UUUUGGGH ANOTHER ONE OF THESE GAMES. You know how I bitched about Message in a Haunted Mansion, re: the game being more about cracking a mystery that happened 100 years ago, instead of whatever’s happening now? This game is basically the same thing, although with slightly more interesting characters — then again, maybe I just think so because I haven’t played it to death yet. Also, we get to go outside in this one, so that’s a plus. Still. I don’t really play these games for the Marie Antoinette mysterytimes, you know?
Anyway! Dear George: Nancy was apparently going on a Wisconsin ski vacation by herself, because it’s not like she has any friends or anything, but a blizzard has swept in and shot down those plans. She’s one of the few people to have made it to the castle at all (spooky!) and the castle itself is very old (creepy!). Not to mention, the castle’s owner, who is the only person Nancy knows, is away on business, and the caretaker told Nancy he doesn’t know how to contact her — which Nancy thinks is a lie (scary!). All in all, this whole place is suspicious as fuck, but Nancy will be sure to take time to meet Jacques Brunais, the “gorgeous” French ski instructor.
YEAH GIRL.
“But at least this time,” Nancy signs her letter off, “the culprit is just a snowstorm!”
HAHAHAHAHA. Oh, Nancy, you say the silliest things.
And so we begin. Nancy reminds us that we have to get this letter to a mailbox, because I’m so sure any mail is getting out of the castle in this weather. Also on the desk is a room key, which we will need to get in and out of the room (this game uses the super-fun alarm clock system of passing time), and there’s a little envelope in Nancy’s desk drawer, with a locker number and combination. We can’t take it with us, but we’ll probably need it later. Exploring will lead us to Nancy’s suitcase (the contents of which seem to point to Nancy being a really dorky dresser), which also contains a brochure about Wickford Castle, the place in which we are staying:
See, I was going to be classy and avoid the Wisconsin/dairy jokes, but the game has already provided some here, so I guess it’s okay for me to go ahead.
We poke around a bit more and discover that the radiator is broken (boo!). Turn to the table and you’ll find a copy of our old friend, Sassy Detective magazine. Wait, is this the first time it’s been used in a game before? I know it pops up in Phantom of Venice, but I don’t recall it in Message in a Haunted Mansion. Then again, I block out a lot of things from Message in a Haunted Mansion.
Anyway, this issue of Sassy Detective has lots of fun things, like an interview with Canada’s “hottest new girl sleuth”, Lorna McNamer, but who cares about her? What’s really important is an article about fingerprints, and how to use them to figure out what numbers have been pressed on a phone, or a keypad, or a security system that we might have to disable later in the game — I mean, what?
I got really excited because I already knew about this on account of reading Runaways when I was twelve.
File that information away for later, aaaand that’s all there is to Nancy’s room at the moment. We should go tell the caretaker about our wonky radiator and also get him to send our letter. You know, through the blizzard. Maybe the wind will push it along to Illinois.
Creepy dead ends, passageways that are too dark to go down by ourselves, quirky guests, and portraits of beheaded French ladies. That’s it, that’s the game.
Anyway, in the front lobby, we meet Dexter Egan, the not particularly personable and only slightly creepy caretaker of the castle! I hope he doesn’t have anything in common with this Dexter.
He asks if we’re settled in, and we have two options — one, tell him about the radiator or two, say that everything’s great and we just need a stamp for our letter to George. If you don’t pick option two, the letter never gets brought up again and we have to walk around with it all game. So that’s a thing. I chose option one, anyway, because I was worried the radiator would explode or something if I didn’t. Dexter immediately gets all snippy and huffs that he is Very Busy — last time he checked, there were only 24 hours in a day, thank you. He apologizes for the inconvenience of it all. Man, someone got up on the wrong side of the bed today.
And if Dexter’s life wasn’t hard enough, there have been a couple of…incidents. Nancy’s detective radar immediately goes off: incidents? We’d sure like to hear more about those! Vacation, what’s that? Dexter says that somebody vandalized the historic library (which I guess is worse than if they had just vandalized a regular library), which isn’t going to make the castle’s owner, Christi Lane, very happy. Apparently they went so far as to hack a huge hole into one of the walls, which, okay. Maybe they were a frustrated Nancy Drew player who couldn’t find a secret passageway in this game and decided to just make their own. That’s a possibility, right? Anyway, Dexter locked the library up and called the police, but, you know, blizzard. That’s a relief. The police just step all over Nancy’s territory anyway.
