The Dark and Stormy Night

Rosemary Clark is one of the world’s most popular and enduring cozy mystery novelists. For the past two years, however, she has lived as a recluse in her hilltop mansion, cutting off contact with friends, family, and the public at large. The reason for her withdrawal from the public eye has been a subject of much debate until earlier this week when Ms. Clark emerged to announce that she had been writing her final novel, entitled “The Dark and Stormy Night.” To celebrate the completion of the book, Ms. Clark invited a small group of her closest friends and associates to Winterwood Manor with the tantalizing revelation that she had featured all of them as characters in the novel. Benjamin Baker, owner of The Will Street Detective Agency and your boss, is on the guest list because of years spent advising Ms. Clark on the finer details of being a private detective. After the guests arrive and dinner has been served, Rosemary reveals that she has spent the last two years leaving her estate in secret to investigate a very specific crime and that the novel contains hints about both the crime and the one who committed it. Poised to reveal more about the plot and the main players in her mystery, Rosemary has just taken a sip of her nightcap when the lights flicker suddenly and then go out for a period of approximately ten seconds. A scream rips through the night and then the lights come back on. Inexplicably, Rosemary is gone. All that’s left where she was standing are a few spatters of blood. After a thorough search of the house, Rosemary is nowhere to be found, and while it’s unclear whether any sort of crime has been committed, there is a definite feeling that something is wrong here. Benjamin immediately calls you to come and investigate, insisting that he can’t be the one to question the other guests since he is just as much a suspect as they are. Now, you are here at Winterwood Manor tasked with solving the type of serpentine mystery that Rosemary Clark was known for. Determine what happened to Rosemary Clark, search through the clues of her final novel to determine the nature of the crime and the identity of the criminal she had been investigating, and solve the mystery of The Dark and Stormy Night.