A Death in the Family
Croydon · 1928-29
“Everyone is very kind. Everyone was also there.”
- Players
- 6 to 12 adults, plus the host
- At its best
- 8 to 12 guests
- Runs
- 2 to 3 hours with dinner
- Setting
- Croydon, Surrey, 1928
- History
- Real case: The Croydon poisonings
- Suits
- Clever, note-taking tables. Twisty
- Best for
- Dinner parties
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Acting
- None needed. Short lines to read where the story needs them
- You need
- A TV or laptop, and a phone each
- Delivery
- Instant access. Printable pack included
- The host
- Plays the victim, then runs the inquiry
- Price
- A$39, one payment
- Content
- Real people are portrayed. Involves the poisoning of members of one family, including an elderly woman, and financial fraud. The killer is invented; every real person is innocent.
Two houses, a short walk apart, one family spread between them. There is a funeral in the spring and another before the year is done, and the same small circle of sympathy cards goes round each time. Everyone is very kind. Everyone is very present. The doctors are satisfied, right up until somebody with a longer memory stops being satisfied, and a respectable family in a respectable street finds itself explaining its own dinner table.
That is as much as the file will give you. The rest comes out over the evening, act by act, and your guests will have buried a good deal of it themselves by then.
What you get
Fully scripted evening
Every act cued, every scene set, your lines where you need them. No prep, no printing, no experience required.
Clues arrive in stages
Evidence and private dossiers drop to your guests' phones as the night unfolds, one act at a time.
You play the victim
Set the table, welcome your guests, then haunt the evening while they work out who wanted you gone.
6 to 12 players
A core cast carries the case, with flexible roles as your table grows. Latecomers can join as observers.
App-hosted
The case runs from any screen in the room. Your TV is the stage, the phones are the wings.
Between 1928 and 1929 three members of the same family died in Croydon, south London. Arsenic was found. Nobody was ever charged, and the Croydon poisonings remain among the best known unsolved cases in England.
The game reopens the case and reaches a solution of its own. Knowing the history will not spoil your night, and history does not decide the verdict at your table. Your guests do.
These were real people and real deaths. The file is written with that in mind: we reopen the questions, not the graves.
Take it to trial.
This case can end at the reveal, or it can go to trial: the person your table accused stands in the dock, your guests become the jury, and nobody learns who really did it until the verdict is in. The trial is invented: an alternative ending, clearly labelled as one, and not the historical record.
The trial for A Death in the Family is coming soon. Trials are released case by case, starting with The Masque at Carfax Hall. When it arrives, the trial can also be played on its own, as a jury case.
Reopen A Death in the Family.
Host it at your own table. Nothing to print, no script to learn, and you play the victim, so you finally get to attend your own party.