#titrt

‘Ey, yo, Mr. Egan!

Fix my radiator!

But alas, he does not. Instead, he asks us to please gather the dinner order for Professor Hotchkiss. Fine, fine. That’s all good. No need to ask me for my dinner order, though. (Nancy has likely already, very promptly, submitted hers, let’s be real.)

We head on up that crickety-ass elevator, zero trust between myself and this contraption. When we exit, we hear a banging noise like someone is doing metal work.

...

Moving on...

Professor Hotchkiss addresses us as Candy and says she’s very busy working on her “theory.” and has plenty of energy globules. Uhhhh... Still, she orders some couscous and calls us Fanny on the way out. 

Mr. Egan doesn’t like this. He insists that the professor order from the menu.

The problem now is that she doesn’t have one, so we must provide it. I believe it’s in Nancy’s room, so we must head there now. I cannot help but wonder why this is not a phone conversation between the two necessary parties instead.

And yep, here it is. The menu we should’ve pocketed in the first place and made our lives a little easier. 

Anyway, while we’re here, we may as well call our friends!

Ned doesn’t answer and is now in a fraternity, so that’s... cool........

Bess and George answer, though, and they’re happy to hear from Nancy! Nancy remarks that they must not have gotten her letter and I say, “No fucking shit, Nancy.” out loud because A) it hasn’t even been a day and B) there’s a BLIZZARD. Thus confirming that Nancy does not, in fact, understand mail.

We talk about the robbery and the vandalism. The ladies suggest I sneak into the library. Uh, yeah, obvs. Nancy remarks that Hotchkiss isn’t talking about the robbery, but she may have an unreliable testimony if she’s as much of a wackadoo as she appears. We, of course, discuss Jacuqes and Nancy announces he’s engaged. Bess does not like this. George does not like that Bess doesn’t like it. 

We refer to Lisa as a “nice woman” and I’m not sure I agree. She sounds like a 12-year-old and looks like a soccer mom in her 40′s. Bess and George warn me that photojournalists are “born snoopers” but make sure to call Nancy “the prime minister of snooping.” so as not to invalidate us. Thank you. 

Bess and George think I should stay on Dexter Egan’s good side. He may be up to something. Then they end the call by saying, “Watch out for weird people!” in unison. The weird people are already here, y’all.

Back at Professor Hotchkiss’s door, Nancy tries to convince her to open up for the menu, but the professor insists she slip it under the door, “No funny stuff.” Kay, so I guess we won’t be slipping the professor the tongue tonight.

Truly an enigma, the professor orders 50 drumsticks. Yes, 50. Then as we leave, she ends the conversation with a matter-of-fact “Rock and roll, dear.”

I kinda love this woman, if I’m being honest.

A’ight, let’s bring this insane order back to Mr. Egan. Maybe he will finally fix our radiator.

Let’s hit up dat elevator so we can go chat with Mr. Egan.

NOPE.

I knew this elevator would kill me! I knew it!

None of the buttons, including the alarm, work. If I was Maggie, I’d curl up in a ball and rot, never to be heard from again. But I am NANCY DREW. So we better find a way out of here.

That looks dank and dark and promising.

I was right.

Everything about this is scary but we prevail. We use the box that is conveniently placed atop the elevator to climb back up into the 2nd floor. Nancy’s upper body strength deserves some credit. She’s giving us unrealistic expectations.

Behind that door lies the hallway...

I immediately go downstairs to cry about this to Mr. Egan. He lectures Nancy a bit about not climbing around in the elevator shaft anymore, then asks her to please go reset the elevator using the switch in the basement. 

Nancy reminds him of the radiator and he says he’s still busy, so he asks us to knock a few more things off his to-do list. We will fix the stairwell light in addition to the elevator. 

Okay! See ya, Mr. Egan!

Lisa is nowhere to be found when we check the lounge. We’ll have to interrogate her another time, since we are not allowed to know where she is when she isn’t planted in this chair, apparently.

To chores!

We pull the lever and reset the elevator. For good measure, I call the elevator down to the basement and sure’nuff, it rolls on down to meet us. (The first time I played this game as a kid, I refused to ever use it again. I did not finish the game.)

