De Tanga, Death and Hallas tried again to re-open the hidden passage in the ballroom but still they could not get it to open.
"Hallas you said that you opened the passage to here from the laboratory right? Do you think if we went over there that you'd might be able to re-open the passage from over there?"
"I'm not sure Detective Tealson. It was kinda an accident that I even opened it at all."
De Tanga frowned slightly. "Well still I'd like to see which wall it is that the passage opens from over in Mr. Boddy's laboratory. So shall we head over there now?"
Both Death and Hallas nod and the three of them head over to the laboratory. It took them about eleven minutes to get to from the ballroom to the laboratory going through the halls.
"Hallas, how long did it take you to get to the ballroom from the passage?"
"No more then five minutes."
"Hmm... that really cuts the time down. Meaning that woman I was tailing would have been long gone even before I could have made it down here." Death said more to himself then to Hallas and De Tanga.
"Yes that's right. But that makes me wonder how the woman even knew about the passage in the first place. I'm pretty sure that any secret passages in the manor wouldn't be something that someone could find out easily."
"So you think that this woman might be the killer then?"
"Not necessarily. Yes it's quite possible that she could be the killer but we don't know that for sure. Mr. Boddy was a very rich man so that woman could just be after Mr. Boddy's money and that's it. It doesn't mean that she was the one who killed him. But what I've seen many people here could have a motive to kill Mr. Boddy just dealing with his money alone. Anyway Hallas which wall was it that the passage opened up from?" De Tanga asked as they walked into the laboratory.
"It was this one." Hallas said walking over to the wall that he accidentally opened the passage from.
"Okay Hallas I want to you to go through everything that happened right before you opened the secret passage."
"Alright. Well I was walking around the looking to find Death like you told me to and I ended up here in the laboratory. And I was walking around the room looking around. Then all of a sudden I heard a long string of swearing."
De Tanga looked at Death whom was whistling innocently. De Tanga shook his head. "And then what happened?"
"I listened hard and I figured out that it was Death who was swearing. I walked towards where I was hearing his voice but I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. So I go and lean against this wall and I guess I touched something because the wall moved and revealed the passageway."
"So wait you leaned against the wall that moved? Did you fall flat on your face?" Death asked Hallas with a raised eyebrow.
Hallas sweatdropped. "No I didn't."
"Anyways, do you know which part of the wall you leaned against?"
"Um not really."
Both Death and De Tanga shake their heads.
"It doesn't look like we are going to get into these passages unless we find some sort of a floor plan of the Boddy Manor."
Hallas nods his head while he leans back on the wall. And like before the wall moves and Hallas again falls flat on his face. "Owwy..."
"Hallas and his dumb luck." De Tanga mutters under his breath as he and Death help the accident-prone officer back on his feet. "So this is the passage huh? Well let's go and check it out."
"Do-do we ha-have to?" Hallas stutters peering into the passage that he had gone in an hour or two prior.
"What's wrong Hallas? Scared?"
"No. I just don't... want to go in there again, yeah. Um I've already been in there before and it would be pointless for me to go there again. I should be going and doing something else that would be helpful. Okay I'm going to go now." Hallas starts to walk off but De Tanga grabs him by the back of his shirt and pulls him back over.
"Hallas you are coming with us and that's final." De Tanga spoke in a commanding tone.
"Yes Detective Tealson." Hallas grumbled miserably. Please let there be no rats this time, please...
Amelia hummed as she worked in the kitchen making dinner for everyone in the manor. Ever since everyone had been forced to stay in the Boddy Manor after Mr. Boddy had been killed Amelia had been working double time trying to make meals and keep the manor tidy. Which is a very large job considering that there was so many people in the manor, and the place was so large. That was one of the things Amelia had hated the most when she was working for Mr. Boddy was the fact that she was the only maid working for him. So Amelia never had anyone else to help her out. In some ways she regretted even going in for the interview at the Boddy Manor. When she had gone in for the job she expected to only be working as a part time maid with other maids to keep the manor clean and tidy. But instead she ended up working alone to keep the whole manor clean, the job of more then three maids, acted as Mr. Boddy's butler as well as being the manor's cook.
It turns out that Mr. Body's cook that work there before Amelia started working at the manor quit because Mr. Boddy drove him/her insane with his nit picking. Either Mr. Boddy was being very fussy about his food, or the cook couldn't cook that well at all.
Either way Amelia never got the chance to meet the cook, and Mr. Boddy didn't hire anyone else to replace him/her. Once Mr. Boddy found out that Amelia could cook, he had her doing that too. Amelia had blindly agreed to cook in place of the chef thinking that because she would be doing more work that Mr. Boddy would be paying her more. But she was dead wrong. Once Amelia started working as a cook, butler and maid, Amelia was still being paid the same amount of money she was getting when she was just a maid. Mr. Boddy never paid her more for the extra work she did, only the maid work. Amelia would have complained about this, but she really needed the money and Mr. Boddy wasn't really such a bad guy even if he was a bit stingy and a little strange. But of course Amelia could have gone to Mr. Boddy and asked him if she could get paid more but she had seen what had happened to other employees who had asked for a raise. It's true that it's hard to get fired by Mr. Boddy because he wasn't that aware of the things that went on behind his back, but asking for a raise was one easy to get fired. Mr. Boddy being as stingy always fired those who asked him for more money. Needless to say Mr. Boddy had gained many enemies just for that reason.
