CLUES of the Past [closed]

Going upstairs, Liseran sees Mustard and Plum standing outside Mr. Body's bedroom and staring into it. The inside of the room had not changed other then the absence of the body which has been moved and replaced by a duct tape outline on the floor. The blood has dried already.

Mustard and Plum are staring intently at the room trying to find anything off that may allude them to what happened. Both Mustard and Plum have dark bags under their eyes as they have already grown exhausted by the lack of sleep.

"Good day, gentlemen," Liseran says. "I'm assuming both of you are downright exhausted now. If you'd like, I can keep guard while you retire."

She looks into the room she's already been through so many times. As she waits for a reply from the two gentlemen, her mind traces back to Lacie. Hopefully, she had returned to Cheshire's room.

"Oh uh... alright. Thank you Liseran," Mustard mumbles. He places a hand on Plum's shoulder and leads the tired man down the stairs.

Liseran gives them a quick nod. As they leave, Liseran makes a brief patrol of the second floor and finds things are uneventful. There's no sign of Lacie and now's the best time for Liseran to carry out her action.

I'm asking you for help now... Liseran addresses her semblance. For once, I will you to let me see what I've dreaded seeing for so long. Be at once to my advantage.

She takes another glass of water from the bathroom and sits down with Weeping Cerinthe in hand. She pours the water and in midair she freezes it, letting her aura glow and staring deeply into the ice.

Let me see the future once more... Liseran whispers. I will it.


Not unlike what Liseran expects, sees a not so distant future. What she didn't expect was to see herself. She rarely saw herself in visions, but it showed her examining Mr. Body's room once more.

"There must be something I've overlooked..." her own voice says in that future.

The future Liseran is going through the room. Her first action is to look at the footprints behind and near the duct tape. She also sees herself going to the closet and then checking Mr. Body's stack of papers.

The ice shatters and Liseran stands up.

"It's strange..." Liseran said as she heads to Mr. Body's room. "Nothing was out of the ordinary earlier. No, that's not it. General Mustard and Dr. Green said nothing was out of the ordinary. There must be something else."

She steps in and proceeds to carry out her vision just as planned, something she had never done before.

The first thing Liseran checks are the pair of footprints from Mr. Body's dress shoes imprinted into the carpet. They are positioned directly behind the body, probably from while he was still standing before he fell over. That was what was assumed but something seems off about it.

Liseran was just about to brush the idea, but it stuck to her.

Mr. Body had been in his sleeping clothes... Liseran contemplated. Why on earth are his dressing shoes here? Unless someone else used it...

Liseran keeps note of this and continues to scan the room as she did in the vision. She goes over to the stack of papers.

What will I find now?

There doesn't seem to be anything off about the papers. It was mostly accounting and business letters. One letter caught Liseran's eye because it was addressed to Beacon. It was the request form for two student interns to act as bodyguards. It specifically requested Cheshire to be one of the bodyguards. There is an ink scratch where Mr. Body misspelled the address showing that this was a mistake form he neglected to throw away. It doesn't change the fact though that for some reason Cheshire was specifically requested.

And obviously Cheshire has ties to whatever's been taking place here, Liseran thinks. Mr. Body said so himself that he was acquainted with Cheshire and that this was Cheshire's hometown. It's possible Cheshire even has ties to the "war". He mentioned his grandfather was part of it...

Liseran thought to herself. General Mustard? But Liseran shook her head. She couldn't be that sure. She continued to browse around and then finally came to the last thing she had seen in her vision: the closet.

She had already checked there earlier, but Liseran was sure something had been overlooked. What it could possibly be, she couldn't say, but she was about to find out.

The closet was pretty much the norm. Mr. Body had five dress shirts and five silk pants hanging neatly on hangers. There was nothing off about the closet to indicate any secret doors and it was blatantly normal in every way.

The clothes are nothing out of the ordinary. It's only then that Liseran realizes she still has pastries in her pocket.

"Where could Lacie be now?" Liseran said aloud. She left the room, taking note of what she had found and went to around the hallways looking for the little girl. "I think I'm going to check the other guest rooms before anyone comes up here..."

Liseran checks to see which doors are unlocked...

All of the doors are unlocked including Cheshire's. There doesn't seem to be any sign of Lacie though.

It was then that Liseran felt a tap on her shoulder. Lacie stood behind her with a bright smile.

"Lacie," Liseran smiles with relief. "I'm glad you're alright. Have you eaten?"

Liseran shows Lacie a few of the pastries. They're still relatively warm in the middle.

"I found something new," Liseran then said. "Though I don't know how to connect it to everything yet."

She kneels down to Lacie to meet her at eye level.

"I wanted to ask you a few things," Liseran said. "But you should eat first. Let's go back to Cheshire's room. I'm going to see if anything's amiss..."

Taking Liseran back to Cheshire's room, Lacie sits on the bed swinging her legs. "Don't worry about me," Lacie said pushing the pastries aside, "I'm not hungry but I will enjoy them later, thank you. So what did you want to ask?"

Liseran nods. She doesn't know really where to begin.

"Lacie, I'm guessing you've been here long enough," Liseran said. "And I'm guessing you've at least once been in all the rooms. Have you noticed anything different? I plan to check myself, but the things is I never set foot in them and I'd like to know if you'd want to join me."

Liseran bit her lip.

"And there's another thing, though I'm not sure you can answer it..." Liseran said. "Do you know what a semblance is? It's basically a special ability. I think one was at work during the crime because the scene's too...clean of clues. I want to figure out if the guests have any unique semblance similar to Cheshire's...what am I saying, I sound ridiculous..."

Liseran sighs.

"It just doesn't make sense yet," she mumbles mostly to herself.

