Previously on The Diamond Mystery of Rosemond Valley: We found out that the diamond heist 20 years ago is linked to the aging actress who’s just returned to town, and then we ingratiated ourselves to the local insolent youths.
After an exciting afternoon of doing labor and not getting paid for it — good to see we’re in familiar territory here — we come back to the newspaper office, only to see a Mysterious Figure escaping through the window. Let’s follow him!
Unfortunately, the mechanics of plot convenience have allowed him to already run away, and the alleyway is empty. We look up and see a ladder, and we’re like, “He escaped onto the roof!” So we use the umbrella we picked up from the diner to pull the ladder down, and we climb onto the roof. But the thief isn’t there either! Then we see a plank against the wall and we’re like, “He escaped onto the other roof!” So we take the plank and lay it across the distance between the two roofs to cross over. Not sure how the plank is on the first roof if the thief already used it, but whatever.
But the thief isn’t on the next roof either. That was anticlimactic. Instead, we find a random rock, and underneath it is a box that says “Property of Rosemond Valley Museum.” Inside the box is a mysterious cassette tape. HEE.
We need to use the tape player in the office to listen to the cassette, because I guess Emma doesn’t have a Walkman at home or something. Back in the days before Internet piracy, I used to record songs off the radio onto blank cassette tapes and play them in my Barbie boom box. Just throwing that out there.
Once we’re inside, we see that the office is completely trashed. We look in Bob’s office first, and even though Bob’s shit has been thrown everywhere, Emma notes that the safe behind his fish painting is untouched. (“A safe behind a picture? Bob’s been watching too many episodes of Columbo.” Heh.)
The darkroom is also in disarray, although once again, nothing actually valuable has been taken. Emma finds a gold watch in Tom’s drawer and snarks that taking pervy photos of girls must pay well. The watch has a receipt with it still, indicating that it was purchased from a jeweler on the North Side of town. This will unlock a different part of the map, so we’ll have to go there in a bit.
We pop into Carla’s office to check if her fish saw anything. Answer me, Pierre! Anyway, once again, someone’s ransacked the room but didn’t take anything; her fancy modern art painting is still there, despite probably being worth a ton. Then again, I doubt a random dude on foot could just make off with that painting, so perhaps it’s not really a clue.
We then go into the main office, and now that our coworkers are out, we can rifle through their shit with impunity. We go through Malcolm’s drawer and find his notes, where he’s written that Kit Grace is staying in a hotel, also on the North Side. He also has a photo of Kit Grace, which Emma notes looks recent.
Let’s go through Lucy’s stuff next. She was sure acting suspicious about that Jack Griffin letter, so let’s see if we can’t find out what that was about. We find some of her notes in her drawer, which seem to hint at something suspicious: she’s written, “Does he know where the diamonds are? Do they know each other? I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I have to solve it.” Hey, back off, Lucy! We’re the girl detective here, not you!
Finally, we can listen to the mysterious cassette. We pop it in the tape player and we hear a message to Kit Grace, from Captain Parker. He confesses to stealing the diamonds: Jack Griffin stole them initially, but after he confessed, Parker got greedy and took the diamonds for himself. And…disappeared from the face of the earth? I don’t know. Anyway, Emma remarks that it’s weird that his taped confession ended up in some random box from the museum. Indeed.
Then the police show up, and chapter two ends. Wow, that was fast.
The next morning, the whole office is aflutter over the break-in. Bob is ranting that he knows this is the work of the insolent youths, and he’s going to write an article about youth crime and the evils of avocado toast. Emma remarks that the Mysterious Figure was alone and didn’t seem particularly young, and Bob’s like, “Stop saying words.”
We ask Lucy if she’s missing anything, and Lucy says no, but someone’s gone through her notes. “Creepy,” she says. Emma’s like, “Wow, that’s crazy, can’t imagine why someone would do that.” We ask if Lucy has any idea who it might’ve been, and she clams up and starts bleating about how on earth should she know, she has nothing to do with this, why are we asking her!!! Not suspicious at all!
We go see Tom, who blames himself for the break-in: “I’m simply too talented, someone’s got jealous and decided to destroy it all.” HEE!
Okay, but really, why do you assume this is all about you, Tom? Tom tells us that whoever broke in destroyed several months’ worth of photos. Interesting. If only there were some way to store copies of photos…like on your computer…maybe even some kind of camera that takes non-physical photos that you can upload? Nah, that’ll never catch on.