The breaker box is straight forward, but I don’ttreat it as such, and thus it takes me much longer than I intended it to. Still, the light in the stairwell is on once I finally figure it out!

Vex me no longer, fiend!

Other than the guest lockers, we also notice the employee lockers and the door that leads to outside.

We have not, nor will we likely ever, meet Christi, Sammy, or Mary. 

Nancy makes some sort of remark about how cold it is outside. Yeah. There’s a blizzard, ma’am.

Before heading out to give these boots to Professor Hotchkiss and hopefully confront Lisa, Nancy has one last chat with Jacques.

We learn that he builds “hope boxes” in his spare time. Apparently they’re good for keeping one’s many secrets. He then implies that Nancy has many secrets. Honestly? He’s pretty incorrect. She is fairly honest when she isn’t investigating.

Jacque is engaged to a woman names Isabelle. Bess will be disappointed. 

The tower attached to the castle, Chateau Rochemont, is apparently from the same area of France that Jacques is from. That cannot be a coincidence. 

We ask him what he knows about the library and he once again belittles us, saying something along the lines of, “You’re too pretty and female to worry about this on your vacation.” to which I say fuck off, bitch boy!!!

The other part of the basement is hideous stone walls that look very... cold. Doors line the walls and I can’t imagine having the misfortune of rooming down there.

There’s a breaker box and an elevator reset lever when we first enter the hallway.

After wandering a bit, we find that going left leads to another stupid dead end and going right leads to stairs to the 1st floor. (Am I the only one who doesn’t understand why the floor that leads to outside is called the basement and not the 1st floor? It’s not even underground... I’m from a part of Texas where we don’t have basements and I do not understand them.)

The creepy darkness of the upper stairwell continues to vex me. Still, we find ourselves back on the 1st floor. Let us head up to the 2nd floor to give the professor her ski boots!

It’s very, very easy for me to get turned around in this god forsaken castle. I am exhausted by the time I find room 214 again. Why lord?

We knock and Professor Hotchkiss asks if it’s Jacque with her boots. We introduce ourselves and say we brought them.

This terrifying visage graces us. Her face is frozen, eyes only blinking occasionally. Her jaw never-moving, giving no indication that the voice speaking to Nancy is actually coming from this woman’s mouth. I am... uncomfortable.

Nancy asks about the robbery but the professor simply says that everything is fine, "Mandy.” The professor also has no tip for us, but Nancy assures her that one isn’t necessary. We don’t work here. Hotchkiss asks us to please place the boots at her door so she can grab them the shuts the door, the typing immediately beginning again. 

There they sit. We turn to leave and as soon as we do, the door opens and shuts so rapidly that the typing didn’t even stop. This old woman grabbed her boots without even leaving her typewriter?????

This vexes me even more than the dark stairwell.

Room 214 must be Professor Hotchkiss’s room, because that’s where the incessant typing is coming from. We knock, but no one responds. Kay...

A little past room 214, we come across a beautiful rotunda with a painting of Marie Antionette on the wall.

There she is. The one and only. 

Below the painting is a weird looking circle in the wall that appears to have a hole in it. There’s one in each wall panel, basically. In my honest opinion, it looks like this rotunda - and the whole castle - are absolutely freezing. Everything is stone and I kinda hate it. Not cozy at all. I’m not getting the appeal of a castle in winter at this point.

We find some more fuckin’ stairs to nowhere. The dead ends in this place, I swear...

The next area to explore is obviously the lowest floor since that’s the only place we haven’t really looked over yet. 

An elevator ride to the basement level leads us to the famous Jacques, who is supposed to be... handsome...?

Villainous-goon-number-4 lookin’ ass. Give me that old lady’s boots already.

To summarize our chat with Jacques, which I did not enjoy: he doesn’t like Wisconsin, he is French, and he doesn’t approve of us helping Mr. Egan. Apparently, American girls have a problem about “mixing business with pleasure.” 

I rolled my eyes so hard that I’m shocked it wasn’t audible. 

I had Nancy respond by saying, “I can take care of myself.” He made another remark about American girls. I’d enjoy this conversation much more if he was referring to American Girl Dolls.

Moving on!

Imagine a world where Nancy actually does vacation stuff, like ski, instead of being a teen detective 24/7. Terrifying to consider.

