Another entry from the ’90s mainline Nancy Drew series! This time it’s #128, The Treasure in the Royal Tower, which was adapted into Nancy Drew game #4 of the same title. Not much to say about this one, apart from noting how weirdly blonde Nancy is on all these book covers. What’s up with that? Looks aside, though, the central plot is basically the same: the Clue Crew goes on a ski vacation in Wisconsin and promptly gets sucked into a mystery involving diamonds and Marie Antoinette. Let’s go forth!
Nancy, Bess, and George are on vacation in Wisconsin, staying at a ski resort called Wickford Castle. Immediately upon arrival, Nancy and George drop everything to stand around in subzero weather and remark that one of the castle’s towers doesn’t match the others: it’s round instead of square, and made of a different type of stone. Bess tells them to quit clumsily foreshadowing the plot and get inside.
They’re greeted by the castle’s owners, Mark and Christi Lane. (Christi is mentioned to be the castle owner in the game as well, but Mark is completely excised. Misandry!) The rest of the cast is also quickly introduced: there’s Dexter Egan, the handyman; Lisa Ostrum, a writer for Ski World magazine; Jacques Brunais, a dreamy ski instructor from France; Professor Hotchkiss, a history professor (and a dude, unlike the game); Dr. Alvarez and Meg, a mother-daughter duo, the latter of whom is about the Clue Crew’s age; and two sets of couples who are totally irrelevant. Mark and Christi also have a dog named Gus who immediately adores Nancy.
Nancy and George go down to the ski room and immediately encounter a dark, suspicious-looking corridor branching from it. Nancy thinks she hears footsteps coming from it, so by all means, let’s go look for them! They don’t make it very far down the corridor, however, before they encounter an old elevator. Despite George’s only personality trait being her love of exercise, she and Nancy bang on about how much they don’t want to go up and down all the castle stairs, because they need an excuse to take this super-sketchy elevator. But just as they’re nearing their floor, the elevator power goes out! And the emergency button doesn’t work! I’d say Mark and Christi are about to get the life sued out of them, but fortunately this happened to Nancy and not anyone who cares about safety compliance. Instead, Nancy and George pluckily climb out of the elevator roof and haul themselves up to the third floor on their own. Nancy thinks that something suspicious is afoot, and the footsteps they heard earlier had something to do with the elevator stopping.
At dinner, Hotchkiss asks Mark to tell them some exposition about the castle, as he noticed its architecture is kind of wonky, like the mismatched towers that Nancy saw earlier. Mark tells them that Wickford Castle was built by an eccentric rich dude (“Ezra Wickford”) who basically imported whole rooms from different European castles and stuck them onto his castle without much thought to layout logic or aesthetic harmony. Also, “Apparently, Mr. Wickford was terrified of robbery,” [Mark] said. “His mansion in Chicago had been burglarized a couple of times. So he built these dead-end passages to confuse intruders and hide the locations of the imported rooms.” A man from Chicago building a hotel with a bunch of fake rooms and dead-end passageways, you say? Run, Nancy.
Nancy brings up the round tower they saw earlier, and Mark tells them that particular tower allegedly is from Marie Antoinette’s chateau and thus is dubbed “the Queen’s Tower.” Allegedly, Marie Antoinette hid something valuable in the tower room before she was executed. The tower is sealed and they don’t know how to open it, of course, but they do have some old French books in the library, if anyone wants to check those out instead! The guests are weirdly, unanimously thrilled about a bunch of books, so Mark brings them to the library after dinner.
Upon arrival, though, they find that the library has been wrecked. Nancy assumes that this is connected to the elevator getting stuck earlier. This feels like kind of a leap to me, but clearly she’s correct because she’s Nancy Drew. She offers her services to Mark and Christi, who immediately accept this rando teenager rocking up and claiming to be an experienced detective. I mean, I know Nancy’s been 18 for 80 years and has racked up over three hundred cases in that time, but I feel like these two adults should be a little more skeptical here. Anyway, Mark and Christi tell her that they’ve also been hearing strange noises coming from somewhere above the main floor, but they haven’t found anything in the attic. Mysterious!
