Chapter IV: the accusation
At Ashcombe Manor, Confront Widow Ashcombe. She asks who killed Thomas Ferris, and what you can say depends on what you carry:
- A footpad killed Thomas Ferris. You can always say this. She has you shown out.
- Colonel Vane killed him. Needs the bonded manifest from the chests of tea.
- You killed him. And your husband. Needs the whole of the evidence: both of Coroner Pell's verdicts, the glove from the grating and its pledged mate, the bill of lading signed A. Ashcombe, and the laudanum bottle.
Come back carrying more and she asks again, so a wrong answer never closes off the right one.
The chapter ends when the case is proven, or when Colonel Vane is put down. Either way the book goes on: knowing who did it is not the same as proving it, and chapters V to XII are about the difference.
Chapter XII: the verdict
Serjeant Rede asks what becomes of the Ashcombe case:
- Publish it. Let the whole country be the jury. Needs Silas Grimshaw of the Clarion on your side. He makes up his mind in Chapter X, at The Britannia, Dark: talk to him there.
- Prosecute it. Put every name in the dock. Needs the whole case built. The chapters before gather most of it on the way, but one piece is easy to walk past: where the poison comes from. Cut a specimen from the locked bed in The Club Glasshouse, in Chapter VIII.
- Bury it. The cost is already too high. You can always choose this.
- Not yet. I'll not choose it half-informed. He waits, and asks again when you come back.
Seeing another ending
Any of the three finishes the book, opens its free roam and counts towards the fourth book. Free roam has no story in it, so to see another verdict you need to read the book again: in another save slot, after a New Game, or with New Game + once you have finished every book.