Dexter’s kind of on a roll now, and he tells us that one of the guests (“Professor Hotchkiss”) has also called him because someone apparently broke into her room — but she won’t open the door or let him in, so…there’s not exactly a lot he can do about it. Being the helpful super-sleuths that we are, we offer to wheedle the information out of her. Dexter then gives us our first task, because somehow we always end up doing everyone’s chores for them: get Professor Hotchkiss’s ski boots from the ski room in the basement and bring them to her. Apparently Jacques Brunais has been working on them for her (I have no idea how one works on a pair of boots, but what do I know?), but refuses to deliver them because he’s “a ski instructor, not a bellhop.” Oh, okay. Jacques Brunais sounds kinda douchey. Dexter’s actually quite appropriately sheepish about asking us to do work for him, and calls us a “trooper.” Thanks, Mr. Egan!
Before we head down to the basement, though, there’s someone else hanging around the lobby. Let’s go meet Lisa!
Lisa is like, weirdly excited about the possibility of someone in the castle being a criminal. (“Can you believe it?!” No, Lisa, I certainly can’t. This has definitely never happened to Nancy Drew before.) Nancy mentions the vandalized library, and Lisa is all disappointed that Dexter won’t let them go in there. “I’m dying to see what they did to it!” Hee. She tells us that Dexter ~might~ keep an extra key in his desk…just saying. So we know where we’ll be snooping later! Nancy observes that Lisa knows a weird amount of what goes on in this castle, and asks if there’s anything else we should know about, to which Lisa responds that “the real scandal is downstairs. His name is Jacques Brunais!”
The dialogue for these games is truly amazing.
“Scandalous cuteness“, that is. So that’s…a thing. Although somewhat appropriately for this year, he competed in the Winter Olympics! Incredible. And what about Professor Hotchkiss? Lisa enthusiastically tells us that Hotchkiss is ~totally nutty~ (is she a…Nutty Professor? That was terrible, I’m sorry); she spends all day in her room typing (that was her room with the typewriter sounds coming from it, and let’s also all take a moment to laugh at how old this game is) and was screaming yesterday about she had been robbed. Hilarity!
So basically, Lisa is a massive gossip. From her we learn the following:
- Professor Hotchkiss teaches “history — or maybe a foreign language.” Lisa claims to have heard her speaking French — although she can’t be sure, as she “barely passed Spanish in high school.”
- Lisa herself is “just a humble photojournalist” covering Midwest mansions. That’s an oddly specific topic, but whatever. She chose Wickford Castle because it’s “one of the weirdest” — the original owner, Ezra Wickford, shut himself up inside for like 50 years.
- Mr. Wickford also had one of the castle’s towers brought in from France, but sealed it off. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ~creepy noises~ coming from it at night 50 years later, because of course there are.
“I wonder what we’re gonna do with ourselves while we’re all cooped up in this place!” Well, at least one of us is turning to crime, to be sure. We can also check out some of the books in the room — there are two volumes of Major Figures and Events of the French Revolution, one of which will open to page about Marie Antoinette. File that away for later, so we can move on to the rest of the castle! We promised Dexter we’d get Professor Hotchkiss’s ski boots, so we can do that and interrogate Jacques Brunais at the same time. I’m an efficient super-sleuth, you know.
Aaaand the ski office is closed. Okay, well, I’m flexible. We’ll just have to come back after 2, presumably once Jacques Brunais has taken his two-hour lunch. Doesn’t he know he has three whole customers to be helping out? I choose to reward such shoddy customer service by stealing the paintbrush on the ledge of the office window. That’ll show him.
Also down here is Nancy’s locker, which we may as well try to open. Except the lock doesn’t work. I am beginning to be suspicious about the standards here at Wickford Castle.
We pretty much can’t do anything but wait for Jacques, so back upstairs we go! I choose to harass Lisa a little, asking her if she knows of any ~secret passages~ to get into the tower. “Where do they usually hide the secret entrances in weird old Midwestern mansions?” An excellent question, Nancy. But Lisa knows not — she wishes Nancy would hurry up and find it, though, so “we” can check it out! Um, excuse you, Lisa. Did Nancy invite you on her super-sleuth adventures?
I don’t feel like that conversation ate up two whole game hours, but my screencaps don’t have me doing anything, so I’ll assume that somehow we’ve jumped to 2 o’clock, which means it’s time to go meet Jacques Brunais!
