Our next example, also from the message board, follows.  I have taken the
liberty of fixing some of the typographical errors.

There is a round castle.  Inside the castle there is a king, a queen, a
princess a prince, a butler, a chauffeur, and a gardener.  One day the king
is killed but no one knows who did it.  The private eye is sent to
investigate.  He interviews everyone and looks at every clue but still
can't find anything.  The queen says that she was in the garden with the
gardener and the princess.  Both the gardener and the princess said the
same.  The prince said that he was out on vacation, and everyone said that
he was.  The chauffeur said that she was out taking the dogs for a walk,
which she was.  And the butler said that he was in the corner reading a
book.  Who killed the king and how do you know?

The response posted was that the butler did it, so we must first clear his
name.  True, he is not the best butler in the world.  What butler would
admit to reading a book, rather than serving the family?  But that is not
reason for murder.

The castle must be separated into multiple rooms.  It would be improper for
the king, queen, prince, and princess to share a room with each other, let
alone with the commoners.  Additionally, even if the castle was a single
tower with one room on each floor, it still would need arrow slits for
defense.  The butler was obviously nestled in the corner formed by the
widening of the arrow slit as it came through the wall, enjoying the
sunlight for his reading.  The king was killed in the day, after all.

The butler always "did it."  He would have to be a very stupid butler to
kill the king and not have an alabai, and I would not expect a king to
employ stupid help.  Besides, if we are going to suspect the help, perhaps
the cook poisoned the king.  Perhaps the cook made the food, and somebody
else poisoned it.  It could have been quite a while between the application
of the poison and the king's ingestion, almost anybody could have done it.

Let us now examine the prince.  Potentially the next in line for the
kingdom, everybody (including the prince) claims he was "on vacation" at
the time it happened, a perfect alabai.  But "on vacation" usually does not
mean "in the castle" unless he is in the castle, on vacation from somewhere
else.  This also explains why his chauffeur is not out with him, and why
the private investigator was so easily able to get a statement from the
prince.  Is there more to this "vacation" than the royal family is letting
on?  Perhaps the prince has a problem which is being covered up by the
royal family.  Maybe he becomes a raving madman who needs to be shut up at
some times, and shortly thereafter he has no memory of his actions.  Even
if he is psychologically stable, he has no alabai and gains the most from
the king's death.

Then there is the king.  Have you heard anything about the king except him
being dead?  Neither have I, and the prince is conveniently on vacation.
Obviously the king and the prince are the same person.  All it takes is two
kingdoms.  At the same time, the queen could be the princess.  The queen
being in the garden with the gardener makes a little more sense now.  For
all we know the queen, the princess, and the gardener are all the same
person.  Not only do the have no alabai, but since the prince and king are
the same person they stand to gain the most from his death.

Looking more closely at the chauffeur, who "was taking the dogs for a
walk."  She was not taking the dogs _out_ for a walk, merely taking them
for a walk.  Perhaps some portion of the walk was on the inside of the
spacious, round castle.  The chauffeur bumped into the king, was refused a
raise, and sicced the dogs on him.  Hopefully, the private investigator
would notice bite marks on the king, so it is more likely the chauffeur,
enraged by the king's refusal to give him a living wage, slew the king
while the king was distracted by the dogs.

Of course, there is the incident in the garden.  Assuming that they are
separate people, what were the queen, princess, and gardener _doing_?
Perhaps the king, hearing the queen's shriek as she found the princess and
gardener having sex in the garden, looked out the arrow slit in his room (a
different arrow slit than the butler was using), saw the them together, and
committed suicide in shame.  Perhaps the king simply glances out the window
to see all three of them in the act.  Or perhaps they made their shameless
garden display in an attempt to get the king to commit suicide, that might
be murder.

Who says the king was even in the castle when he died?  The queen,
princess, and gardener are in the garden.  The butler was "reading" in a
corner of the garden.  The prince, on vacation at the castle from his usual
residence, was walking through the garden with the chauffeur and the dogs.
The queen is unhappy with her husband, and will be regent until the prince
comes of age.  Then the prince will be king.  They have the authority
necessary to call off the king's bodyguards.  Everyone else there is easily
bought off.  When the king arrives, they all kill him together.

Where was the private investigator during all of this?  He has no alabai
either.  And why didn't he simply ask the king after he returned from
Darteem's realm?  Or arrange for a beckon spirit ritual to ask the king
within Darteem's realm?

The queen says she "in the garden with the gardener and the princess."  But
the princess and gardener do not actually support her statement, since they
each say they were "in the garden with the gardener and the princess."  The
queen therefore has no alabai and killed the king.

Who says that is a crime?  She killed him as part of turning him into a
vampire.  No crime happened here.

And even if the king is dead, word is not going to get out.  The royal
family will hush it up.  If people believe the king could be killed, they
might try.