The Clue Crew investigates the elevator and find that it’s been switched off. Nancy suspects that our culprit was trying to scare her, because they…somehow already knew that she’s a super sleuth? I don’t know. Anyway, they then go back upstairs, where they encounter Meg Alvarez. She tells them that she overheard Jacques and Dexter arguing last night.
That night, Nancy hears the strange noises Mark and Christi mentioned, so the Clue Crew goes to investigate. They think it sounds like it’s coming from the definitely-sealed-absolutely-no-way-inside Queen’s Tower, because of course it is.
The next day, the girls have a ski lesson with Jacques Brunais. Meg and Bess spend the entire time lusting over him (quoth Meg, “[T]he guy is totally cool”), and although it’s Nancy’s first time skiing in a while, she soon felt herself relax into an easy, natural rhythm. Nancy Drew is a better skier than you.
Out on the slopes, Nancy spies Dexter lurking around outside, where the ski lift machinery is. She’s confused, as Dexter supposedly only works inside the castle. Suspicious! When she asks Christi about Dexter later, Christi tells her that Dexter does a bit of everything around the castle, as he’s been the caretaker for over thirty years — even when the castle was abandoned — and knows it better than anyone.
Bess notes that Nancy seems to be singling Dexter out as her main suspect, and Nancy says she suspects everyone, even Jacques. Bess is like, “But he’s so dreamy and French!”
The Clue Crew investigates the library and notes that the vandal seems to have been targeting the French books. Nancy finds a particular book with a red cover and manages to use her high school French to figure out that it’s about Marie Antoinette, but can’t decipher it in more detail. The book is super old, from 1800. Figuring it might be important, Nancy puts it in her inventory says she’ll take it back to their room to read. The girls then realize that they’re not alone in the room, so they pretend to leave, then hide. They see Dexter appear and rummage around a hole in the wall before leaving. Nancy pokes around in the hole too, but there’s nothing there.
Back in the hotel room, Nancy admits that her French isn’t good enough to read the red book. George suggests asking Hotchkiss, since he’s a French history professor, but Nancy is suspicious of him, too: he’s from Massachusetts, which is not exactly lacking in snow, so she doesn’t think he came all the way to Wickford Castle purely for a ski vacation.
Before they can speculate further, they hear cries for help and find Lisa locked inside a passageway. Dexter uses his key to open the door, and Lisa claims that there was an identical key in the keyhole when she stumbled upon the door, but someone turned it and locked her inside. Everyone concurs that the door usually has a key in it, but now it’s missing. Mark and Christi derp that it never occurred to them that anyone would use the key to lock someone else inside.
As everyone departs, Nancy sees Dexter inspect the lock and swears that he gives her “a very nasty look.” A nasty look? Clearly, he’s a criminal. Burn him!
The next day. The girls go skiing and afterwards, we get an unnecessary exchange wherein Bess says she wants a donut and George points out that they just had lunch. Wow, we made it to chapter 6 before getting a crack about Bess’s appetite! I’m shocked at the restraint this book is showing. Anyway, Nancy spies a mysterious figure hanging around the snowmobiles and follows them, to see that they’re trying to get inside the Queen’s Tower. When the person spots Nancy, they run away. Nancy gives chase, but the culprit knocks a snowmobile over her, injuring her leg. As they run away, Nancy notes that the culprit dropped a key, which she recognizes as the key that was used to lock Lisa inside the passageway the other night.
The girls go inside the ski room, where they encounter Professor Hotchkiss, who’s wearing a snowmobile suit. He acts super shifty when they ask what he’s been up to. Suspicious! Never trust an academic.
Nancy inspects the castle floor plans and realizes there’s another route into the Queen’s Tower, from the basement ski room. The Clue Crew finds a door that leads to a room with a bunch of wooden feathers on the wall. One of the feathers is a key that, when pressed, opens up another hidden doorway. Nancy remarks that “One of the best ways to hide something is to make it blend in with its surroundings,” which will come up again later. The girls follow the passageway up a flight of stairs — Nancy very subtly says “Some of these stairs are really rickety. You could go right through them.”. At the top of the stairs they find a room completely decorated in gold, and in the corner, trying to hammer a hole in the wall is…Jacques Brunais!
