Moonmist (green version) - Infocom

I  knew  something  was  up the moment  I  got  Tamara's  letter!
Obviously  she  was scared for her life but - a ghost  trying  to
kill her? Impossible ... or so I thought.

I  arrived at Tresyllian Castle and was admitted by pressing  the
eye on the wyvern carving by the gate.  The butler asked my  name
and which was my favourite colour. Green,  of course, the  colour
of my new sports car!

Inside the gates, Tamara came flying out to meet me.  We  chatted
for  a while  and  I asked  her  about the ghost. She  really was
convinced the  so-called White  Lady  was after  her.   Soon, she
introduced me  to Jack,  her  fiance. When  I asked him about the
ghost, he said he had just  caught a glimpse  of a whitish figure
from the rear but couldn't  tell if it was a  woman or a bloke in
drag.


The  other house guests were Vivien Pentreath,  Montague Hyde  (a
shifty customer if ever I saw one), Iris Vane, Ian Fordyce and Dr
Wendish.  Evidently  they  were all there for  Lionel's  memorial
birthday dinner.  Lionel was Jack's uncle and Jack had  inherited
the castle from him.

Hyde  said he had  seen  a figure  a few  weeks ago on a previous
visit  to Tresyllian Castle and that it had fled in the direction
of the Tower. Though he followed it, he couldn't find it - it had
mysteriously  vanished!  Wendish  had  seen  it  the  night after
Deirdre's  tragic  accident  (Deirdre,  by  the way,  was  Jack's
previous  fiancee who had drowned tragically in the castle well).
Anyway,  Wendish  said that  the figure had been in the Old Great
Hall and had gone towards the  basement. Iris had also seen it on
the Tower Stairs but neither  Vivien or Ian had seen any sign  of
it.

The butler,  Bolitho,  showed me to my room.  Before he  left,  I
asked  him about the ghost and he said he had seen  it  searching
the  floor  near  the archway  of the  New  Great  Hall the night
before. He said, jokingly, that the ghost must have  bad eyesight
as, though the light  was bright, it  was groping  blindly on the
floor.  He  also  mentioned   that  the  ghost   appeared  to  be
left-handed. The figure headed  into the drawing room when it saw
him but vanished when he followed.

Bolitho gave me an aerosol that might help me and also said  that
if I wanted to check my appearance, the mirrors in the room would
adjust.  Too right,  they did!  When he left, I tried moving them
and  found a switch on the wall mirror.  Behind it was  a  secret
passage.

After washing  and  changing,  I wandered  down  for  dinner. The
other guests were in the New Great Hall, chatting,  so, as  there
were a few minutes  before the  dinner-gong  went,  I entered the
Drawing  Room and  examined the floor carefully. Success! I found
a contact lens!

I  asked  all  the  guests if it belonged  to  them.  Ian said he
wouldn't be allowed  to serve in  the  Guards  if  his  eye-sight
wasn't perfect.  Jack  said there  was  nothing  wrong  with  his
eye-sight either.  Wendish  wore  glasses,  Hyde a  monocle  and,
though Vivien admitted wearing contact  lenses, she removed  both
of hers to show she was still wearing them!

The gong sounded and we went in to dinner. I noticed that Bolitho
placed  a note on Jack's napkin so I sneakily read it.  It seemed
the servants,  by arrangement  in Lionel's will, were leaving the
castle once  the  gong had  been rung  for  dinner.  One, Gladys,
wouldn't be coming back. She had handed in her notice and left an
explanatory note on the desk in the sitting room. I vowed to look
for that later.

The meal was just getting pleasantly under way when a voice  came
from the bust of Lionel that was in the room! I examined the bust
and  found it was hollow with a tape recorder in  it.  Obviously,
Lionel had planned this evening well.  He said that there was one
valuable item he had brought back from his travels abroad  hidden
in  the  house.  The first clue to find it was hidden  under  the
punchbowl and Jack had the second.

I  read  them both.  The first was a picture of Tresyllian Castle
with clouds  of  mist hiding the full moon. Lionel said the first
clue was just to sharpen our wits.  The second said - My first is
an "I", but find an eye that sees not.

