Solution walkthrough

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This page reveals everything. The route comes from reading the game's code and tables; its end, from the well to the final text, has been played in the game.

Winning, in short

Five things are needed: the rope on the well, the stone in the well's rock, the opened médaillon, a low tide, and a perfect quiz. No clue, topic or score is checked, so all the investigation is optional.

Shortest route

Time costs: 12 cost units are 1 minute. The clock also has a real-time part whose rate hasn't been measured, so don't dawdle in the grotto.

1. Start: 10:00 on the 31st, in your cabin. Condition falls by 1 per half-hour plus a little for travel, so 79 is plenty for this route.

2. Rope and stone, before 18:00: take the rope in the salon (zone 0), and the stone with a skull (une pierre) from the aquarium in Marie's room. At the well (room 10), mettre the rope on the well (zone 17) and the stone in the hole of the rock (zone 15). Both are required: the rope adds the exit dans le puits, and the stone makes the button inside the well work. Stay out of Marie's room at 18:30.

3. Wait safely until after 02:30 on the 1st (see "What kills you"). attendre adds a half-hour. Devant chez Juste is 8 minutes from the north beach.

4. North beach, from 02:30: fouiller the fish trap (zone 6) and open the médaillon's close-up. On the toucher tab, click the stones in this order: bottom right, bottom middle, middle left, bottom left, middle right. The médaillon changes (a key sticks out). Take it.

   The close-up only opens from fouiller: on the trap, or on the ground after you déposer a médaillon you carry. The stones are on the small picture in the bottom-right panel, and their click boxes, 7 × 6 pixels on the 320 × 200 screen, sit slightly right of the stones: they are hard to press. Click in the red circles, in this order (played in the game). Clicking a wrong stone starts over; missing every stone does nothing.

   

   

5. Well, room 10, 16 minutes away. Wait until 04:00, then go dans le puits (2 min). Inside, appuyer on "Signes des temps" (detail zone 6): the bars lift and the exit dans le passage appears (10 min). You have until 05:00.

6. Water puzzle, room 30. The bénitiers start full, and are told apart by the skulls on them (5, 3, 8). tourner empties one on the wall; prendre then mettre on another pours; sonder reads the level.

   Step	5	3	8
   tourner the 3	5	0	8
   take the 5, mettre on the 3	2	3	8
   mettre the 5 on the first plate (zone 10); tourner the 3	2	0	8
   take the 8, mettre on the 3	2	3	5
   tourner the 3; mettre the 8 on the 3	2	3	2
   tourner the 3; mettre the 8 on the 3	2	2	0

   mettre the empty 8 back in its niche (zone 23), take the 3, and mettre it on the second plate (zone 11).

7. Select the médaillon and mettre it on the mooring ring (zone 12), then tourner it (zone 31). The quiz starts.

   

The médaillon is in the fish trap from 01:30, but the north beach is deadly at 02:00, hence 02:30.

If the first night feels too tight, the same well window comes back at 16:00-17:00 on the 1st. By then you will need to eat or sleep: condition would be too low otherwise. The first window, 16:00 on the 31st, is too early because the médaillon doesn't exist yet.

This route costs no sympathy as long as nobody is with you when you search the fish trap: the schedule has nobody on the north beach at 02:30.

The places on the route

Place	Scene
Your cabin, the start (room 26)
Salon, with the rope (room 2)
Devant chez Juste, to wait (room 9)
North beach, the fish trap (room 29)
The well (room 10)
Inside the well (room 16)
The passage, with the water puzzle (room 30)

Quiz answers

All 19, in order. One mistake fails it, but the game continues and you can tourner again if there's still time.

