Kit - Chapter 36 [Spoilers]

[boballab]

Do you mean cybil who lived in the place , probably had access to a lot of it s secrets and was friendly with the staff to boot?

Actually Cybil was not liked by the Stonebrook staff, she brought in her own servants from England. Also remember Lucas only married her as a trophy and for status he wouldn't share the Vulpan secrets with her because to him she wasn't a Vulpan.

[boballab]

so the butler did it uh?

Naughty, naughty changing the post like that after I quoted it. You would confuse some people that way.

But speaking to the butler did it there was the things I pointed out earlier then here is a little quote on Stanley's feelings about the Vulpans and the Manor.

“We are the staff of the manor, not the Vulpans who live in it,” Stanley told him simply. “Vulpans come and go, but the manor will always remain.”

Remember that it took Kit and another person to lift that heavy trap door open and both Stanley and his son Bart, who is in line to be the next head butler, know about the hidden room behind the conservatory.

[dellstart]

so the butler did it uh?

Naughty, naughty changing the post like that after I quoted it. You would confuse some people that way.

But speaking to the butler did it there was the things I pointed out earlier then here is a little quote on Stanley's feelings about the Vulpans and the Manor.

“We are the staff of the manor, not the Vulpans who live in it,” Stanley told him simply. “Vulpans come and go, but the manor will always remain.”

Remember that it took Kit and another person to lift that heavy trap door open and both Stanley and his son Bart, who is in line to be the next head butler, know about the hidden room behind the conservatory.

yeah yeah i am bad boy.
Honestly ,I missed your explanation on cybils possibility of being the One to hold the smoking gun.After reading that , it would pretty foolish to think otherwise.
So why expose myself like that .lol

Plus , Guilt woks in mysterious ways, I wonder if stans almost obsessive need to keep the grounds perfect and making it picture perfect for the vulpans , and vils wedding because in reality he's doing something that's going to strike them at their very heart.

[boballab]

Ok here is a motive for Stanley to want Kit dead:

We know and probably all agree that Kit and Clancy have a father/son relationship more then a Employer/employee relationship. We know it was Clancy that comforted and guided Kit from the time of Kit's mothers death. What we haven't seen was how this affected the relationship between Clancy and Stanley. It is safe to assume the Stanley is much older then Kit since Clancty is 73 and Lucas was 49 at his death. Could Stanely growing up first had problems with how much attention first Lucas would have gotten from Clancy then Kit after him. We don't know how much time the two of them took Clancy from his own family and Clancy's relationship to Kit could have hit a raw nerve for Stanley. We know that IRL simple shit as that has lead to many murders.

[expedient]

Ok here is a motive for Stanley to want Kit dead:

This might work for Bart too, either as an accomplice of Stanley or independent of him. Bart is presumably a near contemporary of Kit and might be more prone to jealousy of the attention he received.

It could be nearly anyone as we're still finding out about many of the characters...

[D.F. Thompson]

Ok here's my two cents worth. First off as for the insider I'd have to say that either Sally or Benson fit that bill. But I'm leaning more towards Sally.

Jessie climbed out, and the two gave her a startled look. “Benson, Sally, I’d like you to meet my wife,” he said in a calm yet strong voice, stressing her relationship to him. “Jessie, this is Benson and Sally. They worked here when I still lived here.”
Benson looked stunned, and Sally looked a trifly disapproving as she looked at Jessie.
“Then the gossip was true!” Benson gasped, then he blinked. “It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Jessie,” he said, giving her a little bow.
“May I take your coat, miss?” Sally offered, with the tiniest edge in her voice. Clearly, Sally was in the same boat as most of his family.
“Oh, it’s nice to meet you, and thank you very much!” Jessie said, smiling at Benson and taking off her coat and offering it to Sally.
But the edge in Sally’s eyes evaporated when Marcus helped Vil out of the car. Both servants bowed deeply to her. “Miss Vilenne!” Benson said happily. “It’s good to see you, madam. Have you been well?”
“Well enough, Benson. Can you send tea to Clancy’s apartment? We’re going to visit him.”
“I’ll see to it, madam,” he nodded.
“I don’t think your Sally likes me very much,” Jessie whispered as they followed Benson out of the garage.
“Bigotry isn’t restricted to the rich, love,” Kit whispered back.

As for who else might be in on it I'd have to say Winston.

[GBLW]

Just one comment on moving that heavy trapdoor - wasn't it Archimedes who said something about using a lever to move the world?

And now I'm going to toss in another bit of info that some of you missed (and it allowed me the fun of leading you astray.)

Why does there have to be an insider in the first place?
Answer; to move the trapdoor, right.

OK, then why didn't the insider remove the hydraulic jacks and the 4X4s that were holding the trap doors closed to let them in?
Answer; because it is in a room directly off Kit and Jessie's bedroom, right.

So how were they going to get in there to open it at night without disturbing Kit or Jessie?
Answer; they weren't - which means the 'outsiders' or paladins had a method of opening the trapdoor from below.

