Game 34: The Colonel's Bequest - Won!

Laura Bow Journal Entry 8: "I finally did something worthy of my father's training, but it's very hard to feel good about it. I shot Rudy was he was trying to kill the Colonel in the attic. Thankfully I didn't kill him, so the police were able to come and take him away. I can't understand why Rudy would try to kill Henri after all that has happened. After all, he didn't kill anyone else. It was all Lillian, with Rudy greedily trying to finish what she started so he could get to all of Henri's money quicker that he would have otherwise. I can't believe my good friend was so insane! I guess that's why I couldn't see what was going on until it was too late. I just want to go home now..."

 Act VII: Where Everyone Just Hangs Out and Stuff

So here we are at Act VII of The Colonel’s Bequest! There were only five guests possibly alive at this point; with a fair chance at least one of Lillian, Henri, Clarence, Celie and Rudy had also bitten the dust at the end of Act VI. My money was on Clarence, and I also had a strong feeling that Lillian was going to be the one behind the whole traumatic evening. As usual, I set out in search of all these remaining characters, and since I’d finished Act VI just outside the study with Rudy, I went back inside to begin the hunt. Immediately I noticed something interesting! The glass case that had previously contained a silver derringer had been smashed, and the gun was gone! One of the weapon cabinets was also wide open, so I set about looking for clues. I didn’t find any, with no other weapons missing and seemingly no prints on any of it. I now knew that someone had a gun though, and it was likely the murderer! Instead of going further into the house, I decided to see whether Rudy was still sitting on the steps outside. He wasn’t on the steps, but he was there, walking away from the house and then off screen.

This is why you should have listened to me when I typed "smash glass and get gun" earlier on

 Catch and kiss was always very exciting on the estate

I followed Rudy, only to find that he was strolling along the same aimless route that Ethel had been taking earlier on when in her drunken state. At one point he said to me: “Somethin’s wrong; I can feel it. I don’t understand what’s goin’ on around here. Where is everybody?!” He didn’t stop at any of the locations he passed, but I did! When I entered the chapel, the progress clock appeared and ticked over to 1:15. Celie was sitting on one of the pews praying, and she spoke the following to me after my entrance: “What’re you doin’ here, girl? Somethin’ mighty terrible is happenin’! Evil spirits is all ‘round us. I think we’re a’goin ‘ to die before this night is over!!” I tried to get more out of her, but she didn’t appear to want to listen to me. If both Rudy and Celie were to be believed, neither of them knew where all the missing family members were, meaning neither of them were the killer. They both could have been lying of course, but I didn’t have any major reason to suspect either of them. Soon afterwards I entered the playhouse to find Lillian once again talking crazy with her dolls. The clock ticked over to 1:30, yet I wasn’t able to communicate with her in any way. I did notice something very telling though! There was a chalk board in the corner of the room with seven marks on it. One for each victim!

 If you'd listened to anything I've been telling you, you'd bloody well know where they are!

 You always know how to cheer me up Celie!

 I wonder what it means? Oh well, never mind!

I checked out all the other outside locations, but couldn’t find Clarence or Henri. I therefore re-entered the house, heading straight for the parlor to see what quote I could get out of Polly. “AWWKK! Sleep tight, my pretties. AWWKK! In the basement... the basement.” Well that was very interesting indeed! I tried to think of who might have said that, and could only come up with Lillian or possibly Celie. Was the murderer storing the victim’s bodies in the basement? Where was the basement anyway!? Jeeves’ room is in the cellar, but I’d been there recently enough to know that there weren’t any bodies down there. What had I missed!? I put that question aside for the time being, and made my way up to Clarence’s room. As soon as I entered, it was very apparent that he’d been the next victim! “Uh, oh! A bad feeling comes over you as you look around this room. The small desk chair has been knocked over and you see a fresh bloodstain on the rug!” The notebook that Clarence had been writing in was still on the desk, so I made my way over to it and took a look. The progress clock popped up once again, and it was now 1:45.

 AWWKK! Where's exactly is the basement...the basement. AWWKK!

