Oops, sorry these have been taking so long. Can you tell I’m not horribly invested in this particular game?
Previously on Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion: Abby threw us a seance, only it was a massive fake. Still, we took the opportunity to creep around the house in the dead of night and discovered that in the 1800s, someone named E. Valdez buried treasure somewhere for a dude named Diego to find. Meanwhile, in the present day, someone tried to get us out of the mansion and then tried to burn the house down, or at least get rid of some 1820s tax returns. Fascinating stuff.
Anyway, we last left off seeing Louis stealing a book from the library (how rude!), but since he’s still in there, we can’t go in and poke around quite yet. Instead, remember how I said we were going to break into Abby’s room? Would I lie to you?
You there, Abby? No? Excellent.
Blah blah fake witchcraft shenanigans blah. There’s so many different patterns going on in here that I’m getting nauseated — but then, Victorian photography tumblrs have taught me that that was just how Victorians liked to get down with their interior decorating. I don’t really want to stare at this wallpaper any longer than I have to, though, so let’s go through her stuff real quick. (Also, if you don’t do it fast enough, she’ll come back and catch you. And that is bad. I guess. It’s never happened to me.)
So Abby has a copy of Old West Romances, bless. The key passage inside is about Lizzie Applegate (remember her?) and “The Bandit,” also known as “El Diablo.” According to this book, Lizzie and El Diablo had a thing going. He used to ride his “black steed” right up to the stage where she was performing and leave her flowers! I don’t understand how he was never caught, considering he was apparently riding horses through theaters on the regular. But whatever. Anyway, Lizzie apparently joined El Diablo’s gang of thieving thieves, and participated in the Christmas Gold Robbery of 1878. Good to know. Tuck this information away for later, and let’s keep moving!
Abby’s wardrobe has a weird scorpion inlay on it, so the solution is to go steal the scorpion pin(?) in her jewelry box and put it on the wardrobe, and this setup will be revealed. Blah blah Abby’s been faking all the weird noises/shadows in the house blah. That… was already pretty obvious after the fake seance, but whatever. Now we have proof, which is A+, I guess. There’s also a one-way mirror looking out into the hallway, which isn’t creepy at all. Was she watching us sneaking around? We may never know.
Anyhoodle. Things that will help us actually finish the game: this handy book on the Chinese zodiac right here, and also a slip of paper in her drawer with the character for moon (月). Note the order of the animals!
That’s all for Abby’s room. Let’s skedaddle before she finds us here and I don’t know, stabs us with one of her spider pins.
We have some new questions to ask Rose, mostly about Charlie. Well, first we ask if she’s missing any papers (I don’t know how we know that), to which she says yes, but they’re just old letters. Oh, Rose. Nothing is “just” an old letter in this game. We already did the dialogue about the papers that were lost in the fire, so these were probably stolen. (I’d say “misplaced,” but let’s be real, this is Nancy Drew.) Sucks to be Rose. Moving on — tell us more about Charlie, Rose! We ask about his living situation and she tells us that he said he was staying with friends. Fair enough. I think I’m supposed to suspect him of being a lying liar who lies around here, but there’s nothing really incriminating about that. Well, not yet, anyway.
Then the phone rings!
It’s been a while since we’ve spoken to Nancy’s friends. Let’s do that, shall we?
If you haven’t figured it out yet, Nancy spells it out to Bess and George: there’s buried treasure in this very house! Quelle excitement. Actually, wait, I might’ve given that away last entry. I don’t remember. Oh, well. Anyway, Bess and George are all enthusiastic about this, because they have no lives and must live vicariously through Nancy. (“Things are starting to heat up!” Bess says, and I chuckle because I love me some bad puns.) Bess and George muse that there must have been a reason why someone wanted to burn those particular papers earlier. We also tell them about Louis, and they both immediately agree that Nancy should pick the lock on his briefcase to see what he took. I can see why the three of them are friends. Because this is Junior Detective Mode (don’t judge me!), George helpfully tells us that the maze puzzle on his laptop will help us find the combination. I wonder how she figured that out all the way from Illinois?
