Good old basics.
E had not sustained any injuries before locking the door to his room for the final time.
B killed E using a Trap, which was placed inside his room beforehand. With B broke in, he got rid of all evidence of a Trap.
B shouted that E was dead almost immediately upon entering the room, and C and D entered the room almost immediately after Bās shout. B had no more than 5 seconds of unsupervised time inside the room. Five seconds is not enough to get rid of all traces of a trap that stabs/shoots a man to death.
Too bad, B is actually Knuckles the Echidna.
Hmm, well well now isnāt this interesting. Thereās some avenues that are still strangely left open.
C killed D before B and C ever met up. The door was not locked, but rather kept barred by a device set up in such a way as to hold the door shut after it is closed, such as a bar falling into place. The narrative never says the door was ever unlocked, only that āB got it openā.
C and E did on the other hand in fact commit suicide. E committed suicide to create an impossible murder mystery to entice the others, and C killed D because he thought D was the one who killed E. When he realized his mistake during a re-investigation after B left, he committed suicide. Meanwhile B went home, actually thinking that nobody died at all, just that people had way too much time on their hands and were playing a prank on them by playing dead.
Not under doors you say?
Keys were transferred between rooms via over doors or past the hinges of doors - essentially, at the gaps that arenāt under them.
I always used the sides of my doors as a kid to listen in, not the bottom. I even ran wires through sometimes, those I learnt to not do that after they were destroyed fairly quickly.
Fearsome swordsmanship, @Karifean. However, I am not without a response.
Generally speaking, my approach to the narrative concealing things was that it only conceals information that those who know of it at the end of the scene would want concealed. As such, had B found a suspicious bar on the door that was set by C, the narrative would have made some note of it.
I was wondering why people arenāt gunning for the suicide angle at all. Perhaps the red @VyseGolbez brought up was confusingly worded - it is meant to say that it is not true that all three committed suicide, meaning one or two of them could have. I included the āAt least one was murdered by someone else.ā part to clarify it, but perhaps that wasnāt sufficient.
That saidā¦ Neither C nor E committed suicide.
Other than the gap between the door and the floor, there are no gaps through which keys could pass through.
In that case it was B who murdered D in his room. After that he used the device mentioned by Karifean to make sure the door canāt be opened from the outside after B left the room. After he broke the window he had enough time to remove that device.
Hmm. How do you suppose the door was barred from the outside?
It could have been a bar set up in a way to fall into place after B left the room like Karifean also already mentioned, sealing the door that way.
The narration also mentions B being unaware that three people died in the mansion during the weekend, however, B killed C before they parted ways, so he knew of his death, yet he thought that E had only faked his death and was not actually dead.
What Iām curious about is how this bar was set up in a way that it could fall into place after B left the room. It doesnāt have to be something that is proven by the narrative or anything, Iād just like to hear some concrete, plausible method that is not contradicted by the narrative or pre-existing reds.
Oh my, interesting. However, there are a couple of things in the narrative that seem to disagree with that theory. Number one is that it is directly stated that B and C parted ways in the garage, yet āthree people died in the mansionā. The garage is not a part of the mansion, it is a space outside the mansion.
Another thing is
Why would B say E was dead if he did not believe that he really was dead? He was not trying to make anyone believe E was dead when he really wasnāt.
He changed his mind later. After some time to calm down he became convinced it was all a trick.
To answer this by the way, I just wanted to get one murder under my belt then Focus on the suicides afterwards.
So far I havenāt really went for specific theories, Iām just trying to point out flaws to open up new interpretations and open up new possibilities that could lead to the truth.
If B at any point thought one of the other three was dead, he certainly retained that view until the end of the story.
Regarding that little discrepancy, it is possible that B followed C to the garage and inflicted a wound on him before parting ways. C did not immediately die after receiving the wound and was able to return to the mansion, hoping that he could call for help with a phone. However, after he returned to the mansion (which did not take longer than 15 minutes), he passed away.
ā¦I acknowledge this blue as valid and uncontested.
It seems like there isnāt much left to answer. Iāll be away for what will probably be a couple of hours - perhaps when I return, all the remaining questions have been answered.
In that case there is no discrepancy regarding Bās unawareness that three people died in the mansion on that weekend, as he assumed that C had immediately died after receiving the wound outside the mansion.
B killed D in his room with the knife. After that he set up a device that would seal the door from the inside after he left the room.
I have to admit Iām not very creative when it comes to the concrete way this device could have been set up. Letās just say that the bar could have been placed on top of the door by B. After he left the room and closed the door, it would fall straight down so that the door would not budge easily.
Then after B broke the window and entered Dās room once again, he would quickly move the bar to a place where it was unlikely for it to be seen by C (maybe under Dās bed) and opened the door for him.
This one is still a little bit tricky. Since it was only mentioned that E did not lock the door to his room after receiving a fatal wound, it is possible that B inflicted a wound on E in his room, unlocked one of the windows and escaped. E, still alive and fearing that B might return to the room, locked the open window again and then passed away shortly after.
However, in case it is not possible for B to escape from Eās room through the window as the room is located on the second floor and the success of this escape would heavily depend on the structure of the mansion, another possibility is that E might have originally planned to play a prank on the others (possibly with B being aware of this) and thus only made it seem like he was stabbed by someone with a knife. However, the cookies or the tea have been poisoned by B, making it possible for E to die in his locked room with the culprit being outside.
Excellent. However, one last detail needs to be taken care of.
If B killed C, he was aware of that fact.
In your comprehensive theory of the murders, B is the culprit in every single one of them. Yet, B was unaware that three people had died. One of your explanations has to be wrong.