According to the little piece of paper in Nancy’s room, our locker is 310 and the code is 5-1-7. Alas, however - this code does not work. 

After asking Jacque, he says he believes that 5-1-7 is the code for locker 311. Oh ok, so of course we must open that locker because it’s ours, right?

Nope...

It’s Snooping Time.

A camera bag. We know that Lisa is a photojournalist, and since she appears to be one of like three people in the castle as a guest, it must be hers. 

Inside the bag, we find a letter written in Spanish. That’s weird since Lisa claims to be very bad with foreign languages, Spanish included.

The letter reads:

30 Noviembre, 2000 Lisa, mi amiga, Cuánto tiempo sin vernos! Cómo estás? Qué haces en Wisconsin? Llegamos a Sevilla y fuimos a un hotel de una plaza con grandes palmeras. Mi marido y yo cenamos a las siete. La comida fue buenisima, y la bebida también, claro. Despué de cenar fuimos a dar una vuelta por el pueblo. Dimos varias vueltas la calle de las Sierpes, y luego nos sentamos en un café. Se lo he dicho a Pedro. Ha habido muchos problemas. Es él quien tiene.......

Which translates to:

November 30, 2000 Lisa, my friend, It's been ages since I last saw you! How are you? What are you doing in Wisconsin? We arrived in Seville and went to a hotel in a square with large palm trees. My husband and I had dinner at seven. The food was great, and the drink too, of course. After dinner we went for a walk around town. We walked around the Calle de las Sierpes several times, and then we sat down in a cafe. I have told Pedro. There have been many problems. It is he who has .......

Not gonna lie, I took two years of Spanish in college, and most of this letter reads like an assignment to flex your new travel vocabulary. All this talk of the plaza and the meal. Not to mention that the writer didn’t even properly punctuate her question. Truly bizarre. We don’t bother reading further, which is a shame, since I think the really juicy stuff was about to begin. Oh well.

Here’s where things get really interesting. We find multiple identities which all belong to Lisa... if that is her real name.

Helen Carp of North Carolina...

Alina Boyd of Illinois...

and Tanya Lee Gooding of Florida. We even find passports for Helen and Tanya. 

¡Escándalo!

We’ll have to ask Lisa about this...

Nice and cozy is the lounge of the castle, I see. Clearly they want us to enjoy the snow activities but that is not gonna happen in a blizzard. And in a chair, reading a magazine, is one of the only other people here.

Her name is Lisa and she has powerful tennis-lesbian vibes. We meet her and she immediately starts gossiping about the library vandalism, like, no pretense at all. Nancy isn’t one for pretense either, though, so that’s honestly fine. Lisa gives us a hot tip: Mr. Egan has a spare key at the lobby desk. Why does she know this? We don’t bother asking.

Lisa also tells us that her neighbor, Professor Hotchkiss, was wailing about being robbed. Yes, that’s what we’ve been told. Apparently she’s a nutty lady who types all day and talks to herself. Same...

We also talk briefly about Jacque, but it’s nothing particularly riveting. Lisa tells us she is very bad at Spanish, having barely passed her high school class - so we ask her if she speaks Spanish...?? She also tells us she’s a photojournalist and she’s researching the castle. Creepy noises have been reported. 

At one point, Lisa says, “I wonder what we’re gonna do with ourselves while we’re all cooped up in this place!” and the powerful lesbian vibes continue.

Around the corner, we find a corridor that is very scary and dark and I do not like it. Nancy doesn’t either, because she says it’s too dark to enter. Looks like we’ll have to go upstairs another way.

Across from the library, which is locked, is the worst elevator in the world. Like, is that old blood on the wall?? Mold? Please....

I super hate this elevator, thanks.

Upstairs, we do some more hall wandering.

Pretty soon, I learn what Lisa was talking about...

I presume the infamous Professor Hotchkiss is near. 

By the way, I forgot to mention: the radiator in Nancy’s room is broken. It’s hissing and bubbling and being obnoxious.

When we head out into the hallway, I know immediately that this damn castle is gonna get me so lost.

It’s not gonna be good, y’all. 

The halls have a lot of the same styles of portrait art and old-timey castle designs. I find it... ugly, overall. But that’s not the castle’s fault. 