Disaffected youths! Did you guys break into the newspaper office? Just kidding; we can’t ask them anything interesting. (You can ask “Are you always here?”, but that just gets you a non-informative answer about how they always hang out here except when it’s raining; you can also ask this question at any point when you first see them, so it’s nothing new.)
Off to the North Side!
Let’s approach the hotel first. We immediately see Kit in the lobby, accompanied by Malcolm. Emma is shook, as Malcolm told us he couldn’t get anywhere near Kit. And yet here he is, going up to her hotel room. The loose morals of it all! “He kissed her!” Emma gasps. “On the cheek, but still! I must have a picture of this!” Heh. We whip out our camera and take a photo of them together, and Emma will say that the film is finished. I can’t believe we used up all 24 frames that fast, especially because at no other point during this game do we take any photos.
Hmm, well, do you think the concierge will just let us up to see Kit Grace if we tell him we’re a journalist?
No, he won’t. “You paparazzi mean that poor famous people need bodyguards and secret telephone numbers!” he barks. Okay, first of all sir, there is CRIME going on here, and you are enabling it!!! Second of all, that dude that just went up to Kit Grace’s room is a journalist, so what gives? This is sexism!
The concierge says that “Malcolm Green” is a personal guest of Kit Grace’s. Oh, is he? Malcolm, who is young enough to be Kit Grace’s son, has suddenly moved to her hometown from the big city, and is secretly hanging out with her? Gosh, what do you think could be the connection between them?
We can try a few more excuses, but sadly they don’t work. The concierge kicks us out, which leaves us with nothing to do but go to our next spot, the jeweler’s. As you can see from the sign, the jeweler is Vicini, aka the jewel guy we met earlier. I know, you’re shocked.
Vicini recognizes us from the museum, and we’re like, “Oh, you’re a jeweler, we thought you were regaling us with all that information about jewel replicas because you were a criminal.” We pretend to be there on Tom’s behalf, and Vicini’s like, “Oh, I see he doesn’t DARE come here himself anymore.” He elaborates that Tom owes him for the watch and “ankle chain” that he purchased, but he still hasn’t paid up. Emma ignores that in favor of mocking Tom for ordering an ankle chain. Heh. The 2000s, man. Then Vicini creeps that for all his bad fashion choices, Tom clearly has good taste in women. Gross. Anyway, we remark that we thought Tom was rolling in dirty photo money, and Vicini says that he thought so too, but Tom hasn’t paid for anything he’s bought so far.
Vicini suggests that perhaps we want to pay Tom’s debt for him, since we’re engaged and all. Emma’s like, “Excuse???” and Vicini’s like, “Well, why else would a WOMAN be wandering around on her own, ASKING QUESTIONS? How could you POSSIBLY know a MAN unless you were his betrothed???” Emma’s like, “We work together because it’s 2002 and women are allowed to have jobs, you weirdo.”
We tell Vicini that we work at the paper, and Vicini remarks, “Oh, so you must know Lucy! Charming girl.” What? Is everyone in this town hanging out without us? We ask how he knows Lucy, and he says that Lucy comes into his shop pretty regularly. They’ve been having lovely chats about jewel forgeries, as you do. Vicini jokes that with everything he’s told her, Lucy could become a master forger herself! She could, could she? We snipe that maybe Lucy could give Vicini some competition in that arena, and Vicini snipes back that he doesn’t make forgeries, he makes reproductions. Sure he does.
We then point out that the diamond he has in his display looks just like the Treasure Diamond, and he says that it’s a replica he made. Intriguing. We can look around a bit more — Vicini has a workshop and some tools, but we can’t use them — but there’s nothing else to do after that conversation.
Our next move is to pop into the museum. The security guard says they’re closing soon, but lets us go in if we promise to be quick. We don’t actually want to look at anything in the museum; instead, we want to waltz right past the guard and into the security room.
However, let’s take a detour and look at some of the exhibits anyway. “It looks a bit shabby,” Emma says, looking at the Rosemond Valley bear. Yeah, fuck you, Bob! The symbol of your town is garbage!
Anyway, back down in the security hall, door that was locked when we last came here is now open.
It turns out to just lead to a room full of boxes, but before we can explore, the Mysterious Figure comes up behind us and jumps us. And that’s the end of chapter three!
Chapter Four starts with us waking up after getting knocked out. That’s never happened to me in a children’s mystery game before! Anyway, Emma realizes that Captain Parker’s confession tape is gone. We’re now locked in, and Emma remarks that it looks like we’re in the museum storeroom. Well, I’m glad the culprit locked us into a room full of objects that we could MacGyver an escape from.
