Listen and Read: The Enigmatic Murder at Ravenwood Manor.

(A crime story by Corsini Sophia, Muzi Carlo, Pelliccia Lucrezia, Rossi Riccardo)

It was night at Ravenwood Manor, Valèr Carpenter, the landlord, was hosting a small dinner with two of his friends, Charles Larue, Duke of Coin Rouge, a tall man with short brown hair, and Lucrèce Profìt, a young and distinguished lady, Baroness of Sang de Chat. They were having soft drinks and trying fancy wines when the lights all went out, due to the windy cold night. Everyone in the house got worried and started roaming around the house to find a way to restore the electricity system. Minutes went by, and the maid, Sophie Ventadorn, and the Chef, Lucàs De Jean Antoine, bumped into each other when they heard a muffled scream and other noises. Then, seconds later, the lights came back all around the mansion, and they all got back to what they were doing.

Lucrèce was in the dining room again, finding Charles coming back from the bathrooms, but there was no sign of Valèr Carpenter. The baroness called Sophie with a small bell, and the maid immediately walked to her. "Have you seen Monsieur Valèr?" Lucrèce asked. "I'm sorry, I thought he was with you," said Sophie, bowing politely. "Then let's go look for him," the baroness said, getting up from her seat, and everyone started looking for the landlord too.

When Lucrèce entered a guest room, she found herself facing a dead body. It was Valèr Carpenter, dead on the floor with severe injuries on his body and face due to something sharp and heavy. The baroness ran to the living room and called everyone else, begging Sophie to call a detective and telling them what she saw.

After around half an hour of silence from the guests and the servitude, a knock on the main door could be heard. Sophie opened, and a man stepped in. It was Richard Miller Poirot, the famous Scottish-French detective, in a black smoking with his walking stick. Lucrèce told him what happened, followed by everyone's point of view:

Sophie was cleaning the living room when the lights went off.

Charles, while looking for a way to restore the electricity, went to the bathroom, then met with Lucrèce when the lights came back.

Lucàs De Jean Antoine was cooking the main dishes, and when the lights went off, he was looking for spices, but when he was looking for the generator, he bumped into Sophie.

Lucrèce was looking for some sort of generator too but got scared by a shadow of a cat and ran back towards the dining room, almost tripping on her dark red dress.

Mr. Poirot wrote some notes and then, calmly, got guided to see the corpse. "Those are wounds from a pickaxe, I saw it in a similar case," he said. "Pickaxes? Monsieur Carpenter had a big collection, maybe it was an accident," Sophie mumbled to herself but got interrupted by Richard. "It's impossible. Monsieur Valèr Carpenter has been murdered, and the murderer is still among you."

"How do we know that no one broke in?" Charles asked, frowning. "No damage, no sounds, and no time for the eventual intruder to reach a random door in this huge mansion in the short time they had," the detective said, scribbling on his notebook.

Poirot then wanted a private chat with everyone to find out who the killer was. "I've been seeing shadows of cats for quite a while; they're driving me mad," Lucrèce confessed. "I knew of his weird family tradition of collecting mining objects," Charles said, looking up left. "But he was so jealous he only let the maid see it; she told me." "Mining objects? Yes, I'm in charge of cleaning and polishing them every Tuesday after tea time," Sophie pointed out, looking around anxiously. "Huge and sharp, some of them. even more dangerous than Monsieur Carpenter himself." "Miss Ventadorn is really stressed recently, even if we rarely get to talk during breaks," Lucàs De Jean Antoine said.

After a short analysis, Richard gathered them all together in the dining room. "Monsieur Valèr Carpenter has been murdered with a pickaxe from his collection. Such a brutal murder could only be done if motivated. Luckily for you, I discovered what happened," he said, looking directly into the baroness's eyes. "You, Miss Profìt, found the body, but you were too scared of your own visions to commit a murder." He then pointed at the chef. "You, Lucàs, never complained about your job, but complained about..." The detective smiled, moving his finger towards the maid. "...you, Miss Ventadorn. You were acting very strangely recently. You even mentioned Monsieur Carpenter's danger. He did something to you, didn't he? You kept it to yourself, told no one. except for..." he lastly looked at Charles. "Monsieur Larue, that seems really close to you, considering you told him about Monsieur Carpenter's collection of mining objects. He wanted to revenge his lover and killed Monsieur Carpenter with the sharpest pickaxe of his collection."

In that cold night, Charles Larue was arrested after reluctantly admitting his crimes to the police. The servitude sold the house after the funerals, and both the maid and chef went to work for Baroness Lucrèce. And this is yet another case solved by the detective Richard Miller Poirot.