Chapter 30: Accomplices

There are times when your Villain just can’t get it all done alone. In those cases, he’ll need an accomplice, someone who can help him execute his plan. Typically, accomplices will help with one of two things:

• The actual commission of the crime, or

• Providing the Villain with an alibi

If you’d like to create an accomplice for your Villain, you’ll need to add her Action Log to your Clue Bank. Let’s return to the Case of the Dastardly Duke and imagine an accomplice for him. Let’s say that the duke wanted to leave a suicide letter in the maid’s room, supporting his narrative that she ended her own life, and hopefully turning her death into a open-and-shut case. But he didn’t want to write it in his own hand, and using a typewriter felt wrong, too—the housemaid wouldn’t ordinarily have access to such a machine.

The duke decides to have another housemaid write the note for him. He even feeds her an innocent excuse for this; he says he’s begun a study of graphology, and is requesting handwriting samples from several household servants. He gives her a number of sentences to copy out—most of them innocent, but one of them containing the words “I can’t go on.” After the maid copies out the sentences, he tears the paper so that only the relevant words remain.

What’s our maid’s Action Log? Well, she:

• Met privately with the duke

• Wrote the sentences he requested

What clues might result from her actions? Perhaps: