Crimzle › Previous cases › Case 004

Murder at Gallows Point Lighthouse

Case 004 · 23 July 2026 · Easy

Alec Rennie, the harbourmaster, came out to Gallows Point on the evening boat to close an argument about a wrecked cargo. He never went back. At first light the lamp was still turning and Rennie was lying beneath it, and the sea had been too rough for anyone to leave the rock all night. Three people were out there with him. Who killed him, what did they use, and where were they while the light went round?

Suspects

• Samuel Pike

  Supply boatman

  Brings fuel and bread out to the rock twice a week and hates every minute of it. Rennie had reported his boat as unseaworthy nine days earlier.

  166 cm

• Helen Doyle

  Relief keeper

  Tall, exact, and three weeks into a posting she asked for. She was the one who signed the wreck report that Rennie came out to tear up.

  188 cm

• Thomas Reed

  Principal keeper

  Twenty-six years on this rock and he still logs the weather every hour. His log for that night has a clean, unexplained gap of forty minutes.

  175 cm

Possible weapons

• The iron mooring shackle

  Used to tie the supply boat to the rock, and heavy enough that a man swings it with two hands or not at all.

  7.3 kg

• The brass signal lamp

  Carried whenever anyone goes outside at night. Its glass is cracked and the crack is new.

  620 g

• The lamp-room wrench

  Kept beside the rotating gear for the one bolt that works loose in bad weather. It was found back on its hook, wiped clean.

  1.9 kg

Places

• The landing stage

  Wet granite steps down to the water, lit by nothing but whatever you carry.

  Outdoors

• The boat shed

  Tar, rope and the winch, built into the rock itself and loud with the sea.

  Indoors

• The lamp room

  At the top of ninety-eight steps, all glass and turning brass, and the warmest place on the rock.

  Indoors

Evidence & statements

1. Exactly one of these is true, never both: the lightest of the three things was with whoever was out on the landing stage, or Samuel Pike was the one carrying the lamp-room wrench.
2. Helen Doyle had the lamp-room wrench with her.
3. Samuel Pike was in the boat shed.
4. Rennie died where he fell, and he fell under the light: the killer was in the lamp room.

Play this case