Great Big GRIN

[boballab]

Just one comment on moving that heavy trapdoor - wasn't it Archimedes who said something about using a lever to move the world?

And now I'm going to toss in another bit of info that some of you missed (and it allowed me the fun of leading you astray.)

Why does there have to be an insider in the first place?
Answer; to move the trapdoor, right.

OK, then why didn't the insider remove the hydraulic jacks and the 4X4s that were holding the trap doors closed to let them in?
Answer; because it is in a room directly off Kit and Jessie's bedroom, right.

So how were they going to get in there to open it at night without disturbing Kit or Jessie?
Answer; they weren't - which means the 'outsiders' or paladins had a method of opening the trapdoor from below.

Great Big GRIN

Two points:
1. using a lever would leave marks in the stone.
2. The Secret room is not right off the Master bedroom, The secret room is on the first floor behind the conservatory. The master bedroom is on the second floor, there is a stair case that leads from the secret room to the master bedroom. There is also a dead space in the secret passage.

He showed her the old secret passage that ran from the master bedroom to the conservatory on the first floor, passing through a dead space on the second floor,

So you have a bit of distance to get from that trap door to the Master bedroom, more then enough to cover the sounds.

As to why the insider didn't remove the jacks, he doesn't want to get caught. At this point he knows the bodyguards have the tunnel wired and is also probably monitoring all outgoing calls. Trying to remove the Jacks or call off the attempt just gets him caught.

Everyone has missed the real important clue:

“They waited until you had all your friends and guests in the house, and what they were going to do was sneak up here through the secret passage and murder both of you in your bed. Then they just sneak right back out, clear their tracks, close the trap door, and nobody knows they were ever here. The next morning, they find you dead, all our cameras show that nobody came on or off the grounds all night, and the police spend the next five years trying to figure out which of the thirty-some furs in this house was the one that killed you, because they’d be convinced that it would have to be someone that was in the house the night of the murders.”

The PPC is a terrorist group, hiring them is like hiring Al-Qeda to kill an Isreali married to an Arab. Sure they would want to do that, but sneaking in and quietly killing them goes against their operational goals ie: terror. Doing a silent murder doesn't cause the terror they are looking for. They couldn't call the media and claim resposibility and say they struck a blow against the breed traitor and all that racist kind of crap. This is like asking the KKK not to leave behind a burning cross after lynching.

Think back to when Cybil tried to kill Kit, she hired a hitman, a proffessional. If one of the elders or even one of the older cousins did this they would have hired a proffesional to do it, not 4 amauters to kill 2 sleeping people. The Vulpans have the power, money and the contacts to get the best mercs and hitmen to kill people and if one of them wanted to make Kit and Jessie's murder to be a mystery they would have hired one of them to do it, not 4 wingnuts from the backwoods.

“Oh, they’re still around, but now they’re all militia wingnuts, training out in the woods for the Breed Wars they say are coming.”

[Mad Monk]

I know who did it! It was Brandon the Groundskeeper. Given how fanatical he is about the lawns, he wanted to remove the people who were damaging it.

The lawn looked absolutely spectacular. It was being mowed daily now to keep it perfect,

Snip

but Kit knew that Stanley wished the trap machine wasn’t on the front lawn, and he spent nearly an hour over there with Brandon, the head groundskeeper, discussing how to repair the damage the day before the reception.

Given how fanatical gardeners can be about their lawns, that is the reason. I know some who would quite happily shoot every cat, dog, fox and child in the neighbourhood if it would stop their lawn being damaged.

[expedient]

Given how fanatical gardeners can be about their lawns, that is the reason. I know some who would quite happily shoot every cat, dog, fox and child in the neighbourhood if it would stop their lawn being damaged.

[GBLW]

Two points:
1. using a lever would leave marks in the stone.
2. The Secret room is not right off the Master bedroom, The secret room is on the first floor behind the conservatory. The master bedroom is on the second floor, there is a stair case that leads from the secret room to the master bedroom. There is also a dead space in the secret passage.

Ah, but what I really implied was that the 'intruders' had a lever, in other words, I'm certain the trapdoor is operated by a counterweight. Kit and crew just don't know how to operate it.

As to why the insider didn't remove the jacks, he doesn't want to get caught. At this point he knows the bodyguards have the tunnel wired and is also probably monitoring all outgoing calls. Trying to remove the Jacks or call off the attempt just gets him caught.

Oh, did I miss something? I thought those cameras were installed 'in secret' - at least that's the way I read the passage.

Everyone has missed the real important clue:
The PPC is a terrorist group, hiring them is like hiring Al-Qeda to kill an Isreali married to an Arab. Sure they would want to do that, but sneaking in and quietly killing them goes against their operational goals ie: terror. Doing a silent murder doesn't cause the terror they are looking for. They couldn't call the media and claim resposibility and say they struck a blow against the breed traitor and all that racist kind of crap. This is like asking the KKK not to leave behind a burning cross after lynching.

