Dead Boarder

The year is 1931. You live in Providence, Rhode Island in Ma Shanks’ Boarding House. Times are tough. The Great Depression means that immigrants and long-time residents, including you, are experiencing hard times.
You have all gathered outside the room of Mr. James Gardiner. He’s not been seen for at least two days and everyone is getting concerned for his well-being.

Mrs. Baker rattles some keys, finding the one for Gardiner’s room. Then, knocking once more just to be sure there is no response, the key is turned in the lock and the door is slowly opened.

From within comes the lingering smell of candles, long since burned out, and something sickly-sweet and copperlike. Looking in, you see it. Framed in the shafts of sunlight streaming through gaps in the curtains. A body!
The body is lying on a tarpaulin, stretched out on the floor. You can see blood. The man’s body and clothing are covered in blood. It looks as though he somehow fell over from a kneeling position. The body is wearing a green tweed coat and a brown sweater-vest—the clothes Mr. Gardiner usually wears. It must be Mr. Gardiner!

The scene is shocking. His head has been mutilated by knife cuts.

Tommy looks down at his mom for a moment but when he realises she's serious he disappears back to his room.

Otto barrels past everyone and into the room first.

Everything is in order in the room, except for the body on the tarpaulin. There doesn’t appear to have been a fight in here. The furniture is upright and there are no bloody footprints. The only unusual trappings sit on the floor, in front of the corpse on the tarpaulin: a piece of blood-stained paper lies between two black candles, which have both burned down to their stubs.
Inside the room, going clockwise from the doorway, are: a wardrobe, bed, nightstand with lamp, an ornate bookcase that divides the room into two living areas, a window, a small table set in the corner (with two chairs and another lamp), a fancy upholstered chair, overhead
cabinets built into one of the walls, and another table along the wall to the left of the door.
The room is large enough for six people to move around, even as they step over the body; having more than two people in the sectioned-off bed area would make it crowded, since the bookcase is positioned to make this more of a sleeping alcove.

Otto takes a look at the body without getting too close. Gardiner appears to be dead. There is a deep cut, freshly made, around the head, as if a knife has traced a spiral from the crown to the neck. His clothes are blood-soaked. As his shirt is unbuttoned, strange marks on his chest are also visible. The blood is dry, suggesting this all took place some days ago.

Ottos scans around for the murder weapon. A note on skill rolls
All skill rolls have Regular, Hard, and Extreme difficulties - indicated by the numbers on each skill on your sheet.

If a roll is failed, that player has a choice:

• They can push the roll (perhaps taking more time to undertake the task—justifying another attempt); although if they fail a pushed roll the outcome will be worse (e.g. they could end up getting covered in blood, and so on).
• They can use Luck points to adjust the die roll to make it a success but they cannot use Luck points to adjust a pushed roll.

With regards to luck, rather than rolling you spend points from it to get your score to where it needs to be. These points are not recovered during gameplay.