#	Question	Answer
1	Qui est Anita?	une révolutionnaire
2	Avec qui était Anton la nuit du 31 au 1er?	Sue
3	Dernière personne à avoir vu Juste vivant?	Anita
4	Qui a enlevé Marie?	Personne
5	Qui signe "la dame en noir"?	Marie
6	Quelle est son activité?	le trafic d'armes
7	Où sont livrées les armes?	Asmera
8	Qui a tué Juste?	Roy
9	Le mobile?	une perruque
10	A qui était la perruque?	Lucie
11	Qu'est devenue Lucie?	Morte
12	Qui était Lucie?	autre
13	La cible des coups de feu?	Chris
14	De quel endroit de la plage sud a-t-on tiré?	des arbres
15	Qui a forcé la bibliothèque?	Roy
16	Que cherchait-il?	un livre
17	Pour quoi faire?	décoder un message
18	Un message reçu par:	le piano
19	Qui est Ménélik?	le vent

The ending

After a perfect quiz, Lange reads Marie's note, then the closing text: about twenty crates of weapons in the grotto, and the voyage to Japan ("SOUKIYA").

Playing it as a detective

The shortest route wins without knowing why the answers are right. These playthroughs follow the evidence instead: where to be, what to look at and whom to ask, so that each quiz answer is something you found. Times and places come from the schedule (logic/schedule.tsv), objects from logic/actions.md, and testimony from logic/dialogue.md. Only the piano and the ending have been played; the rest comes from the tables.

Three conversation tricks do most of the work:

• Mémoriser keeps an answer. opposer then confronts someone with it; if it's the statement the game expects, they move to their next, truer answer. One try is enough when it's the statement the game expects; anything else never helps, because failed attempts leave no points.
• "Qu'avez-vous remarqué..." and "Votre emploi du temps..." are asked about a past time slot, which appears in the list once it's over (6 à 7 h PM from 19:00), so a witness can be questioned hours later. "Que faites-vous là?" depends on when you ask.
• montrer costs 2 sympathy each time, and searching while someone is in the room costs 1 or 3. With 50 to spend, show things only to the people who matter.

The full investigation: win at 16:00 on the 1st

This is the most logical playthrough: it sees the murder's aftermath and the shots, and wins at the second low tide. Eat in the salon at mealtimes (manger works from 13:00, 20:00 and 09:00 for an hour; lunch and dinner give 14 condition and take an hour, breakfast gives 7) and sleep the night in your cabin, which also keeps you away from every deadly place.

The 31st, 10:00-12:30: the boats, while their owners are out.

When	Where	What you find	What it tells you
10:00	your cabin	the newspaper of 31 December 1953	a white-slave scare: "Le consul de Djibouti appelle la population au calme après la disparition de la petite Marie"
10:00-10:30	Bruce's cabin (Bamboo, top), Bruce on the jetty	the Bamboo's log, an opium pipe, Marie's handkerchief, the binoculars	Bruce hired Chris at Mahé; Roy: "Le nouveau ne connaît rien à la navigation"; Chris "nearly" went overboard and Roy "held" him. Bruce smokes opium. Take the binoculars
11:00-12:00	Bob's cabin (Brisban), Bob out	three letters signed "la dame en noir"	someone wants Bob's boat for a night loading, delivery on Monday, quarantine flag to accept, then threatens: "Acceptez mon offre ou je ne réponds plus de la vie de Marie!"
11:00-12:00	Roy's cabin (Bamboo, bottom right), Roy on the jetty	a diamond in a drawer	Roy keeps a spare earring. Look, don't take it: carrying it at 02:00 on the 1st kills you
12:00-12:30	Chris's cabin (Bamboo, bottom left), Chris out	a radio transmitter, a mission order, a photo	Chris is an agent. Agent 0012 is lost; an intercepted message: "Lady in black... Menelik orders the merchandise delivery... Asmera"

13:00-17:30: the house.