Before you (and Bess) start thinking that hot French people are capable of crime after all, Jacques has a totally innocent explanation for all this: the Queen’s Tower, as Mark mentioned, used to belong to a chateau used by Marie Antoinette. Jacques’s great-grandfather was one of the carpenters who dismantled the tower to be shipped to the US when Ezra Wickford bought it. During the deconstruction, Great-Grandpa Brunais found a bundle of letters belonging to Marie Antoinette hidden in the tower wall. The wall panels were all dismantled and mixed together before he could retrieve the letters, though, so he was never able to find them again. On his deathbed, Great-Grandpa Brunais asked Jacques to come to the US and find Marie Antoinette’s letters just to like…fulfill his quest, I guess. It’s not really clear what Jacques is getting out of this. Conveniently, Jacques was already a champion skier, so it was super-easy for him to get a job as a ski teacher by day, then poke around the Queen’s Tower at night. Still, he’s been at the castle for a while and hasn’t found the letters.
Nancy doesn’t think he’s the culprit, but she still shames him into confessing his nighttime activities to his bosses for great justice. Satisfied with an evening’s work of crimebusting and sanctimony, the Clue Crew heads back down the stairs. The stairs fall in as soon as George steps on them (man, George does not have a good track record, re: things collapsing out from under her feet), and Nancy gasps that they’ve been sawed. Someone…saw the Clue Crew go into the tower…and followed them…and…sawed through the stairs without anyone noticing in the 10 minutes it took them to talk to Jacques? Sure, whatever.
On their way back out, the girls run into trouble yet again when Dexter catches them. He claims to just be doing his rounds and checking up on the castle. When Jacques comes down, he tells the girls that Dexter is suspicious of him, but hasn’t ratted him out yet, and in fact gave Jacques a key to get around the castle more easily. Jacques doesn’t think Dexter is the one that wrecked the library — although Jacques isn’t a super-sleuth, so really, are we counting his opinion for anything?
Bess and George are like, “Great, mystery solved,” but Nancy points out that they still don’t know who the mysterious snowmobiler was — it can’t have been Jacques, as he already knows how to get into the tower. Could someone else know about Marie Antoinette’s letters?
The next day, the Clue Crew accompanies Jacques to see Mark and Christi, where he confesses all. Nancy spies a shadow outside, but no one else notices, so Jacques happily goes on about how Marie Antoinette’s VERY VALUABLE letters are HIDDEN IN THE TOWER and are DEFINITELY STILL THERE and all one has to do is GO THROUGH THE WALL PANELS TO FIND THEM, which the culprit clearly overhears.
Mark and Christi, for their part, aren’t at all worried that Jacques has been sneaking around the tower. They chirp that he has free rein to keep searching for the letters — “Something like that would really put Butter Ridge Winter Sports Area on the map!” I mean…assuming Jacques doesn’t want to take the letters back for the glory of France or whatever? Nancy decides the Lanes probably aren’t the culprits, seeing as they lack the self-interest and foresight to ask Jacques to give the letters to them (and to block off access to unsafe passageways, and to block off access to unsafe elevators. Jeez. Has Wickford Castle never had a building inspection?).
Nancy then goes to breakfast, where she overhears Lisa and Professor Hotchkiss talking about Marie Antoinette. Suspicious!
Since Nancy is injured, the Clue Crew decides to spend the day shopping instead of skiing. Bess buys stretch pants, then suggests stopping in a cafe for a milkshake, prompting George to mock her because how dare Bess buy stretch pants without immediately going on a diet. Then, once in the cafe, Bess orders a slice of pie too because overweight people have no self-control, get it? These books, I swear.
