When in doubt, improvise. Keys do unlock doors and start cars and motorcycles and a cigar is just a cigar. But items in Puppeteer are often used for other than their obvious purposes. At various points, channeling McGyver, you’ll cobble together in a fingerprint kit, an adaptor, a glass cutter and a sparking and smoking distraction.

Left clicks pay off. Items sometimes conceal other items. You can liberate these by left-clicking on the containing object in inventory. A few items can also have their states modified to a useful one in the same way a mop reduced to a mop handle, a hairpin broken in two, a monkey wrench tightened and so on.

Time for your close-up. If it should work and it doesn’t, maybe you’re too far away. You’ll often need to zoom in on a location to interact with it properly.

Cul-de-sac. The game forces you into the straight and narrow most of the way, but you’re allowed to try out an unworkable alternate solution in one spot and minor variants (one workable, one not) in two others.

Journal-ism. The story isn’t unfolded entirely in dialogue. Some of the narrative wont make sense unless you refer to Nicole’s journal. (And sometimes not even then.) Make a point of reading it after each move to a new area, as you’ll sometimes find useful details and even character names that pertain to the location you’ve just left.

Sell phone. You cant, but wouldn’t miss it if you could. Its just a storytelling device. Nicole automatically receives four calls and places one call on her cell in the games early stages, but never has to use it on her own initiative, though she can at several points to no useful effect. (Though Inspector Pety and Carnot are added to the log of ring-able phone numbers when Nicole receives their business cards, their phone are busy or ring unanswered.)

The plot chickens. Its pretty thin in places. Its not always clear why Nicole is headed to a particular location or even how she finds it. And having introduced certain concepts, the designers sometimes seem reluctant to stick with them (the list of ancestors you’ll find in Azarra) or expand upon their meaning (the dolls deposited at most crime scenes). I’ll try to clear up such issues en route.

Contact: I’d love to know what you think of this walkthrough. Feel free to write to me at peternolafson@yahoo.com.

Copyright: This document is copyright 2009 by Peter Olafson. You may not sell it, distribute it, edit it, excerpt it (except for “fair use” purposes in news coverage) or publish it in any fashion without my prior written consent.

The scenery is like in a Degas picture, says FBI agent Nicole Bonnet. Remember that. Deep in the game, you’ll come across a copy of the original and can make a comparison.

You cant do much here initially, you’re limited to snapping photos of the body until you talk to Inspector Pety and your superior at the FBI (who is never dignified with a name), so get these little chats out of the way. Talk to the inspector. You’ll surrender your business card, setting up a call in the next chapter, and hell make himself scarce. Then try to examine the body, the central window or the table at the left side of the screen and the boss calls on Nicole’s cell.

The thrust of these two exchanges: You’re pretty much on your own here. But now at least you have the run of the place.

You task here is basic police work. Its the only crime scene in the game where you are permitted to pursue it in a semi-dedicated fashion. But its pretty tricky for a starting room and its very easy to miss some small step.

Now you can look around to your hearts content, but cant accomplish without some makeshift gear. Conveniently, this place is flush with the raw materials for makeshift gear. Check out the table on the left side of the screen. From the middle drawer, take the tape, plastic sleeves, stapler and paper and push the blue button on the right side. This unlocks the right-hand drawer, which is otherwise blocked. From this drawer, take the matches, pipe cleaner, cotton wool and rental list. (Note the last name on the list: Its not the victim, Elizabeth Soupault, but someone named Marc Taine. This will surface again soon.)

You can perform the following tasks in any order.

– Approach the body. You’ll be prompted to take a photo (unless you’ve already done so). If you do, Nicole snaps off two shots these cover the body itself and the macabre doll between its feet and you’ll see a 2 beside the camera in inventory.

That’s important. Your photos of evidence are a significant component of the tasks you must complete here (somewhat less so elsewhere) and they’ll pop up here and there until you lose your camera in the escape from Marseilles. (They’re listed below. You’ll have taken six photos by the time were done here.)

Use the plastic sleeves from the desk on the doll and you’ll be treated to a short animation of a hooded man staging the scene and, once it ends, find the doll in an evidence bag in your inventory. Nicole wont offer an opinion on this first of the three dolls you’ll find, but close-up inspection suggests its a dancer. The significance (if any) of these roles (only one of which is formally revealed) is never stated.

Zoom on the body itself. Note the crystals encrusted on the left side of the girls mouth. You’ll want a sample for analysis and you’ll need a cotton swab to collect it. Its a simple matter to combine the cotton with the matches, use the makeshift swab on the crystals and the sleeves on the swab. (Presumably the victim was poisoned, but you never learn the poison.)

– Approach the central window and zoom in on the lower portion and your attention will be called to a fingerprint. You can photograph it (and you should) but you cant preserve a copy for later analysis without a bit of help.

Help from where? The inspector is gone and he didn’t seem the helpful type anyway. But didn’t he allude to another officer? Hes out in the hallway. Talk to him, ask for a pencil and its yours.

The pencil contains lead and lead dust might be used to make a copy of the fingerprint. You’ll need to crush it and that requires something heavy. If you examined the stapler in inventory, you learned its heavy enough to serve as a hammer. Use it on the pencil, then use the paper on the crushed pencil to collect the powdered lead, then the paper on the prints to distribute the dust, then the tape on the prints and finally an easy step to miss the tape on the paper. Copy complete.

– Note that the wing window above and the left of the prints is open and that a crude cross has been drawn on the glass.

Close the window using the mop to the left of the doors hallway side. (When you click on the mop in inventory, the mop end vanishes and you’re left with the pole.) Then back out of the scene to the full-room view and zoom in on the cross’s shadow on the central portion of the studio floor. You’ll find a loose plank. Use the pipe-cleaning tool to pry it up and you’ll find 1793 inscribed on the other side. Photograph it and bag it

1793? No speculation on its meaning appears in the game but soon enough you’ll connect the murders to the French Revolution and that brings the date into better focus. The Reign of Terror began that year. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror) And check Nicole’s journal after this chapter is complete to learn the year was written in blood.

– Those are the three main tasks. But unless you’ve been snapping your camera at everything, if you try to leave now (via the door at the end of the hallway), you’ll probably learn Nicole still needs to make copies of the evidence shes collected.

Copies means more photos. We’ve already mentioned photographing the body (which includes the doll and the crystals beside the dancers mouth) and the fingerprints. What remains?

– the board with 1793 inscribed on it either on the studio floor or in the evidence bag

– the rental list from the desk

– the cross on the wing glass in the upper part of the central window (but only after this has been closed with the mop handle)

Now you just need to have a last chat with the officer in the hallway to turn over the evidence Nicole’s collected and then use the door to the street. The scene changes and you’ll find yourself outside your hotel.

Odds & ends: You can also examine the piano (in either the window or door-side view), the steel hook driven into the victims flesh near the left armpit (in the closeup view of the victim), the knocked-over chair to the right of the body and the shattered mirrors above it (both only in the view of the rooms right side), the pipe and tobacco (in the right-hand drawer of the table), the non-functioning light switch (in the hallway view of the door to the rehearsal room) and the fuse box to the right of the police officer.

This last can provide a conversation topic about the absence of light in the rehearsal room. It seems to have been designed as a kind of prompt for the wing glass puzzle above. (i.e. The darkness in the rehearsal room makes the cross on the window and floor stand out.) However, examining the box and talking to the officer about it arent required to solve the puzzle.

Enter the hotel, stop at reception for an obligatory chat with the desk man Pierre and then use the stairs to to the left to reach your room.

Nicole told Pierre she was going to make a phone call and that’s true, but she has to transmit some data first. Go over to the desk, use your camera on the laptop on the left side to connect it to that computer and then click on the laptop twice to try to send your photos to the FBI. Youll see activity on the screen and learn there’s no connection to the antenna.

This is another tricky sequence and you’ll need to perform three steps to trigger the necessary topic in a conversation with Pierre.

The antenna is the gadget that looks like a closed laptop on the right side of the desk. You can zoom in on it and click on the green button at its center to learn it isn’t plugged in. In fact, it cant be plugged in right now.

1) Why? Zoom in on the electric outlet. Nicole notes that the US-style antenna plug doesn’t fit and that she needs an adaptor.

Dont run off in search of one just yet. Pierre, now sitting at a table outside the café to the right of the hotel, will tell you hes all out and that there’s currently no place where you can buy one. And that’s the end of it. In short, its a similar situation to the one in the rehearsal room. you’re on your own and will have to cobble together a solution.

2) When you looked at the electric socket , you saw a cord already plugged in. This supplies power to the desk lamp. Hence, if you could somehow rig the antenna to run off the current going to the lamp, you wouldn’t need a compatible plug.

And note that the cord from the antenna doesn’t actually go to the wall. It goes to an adaptor that oblong gadget between the antenna and the plug. (This is a different kind of adaptor than the plug kind to which Nicole and Pierre refer and you’re not going to use it for this purpose.)

So lets take that ugly American plug out of the equation right now. Just disconnect the antenna cord from the right end of adaptor. You’re left with a little two-prong plug.

This adaptor does serve an informational purpose: As you can read on the device, it steps down the current to the 12 volts required by the antenna. (If you like, click anywhere on the antenna aside from the green button to flip it over and you can read the specs on the back.)

Hence, you need to find a 12-volt connection in the lamp.

3) Return to the lamp view. Hit the switch to turn it off and click the lamps base to turn it on its side.

This seems at first to be bad news: The sticker on the bottom indicates that the lamp requires an input of 230 volts. All these different numbers are confusing!

Yeah, thats the idea. But the true purpose of turning the lamp thusly is to permit you to remove the halogen bulb. Do so to reveal a two-prong socket like the one in the wall. (You can also examine the bulb in inventory to see it requires a 12-volt current.) Nicole here offers that she could use this to connect the antenna but would need a short wire.

That’s the key line (though you can elicit it before its time if you do these things out of order). Now go see Pierre at the café. Use the Request for help and Piece of wire topics and Pierre’s companion offers a hairpin.

Left-click on the hairpin to break it in two. Back upstairs, use the pieces either on the end of the antenna cord or the socket in the lamp and finally click on the loose antenna cord to connect it to the socket. Set the lamp upright again, throw the switch on it’s base don’t be dismayed by the little green light vanishing and back out to the desk view.

You’ll find the green button atop the antenna blinking. Press it to extend the antenna and then click twice on the laptop to send your photos. Nicole then automatically places a phone call to a co-worker named Ruth at the FBIs New York office. You’ll learn that fellow agent Nick (who made a token appearance in the first Art of Murder game) isn’t available to analyze the fruits of your labors. This foreshadows Nicks cameo in Marseilles later in the game.

Take your camera and head out. At the base of the hotel stairs, you’ll receive a call from Inspector Pety. There’s been another murder and you’re off to the scene … after one more little puzzle: The hotels front door is locked.

You can unlock it by simply ringing the bell at reception, but that just gets you outside. To reach the murder scene in Montmartre, you’ll have to arrange transportation. To do that, take the car rental brochure off the front counter and talk to Pierre. You cant rent a car tonight, but the conversation then turns to taxis and Pierre arranges one for you pronto. Leave the hotel now and you’ll find yourself exiting a cab at the crime scene.

Odds & ends: You can also examine the laptop case on the bench on the foot of your bed, the end table between the bed and the desk, the coffee cup to the right of the lamp (in the lamp closeup), the bamboo stick in the plant to the left of the stairs, the rack to the right on the stairs, the tableware cabinet to the right of the rack, a key locker and bonsai tree at the right side of reception, the flowers and the three suitcases (in the full view of the lobby) and the café door (in the exterior café view).

