It was snowing heavily as the man in the brown coat entered the lone inn in the middle of nowhere. Little did he know that he had just entered the jaws of death.
The innkeeper was a kind old lady who showed him to his room. It was a creaky, dim-lit building but that did not seem to bother him. ”The ferocity of this storm may last a few days, but no worries, I have a feeling that something interesting will happen soon. Hopefully, it will not be a total bore for you, dear,” the old lady said with a sly grin. As the man in brown sat on his bed, he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. He could feel it. A set of eyes. Staring. Straight. At. Him.
It was half-past 12 when he heard it. A shriek, so loud, that it may as well have awakened the dead. He and three others rushed toward the noise. There, at the entrance of the inn, the old lady lay there in a pool of blood. The man in brown checked her pulse, then shook his head. “What in god’s name happened here?” asked a man in blue, trembling in fear. He was a small, skinny fellow, with a mustache that did not fit his face. “Well, my good sir, it seems as if the innkeeper was killed by something that struck the back of her head,” calmly replied a young man in dark spectacles. Then there was silence, everyone still in awe of what was in front of them. “Well, I’m not staying in this house of horrors,” the man in blue announced as he stormed to the door. But it wouldn’t budge. The man in blue tugged and kicked it. It was futile. The door would not open. They were stuck. And one of them, guilty.
The four of them, all four suspects in the murder, then gathered in the main room. The man in blue, a duke, Nathaniel Poe. The man concealing his eyes with spectacles, Arthur Shelley, a chemist. The tall woman, Theda Lux the traveler. And the man in the brown coat, the writer Nox Ray. Nox smiled, finally something interesting. Now, the game has begun.
The group decided to split up and look for any clues. A foolish move. As Nox went back to the scene of the crime, he noticed something odd. A small black button. Fascinating. He slipped it into his pocket and continued to look around. Nothing more out of place.
As Nox returned to the main room, he noticed Arthur and Theda already there. How peculiar. It turned out they didn’t find anything out of the ordinary anywhere else. ”Find anything?” Theda asked. Just a button he responded. “One clue…how disappointing,” she stated as she went back to staring at the clock on the wall. Tick-Tock. Then he felt it, the piercing eyes. Nox felt a shiver down his spine as he asked, “Where’s Nathaniel?”
They found his limp, lifeless corpse in a chair within one of the many rooms. Cause of death–slashed throat. As Nox examined the scene, he found another clue. A silver shilling. Without a single drop of blood. That struck down a motive. Greed. This meant the killer was smug, careless. He had the time to slip out unnoticed, throwing off the trail. Or so he thought. Though there was one fatal mistake.
“It’s you,” Nox declared as he took a sip of the tea that lay on top of the dresser. He pointed at Arthur. Arthur raised his eyebrow, “And why would that be?” The piercing eyes seemed unphased. “Elementary, the button I found near the innkeeper matches the design of the button on your coat and the abandoned shilling represents that the person must not care much for the money. Additionally, the physical injuries the victims received must have been from someone slightly muscular. And plus, the throat wound was aimed to look centered, however, it is clear the wound is more to the left, implying that the guilty party is blind or injured in their right eye. Now, will you take off your spectacles, Arthur?” Arthur struggled and slightly grinned. “What’s the point? You’re already dead.” Nox’s vision started to blur. The tea. Poison. Who placed the tea there? There are two. Nox’s eyes then met the set of cold staring eyes that stalked him. “Well played, Theda.”
