Murder Mystery

Last night, I attended Clare’s murder mystery birthday party. As a lover of mysteries and games, all my life I’ve wanted to participate in an activity like this one, and it finally came true!

The mystery was set in the 1920s with a lot of stereotypical characters. There were shady mobsters, shadier politicians, and every woman was a whore. There wasn’t a woman there who(se character) wasn’t fucking multiple men in the room. For example, I was engaged to marry a woman who was already engaged to one of my business associates, as well as secretly married to another one of my business partners. I played the boss of the mob bosses, making me very important. At least that’s what I told everyone.

Going into the game, I told myself I was going to play super hard, interrogate well, and take detailed notes so that I could solve it. This plan was quickly derailed by the fact that the mystery took place in a speakeasy. By golly, the booze really got in the way of the sleuthing. I didn’t end up jotting any clues down, but if shots were notes, my notebook would have been full.

Consequently, I wasn’t able to play the game as slyly as I had hoped. My dossier had secrets that I was supposed to reveal as well as those that I was supposed to keep to myself, but I kept mixing them up and just sharing everything. I was the most loose-lipped mob boss the world has seen; every conversation I had was as if I was speaking with my psychiatrist given my penchant for indiscriminately telling people everything I knew, as well as what I ascertained from others.

Though that’s not how the game was supposed to be played, everyone was so ridiculously drunk, that we really had to drop any pretenses of being subtle and just read our clues to each other off the clue sheet in order for any information to be exchanged.

Partway through the night, after the first person was killed, there was a scavenger hunt to find a weapon so that you could kill someone else. I had no interest in offing anyone (what a lame mob boss, huh?) but I searched hard out of self-preservation, as I had ascertained that several characters stood to benefit from my death. Picture an intoxicated bunch of people in 20s getups frantically opening drawers and behind books for weapons: the house look ransacked.

Someone was soon killed, but I got lucky, and it wasn’t me. At the end of the night, we had to write down who we thought the two murderers were. I was disappointed in myself because I had hoped to be a better sleuth, but I used the evidence that I knew to make two semi-educated guesses. I spent all night wooing a woman and not suspecting her, but when I reconsidered her motives and accused her. As it turns out, I was the only guest who actually fingered both killers accurately. Looks like I’m not such a bad drunken detective after all!

It was a lot of fun, so I want to play again – next time sober. Although maybe if I had been soberer this time, I would have over-thought the game and guessed incorrectly. I know a lot of people think I dumb lucked my way into my victory – and maybe they’re right – but I will gladly wear this badge of honor until the next time a murder needs solving.