as well.
Brianna stopped the chuckling laughter suddenly, "Yeah but this ladder looks like it's two story's tall though. Almost like the ladder was reaching for a room." The kick-boxer noticed that there's no way flowering would happen two stories up.
Michelle put the clues together. "So do you think the killer climbed this ladder into Talia's room?"
Natalie & Brianna shrugged their shoulders. They knew that anything could have been possible in this game, the killer could probably transport in time for all they knew !
As Michelle & Brianna hung out in the windowsill, Natalie broke away from the pair and started to inspect Talia's bed. Upon lifting the bed cover, two thin sheets, paper articles. Swept onto the floor. Michelle & Brianna whipped their heads in Natalie's direction as she saw her pick up the news articles from the floor.
"What you got there?" Brianna asked Natalie as she strolled over to her. There was two news articles on each sheet, each with a bold heading.
"What the hell?" Natalie mumbled to herself as she read over the news headlines. "How did Talia have these?"
Michelle snatched the articles out of Natalie's hands and read the headlines. "Was she getting information from the outside world?"
"Well look at the dates." Brianna pointed out that the articles were from , and respectively.
The girls all huddled around the news articles and scanned them, seemingly thinking there was nothing to them. Until the names of two of their guests were included.
"
What the fuck!" Brianna gasped after reading the entire article.
All three girls stared at the news article, stunned that Greg had never brought up the subject to them, and that he could possibly be the killer.
"That's it! He's the killer, Talia must have found this somewhere and went to confront him. We can just kill him now ! If we do then we can all find a wa-"
"Reynolds in this article." Natalie interrupted Michelle's fluster as she handed the two younger girls the second article.
"
"I can't believe this." Natalie almost laughed, "We've been living with two murderers!"
"Well we don't know that for sure." Michelle reminded Natalie, "But I am surely not comfortable being around them two now." Michelle shuddered at the fact of how she'd grown close to Greg and Reynold, (especially Reynold) over the past few days at Rue Manor, and that one of them very well could be the killer.
Brianna snatched the sheets again. "We need to confront them with this. If it comes to it then we could make one of them confess to even being the killer."
The estate bell rang, this time there was no orderly shuffle out of the room, the three females barged out of the room and started to head to the parlour (where they knew Giles and the other guests would be.)
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Thankfully, the females all the male guests (Jamie,Dan,Greg and Reynold) were at the parlour. Some of them were even treating themselves to whiskey from the whisky cabinet.
"What do you call this!" Brianna rose her voice as she approached her two alliance members, with a fury she threw each news article to the correct 'culprit'.
Both Gregs and Reynolds faces slowly dropped as they realised their pasts had come back to haunt them. At the worst of times. Both the men just stared at their articles with wide eyes.
"Well! What do you have to say for yourselves?" Michelle challenged the two now silent men.
Reynold whipped his head up towards the girls. "Where did you get this?"
"It was in Talia's last known whereabouts." Natalie peeped.
Greg threw his news article aside. "Well it was obviously planted. The killer wanted you lot to see this."
Dan snatched the news article beside Greg and almost toppled over in shock. "You killed her didn't you? You killed her. And now you've come here to kill us."
Jamie took a quick scan read of the article and quickly scooted away from Greg.
"And Reynold, did you really kill your patients?" Michelle asked.
"No! Of course not. I am an honest man." Reynold rose from his seat, infuriated that he was being asked the question again from the people he least expected.
Jamie looked ready to blow in rage. "How do we not know that you two are not just in together on this. Two killers would make a lot of sense."
Over the next few minutes, screams and shouts of accusations were made, cry's of defence were made and two news articles were ripped up. Until Giles intervened.
"I say, what is going on here." Giles booming voice stopped the commotion in the parlour.
All the guests screamed over each-other at once, trying to get their point of view across the the British butler.
"Enough!" Giles howled. "I don't know if any of you guests have noticed but it is 1AM sharp, and we will all need sleep for the riddle tomorrow. So please, head up to your designated rooms."
The guests each sighed before scaling the familiar staircase to their rooms. Each guest made sure to lock their windows and doors securely. Especially those neighbouring Reynold & Greg's rooms. Since they had a new person to suspect...two in fact.
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