Anyway, the cafe proprietor has lived in the area forever, and says she’s glad the ski resort opened up, as it’s created a bunch of jobs for the locals. She’s especially glad Dexter Egan has a job, since he’s had a “rough time” in his life, by which she means “spent ten years in jail for burglary.” Nancy is confused, because Dexter told the Lanes that he was the Wickford Castle caretaker for years, but the cafe owner says that’s a lie. Wow, add “running background checks on their employees” to the list of things the Lanes didn’t bother to do. Also, we never find out how Dexter knows the castle so well, then, if he only started working there recently. The game gives him a whole tragic backstory about being raised by Ezra Wickford before falling into a life of petty crime, but there’s nothing of the sort in the book.
The Lanes throw a party that night, which Meg attends wearing Jacques’s ski cap. Bess is mildly jealous, but Jacques spends the party hitting on both her and Meg, so she gets over it. Ah, yes, this is what the “égalité” part of the French motto stands for.
As the party winds down, everyone notices that Meg is missing. Jacques mentions that he “left her up near the woods”, which feels like poor etiquette for someone you’re flirting with, as well as pretty irresponsible for a resort employee? Like, don’t leave someone who’s a stranger to the area alone in the woods?
Everyone handwrings over where Meg could possibly be, but naturally Nancy “zips” across the pond and finds her in like two seconds. Meg is unconscious, having been knocked on the head, and still wearing Jacques’s ski cap. Nancy wonders if someone hit Meg thinking she was Jacques. The Clue Crew does a bit of searching, but they give up pretty quickly, admitting that it’s not like they’ll be able to pick out whichever rock was used to hit Meg. They can’t? What about the time Nancy tracked down a random bush in a German forest based on a single burr she found?
The next day, Nancy attempts to question Jacques. He also thinks the culprit was actually after him, not Meg, and perhaps it’s someone who also wants Marie Antoinette’s letters. Not that he and Nancy have any idea who, because that would move the plot along.
Everyone heads back to the lodge, but Nancy elects to ski some more. The lift operator at the bottom of the slope tells her that she needs to tell the top slope operator that she’s the last skier of the day, as that’s their signal to shut down the lift for the day. While Nancy is still halfway up the mountain, though, the lift shuts down and leaves her stranded in midair. Suspense! Nancy calls for help, but nobody hears her, so she eventually decides she’s just going to have to jump off the ski lift herself. Oh, but wait, she can’t jump while still holding onto her ski poles! So she has to jump out of the ski lift with her skis still attached to her feet, without any poles, and hope that she lands on her feet and can freestyle ski to safety. Which of course she does, because Nancy Drew is a better skier than you. “Thank heavens!” she thinks to herself. Indeed.
Back at the lodge, Christi gasps that she thought their “last skier tells the attendant to close” system was foolproof, as relying on verbal instructions so famously is. Again, the Lanes are so lucky this is happening to Nancy Drew and not someone who actually cares about their own safety.
The Clue Crew gathers and Nancy says she thinks the ski lift incident was also sabotage. Bess once again insists Jacques is too hot and French to be the culprit; George similarly is like, “Well, it can’t be Meg because she’s sporty and relatable, and it can’t be Lisa because she has a sassy tomboyish haircut that I overidentify with, and it can’t be Meg’s mom because her daughter is our friend.” Excellent profiling work. (Seriously, I can kind of understand George ruling Meg out because Meg spends a lot of time with the gang, but she weirdly says “It’s not Lisa Ostrum” as though they know anything about her.) Nancy admittedly isn’t much better; she thinks they should still suspect everyone, but hasn’t narrowed down the suspect list at all.
That night, Nancy wakes up and realizes that someone has snuck into the girls’ room. “What do you think you’re doing!” she shouts. Hee. Did she say it “WHATAREYOUDOING?”, Thanos-style, though? With her injured leg, however, she can’t give chase, and the culprit gets away without Nancy seeing who it is. Nancy looks through her things and thinks that something is missing, but she’s not sure what.
