The Hargrove Preserve
The matriarch of a once-prominent family is found dead in the pantry. The investigation centers on the household's sealed preserves, its financial ledgers, and the faint, persistent scent of burnt paper in the study grate.
Initial Crime Scene
The scent of cold stone and dried lavender meets you as you step into the pantry, the chill air clinging to your coat. From the adjacent kitchen, the rhythmic tick of a grandfather clock is the only sound. Your gaze travels across the slate shelves lined with glass jars, their wax seals a uniform crimson, then to the wooden doorframe where a faint, vertical smear of white powder disrupts the smooth grain, and finally to the heavy, silent swinging door leading back to the main house.
Crime Scene Environment
Lighting is dim and diffuse, filtering through high, dusty windows. The air is cold and carries a dry, chalky humidity, with acoustic density low enough to amplify the slightest footfall or the creak of a floorboard from the floor above.
Investigation Constraints
Handwritten letters and diaries, rotary telephones, physical ledgers, mechanical locks and keys, early photographic plates, local newspaper gossip columns, manual accounting systems, doorbells and servants' bells.
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