 Well it serves you right chair! I told you to stay out fights! Now look at you!

Clarence had only written on one page of the book, which was dated May 27th, 1925. “I’m terribly apprehensive about what’s going on here. I can’t say why... just call it a bad sensation... but as the evening wears on I’m feeling more and more alone. Where’s Wilbur? Where’s Gertie? Where’s Gloria? Could they have left without me? Is there a way to leave the island that I’m not aware of? Still, the spine-tingling feeling won’t leave, and frankly, I’m scared.” I couldn’t find anything else of interest, either on the floor or on the desk, so I moved on with a purpose. I’d suddenly remembered that Lillian had been writing in a book that she stored in her case during Act VI. Since she was now in the playhouse, perhaps I could find out what she’d been writing about?! I stopped briefly on the way to see whether any other items had been left behind in the hidden rooms, finding a dusty bootprint on the floor in one. As with the other bootprints I’d come across so far, I didn’t appear to be able to do anything with it, so left. On entering the room where Lillian’s case was situated, I was shocked to find Rudy there, and the progress clock moved onto 2:00am...Act VIII!

 Excellent! If only my father had taught me what to do with it!

 Act VIII: Where Laura Finally Does Something, After Initially Doing Nothing

I didn’t want Act VII to be over yet, as I still hadn’t found Clarence’s body, so I restored a couple of minutes back and looked in all of the remaining rooms. I found Clarence in the bathtub, with a dagger lodged deep in his chest! I searched his body: “Shaking terribly, you search Clarence’s body and establish that he did indeed die by a stab wound to the chest. Upon further searching you discover a pack of matches in Clarence’s coat pocket. Thinking it might come in handy, you take it with you.” I immediately thought of the lantern hanging behind the Colonel’s horse Blaze, and how I hadn’t been able to get to it. Surely the matches were to light the lantern, but for what purpose (the basement?), and how could I possibly get it without Blaze kicking me to death? I spent some time restoring to each fifteen minute interval, marking down where everyone was at each stage. Normally I would stop at this point and write a new post, but I felt like the end of the game was very close now. I decided to push on, and will do the same here in an attempt to get both Acts VII and VIII done in one session.

 This kid is a natural I tell you!

What I make of Act VII

• Lillian begins the hour in the playhouse talking to her dolls, before leaving for an unknown destination.
• Henri spends most of the hour in his room, before typically disappearing around 1:45.
• Celie spends the entire hour in the chapel praying
• Rudy walks around outside for the first three quarters of an hour, before entering the house at 1:45 and searching for something in my room.

 I can promise you that there is only dust under there. Believe me, I looked!

I watched, intrigued, as Rudy walked around the room, pausing to look under each piece of furniture. It wasn’t clear exactly what he was looking for, and trying to speak to him resulted in him telling me to “Beat it, kid! This ain’t none of your business!” As soon as he left, I opened Lillian’s case and read her diary: “Dear Diary, I’m so terrible upset! I can’t believe Uncle Henri would do this to me! I thought I was like a daughter to him and now I find out I’m no more important than any of those other creeps! They can’t get away with it, you know...they just can’t! Between you and me, Diary, you know they have to go...because of what they all did to me. I KNOW they were all in it together to have me put away in the nuthouse. I was never crazy, they just wanted me out of the picture! Now they have to...” That’s where the diary stopped, but it was enough to inform me that Lillian was not only acting crazy this evening, she’d clearly behaved this way before. So much so that her family had put her in a mental asylum! It was time to go and find out who she’d got to next, but first I used the monocle on the diary and found another fingerprint.

 

...and find...a fingerprint!

