I loved the theme! We were actually thinking of a similar take on the theme mid-way through the jam, but didn't end up going with it.
I liked the writing, but the timer seemed to go against the flow of thoughtfully reading through the story, which made it hard to appreciate. I think "The count is down!" was creative enough on the theme that the timer wouldn't have been needed.
Out of the two cases, I thought the second one was more interesting, but the writing in that one often left out the third singular "s" on verbs.
In the first case, there was one point where the detective said that he hadn't mentioned the service passage, when in actuality, I had chosen the option "Who can open the service passage?" first when addressing the butler.
The custom-made assets were good! This isn't very important, but initially I thought the timer tick was part of the music, until it started to go out of sync. In a way, it made me notice the timer, which I otherwise might have missed.
Great job, both of y'all! :D