"There's nothing off about any of the other rooms," Lacie states, "And I know what a semblance is. I have one too you know. As for knowing everyone else's... well actually... I haven't been here that long. I don't really know any of the other guests here other then the one person and well you so I can't really tell you much about their semblances or anything."

Liseran pinches her chin, still very stumped on what's happened.

"Here's what I've gathered so far," Liseran tells Lacie as the two sit down. Liseran feels it'll be better if she has a paper, so she takes out the layout paper Lacie had given her and begins to write on the back.

1. Mr. Body's time of death- 11pm to 12 mn
2. Cause of death- strangulation by rope, corpse's face mutilated by cleaver
3. Dress shoes supposedly where Mr. Body fell. Contradiction- Mr. Body was in sleeping clothes.
4. Door and windows were locked. Assumption= Killer was already in room before Mr. Body
5. Exit- still questionable
6. Cheshire is still prime suspect. Side note: Cheshire had been handpicked by Mr. Body to guard him.
7. Other suspects- None so far. Everyone retired at 10 pm and Mr. Plum witnessed no one leave or enter their rooms past this time and hour of the crime.

"That's pretty much it," Liseran frowned, a pained look on her face. "I can't piece it together."

Lacie stares at the list blankly for some time before speaking. "Why was the face chopped off?" Alice asked, "Mr. Body was already dead after getting strangled right? Then why would the killer go through the trouble of cutting off the face?"

Liseran was about to say that some people were cruel and mean that way, but something else came to mind entirely. If she were to put her finger on it between the time Mr. Body was killed and found, there had to be more than just design. There was no time for design. It was necessary.

“Lacie…” Liseran’s voice trailed off. Her hands were shaking with a bizarre possibility. “Do you by any chance know how many dress suits Mr. Body owns?”

There was silence. Time seemed to have slowed at that very moment. The clock's seconds hand seemd to have taken an hour to move once with deafening clicks. Lacie stared at Liseran blankly, a long pause of absolute silence. Lacie blinked once then replied.

"If I remember correctly," Lacie said, "He has 6 different sets."

“Six?” Liseran said, heart pounding and temples sweating. “There were only five in his dresser…”

Liseran tried to piece everything together. The fact that no one could enter Mr. Body’s room…the shoes…the chopped face…the missing suit…

“Lacie…” Liseran said. “I’ve come to the most bizarre conclusion…I think Mr. Body isn’t dead. In fact, that corpse isn’t him. And that the real Mr. Body is somewhere around this mansion.”

But she needed more than just this evidence. One, she needed someone to be able to identify that the body was, indeed, someone else. Two, she needed to know who that someone else was. Three, she needed to know where Mr. Body was and if it was possible that he was the culprit. Four, she needed to know why all of this was happening.

Lacie glanced left and right and leaned in closer to murmur to Liseran, "Now think carefully about this Liseran. If what you say is true then the wrong move could alert the murderer that you know who he is. You've got the who and some of the how. Now you have to figure out the rest of the 'how' and discover the 'why'." Lacie thought about it for a moment. "Everybody here is connected to Mr. Body in some way. Some may know him better then others. Who should you question first?"

Liseran ponders for a bit. She had two necessarily in mind.

"Ms. White's been working for him for years..." Liseran said thoughtfully. "And General Mustard knew him during the war...but he's asleep. I think there'd be no harm in asking her. What do you think?"

It was funny that she asking advice from a child, but Liseran was clueless in a way. She had only been here for two days and Lacie perhaps slightly longer. Even if Lacie wasn't a guest, she felt she could trust her more than anyone else in the house.

"Sounds like a good a plan as any," Lacie stated, "As his former maid I imagine she knew a good bit about him. I'll be here if you need me, okay?"

Liseran nods and gives Lacie a small hug.

"Stay safe now, okay?" Liseran says.

She leaves the room a bit reluctantly, but she now feels she's made a small conclusion. Okay, incorrect. It was a huge assumption and she was going to have to be careful in order for things to align in the way she wanted it to. First of all, as Lacie suggested, she should keep the assumption to herself for now because the killer could very well be alerted by it. She also felt that she'd need to keep her semblance a secret, too. She was only so lucky that no one was suspicious as to how she knew Mr. Body had been in trouble.

She made her way to the kitchen in hopes to find Ms. White.

Liseran sees Ms. White and Scarlet in the kitchen together. Some sausages have been sliced and stirred into a mixture of scrambled eggs and green onions in a frying pan. There is a bowl full off supposedly pancake mix. Ms. White and Scarlet were staring at the carton of milk with wary eyes.

"You do it," Scarlet said.

"N-No, I'm lactose and tolerant," Ms. White stammered, "You taste this one."

"I did it for the last thing already!"

"Oh like anybody would've poisoned the flour!" Ms. White exclaimed.

"It's your turn!" Scarlet stated, "I'll test the eggs afterwards!"

"You can't poison an egg!" Ms. White yelled.

Liseran is a bit surprised to see the small scene, but she otherwise understands their worries.

"Hello, Ms. Scarlet, Ms. White," Liseran says. Good morning just wasn't something people would say and want to hear at the moment. "I hope you've slept well. It look was like you're having a sort of...problem...here, though. Any way I can help?"

Of course, this wasn't really the thing Liseran wanted to do, but if it could help her warm up to Ms. White, then she'd be willing to. She then remembers something from her old books. It was a tried and true solution back then.

"This may sound strange and I won't guarantee it will work," Liseran said. "But do you have any silver spoons?"

"Silver spoons?" Ms. White asked quizzically, "I think we have some in the utensil drawer..."

Ms. White retrieves some silver spoons from a nearby drawer and holds it up to Liseran.