Murder mystery party ideas

1. Country house weekend: a rich aunt gathers her heirs for the reading of her new will, and she doesn't make it to Sunday lunch.
2. Six rooms, six suspects: a Clue style mansion night where guests move between rooms and the host hides one clue in each.
3. Murder on the night train: a sleeper train is stuck in the snow, the line is down, and one passenger never wakes up.
4. The vineyard launch: a winemaker raises a toast to his new vintage and collapses after the first sip. The full mystery is below.
5. Séance at the manor: a medium calls on the spirits, the candles go out, and when they come back on the host is gone.
6. The ocean liner: first class passengers, a missing diamond and a captain's dinner that ends before dessert.

1. 1920s speakeasy: jazz, flapper dresses and a bootlegger found behind the bar after the police raid.
2. Hollywood premiere: a studio boss dies on the night of his biggest film, and every star in the room owed him something.
3. Casino night in Monte Carlo: high rollers, a rigged roulette table and a dealer who knew too much.
4. Mafia wedding, 1950s: family, feuds and a godfather who never gets to the first dance.
5. 1970s disco: platform shoes, a glitter ball and a club owner who never comes out of the DJ booth.
6. 1980s yacht party: shoulder pads, a stock market fortune and a man overboard.

1. Vampire ball: the oldest vampire in the room doesn't wake up at sunset, and every guest wanted his castle.
2. Witches' reunion: a coven meets once every hundred years, and one spell went very wrong.
3. Haunted hotel: guests check in for one night, and the hotel ghost may not be the killer after all.
4. The quarantined lab: scientists are locked in overnight, and someone sabotaged the only cure.
5. Masquerade at midnight: everyone wears a mask, and at the stroke of twelve the host is unmasked as the victim.

1. Reality TV villa: a contestant is voted off for good, and the cameras missed the one minute that matters.
2. Influencer retreat: a wellness guru's detox weekend ends with one fewer follower.
3. Wedding gone wrong: the best man never finishes his speech, and every guest had a reason to stop him.
4. Ten year reunion: old friends, old grudges and the one who got rich doesn't make it into the group photo.
5. True crime podcast: the guests host a podcast about an unsolved case, and the killer is sitting at the table.
6. Snowed in at the ski chalet: the road is closed, the power is out, and one guest didn't come back from the hot tub.
7. The birthday mystery: the birthday guest plays the victim, dies in the first ten minutes and gets to watch everyone accuse each other.
8. The office party: the boss announces a promotion, then drops dead before saying who got it.

1. Celeste Laurent, Victor's wife. Elegant, sharp, tired of the vineyard. Wears an evening dress. Secret: she has an appointment with a divorce lawyer on Monday, and a divorce would leave her with far less than a will.
2. Julian Laurent, Victor's son. Charming and broke. Wears a dark blazer. Secret: he owes money from poker, and Victor refused to help him this afternoon.
3. Margot Fleury, the sommelier. Proud and precise. Wears black with a silver tastevin on a chain. Secret: she knows Victor sells cheap wine under the Laurent label, and he threatened to fire her if she ever talked.
4. Dr. Henry Blake, Victor's doctor and oldest friend. Wears tweed. Secret: he lost his savings in Victor's last business deal, and he is the one who prescribes Victor's heart pills.
5. Ruby Hart, a wine critic with a big following. Wears something loud. Secret: Victor paid her to write a glowing review of the new vintage, and her career is over if it comes out.
6. Teddy Vance, Victor's business partner for twenty years. Loud, generous with the wine. Wears a dark blazer and cufflinks. Secret: this morning Victor signed papers to buy him out for almost nothing.
7. Ivy Chen (optional 7th player), the event photographer. Wears all black with a camera. Secret: she sells photos of famous guests to a gossip site. She holds the photo in clue 9 and reveals it herself.
8. Felix Moreau (optional 8th player), the estate manager. Wears the estate's green apron. Secret: he sells bottles from the cellar on the side, and the yearly stock count is next week.

1. The doctor's verdict: Victor swallowed a large dose of his own heart medicine, dissolved in his wine. Everyone else drank from the same bottle and is fine, so the poison was in his glass, not the bottle.
2. Victor only ever drinks from his own engraved glass. Margot brought it up from the cellar at 8:50 pm, rinsed it at the bar in front of Ruby and Dr. Blake, and put it on the side table by the terrace door.
3. Staff heard Julian and Victor shouting about money in the study at 4 pm.
4. Victor kept a spare bottle of heart pills in the downstairs bathroom cabinet. Dr. Blake says it was full on Friday. Tonight it is empty.

1. At 8:55 pm the lights went out for two minutes. Someone switched off the fuse box, which is in the hallway right next to the downstairs bathroom.
2. Celeste's phone shows a call to her lawyer from 8:49 to 8:58 pm. Two guests saw her pacing in the garden with the phone at her ear.
3. On Victor's desk: the buyout papers, signed this morning and due to be filed on Monday. Under them, the old partnership agreement: if one partner dies, the other inherits the whole business.
4. Ruby filmed a video for her followers on the terrace during the blackout. Dr. Blake is in it the whole time, holding up his phone torch for her.

1. A photo taken in the dark with a flash (Ivy's, if you have a seventh player) shows someone in a dark blazer bending over the side table. Tonight only Julian and Teddy wear dark blazers.
2. Margot and Julian went down to the cellar together at 8:53 pm to fetch more champagne. They were still down there when the lights went out, and came up together when they came back on.
3. On the edge of the downstairs bathroom sink: a trace of white powder, and a cufflink engraved T.V.

For the host only. Read it out after everyone has written their accusation.

1. Who killed Victor Laurent, and how?

   Reveal the solution

   Teddy Vance. The buyout would be filed on Monday, but if Victor died first, the old partnership agreement gave Teddy the whole estate. During the party he took Victor's spare pills from the downstairs bathroom and crushed them at the sink, where he lost a cufflink. At 8:55 pm he switched off the fuse box next to the bathroom, crossed to the side table in the dark and tipped the powder into the engraved glass. Celeste was on the phone in the garden, Ruby and Dr. Blake are on the terrace video, and Julian and Margot were in the cellar. The photo shows a dark blazer, which leaves Teddy.