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A notebook! This reminds the ranger of the notebook they've started to keep, which ... unfortunately is in their bag. But gladly, Elise got them covered there, even if ... there's not much to write down at the moment.

The blackhaired is about to thank the maid and turn away, being oblivious to the maid's fidgeting hinting at something until Elise points it out. They look surprised at their colleague, impressed that she could have figured that out - but then again, they, themselves, are probably really too trusting.

And the absence of Sylv doesn't exactly make anything better in that regard, either - he'd have figured it out, probably.

However, they can't dwell too long on that, and they smile instead after Elise spoke. "Any bit of information can help us a lot to solve this mystery," Lutgarde adds with a gentle tone, slightly lowering their tall, intimidating frame a bit. "We just want to help you and also your Mistress by figuring out what happened here."

Elise Calcifet
tl;dr
- did not figure out the maid could be hiding anything lol
- adds some gentle encouragement so the maid hopefully will tell them things :pray:
YM3E_k9g

"SCORE!" Howard's eye widened as he began to peer at the plundered pocket book. "What the...?"

The admin's eye grew to the size of a plate as he read through the pocket book. Names danced in his mind. Were some of these... surrounded in hearts? What did this mean? Could it be...? A million thoughts ran through Howard's head at a million miles a second. He knew what this book was. Unlike Shred Zeppelin, Howard Slayte wasn't entirely hopeless with women. He had almost killed one, once, but that was normal in Rocket.

Besides, he wasn't sure if he counted june sleigh as a woman or a force of nature.

"Holy shit...!" Howard gave a hushed whisper. "I've got someone's journal of sexual conquests!"

He did a fist pump. Hell yeah. He could sell this to someone in Rocket for a pretty penny. After reading through the names, he started looking around the closet with renewed vigor.

"Who knows what else is in here?" Howard let out a fervent murmur. "Hopefully nobody is looking for me."

He kept inspecting the closet.

---

TLw0rWFx

Duplicitous Masquerade VIP Room

"Ten minutes..."

The group had (or at least she had) spent a decent amount of time investigating. A lot of her focus had been the immediate area surrounding the body, something the others had seemingly wanted to avoid catching sight of.

"I hope the others were able to find something else useful."

If they were to start putting together the full picture in 10 minutes, Elaine was going to have to rely on the others to get a fuller picture of the situation. She had only hoped they were able to piece together the whereabouts of the victim before the murder and the whereabouts of any other potential suspects.

Perhaps someone had found the size eight shoes that had stepped in the flour trail.

"Well, if I'm going to have to be investigating here only, let's make this as complete as possible."

She focused her attention to the pantry again to comb over and make sure she hadn't missed any further clues.

---

TL;DR:

• Elaine's Dress and Mask
• Elaine closes off the investigation with the final investigation of the pantry
• Elaine hopes the others were able to turn up more details

Tags: None

---

ufwjDnmb

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Lutgarde smiles reassuringly at the maid as she finally confesses what she's seen - and isn't that a curious detail indeed ... They look pensive for a moment as they look around, recall the layout of the house ... does that mean the cook's been coming from the direction opposite from the dining hall, so ... east? "Don't worry, no harm will come to you," Lutgarde promises, still thinking this is a game and nothing actually serious - however, the maid's severe reaction do seem ... hmm. She must be a really good actress.

They turn to their colleague, and nod. "I think we should, yes," they agree with Elise Calcifet, then look over at the bathrooms. "I'll have a look around the bathrooms - I think the servers should be there, too, still, if no one else questioned them yet." They nod as Elise makes way towards the pantry. "You can come with me, Ruby," they tell the maid, before they head off towards the bathrooms themself, encountering Josh Devlin there, talking to the servants.

"Hi! Found out anything interesting?" they ask, but oh- there's not much time left to investigate. "I'll have a look at the bathrooms before we return," they tell Josh, before investigating - after making sure no one's inside, of course. They'd also make sure to keep an eye on Ruby while looking around the bathrooms. Their specialty lays with drainage systems and sewers, so their focus is especially on those hidden tubes leading away from the bathrooms ... before realising they probably should generally look around, too.

"Ruby, let me know if you notice anything out of place, too!"

