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Murder at the Ashcroft Hotel

Case 001 · 2 July 2026 · Easy

The storm took the lights out at half past eleven. At one in the morning Lionel Ashcroft, who had owned the hotel for thirty years, was found at the foot of the service stairs. The doctor was blunt: the fall had not killed him, and he had not gone down those stairs on his own. Only three people were still inside, each of them alone somewhere in the dark. Who killed him, what did they use, and where were they while the hotel stood black?

Suspects

• Michael Ward

  Night porter

  Eleven years on the night shift and he still walks the corridors twice an hour. Says he spent the blackout fighting with the fuse box, and came back up with his sleeves soaked.

  168 cm

• Elizabeth Hale

  Night manager

  Runs the hotel from eight at night to eight in the morning and keeps every key in her head. Ashcroft had told her that week that the hotel was being sold and her job with it.

  174 cm

• Victor Crane

  Head chef

  A tall, unhurried man who cooks for a hundred guests and speaks to none of them. He owed Ashcroft two months of rent and did not like being reminded of it in front of the staff.

  186 cm

Possible weapons

• The brass candlestick

  Taken from the dining room when the lights died, heavy enough to be a decent club and still warm with wax.

  1.2 kg

• The bottle of sleeping tablets

  Kept in the office drawer for guests who complain about the trains. Eight tablets are missing and the drawer was not forced.

  140 g

• The maintenance toolbox

  Steel, dented, and awkward enough that whoever carries it down a dark stair makes a great deal of noise.

  4.2 kg

Places

• The cellar

  Where the fuse box and the hotel's wine both live, three floors below the guests and out of earshot of everything.

  Indoors

• The kitchen

  Cold, dark and smelling of the evening service. The gas still worked when nothing else did.

  Indoors

• The front office

  One desk, one safe, one sink behind the door, and the only telephone that was still working that night.

  Indoors

Evidence & statements

1. Whatever was carried down into the cellar was heavier than the thing Elizabeth Hale had with her.
2. Victor Crane was the one carrying the brass candlestick.
3. Whoever was in the kitchen is the tallest of the three.
4. A wet footprint from the service stairs was found behind the front-office desk, and it was not the dead man's: the killer spent the blackout in the front office.

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