Just call me Miss Marple

Murder mysteries have always been right up my street. Thanks to my early exposure to Miss Marple and Inspector Morse (there were no parental TV controls in our house), around the age of 8, I was pretty convinced that I was going to be either a forensic scientist, inspector or hairdresser (okay the hairdresser is a little random). In fact, when asked to come to school as my favourite character from a book, I transformed myself into Miss Marple by donning an old, flowery blouse, a grey skirt that sat just below the knee and my mother’s beach hat. I even sprinkled a little talc in my hair to make it appear grey for extra authenticity. It wasn’t long before I realised that blood and gore wasn’t really my thing but when I was recently invited to a 1920’s murder mystery evening to celebrate my Aunt and her friend’s 60th, my little notepad was twitching at the prospect. This was my chance to be the super sleuth I had always dreamt of.

The evening started with a few casual drinks and mingling but it wasn’t long before the actors were circulating amongst the guests and Colonel Charles Colman was introducing his downtrodden wife, Mrs Blanche Colman to us. Before dinner, a murder would take place and we had to determine who had performed the murder and more importantly who had planned the murder. After dinner there was time for cross-examination of all the suspects which is where as an amateur sleuth in the making, I should have taken centre-stage but instead followed Andy round like a lap dog while he asked ‘where were you at the time of the murder?’ and ‘why were you carrying a pistol bullet?’. Andy always fancied himself as an MI5 agent (Andrei Popplovski would have been his spy name) which I guess trumps amateur sleuth. Anyway we reconvened at the table and compared notes with our team. The murderer was fairly obvious but who had planned the murder? There was one important clue we were given and that was ‘it will be impossible for the person who planned the murder to lie to you’. Admittedly it took a while for me to twig but I (there is no ‘I’ in the word ‘TEAM’ Andy!) worked out that in order for it to be impossible for the person who planned the murder to lie, that person must be…dum dum dummmmm…dead! So just call me Miss Marple!