You can try to swap out the cord in the electric socket behind the desk and try to plug in the one for the antenna, use the bell at the front desk at earlier points (or repeatedly) and pull back from the hotel entrance to a full street scene complete with passers-by. This may seem without a concrete purpose at the moment, but you’ll find your rental car here in a later chapter. (In Nicole’s room, you’ll occasionally see the headlights of passing cars play across the ceiling.)

Note that the young woman sitting at the café table with Pierre (Sylvie Leroux) is the principal actor in another City Interactive game: The Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual. In fact, if you ask Pierre about Request for help and then Charger, shell reveal that she left her own adaptor in Malta (where Chronicles begins). I guess shes taking a vacation! You’ll find the game for sale in a shop when you get to Spain.

And speaking of cross-promotions, did you notice the City Interactive sign in the upper-right corner in the close-up of the café?

Upon her arrival, Nicole sees a man watching her from the buildings left corner. I think shed follow up and see what he wants this is a murder scene, after all but that’s not an option.

So enter the building, climb the stairs to the top and talk to the officer. Evidently the same fellow from the first crime scene. Hell share a fair amount of information with you before Pety summons Nicole inside. The MO is that of the Puppeteer. The apartment is that of an American named Jack Dupree. The victim was a regular here shell turn out to be Dupree’s girlfriend and a neighbor heard a quarrel in the apartment earlier in the day.

Enter the apartment, talk to the inspector and run his topics. He supplies his business card and adds a few details to what you’ve learned from the officer outside notably, that Dupree is a suspect, that the victim is Jacqueline Lorrain, a dancer from the Moulin Rouge and that there’s a witness.

During this exchange, Nicole seems to be wondering whether this killing is in fact the work of the Puppeteer. No dark-eyed doll at this scene. And the blood to which Pety refers is inconsistent with the killers meticulousness in staging the other scenes (though the body in the intro was certainly streaked in blood). The inspector speculates the killer may have lost control of the situation possibly because he was startled.

Well raise this point again more than once later in the story.

Despite Pety’s suggestion that Nicole get lost, you should snap off a couple of photos: the desk beneath the window and the ropes and hooks hanging off to the left. But you cant investigate as you could at the first scene. Approach the desk in front of the window or the bicycle wheel in the right corner and Pety’ll warn you off.

Perhaps the officer on the landing can help. Ask him about Witness and hell point you to Agnes Grouchet in Apt. 12 one floor down. Shes not helpful until you use Pety’s card on the door and then shell spill what she knows including the suspect Dupree dropping something on the sidewalk outside as he made his exit. (Note that there’s something in her mailbox. You cant examine it in detail right now, but will have a chance soon enough.)

Leave the building. You cant inspect the sidewalk, blocked as it is in this view by police cars, but at the bottom of the screen, just left of the center, is a sewer grate. Zoom in to see a gold bracelet beneath and learn that you cant lift the grate without tools.

Now, the designers have been a bit sneaky here. You’ll recall a tool box in plain sight up at the murder scene. If you looked at it, Nicole said it might contain something useful.

But no, that’s not happening. When you return to the apartment, you still cant do any more than look at the box and you cant get the inspector to look the other way.

It may not be immediately apparent, but a second toolbox can be found here. Initially, this one is almost invisible behind the officer on the landing, but after you talk to the inspector, it’s clearly visible. Ask the officer about it. (It belongs to a technician named Michel and you apparently wouldn’t like Michel when hes angry.)

Then drop down one flight and take the old newspaper from Agnes Grouchet’s mailbox. Take it upstairs and talk to the officer again. Nicole pretends the papers current and includes an account of the police investigation, the officer steps forward into the light to get a better look at it and, behind his back, you can clean out the toolbox, taking proper evidence bags, a screwdriver and fingerprint foil. Hustle back to the grate, use the screwdriver to pry it up, look at the bracelet to find a name (Lukas) on the clasp and, finally, use the evidence bag on the bracelet.

You’ll get a call from Pierre that an American man has left a letter for you at the hotel.

Odds & ends: On the lower landing, you can examine the window, the stroller (here apparently typo-ed as trolley) and mailbox. On the top floor landing, you can look at the shelves. At the murder scene, you can examine the TV set in front of the chimney, the African mask and poster hanging above it and the window above the desk.

On arrival outside the apartment house, Nicole can place calls to Ruth to learn that analysis of the pictures you sent earlier shows the rehearsal-room killing to be the work of the Puppeteer and to Boss to learn shes now the only person from the original FBI team still on the case. (Nick is working on clearing his backlog.)

The old newspaper Nicole gives the officer has nothing to do with the murders, but it’s a real article from the December 10, 2004 edition of the French newspaper Le Quotidien (The Daily). (You can find it on the net at http://www.madagascar-library.com/images/700×700/quotidien-domoina-fady-famadihana-article.jpg)

it’s apparently a philsophical view of certain aspects of Malagasy culture. (Madagascar was a French colony from 1896 to 1960.) Fady is a Malagasy word for taboo or forbidden while famadihana refers to a practice of periodically exhuming ones ancestors and rewrapping the remains. (Source: http://www.cactus-madagascar.com/culture.php#famadihana.) In some regions of Madagscar, this practice is regarded as taboo. (http://whitneyinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2008/12/famadihana-dancing-with-dead.html)

Finally, a seeming glitch: Duplicate descriptions appear for the window on the first landing and the one at the murder scene. Right-click on either window and Nicole offers that, The window is already half-open, so it’ll be easy. The one at the murder scene is indeed half-open, but the one on the lower landing is closed.

And what exactly will be easy? Presumably to get back into the apartment this way. But that’s a bit down the road and, by then, the window at the murder scene will be closed.

Housekeeping tasks. 

Stop off at the desk and collect your mail. The letters from Dupree evidently the fellow who watched you from the corner as you arrived in Montmartre. (I’m a little unsure how he found your hotel to drop off the letter, since this is the first time you’ve been here since he spotted you.)

In it, he asserts his innocence and asks that you meet him on the Pont des Invalides at 11 p.m. Talk to Pierre to have him locate it for you and summon a cab.

But you have three tasks to perform in your room before you travel: transmit the two new photos from the Montmartre scene to the FBI, pick up your laptop (ostensibly with a view to taking notes) and change clothes.

For the first, just do what you did before no need to call in this time and don’t forget to grab up your camera from the desk when you’re done. For the second, grab the laptop case from the bench at the foot of the bed and then use it on the laptop in the desk view. And for the third, try to leave the room. Nicole automatically ducks out of sight to he left of the bed and reemerges in less dressy duds.

Odds & Ends: Nicole can ask Pierre about old Montmatre and learn about a café called Lapin Agile. it’s a real place and translates as The Nimble Rabbit. However, it’s not in the game.

And you can call Boss again. Assuming you called him back in Montmartre, hell just blow you off this time. (If not, youll have the Nicoles-working-alone chat reported under Montmartre above.)

The bridge scene is an animation with no player interaction. Dupree (who looks a little like a young George W. Bush) says hes being framed, asks for your help and mentions letters he received in New Orleans letters now hidden in his room. A motorcyclist appears and fires on Dupree. Dupree appears to have been struck and falls into the Seine. Nicole disarms the assailant by throwing her laptop at him needless to say, that’s all she wrote for the laptop and then picks up the gun and fires a shot after him. Next thing you know, shes being taken to task by Pety and told to get out of town and the same officer who guarded the doors at the two murder scenes is escorting Nicole back to the hotel to collect her belongings.

You don’t actually have collect your belongings. The idea here is to lose your escort.

There’s a side exit from the hotel the double doors (labeled The back) to the left of the stairs. But they’re locked and, if you try to use them, Pierre offers up an unctious Yes? May I help you?

You’ll need a key. This key resides in the previously-empty key locker behind the reception desk visible from the front but identifiable (and, eventually, reachable) only from its right side.

You’ll need a tool to lift the key. The bamboo stick in the plant at the base of the stairs would seem like the ideal tool. But if you try to take it, Pierre does his Yes? May I help you? thing again.

To the lose the police officer, you’re going to have to lose Pierre first. And just as Pierre innocently helps you dump the officer, the officer innocently helps you dupe Pierre.

This involves some to-and-fro. Start by checking in with Pierre. Topic: Car. You’ll collect the keys for your rental car and learn that someone named Louis Carnot is looking for you. (This baddie will turn up at the hotel in due course.)

Then head outside again and talk to the gendarme about Departure to work out that you’ll be traveling in separate cars Nicole having to return her rental at the airport.

Then return to Pierre and ask about Second exit and the plot is hatched. Visit the officer again to offer coffee and a pastry and Pierre again to arrange its preparation. He vanishes and you can start borrowing stuff from the lobby: the bamboo stick from the plant, the cork and hankerchief from the top shelf of the tableware cabinet on the right side of the stairs and the hook and thread from the upper left corner of the inside of the cabinet door. Put the hook together with the stick, use the hooked stick to snag the key and use the key on the side door.

You’ll find yourself in front of the building to the left of the hotel, with a partition protecting you from the waiting officers view. You couldn’t advance from this position without him seeing you, so you’ll automatically return inside. Pierre’s not back from the kitchen yet and you need him back, so prompt his return by using the front door no, the bell on the desk wont work and then returning to the hotel. Pick up the coffee and croissant in dialogue Pierre then vanishes again to answer an oh-so-convenient telephone call and bring them out to the officer. When you return inside, Pierre’s still away from the desk and you can safely use the side exit again.

This time, you’ll arrive outside to find the police officers guard down and his back turned. On automatic, Nicole uses the hankerchief and cork to plug the police cars exhaust and returns inside. Use the front door to exit, tell the officer you’re all packed he fails to note that Nicole’s not actually carrying a bag and Nicole automatically crosses the street to her rental car as the police car stalls out. Poor fellow! Click on the global positioning system on the dashboard and then on the green-flagged region to head back to the crime scene in Montmartre.

Odds & ends: You can also examine a second hook in the upper right-hand corner of the inside of the tableware cabinet door. In your room, you can now left-click on the closet to the left of the bed. (Nicole refuses to put on a fashion show for you.)

You can ask Pierre about Guests and learn why the hotel seems empty.

And you can call Ruth again just to exchange pleasantries. That’s the end of the story for the cell phone. You’ll eventually lose it entirely.

Enter the apartment building and climb to the top floor to find the door to the crime scene sealed with police tape. Zoom in and then either try the door or the tape.

Uh-uh. Nicole has boundary issues.

Finding an alternative should not prove a challenge. Drop down to the next landing, open the window and then step onto the ledge.

This sequence starts out as a non-interactive animation the ledge collapsing beneath Nicole’s weight. Once she recovers, edge left to the lighted window and grab four pieces of ironwork one loose on the window sill and three still in place (but detachable) on the grills right side two on the lower edge and one on the top.

At the left end of the ledge, use the wire (not the strongest climbing support Ive ever seen) to climb to the top floor and head right. The second window is the one you want to enter, but you’ll find it latched. (Click on the latch a bit hard to see in the upper left corner of the right pane and Nicole says the window is blocked.) However, you’ll see in the closeup view that there’s a gap in the middle. You need to slip something into the crack to lift the latch .

You dont have anything like that in inventory but, with a little prep work, you can retrieve such an item. You already have four of the six parts required. And here are the other tw Just to the right of the third window, you’ll find a broken flower box. Take the two planks and continue right to the chimney at the right end of the ledge.

Rungs are embedded in the upper portion of the chimney but the two lowest ones are missing. You can now replace them. Insert the four metals bar from the window grillwork in the four holes and then place the two planks from the flowerbox across these two sets of supports. (Each plank can go in either of the positions.) Then back out of the scene and click on the antenna atop the chimney. Nicole climbs to the top and breaks off a piece off the antenna. (That distant scream is the hundred Frenchmen who just lost their lifeline to Who Wants to be a Millionaire?)

