"So, Maude, no one else was in your room, correct? That would mean that you are the only person who could have fired this arrow through the glass to hit the deceased, and then drawn it back through the broken window and replaced it in this quiver.
"But Letitia, you were then alone in the room with the deceased, and you panicked and dragged him out of your room to throw him down the stairs. You thus at least tampered with a crime scene, and unnecessarily so, since had you left him where he fell and told what you actually knew, it would have been easier to determine Maude's involvement...."
It occurs to me that I'm not really interested enough in this to keep the people straight in my mind--I'm looking back to figure out who did what when. My present solution seems to fail, because the murder weapon is in Maude's room, but Maude's room is the room with the broken glass window in the door, so the arrow must have been fired from outside the room, and once it was fired it couldn't be put back in place. I can't remember which one of them was having the affair with the deceased. I mean, I don't even really care enough about it to remember whether the deceased is properly called the "Landlord".
I'm really sorry, Eric. It's just that when I come to this board I'm in a terrible hurry to get through all the posts and get out of here to do everything else (I still have to finish writing the article series that starts tomorrow, and we've got only tonight to get our Christmas tree if we want it before Thursday, and I don't think we've done more than half a lick of shopping yet). I know it sounds petty, but I don't come here to play--I come here to get through the work I have to do here, answering posts and running games. I wish I could kick back and enjoy the puzzle, but it's the wrong time of year, the wrong time of everything, and not the place for it, really.
Everyone else comes here to have fun and enjoy themselves, and that's good. I come here to work at making it possible for everyone else to have fun and enjoy themselves, and don't really have time for the distractions.
I'm also sorry no one else took much interest in the puzzle. It looked challenging, and even now I find that I don't really know what's happening--but part of that is that I have not even yet formed a picture of the basic details--I don't know the order in which the rooms appear, or whose has the broken window, or who is holding what. I would think that whoever has empty hands tossed the body down the stairs, but that would have to be the woman who gave him the hickey on his neck. I'm so uncertain of the details, I've got Maude having the affair in the room with the glass window, and Maude firing the shot from outside the room into the head of the man in the room, and Maude running back to her room, the room with the glass window, to hide the arrow in the quiver, but somehow I thought Letitia was the one having the affair in the room with the glass window, and the one who was empty-handed, and really, I can't keep the details straight from one day to another. It's not practical.
Sorry.
--M. J. Young
It's good to hear this from you. I'm glad for you opening up. Its cool.
And you do need to prioritize. So, no need for you to jump on every wild idea I come up with.
This little mystery was partly meant to showcase what the limits of a mystery are which it has achieved. It proves, among other things, that simplicity is good in mysteries.
The solution (ta-da!).
Letitia (on the Left) had a bowling ball set up on the outer edge of her stairstep pyramid bookcase, and a plunger which she keeps. Its meant to reach back, get suction, and pull the bowling ball down the bookcase's outside edge. This will simulate the sound of her walking up to her door.
She is in the hall, engaged in giving the Landlord a hickey on his neck as he stands on the very edge of the top of the staircase he later falls down to his doom.
Rayna (on the Right) is stooping on the carpet in her room, spying through the vent, and very carefully removing bits of rust from the vent grates to fall into the vent box between the walls with her father's sword. She is so cautious she doesn't get the clean carpet in her room dirty (which if she had extended her sword to trip the Landlord would probably have been impossible).
Rayna can see the feet of both the romantics, and is thus aware the Letitia is lying later.
Maude is angry, furious indeed, at the Landlord. Perhaps because he chose Letitia the pretty sister over her. Perhaps because the Landlord spies on her through the window. Perhaps, even for the stated reason of him not fixing the glass. Whatever, Jhiaxus determined that she was not a well balanced individual, easily provoked to violence.
MJ came up with some very interesting theory about the projectile flying out a window which I had not considered.
Maude stood in her room, and took aim with her specially made arrowhead and arrow as the two romantics stood engrossed in each other. She shot the arrow, it pierced the glass over toward one side, and smacked the Landlord on the scalp. He fell, and being so close to the edge was unable to save himself. And Letitia, for her, she barely had time to go from hickey-making to futilely grasping at a much heavier man than herself who had already mostly fallen to a thirty and then forty five degree angle before to her horrified eyes, he plunged down teh staircase.
Meanwhile, Maude is pulling the arrow back into her room with deft speed. It goes back through the hole, and two chunks of glass are laid in a line inside her room as she reels the arrow back. Letitia regains enough sense that she must pretend to her regular pretense, and does the toilet plunger thing. A stunned Rayna pulls the sword out delicately, and rises to her door.
Maudes stows her bow and arrow, and sprints to the door, flinging it open just a half second after Rayna opens her door and begins to step out.
They stare at each other for a half minute.
The verser pokes his head around the corner at the bottom of the staircase.
So how does Letitia wind up with the plunger in her hand if it was attached to the bowling ball, and the point was to make it sound like she walked to the door (I'm not persuaded it would do that, but I'll accept the notion) when she wasn't in the room?
And Maude is empty handed because she had to stow her weapons.
O.K.
--M. J. Young
Letitia reaches back with the plunger, connects with the bowling ball,pulls, and the ball begins its dropity drop, and separates from the plunger which she still has in her hand.
Maybe a golf club which could be used to reach back and hook around the bowling ball might be better.