Say hi to Jacques! He’s got some very weird issues going on with his biceps, but whatever. Maybe Bess digs that. I immediately ask for Professor Hotchkiss’s boots, because I don’t have time for small talk. Jacques hands over the boots and remarks that we should be having fun, not doing Dexter’s chores for him. Dude, I’m saying. He snarks that American girls always mix ~business~ and ~pleasure~, which…okay, then. I’ve never seen anyone actually pay Nancy for all this work, is all I’m saying. Do I knock your hobbies, Jacques Brunais? Nancy asks if he’s in Wisconsin for business or pleasure, and he tells us about his “petit chou”, Isabelle, who is studying at the University of Wisconsin. “Besides, I am not the first French work of art to end up here!”
Eh? What does he mean by that? Let’s ask!
“The Queen’s Tower, of course.” Oh, of course. You know, the Queen’s Tower. Named for…the Queen! Of the United States! Who built her tower in Wisconsin, where all the important monuments are! Duh, Nancy.
We can’t wheedle any more information about the tower out of him (his only reply to how it got all the way to Wisconsin is “The French are a talented people, Nancy~” which is, you know, helpful), so we switch the topic to the library. Jacques’s only response to that is to tell us not to worry our pretty heads about that. Whatever, Jacques. Why don’t you help us figure out our locker situation? He tells us that 5-1-7 is the combination for locker 311, not 310. Also, one of Jacques’s hobbies is making hope boxes, to ~express~ himself. I don’t recall that ever coming up as a clue, but it does give him some hidden depths, don’t you think?
Unfortunately, locker 311 is already occupied by Lisa’s stuff. Or Helen Carp’s. Or Tanya Lee Gooding’s. Or Alina Boyd’s. What is this, Orphan Black? Lisa has a suspicious amount of identities, for someone who claims to be just a humble photojournalist obsessed with Midwestern castles! We also find a letter written to her in Spanish, which you will remember she says she doesn’t speak a word of. I’m a little disappointed. We’ve literally just met her, and we’ve already discovered that she sits on a throne of lies. And we were going to take her sleuthing with us!
But at least we have Professor Hotchkiss’s boots. Let’s go deliver them to her, shall we?
Professor Hotchkiss thanks us for the boots, and before we can so much as ask a single invasive question, she shuts the door and goes back to typing. Okay 🙁
Aaand Dexter has more chores for us. The light is out in the back stairwell, apparently, so we might as well go fix it while Dexter does the clearly more important job of standing behind the desk. So we head back down to the basement where the circuit breaker is, and flip the top three switches on the right. Power restored! Let’s go rub it in Dexter’s face how much better we are at his job than him.
He…promptly gives us another chore. I see how it is. We’re to go and ask Professor Hotchkiss what she wants for dinner, because she won’t pick up her phone and presumably Dexter is attached to that desk by a series of life support tubes and will die if he steps away for five minutes to knock on her door.
Anyway, we go to ask (“Virginia Woolf never suffered such interruptions!”) and she tells us she wants couscous. We go to report to Dexter, who tells us that the castle doesn’t serve couscous. He tells us to tell Professor Hotchkiss to order something off the menu. We relay the message to her and she tells us that she doesn’t have a menu. We go to Nancy’s room, get the menu, and slip it under Hotchkiss’s door. She tells us to tell Dexter that she wants fifty drumsticks. (“Chicken, that is. Cluck cluck.”) Dexter tells us to go tell Jacques to defrost the drumsticks. I slowly become homicidal.
(Sidebar: tedious as it all is, Professor Hotchkiss saying “Cluck cluck” cracks me up every time. I don’t know.)
But wait! What’s this?
Dexter…is letting us take the rest of the day off? He’s actually going to fix the radiator? I don’t know what to do with this change of heart.
And then the elevator breaks down while we’re on our way to see Jacques. Too many good things can’t happen at once, I guess.
But whatever, Nancy Drew hasn’t been a role model for girls since the 1930s for no reason. Not that we could call anyone, anyway, since this is in pre-cell phone days. But even if we could, punching out the roof of the elevator, standing on top of the car, and hauling ourselves up the cable to the next floor is clearly the more fun option. On our way up, Nancy mentions that there are “strange noises” coming from below. But that’s usual for Nancy Drew, so whatever.
We let Dexter know about the broken elevator, and he assures us that he’ll check the power switch in the basement. Thanks, Mr. Egan! It’s so nice actually being treated like a guest in this hotel.
Jacques Brunais gets predictably sniffy over being treated like a “sous chef.” “Oh la la!” he complains. Hee. This isn’t one of my favorite games, but Jacques is definitely one of my favorite suspects.