Return left to the locked window and try to raise the latch with the antenna piece. It wont work, and Nicole suggests bending it. Just left-click on the piece in inventory to do so, then use the bent piece on the latch and you’re in.

Dupree’s stash is in a secret compartment on the outer wall between the desk and the radiator. There are four hooks here, numbered I to IV from left to right, and a hole (V) at the right end of the row where a fifth hook would go. Finding a surrogate for that missing hook is your first task.

Not that hard. Remember the two areas Pety wouldn’t let you explore on the earlier visit? The desk and the bike wheel. The latter yields a tool that helps permit you explore the former.

Zoom in on the wheel. You’ll see a loose spoke at the bottom. Grab it, get over to the desk and take the keys from the top.

The middle drawer on the right side is open. In the close-up view, click on the handle to open it a bit more. You can see some odds and ends within, but when you try to examine them, Nicole indicates she needs a light. Use the keys on the drawer they come with a mini-flashlight and you’ll now find the odds and ends meaningless … but discover that there’s a hole in the bottom on the drawers right side. Use the bicycle spoke on the hole to raise a board at the bottom and, beneath, find an Allen wrench and a slip of paper with the numbers 52314 each digit written in a different color. These are automatically added to your inventory.

Interesting. Five numbers all between 1 and 5. These must correspond to the five hooks. (Yes, five hooks. Insert the Allen wrench in the rightmost hook hole and it’ll serve as the fifth.)

But what do the colors mean? Well, note that each hook is interactive and can be turned clockwise to the eight positions of the compass. The colors must indicate the position of each hook and there must be a key to the colors somewhere.

it’s hidden in plain sight. Look at the old map of Europe, Asia and Africa on the right side of the desktop. Directions are noted on each of the eight points of the wind rose in eight different colors.

The 5 appears in red ink on the slip of paper. The SW on the map is also in red.
The 2 appears in blue ink on the slip of paper. The NW on the map is also in blue.
The 3 appears in green ink on the slip of paper. The SE on the map is also in green.
The 1 appears in black ink on the slip of paper. The W on the map is also in black.
The 4 appears in lavender ink on the slip of paper. The NE on the map is also in lavender.

And that cracks the code. You have to arrange the hooks in the order on the paper so that V points southwest (five left-clicks), II points northwest (seven clicks), III southeast (three clicks), I west (six clicks) and IV northeast (one click). Once all five are in the right positions, the compartment should open below.

Within, three items: letters to Dupree from Marc Taine (that name fromt he rental list at the rehearsal room) and a box and notebook that have been tied together. Once you have both, your game is saved automatically a sign something nasty is approaching.

(Nicole’s journal may confuse you here. She mentions finding pieces of an old map and a key and, so far, youve found neither. This may be an artifact from an early stage of design. The map pieces don’t turn up after your visit to the Moulin Rouge, where you recover the key to the box, and the key not until just before the endgame.)

Just left-click on the notebook/box combo in inventory to separate them and then left-click on the notebook to read it.Youll learn that the box requires a key; that is originally contained damaged documents in French and an odd metal object of obscure use (presumably the key Nicole mentions in her journal); that Dupree’s family name is de Bougainville (his French ancestor changed it on arriving in New Orleans c. 1793 a date youll recall from the loose plank at the first crime scene); and that Dupree didn’t have an easy time of it when he visited France to explore his roots. Someone broke into his apartment.

And that’s happening again right now. Once you’re done with the notebook, Nicole hears someone coming. A clock appears in the upper left corner and you have a few seconds to hide in the wardrobe to the right of the desk. From within, youll watch a big man with a pistol and flashlight enter the apartment. Hes about to spot Nicole when (on automatic again) she bursts out of hiding, knocks him down and heads for the door. Close call. (Maybe too close. If Nicole doesn’t hide in time, the man will shoot her dead upon his arrival and youll have to restore a saved game.)

In the car, click on the GPS again and then on the green-flagged hotel.

Odds & ends: In addition to most of the items noted on the first visit, you can also examine the police tape on the apartment door, the desktop, the dress on the closet door, the fruit bowl in the near right corner, the three pictures (located between the mask and poster) on the chimney and the blue bicycle to the left of the radiator.

When you enter, you’ll automatically walk to reception and find Louis Carnot waiting on the sofa across from the front desk. A rather terse conversation proceeds and afterward Nicole says she doesn’t trust Carnot. Why isn’t he speaking to the French police instead of a visiting investigator? While he says he wants to help Dupree, Carnot seems rather too interested in the documents you’ve retrieved from Dupree’s place. And how did Carnot and Dupree come to meet in New Orleans?

In any case, you’ll collect Carnot’s business card, This contains a cell number but no address and begs a question: How will you find him again? (Carnot never answers his phone.)

Otherwise, this is just a housekeeping visit. Talk to Pierre about Safe and hell store the box in the hotel safe for you and offer that, if you’re interested in antiques Nicole’s cover story for the box is that it’s a family heirloom he has a friend with expertise in that field. (This is just a red herring and wont surface again.)

Back in the car, click on the GPS and then the green-flagged Moulin Rouge. (You’ll recall that Jacqueline Lorrain was a dancer at that club and that her keys had a Moulin Rouge tag.) You’ll see a cut-scene of the killer preparing another doll.

Odds & ends: Once you’ve stowed the box , you can talk to Pierre again about Family and learn Nicole has distant relatives in the south near Bordeaux.

Check the front entrance. it’s locked up tight and Lorrain’s keys don’t work here. However, do collect the fallen strip of canvas tape (just left of the center of the screen) and the fallen poster near the second placard board from the left. They’ll come in handy around back.

Around the corner to the right, just past the vertical CHANGE sign, you’ll find the back entrance. The door here is locked, too, but the metal hatchway to the right is only padlocked and you might break a padlock with the right tool.

Grab the pipe on the sand pile you passed on your way in and, since you seem to enjoy collecting temporarily meaningless garbage, the leaky bucket and the wheel on the wheelbarrow nearby as well. Use pipe on the padlock and it’s gone … but the hatch remains too heavy for Nicole to lift unassisted.

You just need to set up a pulley. See the hook on the wall just right on the hatch? Remove the flat tire from the rim (a left-click on the wheel in inventory makes the tire go away) and, in a close-up view, place the rim on the hook. Then use the canvas tape on the hatch handle and it’ll automatically loop over the rim. Now you just need something heavy for the other end. This is where the bucket comes in.

To the left of the door is a water conduit box a nozzle with a valve on top. An unaltered bucket is just going to leak like crazy. But if you first put the poster in the bucket, it’ll seal the gaps long enough that you’ll be able to fill the bucket to the top. Use the full bucket on your makeshift pulley and then left-click on the bucket to push it down. The hatch rises.

You’re in. In fact, you’re effectively locked in, as the posters weak seal gives way, the bucket drains and the hatch closes again. (You’ll see this in an animation, but you can also return to the bottom of the hatch and experience the result for yourself.)

Inside, you may quickly find yourself stalled. The only thing you seem to be able to grab is the fire extinguisher it’s down one screen and around the corner to the left and that’s useless right now.

But don’t forget Lorrain’s keys. Despite their ineffectiveness at the front and rear doors, they do have a use here. They unlock the dressing room the door on the left one screen down from where you entered the club. You wont be able to see anything until you hit the switch to the right of the door. Then you’ll find three spots where you can zoom in on the jumble of stuff within two on the counter to the left and one on the drawer at the rear and a fourth item behind the upper chair.

The spot nearest the door allows you to play back an intimidating message on the phones built-in answering machine:

Remember the deal. He cant be allowed to find anything. Get him to tell you all he knows and take from him the things he was talking about. Hurry up or Ill stop being nice. Be smart. I know you want to live.

The voice sounds very like Carnot. The recipient was Lorrain and the he apparently Dupree.

The hotspot farther up the counter yields a greenish medicine vial. A left-click on the jar in inventory yields a silver crucifix and a batch of Alka Sektzer-like tablets and a further left-click on the crucifix a hidden key.

A search of the drawer turns up a packet of unreadable letters from Marc Taine to Jacqueline Lorrain.

Finally, on the floor behind the right-hand chair, you’ll find an arm from a mannequin. Left-click on it in inventory to remove the putative diamond ring from its finger. This will serve as part of an improvised glass cutter in a future chapter.

The arm sets up Nicole’s exit. Use it to break the glass on the axe case just around the corner from the dressing room door . You’ll see a light go on at the top of the stairs. Listen to a conversation between the two thugs up there one of them the guy Nicole tackled at Dupree’s apartment. To judge from their chatter, one is coming for Nicole shortly. In fact, the thug never turns up downstairs, but the point shouldn’t be lost on you. It is time to go.

Return to the spot where you entered the club and Nicole will note the fire extinguishers potential power. Use it on the floor in front of the locked exit doors to place it on the ground and then use the axe on the valve at the near end of the extinguisher.

You’ve launched a rocket. It blasts through the doors and next thing you know Nicole’s out front near her car. Get in and discover you have company.

Odds & ends: Out front, you can examine the three intact posters and the Féerie sign above the door. Indoors, the clothes to the left of the axe and on the right side of the dressing room and the cosmetics on the dressing room counter.

You’ll find yourself back in your hotel room with the detective as in private detective. His name isn’t supplied in-game, but you can learn from Nicole’s journal that it’s Rene Fourier.

Run through his topics to learn of a link between Dupree’s family and Carnot’s. During the French Revolution, Dupree ancestor Jean Jacques Bougainville (sometimes referred to as de Bougainville) made arrangements with a Lukas Carnot (remember the Lukas on the bracelet in the Montmartre sewer?) for Bougainville’s family to escape to the United States. But something went wrong and most of members of Bougainville’s family met the guillotine. That’s a critical bit of information the first real step toward the killers motive.

Eventually talk will turn to the box from Dupree’s place. Go down and see Pierre to collect it. Take it back up to the room and use the crucifix key to open it.

Within, 21 pieces of paper and the diary of a Dupree ancestor. You cant read the diary (Nicole’s journal says the notes are illegible) but a left-click on the box in inventory removes the torn-up paper and a right-click on the pieces sets up the pieces for assembly.

A jigsaw puzzle. You’ll find this easier if you first lay out the two straight edges (using the nine pieces with browned and wrinkled edges) and then add the 12 from the interior. (And if you put the corner piece, with two wrinkled edges, in the bottom right corner, you’ll see the map as Nicole sees it.) Once complete, use the tape from the rehearsal room in the close-up view to seal the pieces in place. Otherwise, the document comes apart when you try to show it to Fourier and you’ll have to assemble it again.

it’s an old map, with four points marked with Xs (which prove unimportant), another marked with a filled-in triangle and a fifth location at maps edge marked with something more elaborate (both important near the end of the game). Talk to the detective about it and Nicole mentions the waterside castle in the foreground possibly a port en route to the New World? But it’s only a part of a larger map and its significance is unclear. Two pieces remain and you wont be able to put them all together until you’re about to enter the endgame.

The talk then turns to the mysterious Marc Taine. He seems to link everything together including the detective, who reveals here that he was hired by Taine to locate the heir of a Sophie Sourian. (This’ll pop up in the Azarra chapter.) The two debate contacting the police but settle on a visit to Taine’s apartment. (it’s amazing it took this long given that Taine’s name was last on the list in the rehearsal room.) You’ll automatically remove to Nicole’s car. Click on the GPS and again on Taine’s green-flagged apartment.

Odds & ends: You can elicit additional inconsequential dialogue from the detective if you talk to him with the unopened box and opened box in inventory before assembling the map.