There were only four people to find now, so I figured it shouldn’t take long to get through Act VIII. The only one I could find in the house was Henri though, sitting in his wheelchair in his room smoking a cigar, just as he generally always was. The only other thing of note that occurred in the house was that Polly told me the following: “Gotta get the gun... get the gun! AWWKK!” Well I knew that someone had stolen the gun, but not who it was. I figured it wouldn’t be long before I would find out! So where would Celie, Lillian and Rudy be? I decided to head straight for Celie’s shack, and her response to my knocking was “Please!! Leave me outta this!”. It really did seem that she was going to stay locked in her shack for the rest of the night! I made my way from screen to screen in search of Lillian and Rudy, only to stumble on a scene I really hadn’t expected!!!! I walked into the hedge garden as the progress clock appeared onscreen and ticked over to 2:15am, and there I found a body lying next to the fountain. It was Lillian!!!!! I’d been quite certain that she was the killer, so it came as quite a shock to find her dead. There was a gun lying next to her on the grass. Had she perhaps killed herself? My examination revealed a “horrible gunshot wound to her chest area”, making suicide an unlikely cause of death.

 Oh oh! It's Polly isn't it! I should have known! It's always the quiet ones!

 Well, the game certainly surprised me with this one!

“What’s this?! You suddenly find a skeleton key in a pocket of the old army cape. Since it may be useful, you take it with you.” Aha...the key would likely get me into the attic!!! I picked up the gun: “As you stop to pick up the derringer your eye happens to fall upon the bullet not far from Lillian’s hand.” I picked up the bullet too, and successfully put it in the gun. I made my way back to Celie’s shack to make sure she was still there at quarter past two. She was, but as I walked away, a message appeared saying “Is that Beauregard barking?” I went from screen to screen looking for the Colonel’s dog, eventually finding him scratching near the front door. I thought perhaps he was trying to show me an entrance to the basement, but couldn’t find anything of the sort. There was however a note attached to the doorknocker: “Meet me in the hedge harden.” It seemed likely (at the time) the note had been put there to draw Lillian into a trap that resulted in her death. I entered the house, where I was told that “You hear scuffling further upstairs.” I made my way up to the attic, stopping in on Henri’s room to see whether he was there. He wasn’t, but there was something on the floor that hadn’t been there previously.

What? No prints on the gun? So now they're being careful?!

I give in! Is it?

What do you think I'm doing!?

It was Wilbur’s doctor bag, so I looked inside. “The contents are a mess inside. It looks as if someone has hurriedly searched through it.” I didn’t understand what that might mean, but I excitedly climbed the stairs to the attic door and unlocked it with the skeleton key. I entered the attic to find Rudy and Henri wrestling with each other. “Oh, no!! Colonel Dijon and Rudy are in the midst of a fierce struggle! You see a hypodermic needle between them and it’s impossible to tell which of the two men is the aggressor. This is indeed a dangerous situation!” I hesitated, trying to figure out which of the two was attacking the other, only for Rudy to stick the needle into Henri. I was shown a close-up of Rudy: “Whew, that was close! I want you to know that I acted strictly in self-defense! That old coot lured me up here and when I wasn’t lookin’ he tried to stick me with a hypodermic needle from Dr’ Feels’ bag. I hate to think what was in it, but it must have been awful bad...look what it did to Uncle Henri! He tried to do to me what he did to the others. I found out that my uncle lured us all here so’s he could kill us! He NEVER had any intention of leavin’ his money to any of us at all! He only wanted to get rid of us. He’s been sneakin’ around here all night... and one by one he’s been murdering everyone! He had us all fooled, let me tell you! He was in a lot better shape than we all thought! Well, it’s a shame about everyone else, but at least you and I are still alive.”

 Sigh...with Fifi dead and Celie in hiding, who's going to clean up this mess!?

 So why couldn't I get up here in the lift!?

 No way buster! I'm going to restore, and there's nothing you can do about it!