When	Where	What you do	What it tells you
13:00-13:30	salon, nearly everyone	eat; ask about Marie, the locked room, then Lucie and her departure. The locked-room topic appears once you have clicked the locked door in front of Maguy's house, with any verb	the locked room was Lucie's. Anita: she snooped, and "Demandez à Roy". Roy: she was afraid someone had tried to kill her, so he hid her in his cabin and landed her on Mauritius. Bruce only has Roy's word. Anita on Marie: "Personne ne l'aimait". Later, on the jetty, Anton calls Lucie "une belle blonde"
14:00-15:00	Anita's room, Anita out	a communist tract, her newspaper of 23 December 1953	"Prolétaires de tous les pays: Unissez-vous!" Anita is a revolutionary (#1). The paper: Eritrean opposition arming, a white-slave network at Djibouti, and "Les hommes préfèrent les blondes"
14:00-15:00	Maguy's room, Maguy out	Bruce's letter; appuyer on the painting and search the cache behind it	Bruce slept with Marie and still wants to marry Maguy. The cache holds key #15; Maguy and Sue call it "la clef de la chambre de gauche", Lucie's room. Take it
15:00	Marie's room, Roy there	ask Roy "Que faites-vous là?" and Mémoriser	"Je cherche Anita." It's a lie, and you will use it
15:00	Marie's room	the bookcase, the cache, 'Les Forbans'	the cache holds Bob's love letter, the écrin and the list of the piano's tunes. The pirate book explains that a cryptogram is read with another book as its key (inferred: the object isn't mapped to its pages)
15:30-16:30	Lucie's room: the locked door in front of Maguy's house, which opens only while you carry key #15	a black hair on the bed, a brown cigarette butt	Lucie, the blonde, had black hair: the blonde hair was a wig. The butt appeared at 14:00, while Chris was in the room; shown it, Roy and Anton say "Chris fume des Gitanes"
16:00-17:00	bassin, at low tide	lire the inscription with the binoculars	half of a pirate riddle (see "The pirate inscription"); optional

17:30-22:30: the wig. Stay out of Marie's room at 18:30: Roy forces the bookcase then, and strangles anyone there. Chris is next door, in Sue's room.

When	Where	What you do	What it tells you
19:30	Juste's house, Juste at the bar	look in the stove; take the photo	"La perruque est à moitié consumée..." A blonde wig was burnt here at 18:30. The photo shows Lucie with Juste
20:30	salon, Sue and Juste there	the ladder below	Juste fished up the wig, and Roy saw it (#9)
21:00	salon, empty	open the piano's compartment (see "Using the piano") and look in it	a grid of letters came through the piano at 17:30 (#18). Read it, but don't carry it at 23:00
21:00	Marie's room	the bookcase	forced since 18:30
22:30	your cabin	dormir until 07:00	safe from the bar at 23:00, Juste's house at 01:30 and the north beach at 02:00

The wig ladder: ask Sue and Juste "Qu'avez-vous remarqué..." for 6 à 7 h PM, and Mémoriser every new answer. Then:

1. Oppose Juste with Sue's "Juste a pêché un drôle de paquet d'algues jaunes. Roy l'observait." He says he often finds algae.
2. Oppose Sue with Juste's first "Je n'ai rien remarqué". She says it didn't look like algae.
3. Oppose Juste with that. He says he thought he saw something odd.
4. Oppose Sue with Juste's algae answer from step 1. She says he looked around and hid it in a bucket.
5. Oppose Juste with that: "J'ai pêché une perruque blonde. Mais j'ai eu peur. Je l'ai jetée."

This must happen on the 31st: Juste has nothing to say about the 6 à 7 h PM slot once he's dead.

The 1st, 07:00-12:30: the murder and the shots.