The detective picks the lock and suddenly it’s as though you’ve jumped to the endgame: You’re in the killers lair.

Listen to the exchange between Nicole and the detective after entry. Nicole finally comments here on the significance of the dolls found at the murder scenes. She says they’re the key and calls them witnesses.

But witnesses in what sense … and to what? The deaths of the Bougainville’s 200 years before or the Puppeteers revenge? Presumably the former, as they’re all dressed in clothes that date from the French Revolution.

But we don’t have enough information to draw conclusions about their meaning. The ones found at the scene in the first four murders aren’t described in detail in Nicole’s notebook and we’ve had the opportunity to inspect only one. The doll at the feet of Elizabeth Soupault appeared to be a dancer and, looking down the road a bit, were only going to be treated to a detailed description of one doll.

That’s not all. Positioned before the two ceiling-height boards to the left of the door, the investigators know they’re looking at photos of prospective Puppeteer victims and the detective mentions that he delivered one up to Taine just the day before: an antiquarian in Azarra in the Spanish Pyrenees. (Actually, the detective has already mentioned this individual to Nicole; the antiquarian is Sophie Sourians descendant.) Nicole will set out to save him in the following chapter.

But the dialogue suggests they’ve missed certain key implications of the display and you’ll want to a close-up look at the boards. (The game doesn’t require it; this is just for your information.)

The boards themselves are laminated close-ups of handwritten manuscripts in Latin the left one in mirror image. A lot of the text is obscured and I haven’t been able to identify the documents (though the right-hand one may be a religious tract).

But that’s just a curiosity. Whats interesting here is the boards use by the Puppeteer as bulletin boards for workups on his victims. On each board are collected photos, news clippings, maps … and family trees. Apparently hes choosing all his victims from their history from links to people in their respective pasts.

The victims are laid out in order from left to right. The man on the far left is Guilbert Marmontel the Puppeteers first victim in France. (An account of his murder can be found in the fourth police report in the Documents section of Nicole’s notebook.) The victim from the rehearsal room, Elizabeth Soupault, appears on the right side of the left board. And the man on the right board is a future victim: Antoine Sourian the descendant of Sophie Sourian.

But whats most notable here is who’s between the boards (which presumably means the killing is imminent) Nicole’s new pal Rene Fourier and also who’s missing: Dupree’s girlfriend Jacqueline Lorrain.

Nicole seemed to speculate Lorrain might not be an actual Puppeteer victim in conversation with Pety back at the Montmartre crime scene and the absence of any reference to her in the killers lair should rachet up your doubts a few notches.

But if the Puppeteer didn’t kill Lorrain, who did? Carnot is the best bet, based on his threatening phone call on the answering machine in Lorrain’s Moulin Rouge dressing room. But if so, the killing was the evident pay-off for her failing to extract from Dupree information and the things he was talking about and that worldly, immediate motive doesn’t seem a good match up to the Puppeteers obscure one involving family trees and the French Revolution.

Then again, each of the two people who’ve been killed on our watch do have some link to Taine/Puppeteer: Soupault (Taine’s name on the rental list) and Lorrain (a packet of letters from Taine in her dressing-room drawer). So if shes not a victim, how was she tied up with Taine? it’s a question the game never answers.

Exploring Taine’s place is a two-step affair. You’ll need to complete your investigations in the main room before you move on to a hidden one.

And that’ll keep you busy for a bit. There’s evidence all over the place: notably on those two boards and on the table in the lower left-hand corner. Photograph all three of these locations and, in the close-up view of table, use the fingerprint foil on the mug in the lower left-hand corner. (Curiously, this turns out to be something of a red herring. This unanalyzed print sits in inventory until the end of the game.)

When you move to the close-up view of the table, Nicole says something odd: Since I came from France, I felt someone was watching me. Sounds like jetlag talking (or just a translation issue). Nicole, you’re in France and you came from the US. And, just for the record, apart from Dupree lurking outside his apartment building, there has been no previous indication that anyone is watching her .

But the photos on the table do show Nicole outside her hotel, the neighboring café and the Moulin Rouge. That may give you pause. Is Nicole a prospective victim? No. The Puppeteers just keeping his enemies closer.

Also pick up the monkey wrench from the floor in the kitchenette at the right and Taine’s driver license from the top drawer of the small black cabinet to the left of the two boards. (Oddly, the wrench is referred to here as a heavy metal key. That’s doubtless a translation issue. The game was originally released in German. In German, key is Schlüssel and wrench is Schraubenschlüssel.)

Note the different color of a door-sized patch on the wall behind this cabinet. After you’ve taken the photos, click anywhere on the cabinet (other than the top drawer) to push it aside and attack the wall with the wrench.

Nicole says the key needs bending. Oy. Left-click on the wrench in inventory to close its jaws and beat on the wall again. Four whacks’ll do to expose a hidden door. Try to open it to learn that, like Dupree’s apartment window, it’s blocked. I guess they mean locked the translators were apparently on a really long coffee break here because the necessary article to pop the lock is evidently the laminated edge of Taine’s drivers license. Use it on the door.

In the d\secret room, the plot thickens. Open the freezer to the right to find the corpse of Marc Taine. (The journal makes Nicole sound a little less sure, but the drivers license picture seems a good match to face on the body.) So Taine is just a cover identity for the Puppeteer.

Take a picture of the body and head back to the main room. it’s on fire and the hooded man familiar from the earlier cut scenes has just done in Fourier without all the usual staging.

(And that’s confusing. If the Puppeteer can surrender his obsession long enough to commit a crime of opportunity, who’s to say Lorrains murder wasn’t also his work?)

Time to make your exit. Take the blanket in the right corner, soak it in the bucket of water beside the freezer and use the wet blanket on the door. You’ll find yourself outside the apartment. Make for the car, fire up the GPS and head for Spain.

Odds & ends: You can also examine the unfinished doll, photographs and hook on the table, the broken mirror above the fireplace (cousin to the ones in the rehearsal room), Taine’s body (four times over, in fact three times with right clicks and one with a left) and the blood stain on the left of the two frosted glass doors in the hidden room.

In Azarra, the car breaks down. You’ll leave it in the care of mechanic Raul and go off to find the antiquarian. Raul can tell you the location of the antiquarians shop, but you can find it without him. Like most locations in the game, the towns ultra simple in layout.

Exit in the lower right corner. You’ll find yourself in the upper left corner of the town square. The antiquarians place is at the top. Talk to Antoine Sourian and run through all the topics. He doubts the killer would target him and you’ll leave off with a task: Make copies of the dozen photos in your camera to persuade Sourian of the danger while the antiquarian digs up a certain list. He says the local shop can handle the developing job. it’s the lower of the two businesses on the left side of the plaza …

… and naturally it’s closed. Return to Sourian and hell point you back to the garage. (If you checked the shop before visiting the book store, you don’t have to make this trip. Just talk to Sourian again and ask about Shop.)

No ones at the garage but Raul (who’s now at the desk in back). Yes, the shop is run by Raul as well. You’ll leave your camera with him. Head back to the shop and you’ll find it open and the photos ready the fastest work Raul will ever do and the proprietor unwilling to combine this bill with the expected one for the car repairs. You need 68 Euros.

Check out the stores slot machine. Two Euros a pop. If only you had a little money to invest.

Perhaps the fountain in the plaza? As you can learn from Raul a little later (via the Shop topic), the castle on the hill above town attracts young tourists and they’ve apparently used the fountain in the square as a wishing well. There are no fewer than 17 coins at the bottom. (See Odds & ends below for a full accounting.)

Best case, you’ll need two or three of them: a minimum of a 5-Euro, 2-Euro or two 1-Euro coins to feed the one-armed bandit and one other coin of any type to help complete a repair job later in the chapter. But heck, just keep taking them until Nicole says, For a town like this, this is too much anyway. That way, you’ll come away with 23 Euros to squander. Then get back to the machine.

There are a couple of ways to go here. You can make judicious use the three hold buttons to stop the speeding tumblers so they display matching types of fruit. Or you can simply wait until the tumblers stop on their own. A few games in, you’ll strike it rich with three in a row.

(Note that you cant actually lose. Even if you try to run out of money, using the hold buttons to force, non-winning combinations, you’ll find the middle button eventually breaks Raul warned the machine might not work properly and this works out to a win for the player.)

Either way, the payout in 5- and 1-Euro pieces easily covers your debt. (I guess the tourists play a lot.) Grab the money from the tray below and talk to Raul to pay your debt. You’ll get back the photos and camera.

Hustle back to the book shop and have a word with Sourian. You’ll turn over the photos in dialogue. He compares them to his list and says the names match. (Continuity alert: Hes not actually holding the list when he says this! Sourian now disappears behind the folding screen to the right and returns with the list in his right hand.)

On his return, Sourian makes some observations about the crimes that haven’t been touched upon to date. One is Murder motives. Revenge after 200 years? he says. That’s insane! Nicole then wonders if the killer might be after money. Sourian says none of the participants saw a franc and that the money was hidden in the Paris catacombs.

This sets up the endgame and raises a natural question: Participants? This is the first indication that more than one person was involved in the plot to get the Boungainvilles out of France. And that does make sense. Presumably Lukas Carnot had to enlist the aid of various other people at various points along the planned escape route.

You’ve persuaded Sourian of the danger hes persuaded himself, really but his priorities are out of squew and he wont agree to leave Azarra with Nicole until he delivers on a promise to have his grandsons damaged motorcycle repaired. You’ll now take over that effort as soon as Sourian completes another slow circuit to put the list back where it came from. (Watch him. Potentially, it’ll make your life a lot simpler.)

The motorcycle is in the rear garden reached through a door hidden by the folding screen to the right. Try this door to find it’s locked. And while you’re back here, take the scissors from the back of the table opposite the door. You’ll eventually need a few items from this shop the stool beside this table among them but Sourians sensitive about folks touching his stuff and this is the only one you can swipe right now presumably because it’s both small and out of Sourian’s line of sight.

Also approach the safe to the right of the garden door. The repository for Sourian’s list? Nicole here opines that the scratches on the floor indicate the safe has been moved. You’ll soon find the means to move it again.

Return to Sourian and ask for the key to the garden door. Uh-oh. Hes a bit absent-minded and seems to have folded it into a book he was reading and then returned the book to the shelf. At least he remembers the title: Marcel Prousts À La Recherche du Temps Perdu . (This translates as In Search of Lost Time but the original translation was called Remembrance of Things Past.)

Hell offer an odd allusion here: If it weren’t for my young bull, Id never manage. There’s a bull figurine the cabinet to the left of the garden door and, in this context, you may well think it figures somehow in finding the Proust book. Nope. But it does become relevant a little later in the chapter.

Zoom in on the stepladder to the right of Sourian for a closeup of four book shelves densely packed with classics. Yeah, you’re probably going to have to tick through at least a few of these, and I cant guide you here. The book in question will always be the Proust but, from game to game, it’ll always be in a different spot. Just take it slow, surf the mouse across the spines to bring up the titles and left-click on the correct one to snag the key.

Use the key to unlock the garden door and zoom in on the motorbike by the left wall. Nicole notes that the rear wheel is missing. Take the wrench from the lumber pile to the right again, this is called a key and right-click on the missing tile in the roof above the door to discover a piece of rubber has been inserted here. (You cant get it just yet. You don’t need it just yet.)

Talk to Sourian about the wheel to learn Raul has it and that it should be ready. He makes another slow exit and Nicole automatically leaves as though your business is complete It isn’t. Re-enter the shop and grab the marker off the desk. (it’s just to the left of the lamp.)

