Gossipers
This demon has been poisoning the minds of people. Mr Wu Si Zhe*, convinced that his neighbours are out to murder him, asks you to investigate. You connect evidence and testimony, daring to make inferential leaps -- it doesn't matter that some of the attempts might not have succeeded...
*Whose name is a pun that has no bearing on the puzzle.
You speak to the neighbours, while your not-very-helpful assistant examines Mr Wu’s flat.
Interviews
Ananth Reeves
That ah beng? I heard him knocking on Mr Wu's door late at night, after I left. He always tries to get people to drink with him. Sometimes he invites his friends -- rowdy as a rugby scrum! They should find better hobbies, get fresh air. Actually, Mr Wu himself never opens his windows...
Bridget Wong
I smelled that cigarette smell so I know that hipster was there just before me. Always vaping in the corridor, no consideration for public health. Leaving empty vials around too. They should introduce stricter laws for smoking, since Singapore even has the death penalty for drugs!
Cayleigh Teo
Mysterious things? I tell you, you better investigate that gardener! When I was going home, I saw him bringing a whole jungle in his basket -- dunno for dinner or what. Always giving vegetables away. These gardeners arh... Dunno that this block is a dengue zone meh?
Dillon Eng
Eh, you want gossip? Normally arh, you got to buy me a beer -- but nevermind lah, I tell you for free. That ah lian always uses Mr Wu's shower because her bathroom is 'under renovation', hahaha. I heard the shower before dinner -- no lah, I live downstairs, I wasn’t there so early. You know, even though Mr Wu got a cleaner, he ownself clean the bathroom a lot. Sometimes I walk past, can smell that chemical -- you know, the ah-moh-neah.
Effi Veerasamy
Oh, well, I saw that hipster arriving, so I left quickly. You always see him fiddling with his vape and those bottles, and today he had even more paraphernalia. While I was leaving, I saw the doctor approaching from the lift lobby -- with a fruit basket or something, I think.
Faith Reed
Regarding visitors, I saw the chef leaving around lunchtime, when I showed up. After I was done with my work, I saw the lawyer loitering outside. Mr Wu was grilling something, I guess he learnt how to do so from the chef. But he shouldn't eat such rich food! The doctor told me that he takes some medicine for his heart rhythm problem. Dron... drone-something? Could be dangerous to eat the wrong things when taking medicine, too.
Geoff Iverson Lim
Dunno man, I thought I woke up early but like, that woman was there even earlier? She had a jar of flies or something, she's into nature. She should talk to Mr Wu about going green -- he has a bathtub, you know? In a HDB flat! I heard he takes long baths. Imagine the water bill.
Haron Effandi
Everyone knows that the cleaning lady shows up daily -- overkill, if you ask me. This time she was leaving just as I dropped by. Mr Wu seems rather paranoid, doesn't he? He probably believes all kinds of urban myths about specific combinations of food and drink that you shouldn’t consume together.
Indrani Nehru
Right, so, the cleaning lady showed up when I was leaving, with all her bottles of stuff. You know, people should eat cleanly as well. Healthily, I mean. You wouldn't guess the sort of toxins that even innocent-looking vegetables can contain.
Evidence
- A salad of lots of vaguely spade-shaped leaves, with bits of thick red stalks. Tons of these leaves. If you ate fish in that sort of concentration, you'd get mercury poisoning. Imagine if these leaves contained some terrible chemical.
- All kinds of empty bottles: vodka, XO, spirits. There was a strange smell in the air, not sure what it was. And spiky green... shells? Maybe from a fruit.
- Bag of white powder. Sent it to the lab, they said it contained just over 15 grams of pure whatsitsname -- weirdly exact weight, eh? Proper-sounding name, too. Not a street name, more like a name you'd use in legislation.
- Bathroom was messy, things falling all over the place. Had to rescue some air-blower thingy from dangling off a shelf -- if it’d fallen in and gotten wet, that could have spoilt a perfectly good appliance.
- Big half-eaten dome-shaped green thing. Has segments with little droplet-like bits under a translucent skin? Reminds me of grapefruit. Not that I tasted it, of course. But yes, some weird fruit.
- Found blood! But looks like it came from squashed mozzies. With stripy legs. Wonder what kind that is. What’s the technical term those scientists use? Genus?
- Half-full bottle of that, you know, that thing that makes your clothes white. Not hydrogen peroxide, the other one! That cleaning liquid.
- Small pot with a wire grid on the top and lumps of charcoal inside, quite burnt. Bet that produces lots of smoke and other stuff, like toxic gas.
- Some dodgy-looking syringe, without any safety cap. Almost pricked myself! Wouldn’t like to get the contents into my bloodstream, that’s for sure: it was filled with a weird oily liquid, obviously another dangerous chemical.