Hey, maybe we can just open the door? No, we can’t because — say it with me — “It’s locked.”
Somewhere, in 2002, HER Interactive’s marketing department looked up with their eyes narrowed.
So what we want to do is grab an arrow from one of the tables, then go to the door. We slide the poster of Mrs. Holmes that we got from her house under the door. Then we use the arrow to wiggle the key out from the keyhole on the other side, which makes it fall onto the poster, which we can pull back under the door towards us. (All you have to do is go to the door and “use” the poster and arrow, then the cutscene plays automatically.) Kind of weird that this plan hinges on the culprit having left the key in the keyhole, which is not a thing I’ve ever seen anyone do unless they were stepping away from their front door for like, five seconds.
Oh, and we also want to pick up a cockroach. With our bare hands, as you do. We’ll just put it in our pocket for later.
To freedom!
We go out into the hall and see that the other closed door is now open, this time to the security room. “If this is all the security they have in this place, then it can’t have been difficult to steal the diamonds,” Emma says. Heh. For real though, what was the logic in being like, “You know what should be the permanent home of an incredibly valuable, massive diamond? A museum in a small town that has a tiny endowment and no experience holding anything of high value.”
We view the security footage and Emma gasps that the man in the trenchcoat is the one who jumped us. For a second I was like, “Yeah? We knew that?” and then I realized that, from Emma’s perspective, she couldn’t see who attacked her. Emma, it’s going to be hard for me to solve this mystery if you can’t keep up.
Alright, now we have to get out of the museum. Obviously, it’s late and everything’s locked up, so we’ll trigger an alarm if we waltz out. Or at least, I think we will. I didn’t try to walk out without turning the alarm off, so I’m not sure if that will actually cause a game-over, or if Emma will just refuse to leave the museum. This game generally doesn’t make the player puzzle too much over how to proceed, or require us to lie and sneak around. For example, you have to lie to the security guard and say you want to look at an exhibit real quick, but then you can just waltz behind his desk without him giving a shit. Nancy Drew would’ve at least required you to cause a distraction or take a weird path around the desk to avoid the guard noticing you.
Anyway, story-wise, we’re meant to assume that we’ll trigger an alarm if we just try to walk out. Thus, we need to turn off the alarm next to the door before we leave the security room. There’s another alarm next to the computers, but Emma will refuse to mess with it, as it’s the alarm for the diamond case and will go off, since the diamonds aren’t inside.
After turning off the alarm, we can go into the diamond room and jump out the window. I hope no one else picks tonight to waltz into the museum and steal stuff!
Luckily, we weren’t knocked out for too long, and the hotel and its restaurant are still open to the public. Yeah, let’s not go to the hospital for our head injury or anything.
We want to go to the bathroom and dress up in Mrs. Holmes’s old clothes and Debbie’s wig. Now in disguise, we can harass the concierge some more about which room Kit Grace is in and how we’re totally close friends with her and he should totally let us up to see her. There’s like five different excuses we can try to get past the concierge, but there’s no option to just end the conversation after one doesn’t work, so you have to cycle through all of them. It’s dumb because clearly we’re going to have to resort to subterfuge, because this is an adventure game, so there is absolutely no point in making us go through five different conversation trees that all end in failure.
After that endless conversation, we can go over to the hotel restaurant entrance and drop our cockroach friend by the door. All the patrons start screaming about vermin, and when the concierge goes to investigate, we can take a look at the guest list. Kit Grace isn’t listed, but Sue Holmes is.
So, let’s sneak into the elevator and up to her room.
We find Kit Grace’s room and pretend to be from a gossip magazine. She’s weirdly chill about us barging into her hotel room during her downtime and asking invasive questions about her personal life. She’s willing to give an interview, so we start talking about how it must be WEIRD for her to be back her hometown, and it must be full of BAD MEMORIES, perhaps even a FAILED ROMANCE with a DIAMOND THIEF. Does she have any comment on that? Kit gets all upset and tells us to fuck off, but conveniently, she then runs out of the room sobbing and doesn’t check to make sure we actually leave. So before we go, let’s rifle through her stuff!
We look in her closet and see that Kit Grace owns a trenchcoat! The person who jumped us was wearing a trenchcoat! For a moment, Emma says, “What if…” but then she collects herself and says that plenty of people own trenchcoats. A surprising moment of logic for this game!