Raul’s shop has closed again and hes back at the garage. Head up there and ask after the motorcycle wheel. Of course it’s not ready. This fellow does not multi-task well. A harried Raul protests hes too busy but suggests your help might speed things up. Hell need the wheel in question, a tire iron and a patch-ready inner tube.

The wheels easy; it’s just to the left of the desk. The tire iron, too. it’s just left of the covered repair pit behind Raul. You’ll have to zoom in on the nearby oil tub to pick it up.

The inner tube is trickier.

There’s only one here. it’s against the wall near the air compressor in the garages right near corner youll have to zoom in on the compressor to see it and it’s in bad shape. Take it anyway, as you’re equipped to start on repairs. Turn on the compressor the green button two-thirds of the way up its near side and use the tube on the compressor pistol on the ground. The tube inflates and immediately starts to deflate again. A clock appears in the upper left-hand corner and starts to count down. You’ll have to move pretty fast.

Have you ever fixed a leaky tire? Then you know you have to immerse the tube in water while theres still enough air in it to produce bubbles on the surface thus allowing you to pinpoint the hole. The times pretty tight here, but you have just enough to dunk the tube in the plaza fountain and then use the marker from Sourian’s desk on the tube in inventory to mark the location of the puncture.

Get back to Raul and learn he doesn’t have any rubber patches. You’ll have to come up with one on your own. That may seem like searching for the proverbial needle unless you noticed that bit of rubber in the roof over the exterior side of Sourian’s garden door.

You cant reach it but Sourian (now looking for a book) will now lend you the umbrella (in the stand to the right of the desk) for the asking provided Nicole has noticed the piece of rubber.

Simply use the umbrella on the piece to knock it down losing the umbrella in the process. (I’m not sure why that was necessary possibly an artifact of an abandoned umbrella-loosening puzzle?) Now use the scissors from the work table opposite the garden door to reduce the rubber to a nice circular patch. Turn this over to Raul in dialogue and, at long last, you’ve got the wheel. Zoom in on the compressor again, turn it on again, fill the tire with air, pick it up and haul it back to the book shop.

Uh-oh. A cut scene. The door is slightly open, Sourian’s dead strung up on wires from his spiral staircase and another dark-eyed doll rests at the base of the stairs. Boy, does this guy work fast.

Suddenly, you have a lot to do.

– The investigation of Sourian’s death is the simplest: Just pack the doll in an evidence bag. This triggers the usual cut scene of the hooded man staging the scene.

And this particular doll is of more than ordinary interest. If you look at it in inventory, Nicole wonders whether it represents a notary the only instance in which she notes a specific role for the doll. Lukas Carnot doubtless have required the services of a notary to attest to the validity of the Boungainville emigration documents. Perhaps Sourian’s ancestor performed that role. But any such link between the dolls and roles of conspirators are never fleshed out (or even declared).

– Look at Sourian’s desk now and Nicole says the list is gone.

A strange comment, given that you never actually see the list on the desk and that Sourian clearly retrieved it and then returned it to some off-screen hiding place. If you weren’t paying attention earlier, it may appear the Puppeteer has claimed it. But this would be out of character. The killer adds things to murder scenes. He doesn’t take them away.

In any case, where is the list now?

Not far, and it’s now reachable. Sourian’s death means you can now poke around in the area just inside the garden door where previously you had to be fairly circumspect. You can take the stool from its position beside the nearby table this’ll come into play out in the garden and turn the bull to the left of the garden door on its side to read the safes five-number combination. (it’s different every game.)

Zoom in on the dial, turn it clockwise to the first number, counter-clockwise to the second, clockwise again to the third and so on. (Just be precise, as you wont get any audible cues along the way.) Then turn the handle to the left of the dial and ta-da! The only thing you can take from within are two safe wheels. (Nicole calls them rings.)

Remember Nicole’s earlier comment that the scrape marks on the floor indicate the safe has been moved? Well, with the wheels, you can try to move it again. Place them on the two bolts protruding from the safes lower right edge and click on the safes right side to try and move it.

Not an inch. Nicole says she needs leverage. You need to push the safe in a particular way and it’s not currently set up to permit it.

Look at the handles on top. Nicole says they must have been used to transport the safe. But just using the handles? Nicole doesn’t elaborate, but there must have been a connection of some sort between them, right?. A bar of some kind. Perhaps the rapier on the wall behind Sourain’s desk would serve as a replacement.

Use it on the handles to put the sword in place and then click on the swords handle. Now you can move the safe a little. Remove the wooden block that was serving as a support for the wheel-less safe thisll soon come in handy out in the garden and you’ll be able to move it a lot, pivoting the safe so the front is facing the wall beside the garden door. (Come to think of it, how did Sourian move the safe without the rapier?)

In the exposed wall, you’ll see the outlines of a secret compartment. Pull the piece of twine hanging down here and the compartment opens to reveal the ignition key for the motorcycle, a book (which you cant take or examine) and a list of eight conspirators the conspiracy being to spirit the Bougainvilles out of France.

Look at it. You’ve found the basis for the Puppeteers list of targets and can match up most of these names with the murder victims. (You don’t have to do this. Again, it’s just for your own information.)

Victims

1. Luke Crespienne
2. Marie Parker
3. Jeanne Murphy
4. Guilbert Marmontel
5. Elizabeth Soupault
6. Jacqueline Lorrain
7. Rene Fourier
8. Antoine Sourian

Conspirators

1. Dominique Crespienne
2. Thierry Clavier
3. Gabrielle Huet
4. Baredorne Mermontel [sic]
5. Jean Soupault
6. Theodore Fourier
7. Sophie Sourian
8. -asem Carnot

This raises a few issues.

1. The names of victims #2 and #3 don’t match those of the respective conspirators.

Remember that those murders (covered along with #1 and #4 in the Documents section of Nicoles notebook) were committed in the United States and that family names sometimes changed when people emigrated to another country de Bougainville to Dupree, for instance or through marriage. (Granted, victim #1 Crespienne was also killed in the US, but in New Orleans, which has a strong French influence in its history. If a French name was going to remain the same anywhere in America, it’d be in New Orleans.)

2. After #5, the lists are a bit out of sync. There is no conspirator to complement Jacqueline Lorrain and the victims that precede and follow do have conspirator counterparts. More ammo for the case the Lorrain was a copycat killing by Louis Carnot.

3. The eighth conspirator is a Carnot with the first portion of the first name torn off. (You’d think it would be Lukas as per Fourier’s account of the plot and the gold bracelet from the sewer grate but it ends in -asem.) Will a Carnot be the eighth victim?

4. And this list of conspirators will prove incomplete. Looking down the road a bit, you’ll get wind of another potential Puppeteer victim at the tail end of your visit to Marseilles a descendant of an Edouard Montoute. But if that’s the case, why isn’t Montoutes name on Sourian’s list?

One last task: You still need to fix the motorbike. As should be apparent from your last chat with Raul, that’s now your way out of here. And the stool beside the table near the safe is just what the doctor ordered for this purpose. Left-click on it in inventory to remove the top, use the remainder on the back of the bike and then use the wrench you liberated from the lumber pile earlier on the stool. The stool then becomes a makeshift jack and raises the back of the bike.

But apparently not far enough to permit you to restore the repaired wheel. Place the wooden block you retrieved from beneath the safe on the newspaper under the bikes midsection. That’ll do. Put the rear wheel in place, take the wheel cap from the bowl beside the bike, zoom in on the rear wheel and place this bolt over the threads.

Alas, the wrench you collected earlier doesn’t fit on this bolt … until you place any coin from the plaza fountain atop the bolt and then use the wrench. Now pull back to the motorcycle view and click on the bike once to get it back down on the ground and knock down the wooden block. Then use the key from the hidden compartment on the motorcycle to jet off to Marseilles on Frances south coast.

it’s natural for Nicole to want to interview Carnot, tied up as he is with both Dupree and Lorrain. But it’s unclear how Nicole knows to go to Marseilles, being that Carnot’s business card contains no address. How about a phone call to Ruth?

Odds & ends: Tons of them here.

– At the garage, Nicole can also examine the lift on the left side, the repair pit on the right, the rack to the right of the pit and the shelves at the back center. At the sundries shop, you can feast your eyes on the figurines of matadors and bulls in the right near corner, the shelves left of the slot machine, the guitar above the shelves and the ceramic decorations left of the guitar. At the book shop, you can peruse the illuminated manuscripts and photos on Sourian’s desk, a dragon figurine, books and a revolver in the safe and, after the murder, Sourians lifeless body.

On the non-interactive side, remember Sylvie Leroux from the café beside your hotel? The convenience store is also selling her game here called just Chronicles of Mystery. The rack is in the near left corner.

And just in case you wanted to know Raul’s last name, the designers haven’t made up their minds. it’s either Hierro (according to the Dialogues section of Nicole’s notebook) or Herida or Henda (according to the hard-to-read poster to the left of the exterior side of the shop door.)

– What does Hunt for the Puppeteer have against café interiors? You can get a close-up view of the door to the café beside Raul’s shop, but you cant enter. Why bother making this door a destination? Was it an actual location at some stage of the design?

– You can ask Raul about Attractions at the garage on arrival and get a somewhat snotty answer and about Shop at the shop or the garage (after you’ve paid for the photos) to learn that Azarra at times contains more than two people.

– The coins in the plaza fountain consist of five 1-Euro, four 2-Euro and two 5-Euro piece, a 50-cent piece from United States, a 1-pound coin from Great Britain, two 500-yen coins from Japan and 5-zlotys and 1-zlotys coins (one each) from Poland. (This last one is referred to an inventory as old coin, but can be identified visually from the close-up picture.) These appear in random order. The slot machine will happily swallow every coin except the 5-Zlotys piece but wont give credits for any of the non-Euro coins.

– Heres a full list of the books Ive found in Sourians shop. Note that these wont all appear in a given game, as there are more books (97) than there are slots for them in the shelves (85).