The next day, Mark reports that the lift attendant said a skier did tell him they were the last skier of the day, but he doesn’t remember who it was. Helpful. Nancy says she’ll question the attendant herself, but then I guess the ghostwriter realized they were closing in on their word count, because Nancy instead then realizes that the culprit stole the red book from the library from her room and doesn’t have to ask the attendant for clues after all.
The Clue Crew takes off to the Queen’s Tower, but finds that they’re too late and the culprit has already taken Marie Antoinette’s letters. Nancy finally gets the bright idea to just search all the suspects’ rooms for clues. Do you think they might’ve narrowed down the suspect list if they’d done this earlier? Anyway, Mark and Christi hand over a master key without asking any questions, which…I mean, I expect nothing from these two, and yet I’m still disappointed.
(Also, super weirdly, when they get to the tower, Nancy flips a light switch, which turns on the 18th-century chandelier. If the tower has basically been sealed off since it was brought over from France, when was it wired for electricity?)
The Clue Crew finds both the red book and the letters in Lisa’s room. Are you not embarrassed, George? They go through the letters, and while Nancy’s French wasn’t good enough to translate the library book, it’s suddenly good enough for her to read and translate these letters handwritten in 18th-century French. (Admittedly, this does track with Nancy’s language skills in the past.) The letters weren’t written by Marie Antoinette, as it turns out; but rather by her maid. Still, the maid has some very valuable information: Marie Antoinette hid a massive diamond pendant in the tower room, because why not. Nancy realizes that the diamond must be in the chandelier, hidden in plain sight among all the crystal pieces.
She sends Bess and George down to the ski room to stall Lisa, who they think is on the slopes, while Nancy goes to the Queen’s Tower. Obviously, this means Lisa is already in the tower, and Nancy has to confront her alone.
Nancy catches Lisa right in the act of removing the diamond from the chandelier. She tries to jump Nancy, who [raised] her foot, preparing for a karate kick. Somehow, Lisa doesn’t burst out laughing, and she instead reveals that she too knows karate. She lunges for Nancy with “a loud karate yell”. Somehow, Nancy also doesn’t burst out laughing. (Seriously, what is with this franchise and associating France with karate?)
In between karate chops, Lisa reveals all: she thought the diamond was hidden in the wall of the library, hence why she tore it apart. Upon realizing that the diamond was actually in the tower wall, she set about looking for a way inside (there was another door leading to the tower from outside all along, which Lisa eventually found). As for why Lisa wants the diamond: You can’t imagine what I go through, trying to live on my tiny income. This diamond will bring me enough money to do anything I like.” I mean…relatable, tbh, but what a boring motive. You could at least believe the diamond will let you commune with a bunch of other diamonds so you can reach the spirit world, Lisa.
Then the Gus the Dog runs in and tackles Lisa, pinning her down long enough for the girls to tie her up and deliver her to great justice.
We cut to the rest of the cast, who gather together to hear Nancy recap the story. Lisa was behind everything: trapping Nancy and George in the elevator, hitting Meg with a rock (thinking she was Jacques), and stranding Nancy on the ski lift. She also trapped herself in the stairwell to take suspicion off her. The only thing she didn’t do was saw through the stairs in the Queen’s Tower: that was Dexter, who was trying to scare the Clue Crew off before they told the Lanes about his sordid past.
Professor Hotchkiss admits that he was also up to something: he’d wanted to investigate the tower, too, hoping to find something that would bring him honor and glory and more than 5 readers for his academic paper. Everyone has a hearty chuckle over suspecting him. The Lanes chirp that everything turned out fine, so it’s totally cool that one of their employees lied about being in jail and that multiple guests were injured and/or in near-death situations.
Mark and Christi think that the diamond ought to be returned to France, and they agree to return the letters as well, under Great-Grandpa Brunais’s name. Jacques offers to let Professor Hotchkiss publish the letters first, so he can get the academic clout he so craves in the field of French history.
Gus the Dog comes in, and everyone’s like, “Actually, Gus is the real hero for saving Nancy!” and Nancy cracks a lame joke about making Gus her sidekick. Whatever. Gus is no Deirdre Shannon!
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