So our goal right now is getting into the library/spying on Dexter. Obviously the only way he can be pried from his desk are by the clammy hands of death and/or sleep, so we’ll have to wait until crack-thirty in the morning to snoop around there. Before we call it a night, though, let’s ask Lisa about her multiple identities.
Okay, I lied, I actually asked her about Jacques Brunais first because that was an option and why not. She tells us that he “totally choked” at the Winter Olympics, but he’s still hot, so whatever. I’d like to interrogate Lisa further on her questionable taste in dudes, but the conversation tree ends there. Instead, Nancy ~slyly~ mentions that photojournalism must be super glamorous (you know how exotic the Midwest is!), and Lisa admits that there is a lot of travel — “too bad I’m so useless with foreign languages.” Little does she know that we’ve already busted her for being a lying liar on that count! So we tell her about finding her clone club in the locker and she says, “A savvy journalist always has a couple of ‘alternate identities.’ When you’re working under a deadline, you don’t always have time to play by the rules. I’m sure you know what I mean.” Uh, okay, I guess. Actually, I’m not sure Nancy has actually impersonated anyone at this point in the games yet. What an innocent time it was.
The conversation tree ends there and we don’t get to ask her about her supposed Spanish inability, which is kind of weird, but whatever.
Blah blah sleeping the hours away blah. I guess we have to catch our naps where we can, because sleeping through the night when there’s creeping around to be done? Pfffft. On the upside: our radiator is fixed, and there’s a nifty oil can we’re going to steal for future use. Thanks, Mr. Egan!
Other upside: Dexter’s gone! I kind of love how Nancy will go on the flimsiest of reasons to poke through other people’s business. There have been a couple of accidents? Someone vandalized the library? Clearly that’s an excuse to start prying through everyone’s personal items. Naturally, Dexter’s desk is a hive of scum and villainy — he has a to-do list! Suspicious! Among all the things he’s probably going to lob off onto Nancy, he’s written “KEEP SEARCHING” in all caps.
Oh, Dexter. What could you be up to? What could it possibly be?
(Weirdly, Lisa is still up and reading in the lobby, even though it’s like 2 AM. Doesn’t she have a room?)
So there is indeed a spare key in Dexter’s desk, but if you try to use it, an alarm will go off. So we have to find another way into the library, which is probably a good thing. Going through the front door is too lame for Nancy Drew.
So hey, remember how much fun climbing up the elevator shaft was?
If you take the elevator all the way down the basement, then turn around and punch through the ceiling again, you’ll find this super-nifty ladder that I’m sure will lead us all sorts of exciting places. Like, say, the vents.
And the vents lead to the library! I bet you didn’t see that twist coming. Let’s explore, shall we?
Except we can’t, since the second Nancy starts slithering out of the vents like that guy in The X-Files, Dexter shows up. Suspicious! The alarm goes off and Dexter hurries to put the code in to shut it up. Then he mutters, “Darn you, crazy old man. I know you hid that thing around here somewhere.” I’m so glad our suspects will say these things out loud, even when they’re alone and have no reason to. They’re so helpful. Anyway, Dexter mumblegrumbles a bit, then leaves, because he’s been away from the desk for too long, and his life force is draining. You know, I feel like maybe the reason Dexter hasn’t found what he’s looking for is because he pokes around for like five seconds and then gives up.
But whatever. We’re in the library, and Dexter’s even turned the alarm off for us. Thanks, Mr. Egan!
(Weirdly, if you don’t crawl back into the vents in time and Dexter catches you, he says, “Well, well, well. Look who returned to the scene of the crime,” which…what? Didn’t the library get vandalized before Nancy even got here? You crazy, Dexter.)
So, the library. There’s a(nother) nifty portrait of Marie Antoinette on the wall, and when we pick up the book “True Stories Behind Famous Portraits”, the page we open to is about the same portrait! How convenient. The book tells us about how Marie Antoinette was “horrified” by the extravagance of a tiara Louis XVI gave her, and refused to wear it to sit for her portrait. She referred to it as her “crown of ruination”, apparently. The book says that no one knows what she meant by this, but I bet Nancy Drew will figure it out. (Meanwhile, historians everywhere cry into their beers and resolve never to get upstaged by an 18-year-old amateur detective again.) Anyway, the tiara disappeared. Of course it did.