Vicente Aleixandres Shadow of Paradise and Passion of the Earth
Juan Carlos Arces Los colores de la guerra (The Colors of War) and Para seguir quemando preguntas (To Follow Burning Questions or perhaps, more colloquially, In Pursuit of Burning Questions )
François-Marie Arouets (AKA Voltaire) Candide
Fernando Arrabals Baal Babylone and “Porté disparu (Reported Missing)
Gonzalo Torrente Ballesters Los Gozos y las Sombras (The Joys and the Shadows) and Ifigenia
Honore de Balzacs Le Père Goriot (The Father Goriot)
Pio Barojas La Raza (The Race or The People) and Tierra vasca (which Ive usually seen translated as Basque Country)
Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot 
Marie-Henri Beyles (AKA Stendhal) Le Rouge at le Noir (The Red and the Black) 
William Blakes Poems 
Giovanni Boccaccios Decameron 
Marion Zimmer Bradleys The Mists of Avalon
Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights 
Paulo Coelhos The Alchemist, Elevan Minutes, The Fifth Mountain, The Pilgrimage and The Zahir 
Joseph Conrads Lord Jim 
Miguel Delibess Cinco horas con Mario (Five Hours with Mario) and Las ratas (The Rats)
Charles Dickenss David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers
Fyodor Dostoyevskys The Brothers Karamazov and The Possessed
Nikolai Gogols Dead Souls 
Baltasar Graciáns Criticon and El héroe 
Jaroslav Haeks The Good Soldier Svejk
Homers Iliad and Odyssey
Franz Kafkas Das Urteil (The Tool)
Julio Llamazaress El ceilo de Madrid (The Sky of Madrid), Luna de lobos (Wolf Moon) and El rio del Olvido (The River of Forgetfulness or of Oblivion) 
Jack Londons The Call of the Wild, The Game and White Fang 
Thomas Manns The Magic Mountain 
Javier Mariass Corazon tan blanco (A Heart So White) and Todas las almas (All Souls)
Juan Marsés Un Día Volveré (One Day Ill Return) and Rabos des Lagartija (Lizard Tails)
Karl Mayss Winnetou 
Herman Melvilles Moby Dick 
Eduardo Mendozas Una Comedia Ligera (A Light Comedy) and El uno del diluvio (The Year of the Deluge)
John Miltons Paradise Lost 
Gabriel Mirós La Palma Rota (The Broken Palm) and Nomada
Julia Navarros La Biblia de Barro (The Bible of Clay), La Hermandad de la Sabana Santa (aka The Brotherhood of the Shroud of Turin) and La Sangre de los Inocentes (The Blood of Innocents)
Publius Ovidius Nasos (AKA Ovid) Transformations
Arturo Pérez-Revertes El capitaine AltaristeEl husar and El Oro del Rey (Kings Gold)
Jean-Baptiste Poquelins (AKA Molière) LAvare ou LEcole du mensonge (The Miser or The School of Lies) and Don Juan
Marcel Prousts À La Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past)
François Rabelaiss La Vie de la Gargantua et de Pantagruel (The Lives of Gargantua and Pantagruel)
Manual Rivass O lapis do carpinteiro (The Carpenters Pencil) 
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedras Don Quixote
J.D. Salingers The Catcher in the Rye
Jorge Semprúns Le Grand Voyage and Quel deau dimanche! (What A Beautiful Sunday!)
William Shakespeares Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, The Phoenix and the Turtle (a poem that would barely fill two pages much less a book!), Romeo and Juliet and Taming of the Shrew 
Javier Sierras La Cena Secreta (The Secret Supper) and La Dama Azul (The Blue Lady) 
Sophocless Antigone 
Torquato Tassos La Gerussalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered)
J.R.R. Tolkeins The Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King)
Leo Tolstoys Anna Karenina and War and Peace 
Francisco Umbrals Mortal y Rosa (A Mortal Spring) and Trilogia de Madrid 
Jules Vernes Les Enfants du captaine Grant (Captain Grants Children), Maitre du monde (Master of the World), Robur-de-conquerant (Robur-the-Conqueror, AKA The Clipper of the Clouds) and Le Tour du Monde en quatre-vingt Jours (Around the World in 80 Days) (Why are these all in French? Verne was French!)
William Whartons A Midnight Clear, Birdy and Dad
Emil Zolas Germinal

– Finally, if you didnt notice the list in Sourians hand before his death, you may want to institute a more general search for it afterward. And the designers give you some ammo to support this approach. If you approach the bookshelves without having first looked at Sourians desk, Nicole says, Maybe, like the key, the list is in one those books?

Nope. But you can nevertheless look fruitlessly through all 85!

Youll arrive on the coast just outside the gate to Carnots walled estate. By now you probably know that a straightforward approach wont work, but you have to try it anyway in order to adopt an alternative approach.

In the close-up view of the gate, ring the bell just above Nicoles head. The guard who responds appears gnorant of Carnots having asked Nicole for help the business card makes no impression on him but not entirely uncooperative. He offers to pass on a message to Carnot.

But Nicole says that wont do. She must talk to Carnot face to face. I’m unsure why the guard doesnt simply say that Carnot isnt here (which youll eventually figure out). I guess Nicole just really wants to climb that wall.

Youll need some supplies to make the attempt. Up the road to the left of the gate is a phone booth. Inside, youll find a large rock atop the directory, a small one atop the phone and a film cannister to the right of the directory. Take them all and pull back to the full view.

Drop down the stairs across the road to the left of the gate to reach a dock and two boats one wrecked and the other intact. From the wrecked one, collect the rope, the two buckets and the green plank that forms a little bridge between the dock and boat.

Back in the dock view, youll find the intact boat intially inaccessible. Look at that boats dock end. In the close-up, youll see at the edge of the dock a metal attachment used for mooring. Use the rope on it and then the green plank on the rope. Bridge built; boat accessible. Back out of the scene again and zoom in on the intact boat and Nicole crosses over and retrieves the anchor. (This looks a lot like a grappling hook.) Take the plank and rope and return up the stairs to the gate.

Note that youve collected more stuff than you think. Left-click on the big bucket in inventory to find a screwdriver and on the film container to extract a suction cup with a hook the sort of thing a businessman might use to hang a suit jacket on a car window. Left-click on the latter in inventory and the hook is gone.

Use the rope on the anchor. But where to climb? A section of wall near the phone booth most clearly visible in the close-up of the booth exterior has deteriorated and it’s a little lower than the sections around it. But if Nicole connects the rope to the anchor and then tries to use the improvised grapple on the wall, shell stop short worried shell attract the attention of the guard.

In other words, the guard must first be distracted. The only way weve seen is the bell. Could you somehow arrange for the bell to ring at the gate while Nicole is preparing to mount the wall to the left?

Yes. Once youve talked to the guard, the gate grows a new hotspot on the ground at the base of the wall under the bell. The only item that can be placed here successfully is the big bucket (inverted automatically). Then the small bucket atop it. Then the green plank.

it’s not immediately apparent from the display, but Nicole is supposed to be standing atop on this pile. With that in mind, look for a new hotspot higher on the gate. Sure enough, you can now zoom in on the cornice above the bell handle. Click on the central portion of this little ledge in the close-up view and Nicole observes theres enough room to hold an object. But which object?

Well, reason it out: Whatevers up here is destined to be somehow knocked loose and set off the bell. Say, a rock from the phone booth. Place the big one up here.

But whats going to nudge the rock off the cornice and onto the bell?

Remember the aspirin you found back in the dressing room at Moulin Rouge? If you look at in inventory, youll see it’s not a capsule but more like a fizzy tablet along the lines of Alka Seltzer. They also have another, more spectacular use, says Nicole.

Say, if placed in water within a small, closed container? Hey, you have a small, close-able container! All you need is water and the oceans right at the mansions doorstep. Down on the dock, youll find a seawater hotspot close by the dock between the two boats. Fill up the film cannister and get back to the gate. Move to the close-up view of the cornice, pop in the aspirin (which starts a clock), use the film container on the large rock, back out of the scene and head left to the climbing wall. (They give you a lot of time here just in case you inserted the aspirin while down on the dock.) When the bell rings, use your makeshift grapple on the lower section of wall and head up and to the right immediately after you reach the top. Thisll plant you right in front of the house and apparently out of view of the gate guard.

(If you wait too long to make the move right, the guard will return to his shady outpost right below you and Nicole will refuse to advance. Youll have to either restore a saved game or climb down again, return to the close-up view of the gate, retrieve the fallen rock and film cannister (both just to the left of the assembled pails and plank), re-fill the cannister with seawater and try again.)

Look at the front door. Through the glass, Nicole sees a second guard dozing within. (He looks like the fellow she tackled in Duprees apartment.) Youll have to find another route and you wont go far to find it. The bars are missing from the cellar window just right of the front door and you can cobble together a glass-cutter that permits you to open the window. Just combine the diamond ring from the mannequin arm with the screwdriver from the bucket and the screwdriver with the suction cup. Use this on the right pane and then tap it with the small stone to knock the circle youve cut onto the floor within. Left click on the window to open it and again to climb inside.

Jack Duprees tied up down here. Isnt he supposed to be dead? You can remove his gag youll keep the tape, but may or may not use it and can then question him. Youll learn the shooting on the Pont des Invalides was staged (on the initiative and with the assistance of Marc Taine) to throw the police off Duprees trail; that Carnot blackmailed Duprees girlfriend Jacqueline Lorrain; that Dupree returned to his Montmartre apartment the night of the second murder to find Carnot standing over Lorrains body; that the deaths of the Bougainville family were the result either of outright betrayal or someone involved in the plot breaking under pressure; that Carnot and Dupree are both after a hidden treasure that was intended to win that familys freedom; that the map fragment shows the Marseille of 200 years ago this house (the castle on the sea) once belonged to Duprees ancestors and the missing portion presumably the location of the treasure; and Carnot, while implicated in the killings, doesnt seem the type … and isnt here.

Off you go ostensibly in search of something sharp to cut Duprees bonds.

Dont look too hard. You cant free Dupree and youll eventually leave the house without him. Indeed, you cant find much of any description upstairs right now the four doors are either locked or too creaky to risk opening but you do need to try each on tiptoe to extract more info from Dupree. While you’re up here, take the newspaper on the table in the right corner on the ground floor and left-click on it in inventory to roll it up.

Back in the cellar, talk to Dupree again and hell disclose one of his guards lost his keys under the stove at the far end of the room.

Zoom in on the stove. No fewer than eight hotspots adorn the slot between the stove and the floor but only the leftmost suggests theres something to be found beneath. Here you can extract a 1-Euro coin without any help and, with the rolled-up newspaper, the guards missing key.

This unlocks the left-hand door on the top floor. Enter and the game is saved automatically. Nicole suggests locking the door. it’s a good idea. Do so and Nicole leaves the key in the lock. (If you dont lock the door, a guard enters when you activate a puzzle within. He shoots Nicole and it’s all over.)

Make your way left or down to reach the library. Lots of damning circumstantial evidence here. The picture of the dancer over the fireplace appears to have supplied the model for the posing of the first murder victim. The picture on the mantle shows Louis with his brother the brother wearing a gold bracelet like the one you retrieved from the sewer outside Duprees Montmartre apartment. (Though this is confusing, as Agnes Grouchet reported that Dupree had dropped something. Did Grouchet simply mis-identify him? She saw him only from behind.) The little figurine has no deep metaphysical significance, but it’ll be a big part of your escape from this joint, so take that as well. And behind the picture, youll find an ornate wooden square atop a bolt.

Part of a mechanism, Nicole thinks. In fact, the square is the final piece of a stand-alone puzzle hidden behind the bookshelves on the librarys right side. Zoom in on the center, clear away the four books, then the shelves and youll see the back is a door.

Behind the door, a sliding tile puzzle the pieces scrambled at random, making a blow-by-blow solution impossible. A tricky one, too even with the completed picture on hand as the interwtwined vines and leaves look confusingly similar. I found I was able to solve it more quickly by assembling the puzzle from the top down thus steadily reducing the number of doppelganger pieces.

The piece from the mantel is the missing 10th tile (the lower left corner of the central flower) and inserting it in the hole at that position opens up a secret room. In a box on the table within, youll find a second piece of the map this one intact. Drag the first piece onto this screen, use the tape to piece them together, save your game and step back into the library.

Uh-oh. A clock starts. Somehow, the guards have gotten onto you. (It turns out later that guard dogs mentioned in a sign on the front gate have sniffed you out.) you’re going to be caught. You just have to make sure you’re not caught with the map in your possession.

Escape is not an option right now. (The key you left in the door is now stuck.) Nor is concealment. You need to remove the map to a location where you can pick it up on your way to the wall in other words, outdoors. The undraped window in the librarys upper left corner is your only option.

But you cant simply toss the map down into the front yard. Unweighted, it could flutter around and land in an unpredictable place. You need to wrap it around something heavy the figurine from the mantel and secure it with either the tape from the rehearsal room or the one you pulled off Duprees mouth.

Once the maps out the window (or time runs out), a guard or guards enter the room. If you still have the map, Nicoles dead. If youve disposed of it properly, youll find her in the foyer and trying to talk her way out of this jam. The guards debate shooting her and then settle on a bet: Can Nicole make it safely to the wall or will the two dobies get her first?

Still on automatic, Nicole runs, snatches up the map-wrapped statue and is hauled to the top of the wall by FBI colleague Nick. Hell suggest an anonymous call to let the police know Duprees being held captive if made, this is unavailing and provide a contacts phone number to help Nicole get to Havana.

