Night Guard at the Gallery: Every Morning, One Painting Has Changed

About the story

The Marlowe Gallery of Fine Art is a hundred years old next week. It sits on the riverbank of the old city of Brightwater: marble steps, bronze lions, a glass dome, eleven quiet halls and four hundred paintings, including the most famous painting in the country, "The Lady in Blue Rain." You are its new night guard. It's not glamorous. Your job is to walk the halls from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. with a flashlight, a ring of keys and a thermos, check the doors, check the alarms, and write "nothing to report" in the logbook. Your predecessor, old Mr. Abernathy, retired after thirty-one years. He left you a note taped inside the guard booth: "Talk to the paintings. They get lonely. And watch the corners." On your first morning, as the sun comes up through the dome, you stop in front of "Harbor at Dusk," a small seascape you walked past a dozen times in the night. Something's wrong. Last night, there were three boats in the harbor. Now there are three boats in the harbor and, in the bottom-left corner, a tiny painted moth that wasn't there before. You're sure. You're almost sure. You check the logbook, the alarm panel, the camera screens in the guard booth: every door locked, every alarm green, nothing to report. Nobody else notices. The curator tells you, kindly, that night shifts play tricks on the eyes. But the next morning, in another hall, another painting has changed. A clock reads ten past two instead of noon. And in its corner, another tiny moth. Someone is swapping the gallery's paintings for near-perfect copies, one per night. The forgeries are flawless except for one tiny deliberate change, almost as if the forger wants to be caught. The swaps are timed to finish on the seventh night, the night of the Centennial Gala, when the gallery will be full of guests, crates, caterers and confusion, and "The Lady in Blue Rain" will be on display in the center of the dome. You have seven nights to work out who is doing it and how, gather proof, and stop the last swap, all without losing a job you need, while the person behind it watches you walk the halls with your flashlight. The people around you: • Dr. Helena Strand, the gallery's stern, devoted head curator, who has been staying very late and very secretively. • Matteo Ferrante, the warm, charming art restorer who works in the basement studio and brings you coffee at 3 a.m. • Ingrid Aalto, a sharp, sardonic insurance investigator, sent to check the gala's security, who thinks you might be useful or might be a suspect. • Lionel Pryce, the smooth deputy director who is running the centennial and is very friendly to the new night guard. • And Mr. Odo, the elderly night cleaner, who hums to the paintings. This is a fair-play mystery with one fixed solution. No murder, no violence. Just a dark museum, echoing halls, flashlight beams, coffee at 3 a.m., eight key clues, a few red herrings, and a forger who may be crying for help in the only language they have: paint. Features: Fair-Play Art Mystery · Night Shift · 7 nights to the Centennial Gala · Clue log, Swaps & Suspicion meters · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • Dr. Helena Strand, 47: The Marlowe Gallery's stern, devoted head curator. • Matteo Ferrante, 31: The gallery's warm, charming art restorer, who works in the basement studio and brings you coffee at 3 a.m. • Ingrid Aalto, 34: A sharp, sardonic insurance investigator sent to check the gala's security. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The Basement Studio (Night 3, 03:00) · The Investigator (Night 2, 02:15) · The Gala (Night 7, 21:30). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.