Murders of the Past

Breaking the Glass Ceiling

"Argo, I was just thinking about how my cousin and her baby must be in the middle of the Atlantic by now, sailing on the Gigantic!" Maddie muses, polishing the MadMobile with a rag dipped in the special automobile wax.

Argo and Caspian sat on a bench, watching her as Alto floated near them, "I'm sure they are having a wonderful time! Sea travel is my favourite form of transportation!"

"Anyhow, I'm as excited as a frog in a sock about the World Exhibition. It's due to open in just a few days' time!" she grins, "and as we've got nothing to investigate today, I quite fancy taking a stroll around the site to see them adding the finishing touches! What do you think?"

"That sounds like fun!" he replies, "Jason's been talking about the Exhibition all week! He's wanted to participate for years, and I'm happy he's finally had the opportunity to do so."

"I look forward to seeing his and the other inventions!" she smiles, "now, I'll just finish polishing my MadMobile, and then we can go!"

Later, in front of the Crystal Palace...

"It's so exciting to be here, Argo! They're constructing buildings of all shapes and sizes for the World Exhibition... There's even going to be an iron tower!" Maddie explains as they arrive at a building made primarily of glass, "the building behind us is also a wonder. It's named the Crystal Palace because it's mostly made of glass!"

"Tată would love it!" Argo marvelled at the light reflecting off the glass.

"Though I must say, the workers appear to be running late... They haven't even finished putting-"

SMASH!

Maddie jumps, "what was that crash, Argo?!"

"It came from inside the Crystal Palace!" Argo identifies, "we must take a look at once!"

Argo and Maddie rushed into the Crystal Palace and were immediately met with the sight of a woman lying on the ground, covered in cuts with glass sticking out of her body as more pieces littered the floor around her. Judging by the crane above her, the glass must have been from a pane suspended from it and fallen on her. Several feet from the body was a large spool of rope, just like the kind on the floor near the body. There was also a wheelbarrow on the other side of the Palace that Caspian was interested in, if him flying over to it was any indication.

"By Jove, Argo!" Maddie gasped, "this woman is dead as a dodo! Look at all those glass shards sticking out of her! But where did that glass come from?"

Argo cranes his neck back, "given the bit of rope attached to one of the pieces, I'm going to guess it was suspended by that crane. This must have been one of the panes of glass they were hoisting to the ceiling!"

"And look! This must have been the spool with which the glass was suspended..." she says as she walks towards it, "but somebody clearly sawed through the rope with a blade of some kind! Argo, this was no simple mishap... It was murder! Through a sheet of glass is a most unusual murder weapon, I must say!"

"And getting crushed by a piano was normal?" he quipped, joining Caspian by the wheelbarrow.

"But why would someone have killed this woman? Wait a second... I think I recognize her..." she muses, tapping her chin, "yes! I read an article about her! Our victim was Norah Barnlow. She was the lead architect for the Crystal Palace project! Well, we already have one important clue to help us find our killer. They left a black substance on this spool when they cut the rope! We should take a sample of it!"

"As for this wheelbarrow," he pats it, "we can only hope we'll find another clue in it. Let's rummage through it!"

Once the obligatory letter to the team was sent to the airship via Caspian, Argo searched the wheelbarrow. It mostly contained tools for the construction of the Crystal Palace, but he also found a black hard hat inside the supplies. Thankfully, the workers put their names on their hard hats so they could see the owner's name on the band.