That’s all we need them for, so we hang up, because Nancy Drew is the worst friend. Hey, Nancy, maybe you should ask them how they’re doing, you know?
Charlie’s left by now, which means we can poke into his life and figure out why he’s being so weird when we ask him things. I just went back to check, and I completely forgot to mention that, in the saloon, there’s a fireplace, and the grate on the fireplace is “stuck.” (As always.) But Charlie’s gone and we have our trusty crowbar from part one, so what are we waiting for?
This is what you need the lantern for, btw.
Another tunnel! There have been so few of those in this game.
Anyway, it doesn’t lead anywhere particularly thrilling: you just end up…in the saloon again. In a secret room behind the bar, to be precise. With a one-way mirror! This your room, Abby?
Apart from the mirror, there’s also a sleeping bag, a ton of takeout, and some textbooks. Charlie’s been sleeping here! He lied to Rose! For shame, Charlie. There’s a postcard off to the side, which we can read: he tells his parents that he’s still in-between places, but he’s working, and he’s “learning a lot” and “very proud” of the work he’s doing. Aw! I don’t want to suspect Charlie, because he’s kind of cutely dorky here. He’s also very useful: we can read his textbook on “El Diablo” (although it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know — blah blah Bandit, blah blah train robbery, treasure was never found blah), and steal his term paper (which is on a floppy disk, bless). His takeout cartons also helpfully have the character for king (王) on them. Thanks, Charlie!
Our next move is to go check out Louis’s briefcase. I freely admit that I did the Charlie part first because I didn’t want to have to go through Louis’s things twice. I’m lazy like that. As George helpfully informed us all the way from Illinois, we need to get on his laptop to find his briefcase combo. And while we’re at it, we can read Charlie’s paper! Sounds like a plan!
But since we don’t know the computer password yet, we have to play a maze game, aka “The Bane of Every Nancy Drew Player’s Existence,” to get in. I’ll spare you the screencaps. You know what it looks like.
So, Louis’s computer. Contrary to his claims, he does not appear to have a virus. I remember when I was like…ten, I downloaded something and then every time I turned the computer on, I would get a message saying “FUCK YOU LARISSA! ~*~SKYHACKER~*~” or something like that. I don’t know why I told you that. Anyway, that doesn’t happen when you turn on Louis’s computer, is what I’m getting at, I guess.
Hmmm, apparently this house used to be the Golden Gardenia Hotel. You will recall that that was where Lizzie Applegate used to put on her performances. (I feel like at some point early on in the game, Louis or someone tells you that it’s “unlikely” that this house is the same hotel, but I could be making that up. Anyway, if that did happen, then they clearly lied.) While we’re on this 1800s kick, let’s look through Charlie’s term paper, which is on the Christmas train robbery we keep hearing about:
Man, Charlie’s a better outliner than I am. I have a tendency to just sort of vomit up some paragraphs and then see where that takes me. Teach me your ways, Charlie! Anyway, the pertinent information is actually on the next page, which I did not screencap — in addition to his BFFs Purple Pete, Wild Obadiah, and Crazy Jane, Diego Valdez may (there’s a question mark after his name) have been involved in the Christmas train robbery. Gosh, what does he have to do with all this?
Charlie also has a section on the “Applegate connection” — more precisely, he thinks the missing gold is somehow tied to the promotion of The Bandit’s Treasure, which you will remember took place at…the Golden Gardenia Hotel! Which is now the very house we’re standing in!
Have you figured out what’s going on here yet? (It’s okay if you haven’t. This is Junior Detective Mode, after all.)
The final thing we need is in Louis’s briefcase, the combination to which is 4653-4868. The password to Louis’s laptop is “ANTIQUES”, by the way, if we have to use it again and don’t want to play the maze game (aaargghh!) again.
