“It’s so hot out today,” Scarlet Letter moaned, stifling a yawn as she lounged across the Lounge’s most comfy divan. “I just want to lie here and do nothing all day!”
“It must be nice to just lay around all day, but somepony’s got to do all the chores…” White Wash muttered through her teeth, pushing a trolley balanced with porcelain teacups through the room.
Green Mail picked up one of the cups and sipped it without looking away from his newspaper. His eyes bulged and he sprayed the drink all over the paper. “Bleh! Tea, on a day like today? Can’t we have something to cool us down? My mam always squeezed me fresh lemonade when it was this hot out.”
White’s face scrunched up as if she’d just bitten into a lemon, but she grabbed the trolley in her teeth and backed out of the room. “Oh sure, why not, not like I don’t have anything better to do…”
“My first business was a lemonade stand,” Green continued, his eyes all misty with memory, “I could squeeze seven bits of juice out of a single lemon! Of course, only a fool would sell it for less than twice that…”
Plum Pudding moaned from where he lay against the far wall. “Blah, don’t talk to me about drinks right now. I’m so hot I might dunk my head in a glass rather than drink it!”
“There’s got to be some way to cool off,” Colonel H. Mustard sighed, fanning himself futilely with his wings, “Don’t you have a pool, Body?”
Home Body shook his head and continued staring out the window, “It’s being cleaned today.”
“Go out somewhere? There’s an ice cream place in town,” Plum suggested.
“Too hot to move,” Scarlet said, rolling over in an attempt to find a cooler spot on the divan.
“Don’t you know the Princess?” Green asked, squinting at Mustard. “Maybe you can send her a letter and get her to rein in the sun a bit?”
Mustard looked absolutely terrified at the thought and hurried to hide it with a cough. “Well, I mean… I can’t just walk all the way to Canterlot on a whim, you know. And I’m sure she, uh, doesn’t have time to listen to every pony who complains about the heat, in fact, I bet she’s got a long line of ponies already who are bugging her about the heat-”
Scarlet groaned and pulled one of the pillows over her head. “Enough! It’s too hot to listen to all this talking!”
“Hey guys!” Peacock Poppycock said cheerfully, bouncing into the room and grinning widely at her friends. “What’re you all up to?”
Mustard blinked slowly at her and fanned himself even faster. “How can you have so much energy on a day like today?”
“Aw, you just have to have a positive attitude!” Peacock laughed as White backed into the room with a fresh trolley of drinks. She swiped one and frowned at it. “Oh no, sour drinks will never pick anypony up. Bring us something fruity!”
White opened her mouth several times, but swallowed what she wanted to say and put on a grin that showed all of her teeth. “Of course! Whatever you wish! I just love traipsing back and forth through the whole mansion, fetching this and…” The rest of her tirade was lost as she roughly shoved her trolley back out of the room.
“Poor Mrs. Wash,” Body said thoughtfully, “Maybe we should help her out with some things.”
“Do you want to get up and do chores on a day like today?” Green said, pinning his host with a look.
Body paused, glanced out the window and the blaring sun, and nodded his defeat. “Well, I suppose I can just tell her to let the chores slide for a while…”
“You can’t all mean to just lay about like logs all day?” Peacock said in surprise. “We’ve got a whole day ahead to enjoy!”
“I am become one with this couch…” came Scarlet’s muffled counter-argument from beneath her pillow.
Peacock pursed her lips in annoyance for a few seconds before a sudden idea lit a smile across her face. “I know, how about a game? You all know my new candlestick I brought with me? Well I’ve left it somewhere in the mansion. We can have a race to see who can find it first! And Home, you could provide a prize, right?”
Home Body tapped his chin thoughtfully and then nodded. “I think I could arrange somepony to bring us ice cream from that place Plum mentioned. The winner could get to pick the flavors?”
Everypony nodded and made appropriate sounds of agreement, but each of them were thinking about Poppycock’s candlestick. It was a gaudy thing, solid gold with a crust of jewels around the top. She had been brandishing it around with her for the past few days, lording over the rest of them about how fancy it was. It was also obviously worth quite a few bits as well.
“Well, let’s get to it!” Mustard said with forced cheer, leading the way out of the lounge.
As soon as he was clear of the door, Mustard bolted across the mansion to the conservatory and started kicking around through the potted plants. Green chose to start his search in the billiard room, while Plum paused outside the door of the lounge and then started slowly walking around the hall.