When	Where	What you do	What it tells you
07:30	jetty	look at the body; ask Chris; take the key lying on the jetty	"Juste a la gorge tranchée." Chris: "Il a été assassiné. Du travail de professionnel!" The key is Juste's
08:00-09:00	Juste's house, empty	take the diamond ("Un indice?")	a diamond earring was lost at the scene
09:30	Roy's cabin, Roy out	the drawer, the shelf; tourner the latch ("Un déclic", zone 31) and search the cache it opens	the spare diamond is gone. 'Les échecs', the chess book from Marie's shelf, is on the shelf, and the cache holds a copy of the piano's grid ending "we wait the boat": Roy took the book to decode the piano's message (#15, #16, #17)
10:30	salon, everyone but Roy and Chris	ask Maguy "Qu'avez-vous remarqué..." for 2 à 3 h AM, Mémoriser, then oppose Sue's answer for the same slot	Maguy: "Sue a eu de la visite cette nuit." Sue: "Anton est venu me rendre visite" (#2)
10:30	salon	ask Anita "Qu'avez-vous remarqué..." for 1 à 2 h AM	"J'ai croisé Juste derrière chez lui. Quand il m'a vue, il s'est debiné." Juste died at 01:30, so she was the last to see him (#3)
10:30	salon	listen	shots on the south beach. Six people are here with you; only Roy and Chris are out
11:00	south beach	ask Chris "Que faites-vous là?"	"Avant les détonations, j'ai vu quelque chose briller entre les palmiers." The shooter was in the trees (#14)
11:30-12:30	jetty, Roy there	ask Roy about the shots; montrer him the diamond; ask "Votre emploi du temps..." for 3 à 4 h PM and oppose it with "Je cherche Anita"	"C'est Chris qui était visé" (#13). "Il n'est pas à moi... le mien, je l'ai à l'oreille", but his spare is gone. "Je suis venu chercher un bouquin que j'avais prêté à Marie". If you took them, the chess book ("C'est à moi") and the sheet ("J'ai trouvé ça sous ma porte ce matin") are worth showing too

Optional the same morning: a sealed crate floats in the bassin around dawn and is gone by noon (avoid 07:00, when Roy knocks you out), and there's a submachine-gun bullet in the Bamboo's hold.

The 1st, 13:00-17:00: the ending. Eat at 13:00, then go to the north beach after 14:00 (Roy is there at 13:30), take the médaillon from the fish trap and open it as in the shortest route, and be at the well for 16:00, with the rope and the stone already in place. The grotto and the water puzzle are the same.

What you know at the quiz

#	Answer	Your evidence
1	une révolutionnaire	the tract in her room; Sue: "Anita est communiste"
2	Sue	Maguy's remark, then Sue's admission
3	Anita	her 1 à 2 h AM remark; the murder was at 01:30
4	Personne	the "kidnapper" is the dame en noir, who uses Marie's life as a threat to get a boat; see #5
5	Marie	deduction (inferred): the coded messages come through Marie's piano, and its tune list is in her hidden cache; the dame en noir knows exactly what Marie's life is worth to Bob; Anita: "Si Marie n'avait pas disparu, je dirais que c'est elle qui l'a assassiné." The game confirms it only after the quiz, with Marie's note
6	le trafic d'armes	the mission order ("merchandise"), the newspaper (Eritrea arming), the night loading in the letters, the submachine-gun bullet
7	Asmera	the mission order
8	Roy	the diamond at the scene, which everyone says is his, and his missing spare; he watched Juste fish up the wig
9	une perruque	Juste's admission, the burnt wig in his stove, and Roy watching him fish it up
10	Lucie	a blonde who had black hair; her photo with Juste
11	Morte	deduction: she said someone tried to kill her, only Roy says she left, and her wig came out of the sea
12	autre	deduction (inferred): she fits the lost agent 0012. The other choices are une trafiquante, une voleuse, un maître-chanteur and une révolutionnaire; Juste's "C'est elle qui m'a volé mon gri-gri" points to the wrong one
13	Chris	Roy says so; Chris is the agent, and Roy is the one who walked him there
14	des arbres	Chris saw a glint in the palms
15	Roy	he was searching Marie's room at 15:00 for "un bouquin", and the chess book ends up in his cabin
16	un livre	the same
17	décoder un message	the pirate book's book-key, the decoded grid in Roy's cabin, and the chess decoding (see "Using the piano")
18	le piano	the grid in the piano's compartment
19	le vent	the second message, read with game n°5, is signed "the Wind!", and the mission order says Menelik orders the delivery. The choices are la tribu, le vent, le lion, le singe, le fétiche, le roi de la source and le tabou

The night run: win at 04:00 on the 1st

Play the 31st as above, through the piano at 21:00, and rest in your cabin. Then follow the shortest route: the rope and the stone before 18:00, the médaillon from 02:30 on the north beach, and the well at 04:00. On the way you can take Juste's key from the jetty at 02:00 and pick up the diamond in his empty house. Ask Roy about his 3 à 4 h PM on the 31st instead, in the bar at 19:00 or 21:30. It's quicker and avoids a second day, but the shots haven't happened yet and nobody has been asked about the night, so #2, #3, #13 and #14 are taken on trust.

