The Westing Game: Chapter 25 Summary & Analysis

The fourteen remaining heirs sit in Ford’s living room wondering what has happened. With Crow arrested and Sandy dead, the heirs are shocked, upset, and confused. The heirs are divided: some feel bad for Crow, who has been arrested without any evidence that she committed murder, while others believe she herself killed Sandy by filling his flask with poison. Turtle laments her friend’s death. Denton chastises her for kicking her friend. Turtle swears she’s never kicked Sandy, but Denton points out that Sandy had a huge bruise on his shin. Turtle says the only person she kicked today was Barney Northrup.

Theo reveals that Sandy was the one who knew how to play chess—Sandy was about to make his last move before he died on one of the chessboards in the game room, but Theo would have won the game anyway. Ford asks how Theo won the game. Theo replies that he took Sandy’s queen. Ford recognizes this as one of Westing’s signature moves from when he used to challenge her to chess games as a girl—he always sacrificed his queen but won on the next move. As Turtle revels in Theo’s loss, she thinks about her poor friend Sandy. As she recalls Sandy’s final moments, she realizes that his eye twitch was actually a wink. Turtle rushes over to Angela and asks to see Sydelle’s notes on the will. 

In the corner of the room, Turtle rereads the will. When she gets to the bit about Westing’s ashes being “scattered to the four winds,” she is reminded of her mother’s maiden name (and Sam Westing’s original last name), Windkloppel. She says the name aloud. Ford repeats the name once again before deducing that Berthe Erica Crow married a man named Windkloppel—she is the former Mrs. Westing. Crow has been mourning the death of Violet for years—and Westing created the game to punish Crow, whom he believed was responsible for their daughter’s suicide.

Turtle continues reading the will aloud. The indignant Otis interrupts to ask why Westing would make Crow an heir when she can’t inherit anything from jail—Crow, he says, has been sacrificed. Ford realizes that Westing has duped them all by “sacrificing” his “queen” in his classic final chess move. Somehow, she knows, Westing—dead or alive—will make his last move.

Deere tells the other heirs that they’re all being taken for a ride—Sam Westing was nothing but a lunatic. He wrote “Happy Fourth of July” into the will, but it’s currently November. Otis Amber laments that today, the 15th, is Crow’s birthday. Turtle looks up from the will, remembering that Sandy asked her for a striped candle for his wife’s birthday earlier. The game, she realizes, is still on—she can still win. Turtle tells Ford she would like to call her first witness.