“I suppose I should go and tell Mrs. White she can take the rest of the day off.” Body said, rising slowly from his chair and heading off towards the kitchen.
Peacock sat down in his vacated seat and glanced over at the divan. “Don’t you want to search too?”
Scarlet slowly raised her head up, looked quickly around the room, and then ducked back down into her makeshift shade. “It’s not in the lounge,” she mumbled, burrowing deeper.
Plum gave up his search of the hall and moved into the room on the opposite side of the mansion. Green Mail poked his head out of the room he was in and watched him pass with suspicious eyes, then darted over to check out the room the Professor had just left. After a quick rummage around, Green ducked into the empty room next to that one and started moving furniture.
Mustard peered behind the last bush and wiped his brow with his foreleg, realizing too late that all the glass windows in this room were intensifying the heat. He stumbled out of the room and into the unoccupied room next door, looking for something to cool himself down with. He immediately spotted a vase of flowers full of precious water and upended the whole thing over himself.
Plum leaned out of the door and paused, listening to the two ponies talking in the room next to him.
“What do you mean, I don’t need to get drinks anymore?!” White Wash practically screeched, the force of her ire driving her cowering employer back out of the room. “I just finished setting out all these cups of fruit punch, and now you want me to toss them just like the rest?”
“I just thought… a bit of a rest…” Body said miserably, failing to find the words.
“And who’s going to wash all these dirty cups, then?” White demanded, “I suppose you’ll all want something to drink out of at lunch? Which I haven’t even started on yet, thanks to this whole adventure! No one ever thinks of the help, no sir, and that’s not even getting into…”
Plum Pudding, not wanting to get involved, moved past them and into the room on the other side to continue his hunt.
“Anything yet?” Mustard asked casually, as he and Green stepped out of their respective rooms at the same time.
“No, nothing yet,” Green said casually.
The two ponies eyed each other suspiciously for a moment before slipping past each other. Mustard went two rooms clockwise from the one he’d left, and Green entered the room three rooms counterclockwise from the one he’d left. Immediately noticing that their new rooms were thoroughly searched already, they each moved one room counterclockwise.
Plum was panting with heat and exhaustion as he left his latest room. He glancing into the open door of the kitchen, noting that Home Body was standing at the sink washing cups while White Wash sipped from a mug by an open window. Not wanting to get involved, he wandered into the room Mustard had started in and found a nice hose to drink from. Refreshed, he went into the room Green had entered third to keep looking.
By this point all three hunters were getting tired of the game. Mustard dashed into the room next to the room he’d started in, but not the room Green had started in. Plum moved into the room between the one Mustard searched second and the one Green searched third.
Green, a little dizzy from the heat at this point, forgot which rooms he’d already searched and ran into the room next to the one he was in now. Fortunately, he hadn’t searched this room yet. More fortunate yet, there was something to drink. Less fortunate, there was somepony already in this room so he turned around without searching it. He was passed by Mustard, who made one last dash into the room two rooms clockwise from Plum’s current room and ran about it, flipping over paintings and peering under chairs.
A few minutes later the three stallions stumbled their way back into the lounge and collapsed into chairs.
“I can’t… find it anywhere…” Mustard panted.
“So hard… to find…” Plum huffed. “So much… running…”
“I’d pay… three bits… for a lemonade…” Green wheezed, “Or… maybe only two bits… perhaps three bits for two glasses…”
“So nopony found my candlestick?” Poppycock said in disappointment, slouching down in her seat. “I didn’t think I put it down in any hard to find place…”
“Wait,” Mustard said suspiciously, “Are you trying to say that you forgot where you left it, and this whole ‘game’ was just making us find it for you?”
Peacock smiled innocently. “Weeellllll, when you say it like thaaat…”
Mustard grunted. “Now I’m not so upset the ruddy thing is still missing!”
“No it’s not,” said a muffled voice, “I know where it is.”
The other four ponies turned incredulous looks upon Scarlet as she emerged from under the small pile of pillows she’d constructed. “What?! But how?!”
“I was watching you all run about through the open door,” Scarlet said mischievously, before pointing her hoof at a pony, “And there was only one room that only one pony set hoof in. And that pony was you!”
Who chanced upon the candlestick, and in which room?
And here's a map if you need it.
