Previously on Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock: Actually writing about this game at length has made me realize that the plot makes absolutely no sense. Josiah Crowley set up an elaborate scavenger hunt for his real will, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and our villain might be after the real will, or they might just be after Emily’s jewelry, in which case they’ve already made off with it and are halfway to the border, since Nancy has literally not investigated the jewelry theft since the first ten minutes of this game. Oh, well. The minigames are still awesome, though.
So we’re currently working on opening Josiah Crowley’s journal. I have absolutely no idea how anyone managed to do this without a walkthrough, because what you have to do is listen to that Creepy’s Corner record, then look at the trivet, which will have little pictures of each of the sound effects on the record (hoofbeats, thunderclap, etc), with a letter under it. The letters spell out “GOODFELLOW”, so that’s what you have to press on the journal to open it up. What the fuck? How did Josiah even make a journal like this? And then you open it up, and there’s nothing inside but more puzzle hints. Why did he lock away all this useless information so obsessively? The real mystery here is what the hell Josiah Crowley’s deal was, tbh.
Anyway. The next set of clues are radio frequencies with the names of characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream next to them. You’ll recall that Josiah Crowley, along with everything else, was also weirdly obsessed with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It turns out that he was supposed to say certain lines from the play to them, and they have certain replies to say back. Unfortunately, we don’t know what those lines were. But I bet Josiah probably wrote them down somewhere, just waiting for someone to come along and piece together his trail of clues. To Richard Topham!
Topham’s like, “Well, I could let you look at his copy of the play, but I don’t want to.” Whatever, Topham! There’s a secret passageway connecting our houses, and we can just waltz in whenever we want to! You can’t stop us!
What you have to do is wait for Topham to begin one of his mind-reading yoga lessons to sneak into the house. In the meantime, let’s go call those people on the ham radio. You have to get the hunk of quartz filed down by the jeweler, but all you have to do is fork over some money and he’ll do it, zero puzzles involved. Josiah’s ham radio friends all go by names from characters in the play (Thisby, Lute, and Pyramas), and they’re all kind of lame. I don’t know why, but I always picture Thisby as that renfair girl from Runaways. Anyway, they’re all surprised Josiah was actually an old rich dude, as he was catfishing them into thinking he was an actor and lived out in Hollywood, making talkies. Heh. Except for Pyramas, who’s like, “He told me he was an old rich dude, but he didn’t even own a car! He sat on a throne of lies!” Nancy’s like, “Uh, well,” but Pyramas just bitters that he was given a STUPID LINE to say when Josiah gave him a STUPID QUOTE, and if it made Josiah happy to lie about being rich, he DOESN’T CARE AT ALL, but HE KNOWS THE TRUTH! I don’t know why Pyramas bothered to keep being friends with Josiah if he was so pissed off about all this, but whatever. Anyway, we leave the ham radio for now, so we can go break into Topham’s house.
Topham’s off scamming someone else out of their money, so his only line of defense is his grouchy cat. All we have to do is hand over one of the cat’s toys, though, and he shuts up. Worst guard cat ever. He could’ve at least scratched us or something, but then again, he would’ve had to get up from his bed. I can sympathize with that dilemma. Anyway, we grab Josiah’s copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and find the lines he’s marked for his Internet friends. The lines they reply back to us are in hobo code: Flute tells us, “Leave by road when the owner is in, because then there will be thieves about,” for example. Flute gives us his line without too much fuss, but Thisby has to wail about how her delivery was much better when Josiah was coaching her (it’s like five words, Thisby), and Pyramas is like, “I told you this line was stupid. EVERYTHING IS STUPID.” Pyramas has clearly never read the classic work of American literature that is Kit Saves the Day, or he’d know that he was speaking hobo code to us! When we check out the clock near the ham radio, Nancy will note that there are hobo code symbols etched into it. Well, that’s convenient. A little bar with the name of a MND character is under the symbols, so you have to press the symbols that correspond to the line they gave us, and the name will switch until you get them all right. They’re all the ham radio friends, as well as “Bottom”, which was Josiah’s name for Gloria. We already found her line in the letter Josiah wrote to her, though. Convenient!
Excellent, we’ve gotten all the lines right! Will we finally get our hands on Josiah’s will?
Oh, no, wait. There’s another puzzle. Of course there is. I wonder when Josiah had time to set up all these puzzles, between his busy ham radio social life, dressing up in drag, and learning how to read minds. This one isn’t too hard; it basically involves moving a piece around the board and knowing when to use your shortcut cards, because you can only move a certain amount of spaces once. It’s essentially Candyland, except lamer because you’re not allowed to play as Queen Frostine.
Anyway, once you beat the racing game, you get Josiah’s will. Just kidding! No, we actually get another golf ball, and a note telling us to hit a hole in one on his golf course. All right, all right, if you insist.
Luckily, this golf ball is apparently possessed of magical powers, because it lets you hit a hole in one no matter how far off from the hole you aim. When you do, you get another safe deposit box key. To the bank!
