Previously on Nancy Drew: Secret of the Scarlet Hand: We arrived at Beech Hill Museum in Washington, DC, which is preparing to open a new and super important exhibit about Mayan culture — the highlight of which is a gigantic, never-before-discovered monolith that’s like 1500 years old. Who better to trust with the preparation of this massively important exhibit than Nancy Drew, an 18-year-old who has absolutely no background in archaeology, art, or history whatsoever? We hadn’t even been working at the museum for a day when Taylor Sinclair, a man of terrible ties and an even worse mustache, told us that something terrible was about to happen at Beech Hill. Was he right? Let’s find out!
When we show back up at the museum, we go talk to Joanna. She asks how we’re doing with the tasks — they’re all done except fixing the pottery (because we’re still missing a piece), and the numbering system (because I’ve been too lazy to go over there). We can ask her a few more questions now that we’ve met everyone and been around a bit, so let’s do that. We ask when Henrik joined the museum crew, and Joanna says that Henrik offered to come translate the glyphs — for reduced pay! — the second he heard about the monolith. Hmm. Is Henrik just a massive glyph geek, or is he EVIL? Also, prior to working at Beech Hill, Henrik worked at Chaco Canyon Cultural Center in New Mexico. You will recall that Taylor told us that some Mayan artifacts had been stolen from a New Mexico museum.
We can also ask about Alejandro del Rio — does Joanna think he would resort to stealing to get Mexican artifacts back? She just shrugs and says “Who knows?” Well…we were hoping you did, Joanna, but alright.
I got the numbering system out of the way — it’s super boring, but this is what it looks like when it’s done. Yawn. Let’s go check it off of our task list.
Tra la la, off to the laboratory…
She looks like she’s about to burst into a verse of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”.
Aaand Joanna runs in to tell us that “Beech Hill’s been hit!” Uh oh, Taylor’s prediction was correct! Maybe he’s psychic. That’s So Taylor.
So this is what the villain of the game has wrought — they’ve stolen the King Pacal carving, and left behind a paper with only a red handprint on it. A scarlet hand! Like the title of this game! Although somewhat weirdly, I’m not sure we ever uncover the significance of the scarlet hand — is the culprit part of some secret society or something? We never find out. Also weirdly, Nancy shows a modicum of respect for the crime scene by not allowing us to poke around until we talk to Joanna. This game is madness.
By the way, in a bowl to the right of the display, you’ll find the second (and last) piece of the pottery we’re trying to reassemble. Grab it and let’s go find Joanna.
Joanna really does not photograph well.
So Joanna isn’t too happy about our current situation, obviously. It’s her worst nightmare! Nancy jumps at the chance to do some detective work, and Joanna says to go ahead — the police took some samples, but they can’t promise results with any kind of quickness, so she’s giving us permission to poke around. We also ask about the police’s initial findings and Joanna just shrugs and says, “Who knows?” Joanna! You could care a little more about this! But she wants to move fast with the insurance claim, so I guess she has bigger things to worry about than actually finding the artifact.
We should get moving on finding clues and stuff, but we still have to finish our tasks from yesterday. Time to put the pot back together!
It’s a little tricky, because it can be rotated and some of the pieces look a little wonky, but it’s not too hard. Alright, that was the last of our tasks! Time to devote ourselves to fighting crime.
Or not, since Henrik’s decided to get on the “lobbing tasks off onto Nancy” train too. He’s gone off to do…something, anyway, and wants us go through the temple activities and make sure they’re all answerable based on information found in the museum. “Thx, Henrik,” he signs off. Heh. Well, alright, I guess we can do that for him. Henrik’s been pretty nice to us, after all.
But first — the crime scene. That’s more important than the temple quizzes, right? I’m sure Henrik would understand. We can take the handprint, and it cracks me up that the culprit left behind an entire handprint and the police didn’t even bother bagging it up as evidence. Man, the culprit deserves to get away if the police are going to be this incompetent.