I became more and more certain during Rudy's explanation that he was lying. I’d seen him looking for something under all the furniture in my room not long back, and it suddenly clicked that he was likely looking for Wilbur’s bag. Did Rudy really kill everyone though!? What was I to make of Lillian’s behaviour, chalk board markings and diary entry? Before I could think any more on this, I was shown Laura leaving the estate the next morning, then standing on a ferry approaching New Orleans wharf. “You consider last night’s events. Was Rudy telling you the truth...or could there be more to the story? Oh well. You’ll probably never know. Best to forget it, and go on with your life; maybe the police will find the answers. Poor Lillian...poor everybody.” The words “The End” appeared, and I have to tell you that I felt very unsatisfied indeed! My performance was rated and I was shown the notes I’d collected on the way, but I’ll skip showing you this for now. You see, I couldn’t let the story finish like this! I had to restore and at the very least experience a more satisfying conclusion! So it was that I restored my game, and entered the attic, once again walking in on Rudy and Henri fighting. I typed “shoot Rudy”, and that’s exactly what Laura did! “You have shot and wounded Rudy.”

 As much as being passenger is an apt way to describe my involvement in the game, I had to try for a better ending

Left handed and everything!!!

This time I was shown a close-up of Henri, who gave me a much more convincing version of events. “Uh, thank you, young lady, ‘er, Laura. That was some mighty fine shootin’...for a gal. I guess I owe you my life don’t I? Why, my nephew was tryin’ to kill me with poison in one of Wilbur’s hypodermic needles! Ohhh, it’s terrible what’s been happenin’ here tonight! I invite everyone here to tell ‘em about my will and they end up killin’ each other over it. Truthfully, I WAS keepin’ my eye on everyone in the house tonight, or so I THOUGHT! I didn’t see any of the murders. It wasn’t until I met Rudy in my bedroom that he told me what had happened. I couldn’t believe it! He told me that my niece, Lillian, had finally gone totally berserk and out of a crazy jealousy was killing everyone that she thought had gotten between HER and ME! She managed to just about murder everyone ‘til she attacked Rudy with my derringer. Rudy managed to wrestle the gun from her and in self-defense, killed her instead! My nephew, seeing as how everyone else was already dead, decided to finish the job by killing me with a hypodermic needle and say I died of a heart attack induced by the terrible deeds that my niece had done! I can’t stand much more of this! Laura, please find Celie and tell her to fire one of the signal rockets that we use to summon help in emergencies.”

Rudy has to be the stupidest man alive! To think he would have got the whole inheritance to himself anyway!

The police arrived the next morning and took the wounded Rudy away in cuffs. Celie, Henri, Beauregard and I watched them float away, and then Henri spoke up. “I somehow knew that one day Rudy would run afoul of the law. You’ve been a loyal servant to me for many years, Celie. And both Beauregard and Blaze trust you. I’ve decided to leave all my money to you... PROVIDED you take care of my animals for the rest of their lives.” Unsurprisingly, Celie agreed to this proposal: “Course, suh. I cain’t think of nothin’ else I’d rather do. Thank ya, suh.” The game closed with Henri talking to his dog: “You know, Beauregard, people are funny creatures. They’re greedy, they’re rude, they’re selfish. That’s why we live way out here, to get away from them. But we couldn’t get away from them completely, could we, boy? No, not completely. But, everything will be okay, now.” I received the Seasoned P.I. level on the Sleuth-O-Meter (just as I had during my previous ending), which is surprisingly the second best level. I thought I was pretty rubbish at this game, so I was happy with that result. Instead of going through each of the notes that followed, which let me know the things I failed to achieve, I will post the screenshots below (only the ones that were listed as INCOMPLETE). I’m not going to play through the game again, so you’re all welcome to tell me all the things I missed. I'm dying to know!

 So they couldn't find the basement either hey!

Really?

Tough night to make friends! I thought Beauregard liked me!

I kept thinking I should feed something to Blaze, but couldn't find anything

There was another hidden room?

 They're just about the only items I used at all!

 What is this? Thief IV: The Colonel's Bequest?

Huh? I really have no idea what this stuff is.

Not surprising, given how long it took me to figure out how to do it.

 Why does that even matter?

 The Doctor's Bag did too!

 AWWKK! The basement! AWWKK!

 Oh do tell!

 Hey, I found Henri's cigar and cane in one! Surely that counts!

Session Time: 3 hour 00 minutes

Total Time: 12 hours 00 minutes