Bakerhaven Maps and Floor Plans Actualize Arsenic and Old Puzzles

Summary: Bakerhaven maps and floor plans actualize Arsenic and Old Puzzles, although they are assumed from actual acquaintance with building arrangements.

crossword puzzle answers by Derdriu; sample American-style crossword grid created from OpenOffice.org Calc by MeekMark: MeekMark, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bakerhaven maps and floor plans actualize Arsenic and Old Puzzles, albeit assumed from actual acquaintance with building arrangements, not from physical appearances in the 14th Puzzle Lady mystery by author Parnell Hall.

Fiction and film become reality when three bodies betray arsenic-, cyanide-, strychnine-baited breaths brandished in the 1941 play and the 1944 film, Arsenic and Old Lace. The two Guilford spinster sisters, plump Charlotte and thin Edith, compensate for common breakfasts by charming bed-and-breakfast customers with their afternoon tea centered around elderberry wine. Doing in one out-of-towner in the Guilford parlor and two out-of-towners in the Bakerhaven High School damaged bus demands dexterity dealing with driving destinations and distances.

One square block one-half mile (0.81 kilometer) north of town limits encloses Guilford bed-and-breakfast at 51 Elmwood Circle on one side, Winnington estate on the other.

The Guilford house fits in a dirt-floor cellar below a first-floor kitchen and pantry, living room and parlor; second-floor family and guest rooms; and an attic.

The Guilford grounds guard a driveway for the unspecified car by which Charlotte and Edith get to and from the nearby Stop and Shop convenience store. They have a weed killer-free garden from which Charlotte and Edith harvest organic-grown tomatoes and a potting toolshed where Edith hides poisons harmful to hungry woodchucks. Privacy bushes on one side up against incompetent but inflexible fencing on the other inform inhabitants and intruders of backyard intersections of Guilford and Winnington properties.

Actual acquaintance with Bakerhaven maps and floor plans join jumbled backyard picnic-table benches for jeopardy-free jumping through, then out of first-floor Guilford and Winnington unlocked windows.

A serial killer knows that the Guilford sisters keep the kitchen door onto the back porch locked but the living-room window over the window seat unlocked.

The Winnington backyard lodges its bird feeder, canine-free doghouse, grill and picnic table with two lightweight benches near the first-floor unlocked window to the maid’s room. Any marauder or any murderer moves menacingly from there to the back hallway to the dining room, the swing-door pantry, then the cellar or the kitchen. The cement-floor cellar, unlike nothing next-door other than a fresh- but half-dug grave and a shovel, niches air conditioner, bicycle, broken-mirror dresser, newspapers, suitcases and trunks.

Perhaps Guilford and Winnington garages respectively offer the bed-and-breakfast car clutter-free occupancy and oblige floor plans to clutter overflow obligating driveway occupancy for the estate car.

Actual acquaintance with building arrangements not printed on Bakerhaven maps prompts a purposeful perpetrator perceiving response times by emergency medical, medical examiner, news and police personnel.

It quickens response times by Cora Felton from back-house stairs; first-floor bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, living room or office; front-house breezeway and garage; or front-yard lawn furniture. It retrieves her in record time from second-floor bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, living room, nursery and office realized by the new addition for Carter, Felton, Grant residents. It, clutter-strewn surfaces or both perhaps suggest why Cora sees the front driveway, not the breezeway- and driveway-accessible garage, as stopping space for her red Toyota.

Daily travels and daily tantrums perhaps turn Cora respectively away from Bakerhaven maps and, when tackling things thrown by nine-month-old Jennifer Carter Grant, toward floor plans.

A window seat becomes a crime scene twice in Arsenic and Old Puzzles. It is under an unlocked window in the living room of the Guilford bed-and-breakfast. Next to the working fireplace is a portable bar, perhaps another crime scene since its surface lodges a serving tray with wine glasses and a wine carafe. Perhaps author Parnell Hall intentionally and ironically links crime scene with crime scene medical examiner since Dr. Barney Nathan organizes his office space into reassuring consultation room with an ice bucket-topped, perhaps wine-stocked oak sideboard, upholstered chairs and wood bookshelves and file cabinet; a sparse bathroom; and a stark examining room; American Homes and Gardens, November 1911, page 412: Internet Archive Book Images, no known copyright restrictions, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

crossword puzzle answers by Derdriu; sample American-style crossword grid created from OpenOffice.org Calc by MeekMark: MeekMark, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_crossword.png

A window seat becomes a crime scene twice in Arsenic and Old Puzzles. It is under an unlocked window in the living room of the Guilford bed-and-breakfast. Next to the working fireplace is a portable bar, perhaps another crime scene since its surface lodges a serving tray with wine glasses and a wine carafe. Perhaps author Parnell Hall intentionally and ironically links crime scene with crime scene medical examiner since Dr. Barney Nathan organizes his office space into reassuring consultation room with an ice bucket-topped, perhaps wine-stocked oak sideboard, upholstered chairs and wood bookshelves and file cabinet; a sparse bathroom; and a stark examining room; American Homes and Gardens, November 1911, page 412: Internet Archive Book Images, Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/17969892148/; No known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_homes_and_gardens_(1911)_(17969892148).jpg; Not in copyright, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/americanhomesgar81911newy/page/412/mode/1up; Not in copyright, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41862299

For further information:

Arsenic and Old Lace. Original play by Joseph Kesselring, 1941. Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein. Produced by Frank L. Capra and Jack Warner. Burbank CA: Warner Brothers, 1944.

Hall, Parnell. 2019. Lights! Camera! Puzzles! New York NY; London UK: Pegasus Crime.

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Hall, Parnell. 2012. $10,000 in Small, Unmarked Puzzles. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2011. The Kenken Killings. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2010. The Puzzle Lady vs. The Sudoku Lady. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

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Hall, Parnell. 2006. You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled. New York NY: Bantam Books, division of Random House, Inc.

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-birthday-bash-and-puzzle-to-die-on.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/03/bakerhaven-maps-aim-victim-at-birthday.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/03/four-cryptograms-assure-two-deaths-in.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/03/honeyed-lemoned-teas-are-for-fiancees.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/03/manhattan-and-san-diego-account-for-why.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/03/christmas-carolers-are-three-voices.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-puzzle-in-pear-tree-alters-christmas.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/02/tristate-access-adds-broadway-director.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/02/attorney-becky-baldwin-maybe-aces-new.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/02/perhaps-fun-night-attendees-ate-all.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/01/fifteen-million-dollars-avenge-old.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/01/chicken-soup-awes-all-but-appears.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/01/interstate-highways-add-more-hurley.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/12/bakerhaven-acquaintances-afford-clue.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/12/bakerhaven-alcohol-acts-as-clue-for.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 15 December 2020. "An Actual Bakerhaven Map Never Appears as A Clue for the Puzzle Lady." Earth and Space News. Tuesday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/12/an-actual-bakerhaven-map-never-appears.html

"Puzzle Lady." Parnell Hall.com > Books. Website by Kate Anchev/Outbox Online Design Studio.
Available @ http://parnellhall.com/puzzle-lady/