We can’t do much with the print yet, so we might as well start on Henrik’s chores. The temple is at the very end of the exhibition room, and when you go inside there’s more exhibits and some computers. We basically just have to run around looking at the exhibits to answer the quiz questions, under the guise of making sure the answers are in the museum. I’m gonna just give them to you here, because running around checking all the plaques is a pain in the ass:
- Pacal ruled over the ancient city of Palenque.
- His mother’s name was Zac Kuk.
- The name of the calendar is tzolkin.
- The name of the supreme god is Itzamna.
- The name of a modern Mayan language is Quiche.
There’s also a game where you have to match up glyphs with their English equivalents, which is kind of easy because enough of them resemble their translation that you can match those up and then do the rest through process of elimination. The last step is to beat a game called Bul, which is really easy and not worth writing about. The grunting kind of makes me crazy after a while, though.
At this point, you can descend down to the next level in the temple, but I’m not going to do that, I think because I probably figured the first level was all Henrik wanted us to do. Well, whatever. Now let’s go work on the handprint.
Seriously, Joanna has no good angles. She looks like a spaced-out fish here.
We have a bunch of things to talk to Joanna about! She hasn’t seen Henrik, either, which is a bummer because we need him to translate the glyph on the handprint paper — “What am I, fish food?” Joanna complains. Just because Nancy has absolutely no background in Mayan history doesn’t mean the rest of the staff is unqualified for their jobs, too. Joanna tells us that the glyph reads “The magician suffers yellow death.” “Apparently, the thief couldn’t come up with the glyph for ‘The curator suffers flaming purple disgrace.’” HEE! I did laugh at that line. Anyway, Joanna’s translation is nonsensical, but remember what Henrik told us about glyphs being full of subtle nuances? I’m guessing we’re going to uncover a more accurate translation later.
Moving on, we can ask if the scarlet hand, as a symbol, has some kind of significance for Mayan culture, but Joanna can’t help us there. But, she’s noticed that the red material isn’t finger paint, so she suggests we go run an analysis on it and see what it actually is.
(By the way: hey, Joanna, where’s Henrik? We haven’t seen him since the theft. Sing it with me: “Who knows?”)
In the lab, there’s the “Spectro-Analyzer,” which thankfully we just put the hand into and press Start, instead of having to solve a puzzle or something to get it to work. We flip through the chemical compounds in the database, which appear as a black line over the red dotted one. When we find the black line that overlaps the red one perfectly, it’s our match. And it’s “HgS,” otherwise known as mercuric sulfide. That doesn’t mean anything to Nancy, or to me, because I scraped out of chemistry with a C- in high school. Let’s shuffle back to Joanna and ask her.
Joanna tells us that mercuric sulfide is also known as cinnabar, which the Maya used to add definition to the artist’s lines in their carvings. The museum uses it as well, for maximum authenticity, but they’ve been out of it for a while. “Some kind of hold up with the distributor.” Well, we have the number for the distributor, so let’s go back (sigh) to the lab and call them.
The number to call is “Keep It Real Restorations,” but let’s check our voicemail first, as per the Post-It on top of the phone. We have a message from Franklin Rose asking us to do some investigating into the crime — waaaaay ahead of you, Frank. We call him to reassure him that we’re on the case, and also to ask if he has any clue about the phrase “The magician suffers yellow death.” To which he just says, “Oh, Nancy, you zero in on a case like a heat-seeking missile, don’t you?” That…that doesn’t answer our question at all. Also, what a weird analogy.
Anyway, the guy at Keep It Real Restorations is confused by our call, because Beech Hill has been ordering so much cinnabar that we should be swimming in it. We placed an order just last week. The package wasn’t shipped to the museum, though, it was picked up in person. And the initials on the order are J.R.! But hey, it could’ve been anyone using Joanna’s name — does the guy remember who picked up the package? No, of course he can’t, because then the mystery would be solved. Well, that was the opposite of enlightening. Joanna, as usual, has some explaining to do.
When we leave the lab to confront her, though, someone falls out of the temple exhibit. Wait, what?
Oh dear. Henrik’s not looking too good.
So Henrik has amnesia. How very LOOL of him. Bess thinks that we should go visit him at the hospital to ask him what happened (I don’t think he’s going to remember, if he has amnesia, Bess), but George thinks we should interrogate Joanna first. Alright alright alright.