The meal finished. In the kitchen I found a lantern which I took.
Then, with the  second  clue on  my mind,  I wandered the  castle
till  I came to the Games Room. In there were two stuffed  heads,
a rhino and  a buffalo.  I examined the rhino head and found that
one of its glass eyes was pointing backwards! I  got the eye  and
found a third clue. This one said - My second is in never but not
in ever and lies in a hidden end.

In the office, on a desk, next to an ink well, I found a journal.
It  had  been written by Lionel and was of his Amazon expedition.
It gave  the description  of a  treasure, Moonmist, a drug from a
rare Amazon plant, the moonflower. Apparently, the natives use it
to tip their poison darts  but it  is  also  a valuable medicine.
The plant should be gathered  when the full moon is misted over -
which explained the picture  we had been given as our first clue.
It  looked  as  though  the  treasure  we were  seeking  was this
mysterious Moonmist.

As the other guests were relaxing in the  Sitting Room, I decided
to search their rooms - not quite the  "British"  thing to  do, I
know, but, then, I'm an American, and an American detective  too.
In  a medical  kit in Wendish's room, I found a small box. Inside
was a contact  lens with room for another one. With that, a voice
disturbed me - Wendish  had  entered  the room  and was extremely
cross to find that I was searching it. I apologized and asked him
about the contact  lens  box.  He  said it  wasn't his  and  that
someone must have planted it in his  room. By now I was  starting
to feel  that  there  was  something  rather suspicious about the
doctor  but,  for the  moment, I had no proof so left his room. I 
did, however, notice that the two lenses  matched when I compared
them.

I returned to the sitting room to read the maid's note. It seemed
she  had found something dreadful while cleaning  someone's  room
(no  name was mentioned) and also said that she refused  to  stay
under the same roof where "things" were going on.  At the end  of
the  note she said that her old  dad had  always  said  that  the
first  sign of madness was talking to yourself but, as far as she
was concerned, doing the same on paper was a sign that that's the
kind of person to watch out for.

I returned  to my  room and  entered  the  secret  passage. In  a
dead end  behind a portrait of one of Jack's ancestors, which had
a  convenient  peep-hole  in  it, giving  a clear  view  down the
stairs, I found  the fourth  clue. This  said - My  third is  the
silent side of  knight; all together, I am what you could use for
poison pen letters. I .... N .... K ..... ink!

I dashed back to  the library  where I  had spotted the ink well.
When  I examined  the ink well,  I found Moonmist! It was a green
liquid with a strong odour. I had found the missing treasure.

But  what could  the maid have meant about someone writing things
down? The  obvious place  to look  seemed to  be the library so I
went  into there  and examined  the books. Ah-ha! A lab notebook!
Grabbing  it, I read  it. It  held  incriminating  evidence of Dr
Wendish's  fiendish experiments on patients at his clinic. In it,
it  said he  had finally  taken care of Poldark's grand-daughter,
but  that it  was a  pity she  had  discovered  facts of his end.
Poldark was Deirdre's grandfather, so it looked as though Wendish
had been responsible for her "accident" in the well.

As Wendish  seemed to be the villain of the piece, I concluded he
must  also be  the "ghost", so I sneaked back to his room through
the secret passages. He was asleep and I searched his room again.

If only I had  been more  thorough earlier! Can you guess where I
found  the ghost  costume?  In the  same  medical kit where I had
found the contact lens box!

I woke Wendish - he was  very surprised to see me. I'll bet! When
I accused  him, he  made a lunge for me but who should turn up to
grab him but the faithful Bolitho!


It turned out that Deirdre had suspected that her grandfather had
died because of  Wendish's  experiments on his patients. She went
to Lionel,  begging  him to  investigate  Wendish  who,  when  he
discovered  what  they  were  up to,  silenced both  of them.  He
masqueraded as the ghost to look for the treasure and carried out
the attacks  on Tamara  to make  everyone think Deirdre was still
alive!