We go over to the table, where just as conveniently, Kitty has left out a letter from her long-lost husband. Because when you go on a trip, and are staying temporarily in a hotel, you definitely want to bring a letter that your dead husband sent you twenty years ago, and then you want to take it out and leave it on your coffee table? Sure. Anyway, we find out from the letter that Captain Parker intended to go to the West Indies and send for his family, but obviously that didn’t work out, since Kit is still here. And then, reading further, we find out that family also included a child! I know, I’m shocked, are you shocked? I wonder who the child could be.
Hey, let’s go bug Kit Grace again. Nothing in this game causes a “game over”, so there’s no consequences to anything we do!
Oh, nevermind, she just yells at us to get out again. Well, it was worth a try. Thanks for just leaving your incriminating letter around, Kit!
Apparently the only thing on our to do list is…develop the picture? The picture of Malcolm and Kit? I don’t know what that’s going to show us, since we already know it was him hanging out with her. Whatever.
After interrogating Kit, we go into work the next day. Tom is exactly where we left him, hanging is head in the darkroom. You didn’t even want to get up off that chair, Tom?
Anyway, Emma wrote in her notebook that Kit’s son must be about 20 years old right now. So by all means, let’s investigate Tom, who’s at least 30. (Also, a 20-year-old is already a staff reporter at a newspaper? Like, Kit’s kid hasn’t even graduated college!)
Well, whatever. We ask Tom about his backstory, and he tells us an obviously(?) fake story about how he was born “on a South Sea island during a tornado,” and everyone perished during the storm except him and his mother, and then they were rescued and Tom worked as a potato peeler in the Caribbean, then he became a photographer in Japan. Emma tests this story by asking how to say “goodbye” in Japanese, to which Tom says, “si yu lai ta.” I…what? I guess I should be relieved that they didn’t spell it “rai ta”, at least.
(Also, si is not a sound in Japanese; it would get turned into shi, TOM.)
He refuses to tell us about his dad, claiming his dad is a famous rock star and his privacy must be protected. Then he offers to teach us how to catch a gecko with one hand. What? This conversation has Shattered Medallion levels of cohesion. Anyway, despite the fact that his story is clearly bullshit, we can’t call him out on it. Well, we learned absolutely nothing from that. To Malcolm!
So, Malcolm, we saw you with Kit Grace yesterday, and you are about the right age to be her child, and you too mysteriously just arrived in this town a short while ago. Must we go through this farce?
Malcolm repeatedly tells us that he is SUPER ORDINARY and VERY BORING and there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL WORTH LOOKING INTO about his background. He claims that his mom was a librarian and his dad worked in an unspecified office job. He alludes to his father not being home a lot, and his mother having to crush her dreams in order to become a housewife. Emma’s like, “Didn’t you just say she was a librarian?” and Malcolm’s like, “Oh right, she became a librarian like…later.” Oh? Say, after your father disappeared? Is “librarian” code for “actress”, Malcolm?
I guess there’s still a marginal chance that Lucy is the mystery child. Hey, Lucy, tell me about your traumatic childhood! Insensitively asking people if they have a dead father is such a nice change from insensitively asking if they have a dead mom. “We interview OTHER PEOPLE, not EACH OTHER on this paper,” Lucy snipes. Hee. That’s cold. She adds that she doesn’t particularly like people asking her invasive questions and reading her mail. Oh my God, Lucy, that was like two chapters ago. You gotta get over this.
We apologize again and she warms up a little. We coax some information out of her: her mother is dead and her father is unemployed; she grew up in Rosemond Valley and got hired at the paper straight out of college (about four years ago, making her 25-ish). Emma’s like, “Good to know. Anyway, do you like diamonds?” Heh. Let’s not ease into the question or anything.
Lucy naturally thinks that’s a weird fucking segue, and Emma’s like, “I’m just asking! You know, some people like football, other people like diamonds.” Lucy tells us to fuck off and Emma’s like, “Aha, clearly she fears my razor-sharp questioning! She must be up to something!”
Let’s go to the diner again and catch Annie up to speed. We’re like, “Did you hear that someone broke into the newspaper office and wrecked Tom’s photo equipment?” and she’s like, “What” and we’re like, “Yeah, and did I tell you that I saw a man in a trenchcoat escaping the scene?” and she’s like, “What” and we’re like, “Did I also tell you that he was the same guy who attacked me in the museum?” and she’s like, “What” and we’re like, “Did I also tell you someone jumped me in the museum and locked me in?” Hee. The dialogue in this game flows so well, doesn’t it?
