Captain Farthing: "About time you showed up! I've got the Chief breathing down my neck to get this bloody murder sorted. None of us had a kind word to say about Ol' Carnegie, but the Toff's been topped at his own party, and a Lord's inheritance hangs around like a bad fart. Unfortunately, those insufferable twits from homicide managed to arrive at the scene first. To no surprise, they've hit a wall and sent back a half-solved report. Head to the mansion, identify the culprit, and get this case closed!"
Female voice: "Welcome to the Carnegie mansion, detectives. Please, come in. And don't mind our unconscious guests. These parties usually get quite… frivolous… but tonight's festivities were somewhat more dramatic. Don't drink the punch. Of course, there is the dead body in the office. But between you and me, the man wasn't half as appealing as his pocketbook. Now that's a fortune anyone would kill for… Please do poke around and do your 'oh-so-important' business."
The illustrious Carnegie family are hosting a giant party of frivolity, laughter and a few spiked drinks. From Gatsby to Governors, everyone's invited for the riotous affair.
Unfortunately, the bloodied dead body suggests there are one too many guests. Was it a jealous lover? Or filthy blackmail? Or plain old fashioned Envy? This is the bloody 1920's at its worst.
How To Solve Puzzles
Solving puzzles in this escape room involves making lateral connections between clues or completing tasks, like mazes.
Start where any good investigator would, by looking at the evidence on the puzzle sheets. Some are easier to tackle than others, so check them all out to get a feel for how things work. You'll find hints further down this page if you're stuck.
Write your answers on the Police Report chart. If you're not sure where an answer fits, keep solving other puzzles and use the process of elimination.
Don't worry about knowing when a puzzle is solved. Each puzzle has just one way of solving it and finding the right word answer. The answer is usually a word or sometimes a two word sentence.
As you complete the Police Report, a single letter from each puzzle answer will combine on the Conclusion section of the report to form a final sentence.
Wait! Before You Start...
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Having trouble solving a puzzle? Try asking Captain Farthing for a nudge in the right direction below. Stuck longer, open the full solution.
Puzzle 1 · The Maze
Find one of the two entrances of the maze to get to the mansion in the middle. See what letters you can discover in the order you find them along the journey.
As you navigate through the maze (entering from the top entrance), take note of the letters along the path. They should spell ESTHERWOOD.
Puzzle 2 · The Wastepaper Bin
Looks like a letter has been ripped up and thrown into the wastepaper bin. Cut out the various letter pieces and align them together. The paper has a number of underlines on various individual letters, maybe if you put them in order of reading?
After the paper is put back together, the underline on each letter is added together in order from top to bottom, left to right (reading the letter) to spell out DONATION.
Puzzle 3 · The Telephone
This is the telephone in Carnegie's office, with a phone listing nearby. You have dusted the telephone for fingerprints. Telephones are operated by pressing on one of the large numbers and dragging it to rotate the dial. Fingerprints overlap each other from repeated presses on the same number. Maybe you can link the fingerprint presses with the list of phone numbers? Elimination is the way to go, try to find numbers with no presses, 1 press and 2 presses.
The heaviest presses from the fingerprints are the numbers 9 and 2, so they were both pressed twice when dialling. Then we have 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 having 1 press, with no presses for 0, 1, 5 and 7. Looking at the list of phone numbers in the directory, the only one that satisfies the above conditions is ARIZONA.
Puzzle 4 · The Typewriter
Carnegie has been murdered. There is blood everywhere, but quite a bit on the keys of the typewriter. Maybe he left a final message on the paper? Ahh but it has been burned. Perhaps we can use the blood on the keys to figure out what he typed in his final moments.
The letters with blood on them are r, t, y, i, a, h and c. Rearranging these letters gives you CHARITY.
Puzzle 5 · The Marble Map
Looks like some sort of map has been left on the marble base. Looks pretty complicated, but is there some guiding list of actions to follow? There's a "lobby entrance" and various stairs, and a couple of blue dots. There's also a bunch of arrows. Looks like the letters join to form a word.
