One morning, someone found Old Richi dead in his study. He had been strangled and was lying in a couch, and his music system was playing track number 1.
Detective Wesley talked to the three visitors from the evening before. He asked questions to learn more about Richi’s routines and what had happened that night.
Richi dealt with a serious sleep disorder. He could only fall asleep while listening to track 115 on his music system. If the track stopped or switched, he woke up right away. That evening, Richi had put on track 115 before meeting with his visitors.
Jane, who was his niece and heir, showed up at 9:00 PM. “Uncle Richi appeared nervous but aware,” she mentioned. “Soft music played in the background. It was that particular song he always used to help him sleep. We talked about family stuff for around half an hour. When I left at 9:30 PM, he was still wide awake and mentioned he had meetings coming up.”
James, who worked as Richi’s business partner, arrived at 10:00 PM. He was set to inherit all of Richi’s shares in the company once Richi passed away. “At first, Richi seemed uneasy about discussing our ongoing business deals” James said. “But as we talked, he started to feel sleepy and dozed off in his chair sometime around 10:20 PM. I didn’t want to bother him so I moved him to his couch and decided to leave a bit earlier around 10:20 PM, to let him rest .”
Dr. Paul, who was both Richi’s doctor and an old friend, showed up at 11 PM. People knew him as Richi’s rival in love life. He explained, “When I got there, Richi was already asleep in his couch. I didn’t want to disturb him so I just did a quick medical check. Since I know he relies on music to sleep, I left the music player as it was. Everything seemed fine. I handed Jane a prescription and left around 11:20 PM.”
Detective Wesley discovered something critical. At 10:35 PM, the power had gone out for one minute. When it came back on, all electronic devices reset to default settings.
The detective inspected the scene with care. Richi’s bottle of pills remained undisturbed on the nightstand. An unsigned business paper rested on the desk. The music system showed “Track 1,” which is default after a power reset. All three visitors seemed to have motives to killed Richi.
“The killer made a big mistake,” Wesley declared.
Can you figure out who is the killer and what’s that mistake?
View the answer
James murdered Richi and then pretended he was asleep. James claimed Richi fell asleep at 10:20 PM, but the power outage at 10:35 PM had reset the music system to track 1. This track would have woken Richi up because of his sleep disorder and he would have switched back to the track 115 (if he was alive). Since they found Richi dead with track 1 still playing, he must have been killed before the outage—while James was there. Dr. Paul lied to hide his medical negligence. He never examined Richi and just thought he was asleep (Paul didn’t know which music Richi listened to sleep). He left a routine prescription with Jane to avoid trouble of checking on a patient who had already died, and later lied to hide his negligence to save his license.