Back at Beech Hill, Joanna is Not Pleased with this turn of events. “What next, Nancy? Del Rio pulls the plug on the monolith? The board clams up on my funding? My mother posts my old prom pictures on the Internet?” Heh. No matter what we say to her, she snaps that she wants action, not commentary (okay, grouchy), and asks us to go see Henrik at the hospital. We were going to do that anyway, so that works out. We’re also free to pick up Henrik’s mail and take over the lab. So alright, we have Henrik’s job now. I’m a little suspicious of this museum that has only three employees.
Back at the lab, we have a voicemail from a “Nurse Bluefoot” at the hospital where Henrik’s staying. He sounds weirdly Southern, for someone living in DC. Anyway, he tells us that Henrik’s been asking for Nancy as he comes to, because of all the important people in Henrik’s life, Nancy Drew is the one he remembers. Bless. The hospital hasn’t been able to find Henrik’s family, so Nancy is all that he has. When we call Nurse B back, he says that it’s important for amnesia patients to have a “personal support person” around while they begin reality orientation, and that’s going to be us. The next like, twenty minutes are just Nurse B giving us a rundown on what amnesia is and how it’s treated, blah blah brain damage blah. The important thing is that we have to help Henrik get his memory back, and hopefully he’ll be able to give us some information in the process. Nurse B warns us that Henrik’s brain is very fragile right now, so we shouldn’t push him too hard, or he might have a meltdown. Good advice for Nancy “Tell me all about your terrible past during our first conversation” Drew.
The Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Hospital will now be added to our map of Washington. Let’s go!
“You look familiar,” Henrik says. “Is it time for my snack?” HEE! No, Henrik, we’re your former co-worker from Beech Hill! Henrik doesn’t know where that is. Oh, dear. We tell him a little bit about the museum, and Joanna’s name pings something for him: “Is that the woman who called to pick my brain for an access code?” Of course, he couldn’t give it to her, because he doesn’t even remember his own birthday. He grumps at us that we’re just wasting our time, but Nancy Drew will not be discouraged: we can totally help him get his memory back! Hey, if we can curate an exhibit about the Maya despite not knowing anything about archaeology or Mayan history, we can help him recover his memory despite having no background in neuroscience or medicine. Henrik rather ungraciously says that he’ll let us help him. You know, Henrik, I don’t have to be here. I could be off eating Oaxacan cookies with Taylor Sinclair.
Up near the side of Henrik’s bed is a “memory board,” where we can pin our various bits of evidence to see if any of them jog Henrik’s memory. We put up the red handprint, and tell him a little about his job translating glyphs — it’s okay if he doesn’t remember how to read them, though, because we know what this one says. We tell him about the magician suffering yellow death, and Henrik snips that our translator is sloppy. Joanna’s not going to like hearing that. But Henrik should know, because he’s the one that wrote the message. Wait, what? Henrik’s the one who broke into the museum? We thought we could trust you, skinny amnesiac man! At any rate, the correct translation is, “The fool suffers a plague of oozing hives.” Henrik is all pleased with himself for thinking up a suitably gruesome punishment for a fool. Henrik, this is not the time. We try to pressure him to remember why he did it, but Henrik starts crying that his head hurts, and Nurse B kicks us out. Fine. We’re not done with you yet, Henrik! I don’t care how much brain damage you have!
We’ve been so busy, we haven’t checked in with Taylor. He’s the one who told us this was going to happen, after all. Let’s see what he’s up to.