That's what the ten grand each paladin was given was for - to assuage their annoyance. As well they could have been chicken to be labeled as murderers, so they were covering their own tracks.
This is also a good reason why there is no 'insider' on the staff - because everyone in the building would be under suspicion and Vil would turn over each and every stone VERY thoroughly to find Kit and Jessie's murderer.

Think back to when Cybil tried to kill Kit, she hired a hitman, a proffessional. If one of the elders or even one of the older cousins did this they would have hired a proffesional to do it, not 4 amauters to kill 2 sleeping people. The Vulpans have the power, money and the contacts to get the best mercs and hitmen to kill people and if one of them wanted to make Kit and Jessie's murder to be a mystery they would have hired one of them to do it, not 4 wingnuts from the backwoods.

Ah, but 'wingnuts' come cheaper than professional hitmen do. and the person or people I suspect are working on a less than flush budget - and could also be well connected with the 'wingnuts!'

[Mad Monk]

Another reason for someone to want to target Kit:

That was another feature of the servants that Kit had already written about in a prior article, his third one…the availability of the staff to certain attentions. Servants were nearly as available as their Vulpan employers, and there was also quite a bit of Vulpan-servant naughtiness that went on in most Vulpan households. Though his father had been unswervingly faithful to his mother when she was alive, after she died, his father partook of the servant femmes quite liberally. In the other houses, it was much the same story. Sarah was almost notorious for her aggressive attentions on her male servants, from her chief butler to the groundskeepers, and her husband, Harland Vance, was just as bandy with the femmes.

This is declaring to the world that Vulpan servants are all potential prostitutes. This could be personnally very embarasing for some of them, especially if they had denied it in the past to family and friends. Remember that this includes people working for other Vulpans, who may remember the secrets of Stonebrook from when they worked there.

“Mistress Vil, we had no idea you were coming!” the male said, who was the chief butler of Swan Cove whose name Kit couldn’t recall. He used to work at Stonebrook, though, Kit remembered his face from his childhood.

The grating was rusty and looked solid, but Kit could see the single hinge on the right side, and a very clever bolt lock that would be all but invisible from the outside, hidden behind the frame and crossbar of the grating.

To me it seems that if someone knew about it, there would be a way of opening the tunnel from outside - the bolt was hidden, so people outside would not even expect it to be there unless they knew about it. So nobody in the house needed to let the Paladins in, even the first time.

Think back to when Cybil tried to kill Kit, she hired a hitman, a proffessional. If one of the elders or even one of the older cousins did this they would have hired a proffesional to do it, not 4 amauters to kill 2 sleeping people. The Vulpans have the power, money and the contacts to get the best mercs and hitmen to kill people and if one of them wanted to make Kit and Jessie's murder to be a mystery they would have hired one of them to do it, not 4 wingnuts from the backwoods.

Ah, but 'wingnuts' come cheaper than professional hitmen do. and the person or people I suspect are working on a less than flush budget - and could also be well connected with the 'wingnuts!'

I would doubt that the Elders or older cousins would have the contacts with hitmen. When Cybil needed a hitman, she went through her lawyer - there will not be too many lawyers who will deal with such shady characters. For most Vulpans, they would deal with people they know, and if they are involved with the Purists, those are the people they know. This also includes some of the Vulpan servants.

Also worth remembering, just because you have power, money and conections, does no mean you are getting the best person for the job. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b ... 337735.ece

[boballab]

I sent a private message to dellstart where I named my suspect and one of the points I used in it was that the reason the Paladins were used was because the person that is instagting this isn't a Vulpan with their contacts and has had ties to the Paladins. A Vulpan would have hired a pro that they know would not let their mouths run off when they are hoisting one down at the pub. That is the problem with the whole Paladin and keeping it secret, one of them is bound to mouth off to his buddies, and just like IRL you know the feds are informants in those type of groups.

The thing about putting in the cameras was there was one other person besides Jessie waiting for Kit and the Guards when they got back to the secret room. Also carrying around those jacks and 2x4's is not what you would call inconspicious.

Mad monk all you got to do is look at who Vil's bodyguards are to know that the Vulpan's have contacts in the Merc business. Marcus and Stav are mercs and so is Nick, so right there is one Vulpan that could through Marcus and Stav find a hitman. Now if Vil has the contacts don't for a minute think Zach and the other Elders don't have contacts to mercs through their own bodyguards.

[expedient]

If a Vulpan isn't involved in organizing this attempt then the Elders must have the worst kind of luck. All their plans would have been undermined by external influences, Vil reacting with a much stronger hand than she might otherwise.

[dellstart]

If a Vulpan isn't involved in organizing this attempt then the Elders must have the worst kind of luck. All their plans would have been undermined by external influences, Vil reacting with a much stronger hand than she might otherwise.

waking a sleeping giant is the term your looking for i believe.