Invitation to a Murder

Saturday 22 February 2014

Hollowcrest Manor

We, the villagers, were invited to the inauguration party for the return from the US of the beautiful daughter of Lord William and Lady Virginia Ramsbottom. Also in attendance were Colonel Killian Lightly, the local murder mystery writer and amateur sleuth Miss Marble Fletcher, and her nephew Igor (pronounced 'Eee-gore') Beever.

Miss Marble has been commissioned by Lord William to research the family history from the documents in the Library. In this endeavour she is assisted by her somewhat fey nephew, Igor. The good lady arrives rather late but armed with some explosive discoveries, namely letters that reveal a tryst 25 years ago between Lady Virginia and the Colonel, with the result that Lord William's beloved daughter is not in fact his daughter, but the lovechild of his wife and his best friend.

Unsurprisingly, this rather tends to upset the evening's planned celebration dinner. Daughter Shirley is unperturbed by this revelation, after all 'dear Daddy' is bank-rolling her Creative Writing course in Illinois – when she gets around to it, having just completed her third gap-year and about to embark upon a fourth. The Colonel is keen to 'adopt' his new-found daughter, but nobody is having anything to do with that idea as the Colonel has no money to support Shirley in the life-style to which she is rapidly becoming accustomed. Further, Lord William asserts that had he a revolver to hand he would shoot his best-friend/blighter (why is there never a gun handy when you want one?)

While the family and us villagers are sat down to a somewhat awkward (for the family) but scrummy dinner of sausages and chips in greaseproof paper, it is realised that Miss Marble is missing, only to be located - wait for it - in the library, dead, hit on the back of the head with a lump of lead piping! Who can have carried out such a dastardly act on such a sweet old lady, whose only thought was to throw a sizeable spanner into the works of the Ramsbottom family? We the villagers were asked to help solve the mystery.

Turns out that many of us hadn't a bloody clue who did it, but nonetheless the Rumplestiltskin team of Capt F, Tarzan, Underlay & Shagpile figured out correctly that the villian of the piece was helpless little nephew Igor. Runner-up clever little sods were Fat Controller, Kisses Anytime, Golden Globes and Rapid Withdrawal.

Not a bad evening on the whole, so many thanks to Fat Controller, Nik-Nak and their helpers for organising it, and to the talented cast of thespians who so expertly portrayed the events for us.

On-on