What kills you

Each time window lasts the whole half-hour.

When	Where or what	Result
31, 18:30	in Marie's room	strangled
1er, 01:30	chez Juste	stabbed
1er, 02:00	north beach	killed
17:00 and 05:00	in the well or the passage	drowned
outside 16:00-17:00 and 04:00-05:00	entering the well	drowned on the rope
any time	the bassin exit "à la statue"	quicksand
31, 23:00	carrying the sheet (feuille #139) from the salon cache	killed
1er, 02:00	carrying the diamond #96 from the Bamboo	killed
12:00-17:30	playing the piano, if alone when its timer ends (about 14:30-15:30)	killed
condition below 0		dead
hidden sympathy (DS:16E, starts at 50, never rises) below 0	a witnessed tabasser costs 40, alone 10; full list in Game logic	thrown off the case
23:00 on the 1st		the Brisban leaves; you failed

Knocked out for 30 minutes: bar-cuisine at 23:00 on the 31st, bassin at 07:00 on the 1st.

Using the piano

The salon's piano is where the coded messages arrive. Steps 1 to 5 have been played in the game; the sheets of step 6 were read from a test start state with the sheets already carried.

1. Select the ashtray (from the bar, or the one in the salon) and mettre it on the top-left corner of the piano, under the left lamp (1).
2. tourner the thin strip on the piano's right edge (2): "Ca tourne. Un claquement se fait entendre à l'intérieur du piano." This allows one sheet.
3. Select a one-cent coin and mettre it on the slot under the right lamp (3), "Insert 1 cent.". Choose a tune. From 12:00 to 17:00 on the 31st "Requiem" leaves the coded grid and other tunes leave decoys; from 07:00 on the 1st "Ham and eggs" leaves the second grid.
4. ouvrir the lower front panel (4): "Le mécanisme du piano "pneumatique"".
5. ouvrir the compartment, at the bottom of the shelf to the right of the mechanism (5), then fouiller it. It always holds "des feuilles", blank music sheets: "Il n'y a rien d'écrit là-dessus...".
6. The sheet a tune leaves goes in the same compartment. To read it, select it and lire. On the 31st, playing starts a timer, and no other sheet comes until it has run out.

Every sheet is a letter grid, and some letters are drawn darker. On the real messages and Roy's copy there are 64 darker letters: lay them on a chessboard, a1 first then rank by rank (a1-h1, a2-h2...), and read the square each move of a game from 'Les échecs' lands on, white and black in turn. Game n°4, Kermur de Legal against an amateur (Paris 1750), gives "we wait the boat" on the first message. Game n°5, Dr Toerber against Menke (West Germany 1908), gives "tribes need guns! the Wind!" on the second. No game decodes the paper from the garden. On the decoys only a handful of letters are darker, by accident: the game reads their pattern from a table whose place in the PC version holds the C library's copyright.

Clicks are tested in 8 × 8 squares counted from (4, 12) on the 320 × 200 screen, so aim for the middle of each spot.

The pirate inscription

Optional, and two halves of one text. The bassin's half is read with the binoculars at low tide. The other half is carved in the passage under Maguy's room: there, tourner zone 14 to find key #17 in a drawer, soulever zone 15 to uncover the trapdoor, open it while carrying the key, and go dans le passage. Maguy says "j'ai perdu la clef qui ouvre la trappe"; shown the key, she asks "Où avez-vous déniché ça?". Next to the text, the rock reads "Jemelos y indivisibles" (twins and inseparable).

