"Tap, tap, tap."
Crisp footsteps rang out as the female lawyer carried the gas lamp down the empty corridor alone.
If anyone who solves the puzzle can inherit the estate, then so can I!
The lawyer surveyed her surroundings while thinking over the clues she had read on the slip of paper.
In truth, she had long had her eye on the inheritance. After all, if that was the only requirement, then she could meet it even as a lawyer. Surely even discovering a clue would entitle her to a share.
At first, she had hoped to team up with someone to investigate, such as the young detective. Unfortunately, he already had an assistant.
As for the other two... it was not as though she had not tried. But they had shown no interest whatsoever in speaking to her, which infuriated her enough that she finally decided to act alone.
It's not as if I can't find the hidden door on my own!
The lawyer was brimming with confidence. She had studied law at university, but she had also taken elective courses in architecture. That gave her a method of her own for identifying and locating the secret room.
She would analyze it from an architectural perspective!
First, she could rule out everything above the ground floor. Before the banquet began, she had already made a cursory circuit of the entire second floor. In the end, she had determined that there was not enough space upstairs to accommodate a secret room. That meant it had to be on the ground floor. A basement had already been ruled out. Drainage and protection against rainwater had to be considered, especially with the building standing in the middle of a lake. Excavating and building underground would even require accounting for external pressure.
That