“It’s a fiasco, just as I feared! Oh, I’m sick, sick, sick about the whole thing!” Taylor wails. “Yes, your fears seem to have been quite visionary,” Nancy deadpans. Hee. She’s a sassy detective. Taylor tells us that the red hand was also left behind when Prudence Rutherford’s necklace was stolen, and also when the carving was stolen from the CCCC in New Mexico — which is where Henrik used to work. You don’t think the crimes could be connected, do you? :O
Taylor weirdly volunteers the information that he was in the museum when it happened — he says he’s already spoken to the police, and told them everything he knows — “I vomited my brain up right there on the table!” Uh, ew. Taylor’s such a sleaze. Anyway, we ask if he knows why the thief would leave a red handprint, and he says, “To be a gruesome scoundrel?” Hee. We also tell him about Henrik’s accident, and Taylor “jokes” that Joanna did it, because she apparently used to say she’d push Henrik in the museum pond whenever they fought. Um, okay. Anyway, we ask if he has a photo of the Pacal carving, so we can show it to Henrik, and he says he gave the official print to Joanna (for the insurance claim), but we can have a copy. “Keep up the good work!” he chirps as we leave.
You know, regardless of whether or not Taylor is the culprit, he just…tries way too hard to seem concerned and helpful, probably in order to cover up how icky he and his mustache are.
You can talk to Alejandro or Joanna as well, but I decided to skip ahead to the next day and see how Henrik’s feeling.
Henrik’s memory board is a little more filled out — he’s 61, really? He’s kind of bony and wrinkly, but I thought he was like in his forties or something. We pin up the picture of the Pacal carving, and Henrik immediately recognizes it: “This is the stolen carving, isn’t it? And I’m the one who took it! But why? Oh, Pacal!” Hee. Some of his memory is coming back now, and he tells us that it’s still in the museum. He was trying to hide the carving, because apparently something nefarious is going down at Beech Hill. Well, that doesn’t sound good. Is that why he pushed to work at Beech Hill once he found out about the carving? Did he steal Prudence Rutherford’s necklace, and the carving from Chaco Canyon? This feels kind of weirdly convoluted to me. And to Henrik, since his brain starts hurting and we can’t get anything else out of him, information-wise. He does give us a key, which he was carrying when he fell, but can’t remember what it’s for now.
After visiting Henrik, we report for like, our third day of work at Beech Hill. I feel like Nancy’s never going to be able to hold down an average job because she’s so used to having menial tasks interrupted by crime. “What do you mean, I actually have to spend a whole week making photocopies and answering phones?” Anyway, we ask Joanna if she knows how to get in touch with Prudence Rutherford, who might have some useful information for us. “Who knows?” Thanks, Joanna.
Things that actually will help us: the key Henrik gave us opens his desk drawer, where we find a…oh my God, we find a Zip Disk. It holds 100 megabytes! I love this game. So we take the mysterious Zip Disk(!!!!) from the top drawer, and in the bottom drawer, we find Henrik’s translation notes and notes telling us how…wait, how to communicate with smugglers? Henrik, I’m ashamed of you. Most of it involves numbers and Spanish words, but the password to hang with the smugglers is the Nahuatl word for “snake.” Now, Nancy could just Google this, or she could run around trying to find someone who speaks Nahuatl. I wonder which one she’ll do?
And then there’s a few pages dedicated to Henrik’s camping trip with someone named “Big Bunny” (what?), and the gist of it all is that someone told him a story about Pacal and stuff that he wrote down. It might be important. I can’t remember.
We haven’t spoken to Alejandro in a while, and I’m going to go ahead and tell you that he speaks Nahuatl. (By the way, did you know “tomato” is a Nahuatl word? It is.) But let’s not start this conversation off by asking him for a favor, because you know how grumpy Alejandro is. Instead, we ask about the monolith — how did Beech Hill get it? Alejandro says Joanna outbid everyone, and he finds this suspicious, since Beech Hill is a pretty small museum. He suspects that Joanna’s been buying a lot of the museum’s artifacts on the black market, with faked provenance documents. Hmm. (He also calls Taylor an “overstuffed pillowhead,” which makes absolutely no sense, but is funny to me anyway.)
We also ask if he knows much about glyphs, and he admits that while he knows English, Spanish, Portuguese, Quiche, and Nahuatl (heyyy), he doesn’t know how to read glyphs. Well, Henrik’s glyph knowledge came back in like five minutes, so we don’t really need anyone else there. He is bummed to hear Henrik fell down the stairs, as he likes Henrik and doesn’t consider him part of Team Conquistador.