Why Havana? Again, Nicole doesnt make the connection in-game and youll have to read her journal to learn this is Nicks handiwork and that a descendant of Edouard Montoute may live here. (Confusing, for, as mentioned earlier, Montoute did not appear on Sourians list.)

Nicoles cell phone has vanished either into a dobermans tummy or a goons hip pocket so get over to the phone booth where youll make the call on automatic (using the 1-Euro piece from beneath the stove in the process.) After the return call, move to the motorycle and use the key on it. Next thing you know, you’re leaving on a jet plane.

Odds & ends: Out on the street, you can also examine the high section of the wall; in the cellar, the boiler behind Duprees back, the Distillator to the left, the barrels to the left of the Distillator and in the near left corner, the bottles in the near left corner, the wine racks in the upper right corner and the stove at the far end of the room; and, on the ground floor, the sleeping guard.

You can also try to ring the bell at the gate using the small rock, but it’s too light and flies off course.

You can then recover the rock and container from beside the buckets below, but, naturally, you will have to collect a second helping of seawater to try again.

A rickshaw ferries Nicole to an archive. Naturally, the archive isnt open. A note in English on the front door reports that the clerk is drinking coffee at La Catedral (The Cathedral).

it’s not far. Back out of the close-up view, go left twice and approach the café on the left side of the screen. The archive clerk is the fellow sitting at the table outside. Have a chat with him and youll strike a deal: Hell return to work to help you if you bring him some cigars. (If he wont talk, you haven’t read the note on the archive door.)

Way too easy. Back out of the café scene and cross the street to the building on the corner. (This is tenement in the exterior view but a hotel in the closeup. Well call it a hotel.) Cross the lobby to the elevator, zoom in on the elevator floor and take the can you find here. A left-click in inventory opens it. Cigars! Just as though someone had put them there for you to collect. A second click removes them and also some tobacco leaves. (These never find a use. I wonder if they were originally intended for use as an herb later at Las Tunas.)

This is too easy. Sure enough, when you deliver the goods, the clerk wants to smoke one here and now … and you dont have the light he requests.

Back the archives and then right. Youll see an aquamarine car with a white roof on the left side of the street. Zoom in on the raised hood to take a look at the engine. Four hotspots here: the manifold (which establishes the car has been abandoned), the battery (Nicole suggests using it later), the radiator cap (which you can take) and, on the left side of the radiator, a lighter. Nicole says it’s worn but still works. Grab that, too.

And yet when you get it back to the clerk, hell tell you the lighters out of fuel.

Thats even easier to fix than the cigars were to find. On the table just right of the clerk is a lighter loader. Just use the lighter on it and then talk to the clerk again. (You can also refill the lighter before talking to the clerk.) He visits flavor country and Nicole automatically returns to the now-unlocked archive door.

Enter and discover you’re being followed. A blue-shirted man who previously was sitting outside the café now waits in the archive doorway.

Talk to the clerk. Nicole can asks if she can borrow the clerks cobbled-together radio he refuses, but youll find an opportunity to steal some bits a little down the road and for information on the Montoute estate.

And the clerk hesitates. Hes seen the spy, too. (Hes clearly been assigned to follow the clerk.) Youll have to lose that fellow in order to do business here and youll have to talk to him first to get him to clear out of the door. Hell issue a not-so-veiled threat about a cemetery for tourists who didnt watch their step and then back off. (Outside, youll discover hes nowhere in sight, but his absence doesnt register with the clerk.)

In fact, youll find the spy at just one other location: If you enter the lobby of the ruined hotel across from La Catedral and approach the elevator, youll find him watching Nicole from behind a pillar near the entrance as you head back.

Thats a clue: This is the place to lose him. But how?

Electricity is the key. it’s off at the hotel. The fuse box (left from the entrance) doesnt have any fuses. Youll want to borrow a fuse and install it in one particular slot.

The archive has power the radios running off batteries, but not the fan and youll find a fuse box to the right of the door. Once Nicole has talked to the spy and hes disappeared, you can take a fuse.

Notice that the clerk vanishes along with the power. This gives you a chance to borrow some gear from the counter: a rubber band, the batteries attached to the radio and the clothespin on the antenna. Dont worry that none of this making particular sense right now. Theyre now take-able, so take them.

Back to the hotels fuse box. A little experimentation reveals that you cant just screw the fuse in anywhere and produce a result. You want the socket for the elevator and thats the second one from the right in the bottom row. (There is no way to determine this apart from trial and error.) You can confirm youve got the right one by throwing the switch to the right of the sockets. The elevator door should close. Turn it again and Nicole suggests the solution: Trap the spy in the elevator.

How to lure him inside? you’re going to construct a little gadget Nicole once saw in a movie and, now that youve conceived a plan, you can take the final item required: the bricks on the floor to the left of the fuse box.

Zoom in on the elevator floor, use the bricks on the floor to put them down, then use the cigar can on the bricks and the batteries on the can. Use the rubber band on the lighter to keep the flame burning and place the lighter beneath the can. Nicole goes on automatic. A few seconds later, the heated batteries spark and smoke, the spy comes running and Nicole throws the switch beside the fuse box to trap him in the elevator.

Get back to the archives. The clerks talking. Turns out Nicoles not the first person to ask after Montoute. Youll also learn the Montoute estate is some distance away near the village of Las Tunas and this nice fellow lends you his car keys for the trip. it’s the pale green sedan parked just left of the café.

With the keys comes a caveat: Hes not sure the car will run.

It wont. Get in, use the keys on the ignition and turn the key twice. Nothing. Nicoles inner mechanic now opines the accumulator (also known as a rechargeable battery) is dead. Open the hood and look at the engine to find that the radiator also is empty and has no cap. You have a whole new set of tasks.

Solutions should occur to you quickly: Youve already seen a car with a new battery and a radiator cap the aquamarine one beside the archive from which you swiped a lighter earlier. If you didnt take it earlier, youll find the radiator cap comes off easily enough. (It will go on the clerks car with less ease.) Alas, the battery is super heavy. Youll need a vehicle to transport it.

How about that rickshaw out in front of the archive? Commandeer it. Nicole automatically pedals it over to the car, places the battery on the back and makes her way back to the clerks car.

Now for the water and a water container. No, not the café. Too logical and too close. But in front of the hotel entrance, youll find a blue plastic bag beside the trash can. Shame about the hole, but thats what clothespins are for! (Take the rubber glove thats hanging out of the trash can as well.) And in the next screen over, youll find a faucet on the greenish tenement to the right of the hotel. Use the clothespined bag on the faucet, turn on the tap and it’ll fill up. (You can do this earlier in the game as soon as you have the plastic bag and clothespin.)

Return to the clerks car, use the bag on the opening atop the radiator and use the radiator cap on the hole.

Nope. The cap is too big. But cover the hole with the rubber glove first and then use the cap and it’s a good fit.

Finally, the battery. Try to pull out the dead one and Nicole says shell need a tool. The trunks not an option, but what about the glove compartment? Just get in and look right from the drivers seat. This contains a wrench and a bolt (again called a cap). Simply use the wrench on the old battery to remove it and just pick up the new one to install it. Then hop in and fire er up.

Odds & ends: You can also examine the car parked beside the archive and the graffiti on the archives exterior wall; the café and the graffiti on its exterior wall; the elevator, elevator floor (post-cigar can removal), the button to the right of the elevator door and, later on, the spy trapped in the elevator, all at the hotel; the table on which sits the lighter loader; the tenement to the right of the hotel; the desk in the foreground and the notice board to the right of the clerk in the archive interior; the fan and forms on the archive counter; and the two file cabinets behind the counter.

You can talk to the spy outside the café before he starts following Nicole. Youll get different responses depending on whether youve talked to the archive clerk. If you already have, you can ask Citizen of Havana about Cigars and hell offer to show you around presumably the better to keep an eye on Nicole. If not, hes less alert and it’s pretty clear from his reference to field work that hes an intelligence operative of some kind.

Nicole drives kind of recklessly en route but manages to arrive at the Montoute estate in one piece.

Enter the gate and then the ruins of the house. Not much you can do here right now, but all you have to do to progress is satisfy yourself that the final third of the map isnt here. The fragile door to the far right leads to a chamber with a drawing of a ship on the far wall. (This recalls the drawing on the second part of your map.) Below, clear away the remaining stone to discover that the once-secret compartment has already been plundered. (it’s natural to assume that Carnots the culprit, but youll learn later it was removed by a Montoute descendant back at the time of the Cuban revolution in 1959.)

Back out to your car. The scene has changed. Off to the right, youll now see a man working on three-wheeled vehicle. Manual has lost his cap (bolt). You cant find it for him, but you can offer the one from the glove compartment. Grateful, he directs you to a Madame Budoe in the village for information on the estates current owners.

Head right to reach the village note the stick leaning against the left wall (and not yet take-able) and then straight up the street beyond. Youll find a number of people on the steps leading up to the house here. The only one you can address is Ines, whos sitting at the top.

Apparently you’re cutting in line. Madame Budoe is a shaman a healer and Ines her appointments secretary. She puts you on the list for a visit two days hence.

Perhaps you could jump the queue? it’s hot out here and the electric fan beside Ines is broken. Open the engine compartment to learn that the motor itself is fine but the brushes at the top center are worn down. Take them and talk to Ines again to authorize the repairs. And while you’re here, take the pillow near her feet.

Heading back toward the estate, youll run into Manuel again now outside his house in the village. Hes disassembling his vehicles engine and no longer needs the brushes. Theyre yours.

Back at the Shamans house, use the brushes on the motor and youll find theyre too wide.

Re-visit the Montoute estate and explore the central countryard. Zoom in on the location just right of the left column, again on the grinder and finally click on the driving belt slide on the grinders left side to learn it’s missing a belt. This permits you to ask Manuel for his wedge belt.

You can bet hell want something in return and, as it happens, the courtyard holds that item as well. Back out to the full courtyard view and zoom in on the location just left of the right column. At the top center, youll see an spiky green fruit called a soursop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soursop). You cant reach it, but you need to try in order for Manuel to lend you his stick to knock it down.

Get back to Manuel and another bargain is struck. Get back to the soursop screen, place the pillow on the ground below, poke the fruit with the stick and it’s yours for the taking. (Be sure to reclaim the stick as well it’s now off to the right of the fallen fruit as it’s return is required to collect the wedge belt.)

Jet back to Manuel to turn over the fruit and replace the stick (both in dialogue) and take the wedge belt (hanging from the bars to the left of the stick). Back at the estate, zoom in on the grinder, use the belt on the driving belt slide at its left end, then the engine brushes on the grindstone to put them in place and then the grindstone itself to set it in motion. Youll pick the brushes up automatically (as ground engine brushes) and theyll replace your worn-out ones in inventory. Use them on Iness fan, turn on the power and talk to Ines to for a return favor. Shell send you inside to see Madame Budoe.

Talk to her. After a bit of hocus-pocus, youll learn you can collect the remaining piece of the map by offering a sacrifice to Lazarus of Salvia, Toronjil and Thymus. Ines can explain. Theyre all herbs grown in the area and known more collquially as lemon balm, sage and thyme.

If youve been thorough in your pointing and clicking, youve already seen thyme and lemon balm back at the estate the former to the right of the pool, the latter at the middle of the room with the secret compartment. The sage (previously unidentifiable) is just to the right of the estate gate.

Back to Madame Budoe. (You wont need Iness say-so for return visits.) Talk to her again and shell instruct you to crumble and burn the thyme. You can do so right here. Use the thyme on the tallest of the mortars on the table at the lower left, then pop outside to ask Ines for matches and use them on the mortar. (The other two herbs never come into play. I guess even dead poeople can change their minds.)