Other books in the library: an atlas of the United States! Wisconsin is located at 45ºN and 90ºW. And the diary of Hans Axel von Fersen! What a delightful mishmash of names. Mr. von Fersen apparently tried to help King Louis and Marie Antoinette escape during the French Revolution, but, well, we all know how that went. Some mean guy named Monsieur Le Boeuf stole Marie Antoinette’s jewels from her, too. That wasn’t very nice of him. All she was trying to do was escape decapitation, was that so wrong?
Also-also, there’s a book called Purple-Hearted Queen, written by none other than Professor Hotchkiss. It’s literally an entire book about how Hotchkiss suspects that Marie Antoinette’s favorite color was purple, and how she was awesomely wise and loyal and dignified. Professor Hotchkiss is a Marie Antoinette stan. I guess it’s better than being a Marilyn Monroe stan, as far as historical ladies go.
Getting down to business (to defeat the Huns): the coordinates of Wisconsin’s location have to be used on a globe in the corner, which opens up to reveal…
Uh, something. I don’t know what this contraption is, but you find it over the fireplace, behind a plaque that says “A sly rabbit will have three openings in its den.” I don’t know. Whatever. Once you put in -15, -10, and -5, a secret room opens up upstairs. And the secret room is Dexter’s laboratory!
Just kidding. It’s Ezra Wickford’s secret study! (What, you don’t have one?) And it’s weirdly dedicated to Dexter, of all people.
Steal the key on top of the candle, and let’s commence snooping. The papers off to the left reveal that Dexter stole fifty dollars from his dad! That wasn’t very nice of you, Dexter. And on the other side of the room, some journals reveal that his (adoptive) dad was Ezra Wickford! Whoa, man. What a twist. In one journal, there are clippings from newspapers wherein Dexter did cool stuff like winning spelling bees and helping little old ladies across the street, and in the other, there’s (annotated!) highlights from Dexter’s criminal past. He stole $50 (Mr. Wickford writes, “Sad excuse for STEALING” next to Dexter’s apology note, except Dexter never says why he stole the money, so whatever, Mr. W), got expelled from school (“My son the vandal”), and passed phony checks (“I raised a crook?!”). Finally, there’s a letter from Mr. Wickford’s lawyer, annulling Mr. Wickford’s adoptive relationship from Dexter, and disinheriting him — prior to all the crime and heartbreak, Wickford Castle was going to go to Dexter. Rough. (“I’d rather see it burn,” Mr. Wickford writes. Oookay. Man, it’s not like Dexter killed someone.) So basically, Dexter was a heartwarming, plucky orphan who was adopted by a rich guy, but turned to a life of crime and ended up in jail. Like a gritty realist version of Annie. But off to the right is a poem(!) wherein Ezra Wickford seems to forgive Dexter (in ABAB verse!), and gives him a hint as to how to find something important. Hmmm. Could this room be what Dexter is looking for?
(Somewhat hilariously, though, Mr. Wickford also pasted in one of the phony checks and a correctional department badge, then wrote “Souvenirs?!” under them. Like, you’re the one that put them in there, dude, I’m not sure that’s Dexter’s problem.)
That’s all for now in the library, but naturally we’ll want to get in later. It turns out Nancy does indeed have a good reason for stealing sensitive artist Jacques Brunais’s paintbrush — if you use it to pick up some of the dust on one of the tables, and brush it over the alarm keypad, we can work out the alarm code (3*72), using the tips we learned from our good friend Sassy Detective magazine. Handy!
The real reason we need the key and alarm code is because we’re about to investigate the freaky noises coming from under the basement. You’ll recall that the vent entrance to the library is only accessible from the basement, but the elevator car blocks whatever’s below. Instead, we have to call the elevator to the first floor, then go back into the library and crawl back into the vents from there, with the way to the basement now clear.
(Like all Nancy Drew games, the movement is a little counter-intuitive, especially under pressure. You have to go in, turn back to the door, then back up again to see the keypad.)
So now that the elevator car is gone, we can see that there’s a grate leading to secret basement. Blah blah it’s stuck blah. It really was nice of Dexter to leave his oil cans lying around.
Under the basement is…another basement? I don’t know. The “sound of sawing” gets louder as we get closer. I feel like Nancy shouldn’t be going alone into a secret basement at 2 AM to confront someone with a giant saw, but whatever.
And the saw-carrying madman is Jacques! What could he be up to? Will this end with him using Nancy’s blood to paint his hope boxes? Why can’t he find a shirt that fits?
Up next: We enter into an alliance with Jacques Brunais, someone tries to kill Nancy twice, and we start collecting medallions. Gotta catch ’em all, you know.
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