Masquerade Ball · 2026-07-15
At midnight the masks come off at Palazzo Moro — one guest never takes hers off.
Masquerade at Palazzo Moro is a masquerade murder mystery game set on the night of a Venetian ball. At midnight, Contessa Lucrezia Moro called the unmasking, and two hundred guests lowered their masks together. One did not. Bianca Sartori — the finest soprano Venice has produced in a generation — sat alone on the loggia above the canal, a stiletto beneath her ribs. Her mask was still on.
The loggia is reached only through the map room, locked since eleven. Six people crossed that corridor during the evening: the hostess, her majordomo, and four guests from Bianca's world of opera and money. The fireworks lasted twelve minutes — and each of the six offers an account of them that no one else confirms.
Three days earlier, Bianca had announced her retirement and a memoir promising "every debt owed to me, and every name attached to it." Six chapters were drafted. One is missing from the case she left at the water gate — and everyone behind a mask that night had reason to want a chapter gone.
Celebrated soprano
Thirty-eight, adored, and famously unforgiving. Bianca rose from a Cannaregio mask-maker's workshop to the great opera houses of Europe, keeping careful account of everyone who helped or hindered the climb. Her memoir, the publisher confirms, settles those accounts by name.
Hostess and last of the Moro line
The ball was meant to save the palazzo: the Moro name is mortgaged to its roof beams, and the memoir revisits how that fortune was lost. She says she spent the fireworks below with the gondoliers. None of them remember her.
Conductor and former mentor
He discovered Bianca, shaped her, and was publicly discarded mid-season ten years ago. He swears he never left the ballroom podium — yet his plague-doctor mask turned up on the loggia stair, and he cannot say when he lost it.
Understudy soprano
Ten years the second name on every programme, waiting on roles Bianca would never release. Her columbina matched Bianca's exactly, down to the gold ribbon — and twice that night, toasts meant for "Sartori" received Allegra's bow instead.
Impresario and financier
Three seasons of tours are contracted against Bianca's name, worthless the moment she retires. A guest's phone caught him in the map-room corridor at 11:26. Greco insists the timestamp is wrong, and offers no account of his own.
Master mask-maker
Every mask Bianca ever wore came from his workshop. Her publisher says one chapter concerns "forgeries sold under a great name." Rielli left by gondola before the body was found, and returned soaked to the waist.
Majordomo of Palazzo Moro
He holds the only map-room key besides the Contessa's and swears he locked it at eleven — the lock shows no key turned after half past ten. Bianca once had him dismissed from a Milan household; he says he does not remember it.
Case Status
UNSOLVED
The killer's identity is sealed inside the case engine — it is generated live when your investigation begins, and no two investigations unfold the same way. The only path to the truth runs through the interrogation room.
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