Joining the two blue dots, start at the Lobby Entrance, and follow each arrow to move a space along the map: Down → U, Left → N, Down → D, go up one level, Up → E, Right → R, Down → D, Right → E, go up one level, Left → S, Down → K. That combines to UNDERDESK.
Puzzle 6 · The Locked Drawer
Cut out the springs on the left. Is there a space on the blue lock section that fits one of the springs? Maybe that should be the spacing for the rest of the springs as well. Looks like the lockpicking tool is pushing one of the pins past the gold line.
Imagine all of the pins pushed past the gold line, and use that as the spacing to align all of the springs. There are two small springs that fit in the two small spaces, put these in first. Rotating the springs and rearranging the order gives you BOLTSCLICK.
Puzzle 7 · The Statue
Cut up the five rectangle sections of the statue. Paste them together along the glue lines, and then experiment with rotating them to create a five letter word. Maybe the statue face helps the alignment?
Aligning the Hat, Face, Hands, Legs and Feet gives you AZTEC.
Puzzle 8 · Witness Statements
Lots of witness statements, looks pretty jumbled. Maybe try putting the reported times in order? The clock on the left looks useful for that. The circled letters look important, but they need reordering to find the culprit.
The circled letters are r, o, s, r, s, e, p, o and f. The clock is broken up into hourly sections, e.g. 11:05 fits into the 11:00-12:00 range. Putting the various witness statements in the order of time (in hourly blocks) using the clock gives you PROFESSOR.
Puzzle 9 · The Missing Statue
Looks like the culprit was in the room. Reading the note, Carnegie has left his daughter a clue to which statue he took. Maybe the murderer brought back the statue to the room? The clue list could map to each statue, but what do the circled numbers mean? The number must relate to the statue, maybe it represents a letter?
Each clue maps to a statue in the scene: (1) Forging Fire → (V)ulcan, (2) Helmet of War → A(U)gust, (3) Radiant Light → He(L)ios, (1) Growth Abounds → (C)ybele, (6) Wisdom of Mind → Athen(A), (4) Beauty Sleep → Hyp(N)os. Putting the list of letters together you get VULCAN.
Puzzle 10 · The Cocktail
The party guests are really drunk, something must have tainted the alcohol. Looks like we have a chemical analysis of the cocktail already, maybe we need to match the contents to the list of Controlled Substances? No labels on anything, just the chemical formulas. I wonder which cocktail was made? That might help find the foreign substance from the analysis list. We have the right middle section of the substance, H19, but what are the other two parts?
The cocktail chemical analysis shows a number of chemical formulas. Matching these to the objects in the scene we find that the cocktail is the Southside Fizz, which gives us NO3. The pill bottle has C17 on it, which matches a couple of items on the controlled substances list. We don't see C18 anywhere in the scene, so by elimination we get C17, H19, NO3. This combination gives us MORPHINE.
The Conclusion
This is the answer sheet. Each of the 10 puzzles combines with its word answer to form another final word. The coloured circles from each puzzle answer map to a letter in the conclusion (there are two possible locations for each letter).
ESTH(E)RWOOD → E
MORPHIN(E) → E
(C)HARITY → C
(A)RIZONA → A
DONATI(O)N → O
VU(L)CAN → L
PROFE(S)SOR → S
AZTE(C) → C
UNDER(D)ESK → D
BOLT(S)CLICK → S
Combining each letter from the 10 puzzles, we get CASECLOSED.
Before you spoil the surprise for yourself, you should read the filled out police report again and cross-reference it with the suspect list. Make any clever observations? No? No worries, we can't all be Sherlock.
The murderer is..... Reginald Garstang.
Why? It's quite elementary, old sport: that morning, Carnegie had a long and heated telephone call to Arizona. Correspondence was also discovered revealing that Carnegie was involved in a dispute with the Arizona Institute regarding his son's unsavoury behaviour. The institute is requesting a sizeable donation in order to cover up for Carnegie's son's mistakes.
The murderer is revealed to be a well-known professor, who stole an ancient Aztec artifact. Piecing these clues together, the only professor on our suspect list is Reginald Garstang, who is an archeologist that works at the Arizona University.
