Case 030

Case 030: Black Magic

Celest St. Claire's Notes

Hey,

As I mentioned in my note, I’m sure that my conclusions will match Sullivan’s. That being the case, if you’ve already asked him about these clues, you probably won’t learn anything new here.

If you do choose to use this site, you’ll still need to email Sullivan about the killer’s Identity. You’ll also need to email him the case’s Solution once you’ve figured out where he can find evidence that will help the police arrest the killer.

If you haven’t emailed Sullivan yet, you can visit SleuthKings.com/Case-030 to send him your first email. When you want to address either of the issues above, just include the appropriate underlined word from above in the body of your email.

If you want to see my thoughts on any of the clues in your case file, just click the corresponding button below.

You may have noticed this already, but the third row of letters on the poster spells “diamonds.” I’m pretty sure it’s telling us to look at the 8 of diamonds card.

Looking closer at the card, there are letters in each of the diamonds, right? If you can figure out how to line it up with the letters on the poster correctly, I think the card might help spell out some kind of message. It’ll probably cover the word “diamonds,” but that’s OK – I’m pretty sure we won’t need it for the final message.

Here are the letters each row contains when the card is lined up correctly with the poster’s letters:

A X R S N X S G

V C A E C G X U

O A S X I I D I

I M X D N R I S

D E U A G L S E

If you read the message from top to bottom, starting with the left-most column, it says:

“Avoid cameras. Use Dancing Girls disguise.”

That’s weird. It sounds like the killer was taking orders from somebody else. If that’s really what’s going on, I don’t think that you and Sullivan are looking for just one killer.

Even if I’m right, it’s probably best to focus on identifying the person taking orders for now and worry about finding their accomplice later. If they wore a “Dancing Girls” disguise to sneak into the theater, my guess is that they’re probably a woman. If that’s the case, Magnus really might be innocent.

Knowing that the killer is a woman doesn’t narrow the suspect list down much, but it’s a start, right? Hopefully, we’ll learn a little more about them from some of the other clues!

I’m pretty sure Sully is right – the illusion instruction sheet and the ace of spades card are connected. My best guess is that the numbers beside each word on the instruction sheet are telling us to look at a word or letter beside each picture on the card to spell out a message.

I was right! The numbers on the instruction sheet are telling us which letter to look at on the card.

For example, the numbers beside the word “Rabbit” on the instruction sheet are: 1, 2, 6, 5, and 10.

The words beside the rabbit picture on the ace of spades are: “Find Every Person.”

When you look at the letters indicated by the instruction sheet, you get the letters: “F I V E P.”

If you repeat that for the dove, you get: “M B E G I.”

The hat gives you the letters: “N P L A N.”

When you add it all together, the message says: “Five PM begin plan.”

Believe it or not, this is great news! If the killer was busy sabotaging things at 5 PM, it means they won’t have an alibi for that time! I’m sure it won’t eliminate everyone from the suspect list (that would be too easy!), but it should help us narrow things down a little more.

So far, I started out by filling in the weird insults on the love letter. I had to dig through everything in the case file to do it, but here’s what I got:

Jake the Not-so-“Wise.”

Dillon’s show sucks. He’s a “Vampire.”

This guy isn’t so great… “Hogan.”

Next, I replaced the block of symbols with the matching letters from the insults. Unfortunately, the block only spells out gibberish, so I’m kind of stuck now. Even worse, none of this even begins to address the random numbers at the bottom of the letter.

The only other potentially helpful thing I’ve noticed is that the numbers on the 9 of hearts card are laid out the same as the block of symbols (now converted to letters) on the letter. That’s got to be important somehow, but I haven’t quite put everything together yet.

I finally figured it out!

When you replace the symbols with letters on the love letter, you get:

O H M

W S V

N E P

The numbers on the 9 of hearts are arranged like:

9 5 7

6 2 1

3 8 4

The trick is that each of the letters stands for the number that’s in the same place. For example, 9 = O, 6 = W, 3 = N, etc.

Once I figured that out, I was able to replace the numbers at the bottom of the letter. They read: “Seven PM show.” I’m pretty sure the words above them are important, too, which means the full message is “Don’t miss the Seven PM show.”

That means the killer must have been at one of the 7PM shows. I don’t know which show they attended, but we can at least rule out anyone who wasn’t at any of them.

I think the best way to start figuring out the pattern is to write out the alphabet and put the squares from “Magic and Fables” below the correct letters. Here’s what I’ve got:

Judging from how things seem to repeat, I think A – F is one set, G – L is a second, M – R is a third, and S – X is a fourth set.

I haven’t quite made sense out of all of the pattern yet, but I have noticed something about the centers of the squares in each set. The squares for A – F don’t have anything in their center. The second set (G – L) has a circle in the center. The third set (M – R) has an “X,” and the fourth set (S – X) has a circle with an “X” in the center.

When you’ve figured out the pattern and can fill in the rest of the alphabet (excluding Y and Z), you should be able to decode the message at the bottom of the flyer. Even when you’ve decoded it, though, I doubt all you’ll have to do is read it. Be ready for it to tell you to do something else if you want to find the message we’re actually looking for.

Good news – I cracked the pattern! Here’s what it looks like:

When I decoded the message at the bottom of the flyer, I got: “Back of clubs. Look north.”

I don’t know how I missed it, but the design on the back of the 4 of clubs actually matches the square pattern on the “Magic and Fables” flyer! I oriented the card so that north faced up and then decoded the squares, which gave me this message:

“Strong alibi: just perform on stage during the show.”

Wow, so the killer not only used one of the magic shows as their alibi, they actually performed on stage during it. That means they have to be either one of the magicians or their assistants!

Although it will probably take solving Clues 1-4 first, don’t forget to send Sullivan an email once you know who the killer is! If you haven’t emailed him yet, you can do so at SleuthKings.com/Case-030. When you want to tell him the killer’s identity, be sure to include the word Identity in the body of your email so that he knows what you’re talking about. Or, when you think you know where he can find evidence that will help the police arrest the killer, you can include the word Solution in the body of your email.

Good luck!