“Personal belongings”? Nancy Drew no understand those words.
So the book Louis “borrowed” is an oral history of Chinese immigrants in California. (Or, well, a written version of their oral history. This isn’t an audiobook.) The page we turn to is a story by one Wing Tang, who worked for Lizzie Applegate at the Golden Gardenia. Hmm. Wasn’t the Golden Gardenia owned by E. Valdez, though? More importantly, he also states that they called the house gum bo fu. This is less helpful without the pinyin, but I guess we can’t have everything. I wonder what it means? I also wonder how frustrated people who speak Chinese must have been at having to wait for Nancy Drew to get it translated so they could finish the game.
There’s also this very interesting letter. I wonder who this mysterious client is, and why Louis is uncertain as to how much they have? Moreover, where did they find $50,000 in 1870s gold coins?
Louis has also circled an article in his Victorian Antiques magazine by “John Oroman” (heh), who claims he has developed a systematic approach to figuring out which old homes are likely to have hidden treasure. This is the time to remind you that Louis was the one who approached Rose about renovating the house. (Also, one lady found $20,000 in her house! Man, I wish I had that kind of luck. I live[d] in San Francisco! Where’s my Victorian gold stash?)
It occurs to me that I could have called this number. But I didn’t.
Finally, there’s a throwback to Stay Tuned for Danger — Louis has clipped out an article about Rick Arlen, who apparently is still with LOOL (bless). I felt it was my duty to report that to you. The article also makes mention of Nancy herself, stating that she was a teen detective who was ~on the case. This is kind of interesting because you could infer that, rather than just being a cute nod to the previous game, this clipping proves that Louis knows Nancy is a detective. (Although you’d have to think about how he got the article in the first place. I bet Louis is a LOOL fan.)
I have no idea what time it is, but clearly there’s none to waste: let’s call Emily with the annoying voice, and get her help putting our clues together!
We first ask her about the Ladies’ Protection Society, and she says they probably helped out widows and orphans — although, of course, she’s never heard of it and so doesn’t know for sure. I can’t tell if this game is implying that the Ladies’ Protection Society is a front for Lizzie’s train robbery money or not. Well, whatever. We then ask about The Bandit’s Treasure, and she tells us that “the music is fantastic.” That really helps, you know. Finally, we get to the real question: does she know what gum bo fu means? Emily muses it sounds Chinese (duh), but she doesn’t know for sure — she’ll ask her friend. Meanwhile, she advises us to ask everyone else, just in case they know. Nancy also asks where “Yerba Buena town” is, and I laugh in a superior manner because I already know the answer to that, and I’m kind of obnoxious.
Anyway, Charlie is still here, for some reason (or maybe I went to sleep and didn’t screencap it), so let’s go confront him. Maybe there’ll be blackmail!
We ask him about the train robbery first, of course. Don’t want to get on his bad side before we wheedle information out of him! He tells us that, in his scholarly, History 183 opinion, El Diablo was just a composite of different outlaws — at the very least, no one knew who he was. Huh. I’ll point out that this means that Diego Valdez and El Diablo/The Bandit are not necessarily exclusive, if you ~get my meaning~, which may be why no one’s sure if Diego Valdez participated in the Christmas train robbery.
Anyway, to the point: Charlie, j’accuse! Of living in Rose’s unrealistic basement, to be precise. He immediately panics and begs us not to rat him out. I wonder if Charlie saw us poking around down here through the mirror? Because he’s missing his chance to get some leverage on us, is all I’m saying. We ask how he found the room in the first place, and he says that he had been living in parks, but it started to rain, so he ducked into some bushes and found a panel leading into the room. From there, he overheard Rose and Abby talking about how they needed help, and decided to offer his services (you’ll recall that Rose mentioned that like ten minutes after she and Abby thought about hiring help, Charlie popped up). He swears he’ll tell Rose, but in the meantime, he can help us: what else has he seen through that mirror? Charlie tells us that Louis was poking around, tapping the walls and floors. Looking for ~*~treasure~*~, perhaps? One last question: does Charlie know what gum bo fu means? Of course he doesn’t. I believe this is the last conversation we have with Charlie, which is kind of sad. I’ll miss his incompetence.