2Ne8lHSX
tl;dr
- reassures the maid ruby & keeps her with themself
- parts with elise to go investigate the bathrooms
- meets josh there, does a quick chitchat
- investigation: especially interested in the drainage system, but also realises there's more to bathrooms, asks ruby for help/anything out of place as well

Elaine Highland was quite the gumshoe, zeroing in on the circumstances surrounding the murder, as well as its timing. Why were the two by the restrooms? His questions would be answered quickly, but they didn't seem proud of it. His eyes widened when he heard Ruby had locked it. Why were they speaking so quietly? Did the murderer lock them inside the restroom? He had to make sure. "Thanks so much. I think it might be time to tag Ruby down and see what she knows."

With that, the Gym Leader would perform a sweep of the VIP Room in search of Ruby. Provided he could track the maid down, he would get straight to the point. Their time was very limited, after all. "Ruby, I need you to describe in detail where you were, what you were doing, and what you saw between 6>45 PM and 7:15 PM tonight."

Howard Slayte, Admin Fox, the guy who unceremoniously kept Regice locked in an industrial freezer in Dewford Town, five time winner of 'best boss of the month' in the monthly Team Rocket Grunt Magazine, walked out of the closet with a hip new fit.

"So this is how the one percent dress..." Howard picked at the two extra layers of jackets he was wearing. Hey, if he was going to pilfer through Maki's secrets, it was probably for the best that he had a few extra pockets. Who knew what other things he'd find? Maybe another book of secrets, Maki's credit card, or one of kyle lopez's Rainbow Feathers.

For now, his pockets simply held the book of names and a nice pair of shoes covered in flour.

"Man, I'm starving." Howard wandered past the trembling staff and his fellow investigators towards the pantry. "Is there bread in here?"

He squeezed past Elaine Highland to look for bread. A murder mystery wasn't going to stop Howard from carbo-loading.

---

_39Q|y4m

Duplicitous Masquerade VIP Room

After resuming her investigations at the pantry, Elaine had not found much left. Beyond the odd sight of howard slayte entering the pantry with a new (two?) blazer(s?) with pockets filled with something and scouring for a loaf of bread from the pantry, there was not much else to be found.

I swear he ate during the dinner. Wasn't he eating caviar?

Elaine sighed as the remaining few minutes passed and took off the gloves she wore throughout the investigation. "Well, come on. We have to go."

After warning Howard not to dawdle, she headed back to the dining hall. As she did, the others eventually trickled into the room, taking their seats one by one. Elaine had taken her place back where she had initially sat down before.

"If we're going to disseminate all the information we found, allow me to go first then." Elaine crossed her arms as she stood up from her seat. "I focused primarily on investigating the body and where it was discovered. The body of Chef Kawasaki was found in the pantry today at 1920. Upon its discovery, I examined the body in the state it was found."

Elaine took her arms and began to gesture at her neck as if she was closing a loop around her neck.

"The cause of death is strangulation. The victim looks to have been garotted, but the weapon was not found at the scene. Most likely, it has been disposed somewhere. Possibly, the trash or maybe even flushed down the toilet or sink. The remnants of that are merely the thin, blue-purple bruise circling his neck."

She then took her hands and shaped them like claws before once again gesturing at her neck. "There are also notable linear excoriations perpendicular to the loop around his neck, indicating that he may have resisted and as such was fully conscious when he had been killed. The kitchen had been mostly cleaned down, but there were a few bottles lying on the ground indicating that there had been a struggle. Meaning, from what I could see, that the kitchen was a likely site for the incident."

But that was hardly all. There was far more to what she had caught onto.

"Next thing to note was that the body was flaccid and unnaturally cold. Normally, rigor mortis sets in in stages. There's a whole load of physiology behind that involving the breakdown of the sarcolemma leading to released calcium leading to sustained binding of the myosin-actin complex, but that's all irrelevant for us. The point to remember is that corpses move over a stream of warm and flaccid to warm and rigid to cold and rigid to cold and flaccid. In other words, cold and flaccid is the final stage of rigor mortis, typically ocurring 36 hours after the time of death. But people had seen him and he cooked our meals. In other words, the other conclusion is that the culprit attempted to disguise the time of death. Rigor typically begins to happen about 2-4 hours after death, so if the body was discovered too late, the time of death could be narrowed down a bit more."

