Dear Sleuth

Thank you so much for booking to join us on one of my Original Murder Weekends. I hope you will have an immensely enjoyable weekend on this, my 100th plot – I can’t believe that the 100th is finally here, it seems like such a milestone and I am determined to make it a really fun plot that everyone will really love, laugh at and remember for a long time.

When I was a teenager I read all the Agatha Christie books and really enjoyed the village life and eccentric characters she created – a very good reason, I thought to write my 100th plot as a nod to the woman who was my inspiration – and so the village of “Munchampton” was born.

A sleepy little village in Gloucestershire, Muchampton’s cricket team has been playing on the green for 100 years and to celebrate their centenary (100 not out!) Lady Munchampton has kindly donated a large sum of money to keep the Club afloat for the foreseeable future. She has insisted that for her generous contribution she should be made President of the Club, much to the chagrin of the committee and members, but they needed her money too much to refuse. Lady Munchampton has also promised to arrange a 100th birthday party; all the village are invited to the ‘100 Not Out Weekend’.

You, should pretend you are a Munchampton villager – you could be absolutely anyone you like (throw caution to the wind!): you could be an eccentric musician who travels the world with an orchestra; you could be the Landlord or barmaid at the village pub (The Black Swan), who has had more than a few liaisons with the locals; you could run the village Post Office and bring a petition to keep it open; you could be a local school teacher - or a church warden at St Michael’s Church - who knows all the gossip on everyone; you could be a long-suffering cricket widow or a stalwart in the local Women’s Institute, who begrudgingly makes the cricket tea every Sunday.

The reason for our fictitious theme is to explain why a group of total strangers would meet at a hotel and, once the murders start, it quickly fades into the background as you turn sleuth to deduce the reasons and motives for a series of untimely deaths. We hope you will enjoy playing along with the main characters.

On Murder Weekends we usually have a colour theme on the first night, and of course to honour the Cricket Club, it couldn’t be anything else but white. I thought it would be nice if we could all wear something white. It may be a sparkly dress, bow tie, baseball cap, socks or even white bra that’s cheekily showing above your dress line! Perhaps you could just accessorise with lots of white jewellery. You could go completely mad and wear white from head to toe (or even your cricket whites!) but just wear whatever you feel comfortable in and remember there will be a prize for the best “white”.

Throughout the weekend, there will be themed games and quizzes – but, none of them are complicated; they are just a light-hearted way to get you chatting to your fellow guests and to alleviate the stress on your brains from trying to make sense of the dastardly deeds. Nothing is compulsory on Murder Weekends, so if you’d rather sit out a game and go to the Incident Room to study the evidence then that’s absolutely fine.

I looked back on all our previous plots and couldn’t believe we had never had a Village theme, and was also even more amazed we’d never done a ‘masked ball’, which I thought would be tremendous fun! Rather than having the usual fancy dress themed party on Saturday night, I thought it would be great to wear masks. It would be too restricting to have a proper ball, with gowns and black ties, so you should just wear whatever you feel comfy in, or dress appropriately for your mask. You could buy a rubber werewolf, George Bush (with a suit), Gordon Brown or Gorilla (with all black clothing), a frog mask (with all green clothing). You could make your own from papier mache, or buy pre-made masks in white clay that you can decorate yourselves – there are plenty of websites to give you some help, just Google ‘plastic masks’, ‘rubber masks’ or ‘make your own masks’ – we found www.squiddo.com/kisdcostumes; www.novelties-direct.co.uk but there are many other sites.

Over the years we’ve found that the simplest ideas are often the best and many of our guests say that half the fun is creating their costume before the Weekend to get them in the mood (so please don’t feel you have to go out and hire something special). If you’re stuck for an idea then please get in touch with us at the Murder Weekend office and we’ll try and give you inspiration.

The main reason for the plot theme is so we can all role-play and get involved, which adds to the realism of the characters and consequently the plot - so please pretend you are guests at “The Munchampton Cricket Club’s Centenary” weekend. Don’t mention the words ‘Murder Weekend’ or ‘murder’. We’ll only look at you as though you are completely daft and deny all knowledge of any such thing.

We know you’ll have a lot of fun, no matter how you decide to play the game, but for those of you who are keen sleuths and want to solve the crime, I have enclosed some tips to help you. Also it might be an idea to bring along a small notepad and pen to jot down conversations you overhear or evidence you think is important would also be useful.

We very much look forward to seeing you on Friday at the Welcome Reception at 8.00 pm, before dinner at 8.30 pm. We aim to keep you occupied throughout the weekend with the many twists and turns, but Saturday morning is free if you wish to go sightseeing or shopping.

We hope you have a marvellous time and manage to crack the crime, which will be solved when the Detective makes an arrest at 12 noon on Sunday, when sadly the “The C.C’s Centenary” weekend officially ends, but hopefully you’ll go away having had a great time.

Joy x


* PLEASE NOTE: Could you let us know your full name and the names of any other guests in your party, as we need them for seating plans and to ensure that you are all sitting together.