Amelia decided that she was better off not asking for anything more and just continued to work hard and being very friendly to Mr. Boddy in hopes that her good work would eventually be rewarded.
But that hadn't happened and Mr. Boddy was dead and now she was still stuck doing the same job she was doing before only this time she wasn't getting paid for it. It was taking most of Amelia's concentration just to stay chipper and polite.
"Amelia do you need a hand with anything?" A voice asked from behind Amelia.
Amelia looked behind her to see Sylphiel Peacock standing by the kitchen table.
"Oh no Miss Peacock I'm fine."
"Are you sure? You've been working so hard keeping everything clean and cooking for everyone. And I feel bad if I didn't help out at least once."
"No really, I'm perfectly fine doing this by myself. I had to do this when I was working here anyway so I'm already used to the workload. But thank you so much for offering." Amelia smiled.
"I insist. Let me help you. I'm a very good cook. I used to work as one at a few different places before and helping out wouldn't be a problem at all for me. Please let me help you." Sylphiel put a hand on her shoulder.
"Are you sure? You really want to help me out?"
"I'd be glad to."
Amelia beamed with a great big smile. "Thank you so much!" Amelia gushed out all happily.
Sylphiel smiled herself and started to help out by picking up a knife and chopping some onions.
After about ten minutes Death, De Tanga and Hallas made their way into the ballroom from the secret passage. Unlike from when Hallas went through the passage before, De Tanga had a flashlight to see while in the dark passage. And last time Hallas had wished the he had a light to see, now he wished they didn't use a light at all.
It took them much longer to go through the passage then it had taken Hallas to do initially just for one reason. Before Hallas couldn't see anything in the passage, but with flashlight in hand he could see everything that was in there. Bugs, spiders and rats, there were tones of them in the passage. Hallas kept screaming and wanted to run away and it took all of Death and De Tanga's strength just to drag Hallas through.
Once out Hallas collapsed to the floor wheezing in fright. "I never want to go in there again!"
"Geeze you're a real wimp. I'm not too crazy about spiders and bugs but I'm not as bad as you." Death shook his head at his fellow officer.
Hallas didn't say anything in reply to Death's comment and just continued to mutter under his breath.
De Tanga would have said something in Hallas' defense but it wasn't just that Hallas was afraid of rats, spiders and bugs, he was afraid of far too many other things. Hallas didn't seem to have a brave bone his body at all. "Oh well get up Hallas we've got other things to do right now." De Tanga said dryly while he and Death helped the shaken officer to his feet.
Death was going to say something when they heard two very distinct female screams. "Huh? What's going on?!"
The screaming continues and the three of them follow the source of the sound. They were eventually led to the kitchen.
The three of them pulled out their guns out of the holsters and readied themselves as they entered the kitchen. What they found there was Amelia White and Sylphiel Peacock screaming at the sight of a very bloody and very mangled dead body sprawled out on the kitchen floor.
Hours later the dead body had been removed from the Boddy Manor kitchen and had been sent off to be taken down to the morgue for an autopsy.
After about twenty minutes De Tanga managed to get the full story from both Amelia and Sylphiel. What had happened was that both Sylphiel and Amelia were cooking the dinner for everyone when Amelia asked Sylphiel to see go check in the back storage freezer to see exactly how much extra meat that was being stored. When Sylphiel opened the freezer door a dead body came crashing out onto the floor.
The dead body that had been in the storage freezer was a male but that was all that could have been determined. The face was badly gashed up as well as the rest of the body and all of the dead man's clothes where stained with blood and torn. They couldn't identify the body so De Tanga was hoping that the morgue would be able to tell them who the dead man was. There was a chance that body was Mr. Boddy, but if it were Mr. Boddy then it would still be hard to identify how he was killed. The body was so completely mangled that De Tanga didn't have any idea exactly what the cause of the death was. It was obvious that the body had been messed up with various blunt objects right after his death so as to make it hard to identify and to tell what the cause of death was.
"I can't believe I was in the kitchen for most of the day and there was a dead body in the room too!" Amelia cried out shaking with tears rolling down her cheeks.
Before De Tanga would have thought that Amelia was genuinely upset by something like this, but after hearing about her acting abilities from Martina, De Tanga wasn't so quick to believe her sincerity. "So you hadn't gone into that freezer at all in the past few days?"
"That's the strange thing, I had gone into it. Yesterday there hadn't been a dead body in there at all!"
De Tanga tapped his chin in thought. So unless Amelia is lying, then the dead body had been moved into the kitchen just the night before or early this morning. I wonder if there's a secret passage in here too. De Tanga decided he was better off not mentioning the secret passage till later on. "Well the body has been taken in to the morgue, so we'll soon find out who that man is. So until then all we can do is wait. Are you going to be okay Miss White?"
"Don't worry about me I'll be okay, I'm just a little bit shaken up that's all."
De Tanga turned over to Sylphiel. "What about you Miss Peacock, are you going to be alright?"
Sylphiel didn't answer him for a few moments she just seemed to be lost in her own thoughts.
"Miss Peacock?"
"Oh yes I'm sorry. Um yeah I'll be fine."
"That's good then. Tell me how was the food that you two were preparing?"
"It's still fine. A little cold, but all we need to do is warm it up."
"Okay then I want you to do that."
"What? Eat, after something like this?!" Amelia and Sylphiel stared at him shock.
"It's not good to skip meals, and besides I want everyone to settle down a bit and gather into a room so that I can ask everyone a few questions."