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The Nightwatch Murder

Case 010 · 3 September 2026 · Hard

The Pelham Museum closes for good on Friday and its collection is already half in crates. At twenty to two the night watchman, George Ellis, telephoned the director at home and said he knew which of them had swapped the Delacroix for a copy. He did not finish the call. By two he was dead on the museum floor, and the four people permitted in the building after hours each said they had been somewhere else. Who killed him, what did they use, and where were they at two in the morning?

Suspects

• Simon Blake

  Deputy curator

  Wrote the catalogue for the closing sale and chose which pictures travel and which stay. He was in the building for three hours and signed the book only once, on the way out.

  174 cm

• Martin Gale

  Security manager

  Tallest man in the building, and the one who decides where the cameras point. Two of them were pointed at the floor that night.

  188 cm

• Irene Fox

  Archivist

  Keeps the provenance files, which is to say she keeps the proof of what every picture is. Three files went missing the week the Delacroix was valued.

  166 cm

• Sophie Reeve

  Painting conservator

  The smallest person on the staff and the only one who could make a copy good enough to hang. She cleaned the Delacroix in June and has not been paid since.

  160 cm

Possible weapons

• The iron packing bar

  Used to lever the lids off crates, and the heaviest loose thing in the museum tonight.

  4.8 kg

• The silver trophy

  From the sporting collection, catalogued, crated — and out of its crate when the police arrived.

  2.6 kg

• The roll of picture wire

  Steel wire for hanging frames, cut short that night, and light enough to go into any pocket.

  140 g

• The bronze statuette

  Nine inches of solid bronze from the antiquities room, signed out that evening for photography that never happened.

  900 g

Places

• The Egyptian gallery

  Half emptied, lit by two emergency lamps, and the only room where the watchman's route doubles back on itself.

  Indoors

• The loading bay

  Crates to the ceiling, a roller door onto the yard, and a floor nobody has swept in a fortnight.

  Indoors

• The conservation studio

  North light, a wall of solvents, and two easels that both held the same picture this summer.

  Indoors

• The archive

  A basement of shelves and box files, with a door that can be locked from the inside and was.

  Indoors

Evidence & statements

1. At least one of these is true: Sophie Reeve was in the conservation studio, or the iron packing bar was down in the archive.
2. Exactly one of these is true, never both: whoever was in the loading bay is taller than whoever was in the archive, or the roll of picture wire was in the conservation studio.
3. The iron packing bar was in the loading bay.
4. Irene Fox was not carrying the roll of picture wire.
5. If Simon Blake was in the Egyptian gallery, then whoever had the silver trophy is the shortest of the four.
6. Exactly one of these is true, never both: Simon Blake had the roll of picture wire, or Irene Fox was in the Egyptian gallery.
7. Whoever was in the Egyptian gallery is taller than whoever had the bronze statuette.
8. Ellis died where the telephone cord was cut, in front of the empty case: the killer was in the Egyptian gallery.

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