Meanwhile, Louis is looking creepier by the minute. We should go talk to him.
CREEPY.
Before we jump on him re: gum bo fu, let’s ask about the fire screen. Remember that? It’s okay, it was a while ago. Anyway, Charlie claimed that Louis was going to replace it because he (Charlie) got the wrong one. But now that we know of Louis’s creepin’ ways, I’m beginning to wonder! Louis says that he was going to purchase an antique fire screen, but never found a “suitable match.” He feels just dreadful! I’m sure. Why do they need an antique fire screen, anyway? If I were staying there, I’d accept a few anachronisms in the decor if it meant the safety devices weren’t 150 years old.
So! Gum bo fu! Louis immediately freaks out (“Where did you hear that?!”, double end marks and all), and we have two options: we can tell the truth (we found it in a book), or we can lie like lying liars (we found it in a magazine). I choose to lie, because I’ve played this game and if you tell the truth, he figures out that you’ve broken into his briefcase and the game ends. I’m in favor of the game ending, but not like this! Once he hears that we got it from a magazine, Louis relaxes and says that it means “House of Great Books,” after the fact that many books were stored in private homes to save them from the earthquake and subsequent fire. Oh, well, that makes sense! I bet Louis borrowed a book about a house of books because he just really loves books. That’s totally it.
YOU CAN’T FOOL ME, LOUIS.
Anyway. I decided that I should talk to Abby, since I haven’t done so since the beginning of the game. This means that I missed a mildly interesting conversation from before the fire, where we could confront Abby about her fake seance, but whatever. I’m pressed for time here, you know.
Abby’s still going on about the fire. Old news, Abby! But whatever. She has a weird hate-on for Charlie, although we know by now that he’s innocent. So let’s go through the conversations really quick:
- She thinks Charlie is responsible for the fire because he’s always around when the accidents start, although she doesn’t think he’s doing it maliciously. Still, there’s something ~suspicious~ about him (which, as we now know, is the fact that he’s squatting in the basement).
- She really likes the poem in our room, but doesn’t know very much about it.
- She claims Louis’s store, “Chandler Interiors” (I almost wrote “Anteriors” there, oops), is super reputable, and all his customers will want to visit the B&B when it opens. Bless.
- Apparently Charlie originally told her he was “between apartments” (this is, I think, information you’re supposed to get before you figure Charlie out); Abby talks a bit about how high rents are in SF (even in 2000! They’re absolutely insane now, by the way).
- Re: the furniture in the house, Abby says the house came with some knick-knacks and objects that were too big to move (like the bed in Nancy’s room).
- “Gumbo fu? I love gumbo. What kind of gumbo is gumbo fu?”
That was…scintillating.
Back in Nancy’s room, we receive an envelope from Emily! In theory, we should already know what gum bo fu means, but:
Dude! Louis lied to us! (I couldn’t find a reading of the first hanzi as “gum”, and 寶 [“bo”] keeps turning up as “bǎo“, but the last one is “fǔ“, at any rate.) Why would he do such a dastardly thing?
The good news is, Emily has provided us with the last hanzi (gold): 金.
We’ve exhausted all the clues in the rest of the house, and found all the hanzi, which means it’s time to begin the end of the game! You can solve the puzzles in Nancy’s room without triggering the ending sequence, but this is essentially the part where everything makes sense, so if you want to go harass Rose, Abby, Charlie, or Louis, you should do so now.
Ready? Great.