By the way, did Alejandro know that the Pacal carving was stolen from the museum? Alejandro says that he heard the alarms going off (so he was in the museum when it happened), but it wasn’t until Henrik called that he found out about the theft. I feel like it’s kind of weird that Henrik — who apparently stole the carving — called Alejandro up to tell him about it, but alright. Nancy points out that we didn’t see him, and Alejandro says that he was there on business, not for tea — he figured someone tripped a wire and didn’t bother to stick around. He’s kind of glib about the whole thing, and when we call him on it, he says that it doesn’t matter if the carving is in Beech Hill, Amsterdam, or Hong Kong — he considered it stolen once it was taken out of Mexico, and until it’s returned there, “what’s the difference?” Well, one difference is that at least you were able to keep an eye on it when you knew where it was, Alejandro.
We can also talk to him a bit about the cinnabar situation, and tell him that Joanna may have lied to us. I’m not sure why we’re telling this to Alejandro, her mortal enemy, but alright. We say that we haven’t called the police yet, because we don’t want to jump to conclusions, and Alejandro snarks that sure, Joanna is such a saint, she would never do anything illegal. Seriously, why are we telling him this?
Finally, we can ask him about the Nahuatl word for “snake.” Alejandro says, sure, he speaks Nahuatl — but his vocabulary seems to be slipping, if you know what he means. If we get him some documents from Joanna’s office, though, he might recall the word we need. Okay, shady. We agree because Alejandro is clearly our only resource for Nahuatl vocabulary in the whole wide world, and he says that he feels his Nahuatl coming back already! “Do you know what ‘cihaupilli’ means? Princess, or lady.” Is Alejandro hitting on us?
In light of that scintillating conversation, it’s time for another episode of How Henrik Got His Groove Back. We pin up the notes from his drawer, and in theory some time should pass for him to look at them and piece the information together, but I just backed up and clicked on him again. Henrik works fast, I guess. He says that he’s been able to recover some of the information he was working on before he got bopped on the head, and shows us a paper with stuff like “Whisperer of silent secrets” and “prison of stone” on it. He’s certain that it has something to do with whatever shenanigans are going down at Beech Hill. The answers all sort of tie back into the same point, so it doesn’t matter where you start with your questions. Henrik tells us that the Whisperer of Silent Secrets was a Mayan scribe. Pacal was not a fan of her, because she didn’t write very nice things about him. Nancy’s like, “What, did she say that Pacal had bad fashion sense?” Like you and your mom jeans can talk, Nancy. Anyway, Pacal had the Whisperer and all her writings locked up in a giant tomb (the aforementioned prison of stone). Gosh, that sounds like the monolith! Yup, there’s a 1500 year old body in the museum garden. ~History~
Henrik is sure that there’s someone trying to get into the tomb, but he doesn’t know who, or why — and he’s also sure that he took the Pacal carving for some reason related to this whole convoluted plot, but he can’t remember it. And that’s all he can give us for today.
That should have eaten up enough time for Joanna to go home or step out or whatever, so let’s go get the documents Alejandro wanted.
On her desk, there’s the list of incoming packages. #1113, the Diego Landa carving, is of particular interest to us, as the glyph on it is unidentified. Hmm. Hmm, I say!
Other than that, all her stuff is in a (locked) filing cabinet. Well, it’s a good thing she leaves her keys in her desk drawers.
So what Alejandro wants from us is the Pacal carving’s provenance documents, so he can prove that Joanna is really a thieving thief once and for all, I guess. The Pacal documents are pretty weird, too; there’s no account of where, when, or by whom the carving was excavated, so…yeah. But it was excavated in the 1930s! Indiana Jones crossover?
Back at the museum, Alejandro suddenly becomes fluent in Nahuatl once we hand over the provenance documents. He tells us that the word for snake is “coatl.” Nancy says “Muchos gracias” in response. Oh, dear.
There really isn’t a good place to end this, but I’m at 4k words now, so I figure that’s close enough. Up next: we figure out the mysterious Zip Disk! And then we make some phone calls. And some more phone calls. And we solve the mystery, mostly through making phone calls.
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