The Westing Game Chapter 25 Summary

Westing's Wake

  • The players confer in Judge Ford's apartment.
  • They say Crow has confessed, but only to being herself, not to any murders. Everyone feels sorry for Crow, and for Sandy.
  • Turtle says Sandy was her friend, and Dr. Deere says she shouldn't have kicked him. Turtle says she never did—she only kicked Barney Northrup. She thinks about how Sandy looked dying, twitching, with one eye blinking, kind of like how he'd wink at her sometimes.
  • Theo says he didn't realize it, but he was playing chess with Sandy in the game room the whole time. Turtle thinks this is a lie because Sandy didn't know how to play chess.
  • Theo says Doug saw him playing, and mentions he won their last game. The judge asks him how he knows, and Theo says he took the queen.
  • The judge realizes it's a total Westing move, and says that Theo would have lost. Theo realizes she's right.
  • Turtle thinks about how Sandy beat Theo, except he didn't know how to play chess, and how she didn't kick him, except he had a sore shin. She thinks about the dentist he sent her to, and how he told her the game wasn't over, and had winked at her.
  • Turtle jumps up and asks Angela to look at her copy of the will.
  • Turtle reads the will aloud to everyone. In part one she repeats that Westing came to seek his heir and said his body will be scattered to the winds.
  • Grace really was related to Westing.
  • Judge Ford explains the Westing family tree, and says the game might've been for getting revenge on Crow.
  • Turtle rereads the second and third parts. Otis says that Crow won't win any money, and that she's been sacrificed.
  • This makes the judge think of chess, and she figures out that Crow is the queen's sacrifice, which means Westing won. She calls herself stupid.
  • Dr. Deere says Westing's the stupid one, saying happy Fourth of July in the will, when it's November.
  • Otis says that it's Crow's birthday, which makes Turtle remember that Sandy had asked for that candle for his wife's birthday. She realizes the game isn't over, and that Sandy was rooting for her. She thinks, again, "It is not what you have, it's what you don't have that counts" (25.62). She has to figure out what happened before anyone else does. She decides to hold a trial.