Let’s check out the lobby. We need to mail this letter in a blizzard, after all.

The top of the stairs gives a grand view of the windows and the snow outside. Lovely. We head down the stairs. 

Near the front door is a table with some postcards and pamphlets on it.

Can you handle the view! 

Yes.

Peppercliff Farms remembers. Haha, get it?

I’ve never been skiing in my life, and this postcard does not make me want to change that.

Apparently Le Pierre Chateau is the oldest Chateau in Lakepond Wisconin. What kind of name is Lakepond? Which is it? A lake or a pond?

Hmm, Butter Ridge Ski Resort in Land O’ Lakes Wisconsin. Butter... Land O’ Lakes... Nice.

Another old-timey thing in the castle is the man who runs the place, Mr. Egan. 

Hello, sir. You are old and curmudgeonly, therefore I will adopt you as my honorary grandfather. Thank you. Do not betray me, Mr. Egan. 

He tells us, to our deep and complete shock, that the mail will be delayed until the blizzard ends. He also alerts us that one of the only things to do in this castle is off-limits: visiting the library. It was vandalized last night. Someone even busted a hole in the wall. Nancy makes a joke about needing a book that badly or something, and Mr. Egan does not laugh. 

Apparently, a guest named Professor Hotchkiss was robbed recently, too. Though she would not let Mr. Egan into her room to see nor would she tell him what was stolen. Nancy asks Mr. Egan if he needs any help because he is clearly a very busy man.

Thus, we are tasked with bringing Professor Hotchkiss her ski boots from Jacque. Before we go, we ask Mr. Egan how long he’s worked here at Wickford Castle. He says, “Awhile.” and nothing more.

Okay, see ya Mr. Egan!

By the way, Mr. Egan is too busy to fix our radiator for the time being. SIGH. The hissing and gurgling will continue. 

There’s a blizzard and we are in a castle!

Of course, the best thing to do in a blizzard is write a letter that will obviously be mailed. I always mail letters during blizzards. Of course. That’s the best time. The postal service is so fast, especially in blizzards.

Anyway, Nancy is on vacation at the charmingly bizarre Wickford Castle. It’s got corridors that lead to nowhere, a terrifying elevator, and a tower that doesn’t match the rest of it. Nancy’s favorite things?

We finish up writing this letter to George and get our first view of our room here in Wickford Castle.

Now, we all know that Nancy doesn’t have a physical form, but this view of the desk is truly freaky. Just staring at this desk, presumably sitting at it, with no legs in sight. 

It’s fine.

I’d also like to note that Nancy writes that she’s excited to learn more about the ski instructor, Jacque, and that Bess is going to be jealous.

Ma’am? Do you not have a boyfriend named Ned? Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am?

Anyway... while we sit at this desk, we swipe Nancy’s room key.

The drawer also has something worth noting.

Looks like our locker is #310 and the combo is 5-1-7. Good to know.

Taking a look around the room, we have the usual stuff. A bed with an alarm clock and a phone next to it. We also have some furniture and stuff. On our table, we have some magazines that Nancy very obviously brought with her. 

Sassy Detective!

Taking a look inside one, we find some handy dandy information on fingerprinting. 

When we touch things, some of the oil from our skin is left behind on the surface of the thing we have touched. Our fingertips each have a unique pattern on them, and the oil shows, or prints, this pattern. This is how we get the term “fingerprint.” When you touch several surfaces with the same fingertip, the oil begins to get used up, so the fingerprint becomes lighter and lighter. The most common method of discovering fingerprints is called “Dusting.” When you brush a light powder over a surface, the powder, or “dust,” will cling to the oil left by fingertips, revealing the fingerprints. Remember, fingerprints will appear in darker or light shades depending upon how much oil is present. Now, Sassy Detectives, put two and two together to figure out how to determine a keypad access code. Here’s a little test: if you saw the four fingerprints below, what order would you put them in from first to last? (Will the darkest fingerprint be the first button that was pressed, or the last?) So then, what’s the code?

The image has fingerprints on 1, 7, 3, and 5, from darkest to lightest, so the code would be 1-7-3-5. This knowledge will likely come in handy. Thanks, Sassy Detective!