Alibit

The Guesthouse at Skansviken

about 3 h 15 min · 4–5 players

The merchant Gösta Löfgren, a summer guest at the guesthouse in Skansviken, was found dead on 8 July 1914 in his hired rowing boat off the point. He lay in the bottom with a wound to the temple and an oar across the gunwale. The finding was recorded as an accident: he had been out on the water late, the boat had capsized in the dark and he had struck his head against the gunwale. Ruben Lagerlöf, the firm's cashier and his own travelling companion, found him shortly after dawn. Follow the report straight through and you end up with the rower, who quarrelled about his pay and was the last person seen at the boat, or with the guesthouse's manageress, who had unpaid bills and an illicit can of brännvin in the cellar. Anyone who instead compares the wind log with the oarlocks and counts the steamer's calls arrives at a different man — and the paths cross in one place only: the boat lay moored and had been rowed with two oars, while the only account of the evening speaks of one oar and a short way. Requisitioned from the guesthouse and the village: the guest book with the rooms (code 'guestbook'), the wind log kept by the rower (code 'windlog'), the telegram from the office in Stockholm (code 'telegram'), the arrival list for the steamer at Skansviken (code 'arrivals'), and the receipt book from the firm's office (code 'receipts'). Further, the medical examiner's statement on the temple (code 'temple'), the technical examination of the bow line and the oarlocks (code 'bowline'), the profiling of the cash box and the receipts (code 'cash'), and the alibi table for the evening (code 'times'). The photograph of the lime gravel by the slope is requisitioned (code 'gravel'). Four red herrings are requisitioned in particular: the debt to the landowner (code 'debt'), the missing portmanteau (code 'portmanteau'), the hint of smuggled goods (code 'smuggling') and the cashier's journey to town (code 'journey'). The notes taken from the fisherman's wife (code 'fisherwife') and from the steamer hand (code 'steamerhand') are also in the file.

The Guesthouse at Skansviken – a murder case in Alibit. Up to eight people work the same case in the browser, with no game master.