When we go back to the house to get the car, though, we overhear Emily and Jane having another fight. Emily’s wailing that she’s going crazy, and nobody believes her, NOBODY UNDERSTANDS HER! Jane’s like, “Oh…well…that sucks. Try to chill out?” Yeah, maybe Jane wasn’t the best person to come out and take care of a grieving teenager. When we go inside, Jane’s like, “Nancy, you have to go help Emily! I know I’m her guardian and all, but stepping up and taking care of her is haaaard.” Whatever, Jane.
We go up to Emily’s room, and she shows us that one of the stolen necklaces has been put back into the jewelry box. “I have no idea how it got there! Jane is right. I’m having a nervous breakdown!” she wails. Nancy’s like, “Yeah, but I think I found the real will!” and Emily’s like, “Literally what does that have to do with this, though.” Right? She tells us to go back to River Heights. “You’re just making things worse.” Uncalled for! We are going to solve this mystery and fix everything, and then Emily will have to take that back and admit that Nancy Drew rules. Anyway, she kicks us out of her room.
Over at the bank, we present Mr. Archer with the safe deposit box key, and he muses that it is one of theirs. But the box isn’t Josiah’s! It belongs to Clara Pickford, that old lady who was obsessed with Mr. Archer! Yes, Clara Pickford was Josiah in drag. Mr. Archer’s like, “Ohohoho, I never suspected a thing!” My God, why can’t anyone in this town pick out an old guy in a dress? Wasn’t Mr. Archer suspicious when she stopped coming around after Josiah died? Well, whatever. We’re about to finish the game, and I won’t spend any more time thinking about this than I have to! The safe deposit box has the real will, which we weirdly don’t get to read. Wouldn’t it be funny (and awful) if we went through all this trouble to find the real will, and Josiah still didn’t leave anything to the Crandalls?
Does Gloria have like…playing cards stuck in her hair, or something?
But the real answer to our mystery is a picture of Gloria and Jane Willoughby that Josiah was just…randomly keeping in his safe deposit box? I don’t know. Mr. Archer points out that the lady in the picture doesn’t look at all like Jane Willoughby. Jane is an impostor! And we’ve left Emily alone in the house with her! We have to go rescue Emily, even though she was a total jerk to us earlier. To the Nancymobile!
Jane like…psychically sensed that we’d figured her out, or something, because she’s preparing to make her getaway just as we pull up. We tell her that we just saw a photo of the real Jane Willoughby, and we know this Jane isn’t her — she isn’t dressed like a Gibson Girl, after all. “It’s been swell seein’ ya, sister,” Jane snarls, and guns it. First of all: I don’t care if she’s evil, I love Jane and her ’30s slang. Second of all: CAR CHASE! Aw yes. Nancy speeds after Jane in her trusty blue roadster. You basically just have to follow Jane, and not let her car out of the game frame. Eventually, Nancy realizes that Jane’s making a break for the border, and you can take a shortcut to head her off.
And the game ends with a car crash! Not Nancy’s car, sadly, but still good enough. I do think that my love for this game comes 80% from this ending sequence. It completely makes up for the lameness of the middle third of the game. Jane gets covered with pies and wails that she wishes we had just minded our own business. And that’s the end of the game!
(Yes, the villain of the last game was also Jane. Waste not, want not, as they said during the Depression!)
Nancy writes a letter to Ned — wait, Ned? Okay, I lied when I said there was zero Ned in this game. He pops up here right at the end. I can’t believe we were cheated out of the scene where they first meet and Nancy thinks he’s a car thief. Anyway, Nancy explains the end of the game: “Jane” was actually Real Jane’s thieving roommate from her boarding house, who intercepted the letter Emily wrote to Jane about her mother’s death. Fake Jane thought she could gaslight Emily into thinking she was too crazy to run the inn, and they could sell it and split the profits. Then, of course, she realized Emily also had some valuable jewelry lying around, and blew up the kitchen and stole those, too. This is pretty creepy when you realize Fake Jane was living with Emily for at least a couple of months before Nancy showed up. But whatever! Emily’s probably not traumatized or anything!
Also, Josiah’s will had absolutely nothing to do with any of it, and the fact that finding the will also exposed Jane was just a massive stroke of luck. Josiah left both Emily and Mr. Archer a ton of money in his real will, so they can just swan through the Depression like it’s no big deal. Richard Topham was left nothing, so I guess he will have to become a hobo. The hobo code is all over Josiah’s house, so he should be able to pick it up pretty quickly!
You know, I think this game explains a lot towards Nancy’s tendency to just solve every weird puzzle she comes across while assuming it’s part of the mystery. Clearly the fact that her very first mystery was a bunch of nonsensical puzzles shaped her as a detective. Anyway, she tells Ned that they’ll share a slice of pie that she stole from the car crash when she gets home in a couple of hours, since she solved this entire mystery in one day. Take that, Sam Spade!
THE END.
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