The Detective Society - The Cursed Exhibition - Episode 2

The scene: the dining table

The weapons of choice: wine, olives, potato chips. Probably all covered in cat hair. 

We are ready to dive into tonight’s envelope! Perhaps we shall discover Claudia’s murderer, possibly that of the Curator, or what Eddy was *REALLY* doing that night, skulking around the museum. 

We Open the Envelope! This time, the envelope contains a letter from the police, a police evidence envelope, and the standard square ‘start here’ envelope. We are helping Police Officer D.S. Higgins with the investigation. Now we have video proof it WAS Eddy! Yes! Eddy is now in hiding, we have the contents of his locker, and we don’t know which address is currently his, nor do we know his current alias. 

The evidence folder contains a black wallet, made of ‘phizenbao’ leather. No money, a picture of an unknown woman with a date on the back - 20/08/02. There’s a hangman puzzle on the back. There’s also a betting slip, betting on Oscars in 2021 - we notice that Eddie’s aliases are also related to actors. There’s a code and site for a dating service. Also a members card for a coffee shop - Sir Frothalot (I like large lattes and I cannot lie). As well, his staff id card with medical information - no bees please. There’s also a tram map for the city of Manchester. 

His locker also contains information regarding accessing his dating profile - we’ll need to recover his account at some point. We may also need to log onto his Coffee website, which will need his address, as requested by the police officer. He boarded a tram post coffee purchase. Apparently he took a weird tram path, which we will have to map out. Going through his bio, we realize we need to identify the following:

• When did ‘Believe’ win the Eurovision - May 2008
• When Djokovic won his third Wimbledon title. - 12 July 2015

When we email his prior employers, they do ask for confirmation of when he left their employ. The hotel provides us with a list of potential names, including two with famous last names - Cruise and Cotillard. We hypothesize he may be alternating genders for the last name, then realize he’s stealing the first name of the male best actor for the oscars of the year he changed jobs, and then the female best actress’ last name. We test our theory:

• In 2015, when he joined the Myth museum, the winners were Eddie Murphy and Julianne Moore —> Eddie Moore
• In 2008, when he joined the Hotel, the winners were Daniel Day Lewis and Marion Cotillard, allowing us to narrow the list down to Daniel Cotillard.
• In 2003, it was too early so he went by the 2002 names, which were Halle Berry and Denzel Washington - Denzel Berry
• He started then at Smithsonian in 1999 as Roberto Paltrow, when the winners were Roberto Benigni and Gwyneth Paltrow.

So, we know his aliases, and this is supposed to take place in 2021 (?) which gives us Anthony McDormand as our likely name he’s going under now. 

We try the dating site. Using the photo reference, we figure out who he went out with, and start messaging. We then have to solve the hangman to figure out her favorite food. After chatting, she gives us Eddie’s then-address: 21 Nona Street. From there, we try to access his coffee account. 

First, turns out the address is real, and closest to Langworthy and Wiest tram stops. Looking at the coffee store, it’s not clear what the nearest one would be. However, my puzzling companion emailed the possible address to the police officer, who called the landlord there, and let us listen in. The message tells us Eddie moved out of Nona street a few years ago, ghosting the landlord. 

So that wouldn’t be the nearest coffee store for him. So, we have to use the Manchester Transport network and backsolve his path. OR, we can guess which stop is nearest to him based on which coffee shops are in Zone 1. There has to be a way to backsolve, but we’re getting testy. We should probably eat dinner. Turns out Princess Street is near St. Peter’s square as well. So, we get into his coffee account, which gives us another address for him, which we send to the detective. Sadly the current tenant doesn’t know where he is either, and we are apparently behind the trail of someone else looking for Mr. Moore. 

We need to find another address. I email his coffee shop, to no avail, but it does say that they are processing his new address in 7-19 business days. We tell the officer that the coffee shop has it - no luck. We realize we can still ask the prior employers, now that we know his alias at the time. The hotel does give us another address! We get to listen as the police break into his apartment! Oh no, he’s dead, and the artefact is missing! Another curse! But we won - without hints or crying, or too much cat hair. 

We tested the theory, realizing that you can solve all three addresses in any order, whichever the last one you send in is the murder scene. VICTORY!