Chapter 13 of 17 · 3'06"
Wadsworth walks the room through the night again: Boddy wasn't dead, the gunshot was meant for him, and someone slipped down a secret passage to kill the cook. "Who wasn't here with us?" turns every alibi inside out. What looks like deduction is really an interrogation, and everyone in the room is a suspect.
Boddy Faked His Own Death
Wadsworth Knows the House Too Well
The Cook and Yvette Were His Accomplices
Wadsworth gathers the guests and replays the night step by step. Boddy, he argues, faked his death because the bullet was meant for him. When Yvette screamed, everyone rushed to the billiard room - and whoever stayed behind could have taken the dagger, used the secret passage, and stabbed the cook. He then reveals the cook and Yvette were Boddy's accomplices.
Wadsworth isn't just solving a puzzle - he's running the room. Each step of the reconstruction narrows the suspects until every guest feels the spotlight, and his calm "This house belongs to a friend of mine. I've known all along" is as much a power move as a clue. When he says "So whoever knew that the cook was involved killed her?" the logic is airtight, but the real aim is to force a confession. The comedy sits under the menace: these people swap accusations over who handled the dagger while each of them is quietly terrified of being found out.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“Don't be ridiculous. If I was the murderer, would I reveal to you how I did it?”
A calm rhetorical question that throws the whole accusation right back at the room.
Neutral
“So you could be the murderer.”
It never raises its voice, yet quietly puts everyone in the room under suspicion.
Neutral
“I gathered you all here together because you were all implicated in Mr. Boddy's dastardly blackmail.”
One sentence explains the whole night, and the word dastardly quietly reveals the butler's judgment.
Formal
“Clearly his best hope of escaping death was to pretend to be dead already.”
A clean bit of deduction that turns playing dead into a survival move and chills the room.
Formal
Up next · 14hold something over someoneThe scene: Wadsworth's Black Market ConfessionShe was one of Boddy's accomplices - she fed him the secrets he used for blackmail. Anyone who knew she was involved had a reason to silence her before she could talk.
The gunshot was meant for him, not for Wadsworth. Since the shooter would assume he was dead, playing dead was his best chance to survive and escape.
That's exactly what a guest accuses him of. Wadsworth's answer - that a real murderer wouldn't explain his own method - is clever but not quite a proof.
Yvette was Boddy's accomplice too, and several guests had met her before: one through her husband's affair, another as her employer, and one as a client of Miss Scarlet's.