Instead of the tapestry, we now have this panel! The pattern is of Chinese zodiac animals, and they’re pressable! Simply recall the order they were in in Abby’s book (Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Boar). The panel then reveals a super-snazzy lock, and all of the hanzi we’ve had to learn finally comes into use:
Again, the characters have to be put in an order that we learned elsewhere (in this case, the tapestry). I’ll go ahead and tell you that the correct order is 子 (child), 开 (beginning), 女 (daughter), 四 (four), 目 (eye), 火 (fire), 月 (moon), 王 (king), 川 (river), 金 (gold).
(By the way, I’m really sorry if you don’t have Asian characters installed. Oops.)
And the safe opens to reveal a metric ton of helpful information. How exciting! Where shall we begin? It doesn’t really matter, because the whole thing is basically the equivalent of a neon sign saying: LIZZIE APPLEGATE’S REAL NAME WAS ELIZABETH; EL DIABLO WAS DIEGO VALDEZ; THEY WERE MARRIED; LIZZIE IS E. VALDEZ. And there you go! Lizzie also left a will in which she left her necklace to Nellie Beecham, $15,000 to Wing Tang (aw! That was nice of her), and $10,000 to Mable Cratty. And nothing for Lotta Crabtree? How rude. Anyway, she left everything else to Diego, but with the condition that, if he wasn’t found within one year of her death (or was found dead), it would all go to the Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society. So now we know what happened a century and a half ago. But what about the hidden treasure? I’m guessing, given that it was stolen by her secret husband who was known to the world as the Devil, she didn’t tell anyone about it. Which means it’s still in the house! And we should find it before Louis someone else does!
Before we close the safe, there’s a pyramid that we have to open. Remember that hanzi character that was with that letter on the stairs? (These games make me write the stupidest sentences.)
So you put the hanzi in on this side…
Flip all the suns to moons on this side…
And solve a sliding puzzle on this side. When you finish, it’ll be in the shape of a phoenix, and we’ll get a shiny red jewel! How exciting! The jewel, you may notice, matches the eyes of the birds on the staircase. And one bird is missing an eye! Clearly, this is where it’s meant to go.
…but it’s also the middle of the night. Oops. Okay, I’ll just come back later. I’m flexible like that.
Okay, for real this time.
~Trippy~
So the light comes in the window, reflects off the birds’ eyes, and points us directly to the middle of the floor. How…has nobody noticed this? Even without the eye we just put back (which is the right one on the left bird head), the left eye still works…? Maybe this is the one day where San Francisco’s not covered in fog. I can buy that.
Are you kidding me? Fine. I’m glad we still have that crowbar.
Aw, yeah. We’re rich, you guys!
Or not.
So the culprit is Louis. Of course it’s Louis. Are you even surprised? He used John Oroman’s ~systematic method~ to figure out that there was most likely gold in the house, approached Abby and Rose, caused a bunch of accidents to make them consider selling it (to a buyer he knows, probably him tbh), the “anonymous buyer” in that letter in his briefcase is him (the reason he didn’t know how much gold there was was because he hadn’t found it yet, obviously), etc etc etc. Well, whatever. I guess we have to stop him now. Remember that shaky chandelier?
The game is sort of tricky, because the quickest way to the chandelier are the steps to our left (the rope is on that end of the staircase). But you may also remember that there’s a squeaky step on that side, and Louis doesn’t know that he didn’t completely knock Nancy out. So the solution is to go up the steps to our right, cross the landing, and undo the rope holding up the chandelier.
Yay. Day saved. I guess.
Blah blah all’s well that ends well blah. Rose and Abby don’t have a legal claim to the gold, but the bank will give them a reward for finding it (although the original reward, from the 1870s, is only $1,000, so I hope the bank is accounting for inflation here), and the B&B is booked through the month because it’s gotten so much publicity! Rather upsettingly, this news is delivered through the San Francisco Observer, which is not a real paper. Boo.
THE END.
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