Each half holds every other word, mirrored. Overlaid and turned back, they read (tools/render_inscription.py):

3 muertos pesan 2 muertos y 5 muertos 2 muertos. El segundo es el primero y el primero el segundo. El hierro gira sobre el señal de los piratas.

"Three dead weigh two dead, and five dead two dead. The second is the first, and the first the second. The iron turns on the pirates' sign." This is the water puzzle: the bénitiers marked with 3 and 5 skulls must each hold 2. The last sentence matches the médaillon's key, turned in the ring (inferred).

The same passage has carvings of mirrored digits around the text. Placed on the island map, they number six places: 2 the south beach, 5 Maguy's house, 1 the jetty, 3 the bassin, 7 the well, 4 the north beach. 'Les Forbans' then gives the order and the rule: "Du septentrion au méridien, par le mouillage, le singe et les frères de la côte, sur la tête de mort... Ne va jamais à reculons... Après tu suivras le sens du zodiaque". Taken in the riddle's order (north beach 4, jetty 1, bassin 3, Maguy's house 5, well 7, south beach 2) and added up as you go, modulo 5, they give 4, 5, 3, 3, 5, 2: the order of the écrin's stones (table 0x1E3). The opened écrin shows zodiac signs ("Les symboles dessinés sur le couvercle sont des signes du zodiaque", says Maguy), which give the order of the médaillon's stones. The places and the zodiac reading come from the Adventurers' Guild blog; the code checks the two click orders.

Seeing the evidence

Worth doing for the story, none of it required:

• Marie's room: bookcase and hidden cache, écrin (click its stones 4th, 5th, 3rd, 3rd, 5th, 2nd from the left; see "The pirate inscription" for where that comes from). The aquarium holds the stone with a skull, needed for the well.
• Piano in the salon: see "Using the piano". A one-cent coin in the slot plays a tune of your choice. From 12:00 to 17:00 on the 31st, "Requiem" leaves the coded grid in the compartment, and from 07:00 on the 1st "Ham and eggs" leaves a second grid. Other tunes leave decoy grids. Each opening gives one sheet. Don't be alone in the salon at about 15:00 after playing on the 31st.
• Juste's stove: the wig, from 18:30 on the 31st. The house is locked at 18:30-19:00 and from 21:30 unless you carry Juste's key, which lies on the jetty from 02:00 on the 1st.
• Lucie's room: the locked door in front of Maguy's house; key #15 is in the cache behind Maguy's painting.
• Bassin at low tide: the inscription needs the binoculars from the Bamboo, at the well's low-tide times. See "The pirate inscription".
• Roy's cabin (Bamboo, bottom right): tourner the latch to open a cache, where the decoded grid arrives at 02:00 on the 1st.
• Chris's cabin (Bamboo, bottom left): transmitter, the mission order, and a photo.
• Juste's house: the diamond, from 01:30 on the 1st.
• Anita's room: the anonymous note, from 18:30 on the 31st.
• The garden: "du papier" is a third letter grid. Taking it opens the drug-trafficking topic; shown it, Juste says "Très mauvaise médecine".
• Bob's cabin (Brisban): the dame en noir letters.
• Character testimony: logic/dialogue.md.

Not confirmed

• Played in the game: the piano, the sheets, the médaillon, the well, the passage, the quiz and the ending. The rest comes from reading the code.
• The exact on-screen look of the zones isn't confirmed. Zone numbers are from the tables.
• The rate of the real-time part of the clock isn't known.
• The médaillon's order comes from its table (0x1E5, seven stones, five clicks) and worked in the game; the Adventurers' Guild blog entered six zodiac signs whose last five match it, and the walkthroughking.com walkthrough gives a different order, probably for another version.
• The paper from the garden doesn't decode with any game in the book.
• The chess decoding, the écrin's numbers, and the rope and stone steps were first found by the Adventurers' Guild blog (2016, English version of the game); they are checked here against the code.

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