Locked in... to Die! is the sixth Dreadful Crimes case: the music critic Byron Cashan is found dead in a room locked from the inside, in a lodging house in the Strand. You check each tenant's room and the basement to work out how the killer reached him.
Part 6 of 10 in The Dreadful Crimes
Mrs Henman, the housekeeper, found his door locked when she brought his morning coffee; a neighbour hints Cashan was overly fond of her. Mrs Bloomfield felt sick that night and opened a window. Mr Bloomfield was in the cellar with his experiments. The caretaker Mr Henman looks after the building and was working in the basement. David Golden says he was giving a benefit recital for out-of-work musicians, with dozens of witnesses.
Mr and Mrs Henman, Mr and Mrs Bloomfield, and David Golden.
Cashan's harsh reviews had broken up the Aldwych Chamber Orchestra, whose first violinist was his neighbour David Golden. Golden made a candle laced with a chemical from the basement, shut off the gas at the mains and handed out candles so that Cashan would light the poisoned one.
Cashan's room has an air vent shared with the flat next door, a window locked from the inside and candles burned down to stubs. A newspaper in the Bloomfields' room reports that the Aldwych Chamber Orchestra has disbanded after a run of damning reviews, and Mr Bloomfield, an amateur chemist, warns that one of his cellar chemicals reacts badly to heat. The caretaker says a man from the gas company is due the next day.
The Mystery of the Twice-Dead Professor!
The Mystery of the Twice-Dead Professor! is the fifth Dreadful Crimes case: the anthropologist Professor Byng was buried after a heart attack, then turned up bleeding at his own door and died again. You investigate his home, the cemetery, the university and an abandoned house in the Strand.
A Simple Matter of Murder!
A Simple Matter of Murder! is the first Dreadful Crimes case: a foreman lies stabbed in a Whitechapel warehouse and a boy is found holding the bloody knife. Henry Raymond and young Artie introduce themselves and challenge you to solve it, and the obvious answer turns out to be wrong.
Death Stalks the Colonel
Death Stalks the Colonel is the third Dreadful Crimes case: Louis Prescott, a former army colonel who runs a munitions factory in Southwark, has been shot through the heart at noon. Several shots were fired at that moment, and you have to work out which bullet killed him.
Murder at the Palace!
Murder at the Palace! is the final Dreadful Crimes case: Frederick Abberline calls you to Buckingham Palace, where a guard lies dead in Queen Victoria's study on the day of a knighting ceremony. The case pulls in clues from every earlier crime and ends with a rooftop standoff.