Talk to Budoe again to learn that she is the last survivor of the Montoute family. Shes just about turn over the map when Madames mouth opens in terror. Nicole turns around and is knocked to the ground. She comes around briefly to find Carnot looming above her … or is it Carnot? His image alternates with that of a similar and yet different-looking hooded man from the murder scenes.

Carnots brother?

When Nicole is on her feet again, all three map pieces are gone (along with the remaining herbs) and Madame Budoe has become the Puppeteers newest victim.

Use an evidence bag on the doll at her feet and leave the room to discover everyone has vanished. Ines. The people waiting on the stairs. Manuel and his vehicle (not to mention the tractor that was parked near his home). Kind of creepy. All you can do is return to the car. you’re headed back to France, empty-handed but not uninformed.

Some of Budoes statements in her final exchange with Nicole may seem indecipherable, but their meanings are all within striking distance.

The white man? His ancestor also took the oath. The first appears to be a reference to the Puppeteer and the second to the agreement between Lukas Carnot to spirit the Boungainvilles out of France. Thus, it implies that the Puppeteer has an ancestor on Sourians list. And that points the finger squarely at one of the Carnot boys if for no other reason than that everyone else but Dupree is dead and Carnot is the only remaining name on the list without a victim as counterpart.

It comes full circle. Clear enough. Just as the Bougainvilles died, so relatives of those who agreed to help them in the unsuccessful plot to escape France have now died.

We will depart but dont stand between us. A seeming look into the immediate future. Madame Budoe does depart she dies and Nicole is standing between Budoe and her attacker. (Getting out of the way is not an option.)

Only Bougainville will stay. Stay on the living side? Is this a prophecy that Bougainville ancestor Dupree will survive?

Odds & ends: Outside the estate, you can also examine the gate and the vegetation to the right. (This doesnt become identifiable as sage until you’re instructed by Madame Budoe to collect it.) Inside the gate, you can have a look at the pool and the house. In the inner courtyard, the vegetation straight ahead. In the village, the tractor. Outside the shamans house, the vegetation at the far right. Inside, the herbs strung along the ceiling, the shelves at the near right and far left , the table at the near left and the altar in the far corner.

After Nicole determines the engine brushes are too wide, you can check back in with Manuel to learn he might have smaller brushes available tomorrow a red herring and, oh, dont get any bright ideas about taking his stick.

Really just a pitstop. On the trail of Carnot, Nicole arries outide the Marseilles mansion at night to find the gate and front door unlocked and the guards, dogs and Jack Dupree nowhere in evidence.

You cant search the place properly. The locks upstairs are still intact and the once-creaky door on the ground floor is now locked as well.

But youll find a note on the cellar floor just to the right of where you originally found Dupree. Apparently hes been taken to the Montmartre cemetery. He reports that Carnot has the third piece of the map actually, he has the whole thing now and begs Nicole to save him.

Odds & ends: Visit the dock. it’s now low tide and the intact boat is beached.

Another pitstop. Enter the gate, head straight, then right at the T intersection and then straight again. Youll find Carnot, his guards and a struggling Dupree. Click on the scene and Nicole edges close enough to overhear the exchange.

Carnot asserts that the map is useless and that some additional tool must be needed to read it correctly. Dupree finally concedes it has to be used in tandem with a dagger hidden behind a poster in his apartment and a key in the box that was hidden in the secret compartment between the windows. (You already have this box and found no such key even though Nicoles journal says you did). Carnot then dispatches one goon to the apartment and, after backtracking two steps under the players control, Nicole follows the goon automatically.

Enter the apartment building and make for the top of the stairs. From the stairs, Nicole sees the guard struggling with the door and speculates the police would take an interest in his activities.

And how. Drop down to the next landing and knock on Agnes Grouchets door and ask her to report the attempted break-in. She evidently does, for Inspector Pety shows up in good time and places the fellow under arrest.

Thankfully, the inspector forgets to re-secure the apartment. Seems the guard got in before he was arrested and Nicole, hiding outside, can now re-enter and capitalize on this oversight. The poster on the brick wall can be flipped to reveal a broken medieval dagger. Take it, leave the building and use the keys on the motorbike. Nicole then returns to the cemetery with the box having invisibly retrieved it from her hotel en route.

Back to Carnot & Co. Once Nicole appears on the scene, a conversation starts automatically and you strike a bargain: Duprees freedom in exchange for Nicoles help in opening a hidden passage. For this purpose, Carnot turns over the final third of the map. (Youll get the rest a little later.)

Look at it. Youll see a skull in the upper left corner, and youll want to look for something similar in the cemetery. Mercifully, the choices are few. You can get close-up views of the two tombs behind Carnot and his remaining goon and the two to the right. The closer and more elaborate of the latter two is the one you want. A skull identical to the one on the map fragment decorates the top of the door.

Which cant be opened conventionally. But youll notice that you can zoom in on the base of each of the columns that flank the door. Youll see holes at the base of each and, since this is an adventure game, you can pretty much guarantee you’re expected to fill them.

The newly-acquired dagger? Again, thatd be too simple. Youll have to hunt up the right item in the cemetery and, to claim it, youll have to have first made a thorough effort at the tomb door itself left-clicking on the skull in the close-up view, right-clicking on the drilled holes in a close-up view and trying the door.

Make your way back to the T junction and then head left. Along the right side of this path, youll find a monument topped by a bust. The fence around the monument is incomplete and one of the bars is leaning against the front. Grab it. Thats going into the twp column holes.

Looking forward a bit, you’re also going to need some lubricant. (An old metal rod in an old hole in an old cemetery cant be expected to turn very far.) At the T, head back toward the cemetery entrance. Off to the right, youll see a garbage cans and, in the close-up view, a bottle of oil beside them. Snag that as well and return to the tomb.

In close-up views, insert the metal bar in each of the drilled holes, then use the oil on the base of the respective pillars and then activate the metal bar. In its turn, each column will turn outward. Pull back to the tomb-door view and use the door handle again.

Now youll have to master a special lock on the near end of the sarcophagus within. The three protrusions here match up nicely with three holes in the handle of dagger you retrieved from Duprees place. Place it on the lock and it’ll fit nicely with the broken blade now a hotspot. But try to use the blade bare-handed and Nicole refuses. It may be old as the hills, but it’s still sharp.

So off you go again to find something to the make the hotspot less hot. To the right of the fenced-in monument where you earlier found the metal bar is a heavy rag. (it’s hard to see at first, hidden as it is behijnd Nicoles starting position on this screen.) Grab it and return to the tomb. In the close-up view of the lock, cover the dagger blade with the rag and then activate the rag. Below the dagger, a panel descends. The entrance to the catacombs.

Retrieve the dagger and report your success to Carnot. He now commisions Nicole to determine the proper path through this labyrinth and for this purpose turns over the remainder of the map. Combine them in your inventory and then use the tape to paste them together.

What did Dupree say was required to read the map properly? The dagger and a key. A key was supposed to be in the box, but all it contained was the fragments of the first third of the map and the unreadable diary of a Dupree ancestor.

Perhaps you haven’t seen everything yet. Use the dagger on the box to rip open the lining within the lid and reveal an unconventional key. The sun-like symbol at the center of the handle looks a lot like the red symbol near the center of the map and the ornate tip like the twisting catacomb passages on the map. Clearly, they go together.

Use the key on the map in inventory or simply drag it onto the open map to place it there. Now drag the key handle onto the sun symbol Nicole says it’s in the right place now and then, with right-clicks on the key, rotate it counter-clockwise. This may take more than one rotation but sooner or later, when the key points north (up), Nicole will note that the configuration of the tip matches a portion of a route through the catacombs. This is outlined in red. Continue the right-clicks until that tip points west (left) and more of the route is revealed.

But thats the end of it. Nicole says the key by itself isnt enough to sketch out the route.

This is where the dagger comes in. Use it on the map in inventory or drag it onto the open map and it’ll replace the key. Look at the map again and Nicole observes that three triangles on the map seem to match up with the three triangular holes in the handle. Right-click on the dagger until the blade points north-northwest and then drag the dagger onto the triangles.

Again, Nicole says it’s in the right place. But what does this mean?

The dagger just provides a different frame of reference, and you’ll have to use the key within this new frame to complete the path. Use the key on the map and then drag it so that the sun symbol on the key handle lines up with a different sun-like symbol on the dagger handle. Then right-click on the key to rotate it until it sketches out the remaining two legs of the route. (It should do so first when pointing west and then southwest.)

Now Carnot takes over. He refuses to release Jack, denies being the Puppeteer (he makes no admission about Lorrain) and marches Dupree down into the catacombs while the remaining goon keeps watch over Nicole.

Big mistake. Nicole quickly knocks out and disarms the guard and can finally slip through the open panel in the tomb to a very brief endgame.

Right away, you run into trouble. The second set of stairs is damaged and slippery. You’ll have to bypass it using the metal hook hanging over the middle of the walkway at the top. A good place to attach the rope, says Nicole.

Only, you haven’t had a rope in your inventory since your first visit to Marseilles.

Perhaps a hose would smell as sweet? Back on the surface, youll find a blue hose to the left of the path just one screen down from the tomb. Use it on the hook and climb down to find yourself on the floor of a large room with impassable passages up and to the right, a wooden plank in the upper-right corner (take it) and a rope just below and to the left of the central down staircase (ditto).

Drop down those stairs to discover the ledge Carnot and Dupree used to cross the room has collapsed into a dark pool. Happily, you’re equipped to cross the gap thanks to a protruding metal bar on the wall (again unsubtly identified by the cursor as A good place to secure the rope). Connect one end of the rope to the bar and the other to the plank, then left-click on the plank to push the improvised catwalk into position.

And oddly enough, thats the last challenge here. Simply walk into the exit at the far end of the empty room beyond to set off the final scene. Nicole finds Carnot and Dupree seemingly stalled at a metal door. She rushes Carnot not the brightest thing she’s ever done but Carnot gets the drop on her and threatens to kill Dupree unless Nicole drops her gun. She does and pleads for Carnot to let them go. A fed-up Carnot knocks her down and is about to permanently rid himself of these meddlesome kids when a hooded figure steps from the shadows and stops him: Carnots brother Al. The Puppeteer.

You cannot kill him, he says. I’m trying to clear us of this odium.

I’ve heard Lysols good for that.

The brothers have been working along parallel courses with different dark purposes Carnot to recover the treasure hidden by Bougainville 200 years before and Al in a kooky effort to somehow reset the karmic scales and ward off the hand of fate by killing descendants of the conspirators.

The alliance of the nine! he says. Our ancestors killed the whole family. Women! Children! I had to fix it! … I killed eight criminals.

Carnot, aghast, protests that Als own victims were innocent , says there is no fate and calls his brother a fool.

And, you know, that was probably the wrong thing to say to the crazy guy. Al shoots Louis. The Puppeteer’s final victim is indeed a Carnot. Nicole goes for the gun she dropped and shoots Al. Rocks loosened by the reports begin to tumble down and we find Nicole and Dupree returning the way they came (but for some reason emerging from a neighboring tomb) to blinding sunlight and a predictably crabby reception from Inspector Pety. He does not explain how he happens to be here. In fact, nothing is explained Dupree seems more interested in having coffee with Nicole and the treasure is utterly forgotten.

Odds & ends: Nicole can examine the three statues on the screen down and to the right of the catacombs entrance, the wheelbarrow, toolbox, axe and bucket around the monument where you found the metal bar and rag, the fallen gangster (after she overpowers her guard), the hose and bricked-up passages (after descending to the bottom of the first catacombs room), the pool in the next room and the three niches on the walls in the third.