Elaine then gestured with her hands as if she was opening a door. She was going to rip off the bandaid on this one at some point so she might as well do it now. "So, I surmise that the culprit hid the victim's body in the fridge. I had said that the culprit attempted to disguise the time of death, but it could have also just been a happy side effect for them as their main objective was potentially to hide the body until the opportune time."

As she brought her hands back down to her side, she continued to explain her findings. "Which leaves one last clue I had found. From the pantry out, there is a trail of flour. One of the flour bags was likely broken when the victim's body was left in the pantry. Moreover, there were footprints in the flour reminiscent of a Size 8 men's shoe. Of note, the victim's shoes had not even a grain of flour on them. Which means there is a pair of size 8 men's shoes here covered in flour and belonging to the culprit."

Elaine brought her hands to the sides of her dress and took a gentle curtsy. "Simply with the state of the body, this level of reasoning is possible. What do you think, everyone?"

---

Case Notes from Elaine:

• Elaine's Dress and Mask
• Elaine spoke quite a bit so let's summarize the points here.
• The victim was garotted and was conscious when it happened. Given the signs of a struggle and the fallen bottles in the kitchen, one may surmise that was the likely site of the murder
• The body was flaccid and unnaturally cold, but that meant that the corpse had likely kept in a cold storage location until it was left out to be discovered
• The trail of flour and the footprints indicate the culprit had stepped in it and that their size 8 shoes are somewhere on the premises
• With the state of the corpse, this level of reasoning is possible for Elaine Highland. What do you think, everyone?

Tags: howard slayte

SPOILER: Click to show

Elaine Highland was first to act at the dinner table, putting so much information together that was tricky for Josh to follow it all. Was this how others felt about the Gym Leader's saddle skills? Everyone had their specialty, and Elaine's was being one of Hoenn's greatest gumshoes. What Elaine didn't have, though, was a timeline. The inquiries Josh had gone about were focused on putting a timeline together. And that didn't require a criminology Ph. D.

The Gym Leader stood up once Elaine was done and contributed what he could do establishing such a timeline. "The servers for the dinner stated the last time the victim was seen alive was between 6:45 PM and 7 PM." From Josh's facial expression, Elaine Highland and others may have been able to tell he was suspicious of one of the servers not being forthcoming. They would have had access to the kitchen, too. Even if they weren't the culprit, they could easily have been an accomplice. "Then, I talked to Ruby to try to piece together where she was at the time of the murder. She said she was cleaning the restrooms during that time. As in more than one. None of the people looked too happy to speak to me, either... especially not the servers."

With that, Josh sat back down in his chair. "Elaine did a very good job putting the cause of death together. I think now we need to focus on the events leading up to the murder. Anyone else have anything else to say about the timeline?"

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Unfortunately, there hasn't been much to see in the bathrooms before being called back into the dining hall by MAKI YUKIMURA. Lutgarde promptly follows, noting down the curiosity of binarily gendered bathrooms and the locked family bathroom. Is this one private, or just a way of saying unisex? And it's not like there's been actually much difference between these two that the ranger could tell from a glance ... but bathroom questions aside, they sit down at the table with a chipper look on their face, curious what the others might have found out.

They also look reassuringly at Ruby, glad to see her alive - but well, why wouldn't she be, indeed?

Elaine Highland's report is thorough and reveals a lot of information - a bit too much for Lutgarde to properly process. They take out their own notebook now, marking down some of the important bits and pieces that they gathered. They nod, pensively as they recall the information they gathered, as Josh Devlin was the next to share his information.

Huh.

"I think Ruby said that she saw the cook walk towards the kitchen at 6:30, if I remember right? He would've come from the East." They look at both Ruby and Elise Calcifet who's been with them during the interrogation. "Ruby, I also have a question for you, actually, still. I went to the bathrooms to take a look, but the "family" bathroom was locked - was this one also locked when you cleaned them? Do you have the key?"

tl;dr
- returns to the dining hall, sits down where they sat before
- takes out their notebook to make some notes during elaine's report
- information the cook walked towards the kitchen at 6:30 according to ruby
- information the "family" bathroom has been locked; asks ruby for details about the bathroom situation when she cleaned them