We also dump the entirety of Captain Parker and Kit Grace’s backstory on her real quick. Annie suggests that Kit might know more than she seems about what happened to the diamonds. We’re like, “Did I also tell you about their mystery child?” We explain once again that we think it’s someone at the paper — but who? Tom is clearly lying about his childhood; Lucy had that letter from Jack Griffin and a weird interest in jewel forgeries; and we saw Malcolm hanging out with Kit Grace. Annie’s like, “Ew, he’s way too young for her.” Seriously, Annie? That’s the first place your mind went?
After we finish talking to Annie, can go around the corner and see that Lucy is just chilling in a booth. Let’s use this opportunity to interrogate her some more!
Apparently Emma’s constant stream of “Tell me about your parents” and “Tell me who your father is” and “Do you like diamonds?” has worn Lucy down, and she cracks and tells us everything: Jack Griffin is indeed her father, and he hasn’t committed a single crime since getting out of jail, but the town turned on him anyway and Lucy has to support him. Emma questions how Lucy is managing to support herself and her father, and Lucy admits that she writes crime novels under the name of Karen Stone. Wow, that’s a coincidence, we have her book right here! “I’ve heard it’s really good,” Emma says, like we weren’t calling it a cheap novel when we saw it at Debbie’s. “Thanks, I know,” Lucy says. Heh.
We ask if Lucy thinks Jack Griffin had an accomplice who double-crossed him. Lucy tells us that she’s convinced her dad carried out the diamond theft alone, and her dad always maintained that he did it alone. I mean…yes? Why are we asking this? We already know the diamonds were stolen by Captain Parker after the fact. I guess we’re trying to see if Lucy’s aware of this, but it still reads kind of weirdly.
Anyway, now that she’s caved and accepted Emma the Intern with No Last Name as her lord and savior, Lucy’s all friendly and we cheerfully bid her goodbye. Good talk Lucy! Hope that wasn’t traumatic for you.
Is Tom still sitting on that chair? Yes, yes he is. Now that we’ve confirmed Lucy’s dad is not Captain Parker, our next move is to narrow it down between Tom and Malcolm. Since neither is very forthcoming, we’ll have to trick them into revealing themselves. So! Tom, you look like you could use a haircut. Another needlessly long conversation ensues wherein we try to flatter Tom into getting a haircut and he defends his hair until we tell him that he looks like Michael Bolton. Hey, don’t do Michael Bolton like that! Tom has neither the volume nor the jawline to pull this look off. We tell him that if he gets a haircut, he’ll look like Antonio Banderas instead. Heh. The writers of this game should be relieved that those references have aged pretty well so far.
Having convinced Tom, now let’s work on Malcolm. We tell him he has the face of Tom Cruise, but his haircut isn’t doing it justice. “I’m not sure you’re the one to give advice on hairstyles,” Malcolm snarks. Hee. I do appreciate that everyone keeps roasting Emma about her haircut for the rest of the game, even if they weren’t able to actually change the model to show it. Much like with Tom, we go through a needlessly long conversation trying to convince him to get his hair cut so he’ll look like pre-jumping-on-Oprah’s-couch Tom Cruise. It doesn’t work, so then we just tell him that Debbie used to know Kit Grace, and going undercover as a customer would probably get more info out of her than approaching her as a journalist. I don’t know why we didn’t just do that in the first place. Like, Tom works for the paper, we could’ve just told him we needed him to come take photos for the article. I guess we would’ve missed out on those topical Michael Bolton and Tom Cruise references, though.
Having talked to both Tom and Malcolm, we now want to go to Mrs. Holmes’s house to pick her up for her haircut appointment. After we’ve talked to her and left the house, we’ll cutscene over to Debbie’s salon. Mrs. Holmes promptly shrieks, “Malcolm! My little sweetiepie!” and Malcolm’s like, “Granny? What are you doing here?” So Malcolm is Kit Grace’s son. I know, you’re shocked. They did such a good job redirecting us away from that twist! There’s some more dialogue where Mrs. Holmes calls him “Malky” and we tease him about getting highlights, then Malcolm gets all huffy and leaves.
Meanwhile, Tom is getting his hair trimmed. We then introduce him to Mrs. Holmes, and of course she doesn’t recognize him. Weirdly, Emma then says, “Hmm, they don’t seem to know each other.” Yeah, Emma, we literally just uncovered that Malcolm is Mrs. Holmes’s grandson, not Tom. I can’t remember if the dialogue triggers automatically or if I had to click on Tom; either way, this bit was clearly meant to go first.
Tom’s like, “Hey, do I really look like Antonia Banderas now?” and we’re like, “Idk, we don’t need you anymore, bye.” And thus, we leave Tom to his fate and begin chapter 6.
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