Murder Mystery Madness

Oh dear, I did it again.

So I told you about my Saturday, which was exhausting. On Sunday, I had planned a Murder Mystery dinner party using a set from the "How to host a murder" series called, The Last Train from Paris. I bought it from a marketplace seller on Amazon Japan, who then imported it and sent it to me. It was for eight people and I ended up going for a Sunday to host it because time is running out before I head home and everyone seems to be busy in July.

Now, I love these Murder Mystery dinners, but this one was a massive stress to organise. Aside from the difficulty in finding ingredients for the food I was attempting to cook, on my way back from rafting on Saturday I looked at my phone to find out one of the guests was sick and would probably have to pull out. I didn't know if I should try to arrange a substitute there and then or see if the guest could make it. However, with the party being less than a day away at that point, I had little choice but to ask my designated driver if she could fill in, since she was the likeliest candidate and was in the midst of making alternative Sunday plans. I felt really bad about arranging the replacement so quickly, especially since after the Rocky Horror Beach Party fiasco, I was really ill and missed a murder mystery party my friend had organised.

On Sunday, I woke up early, partly because my head was messed up from rafting and I felt like my bed was bobbing around on water. I made a cheesecake base then headed out to get ingredients for the coq au vin dish that was described in party guide. While I was in the import shop Jupiter, trying to work out where to get cognac, disaster stuck again. Another guest had fallen ill and had to drop out. This was now mere hours from the start of the party and I had no ideas. These things don't work well if one of the characters missing, unless it's from a set where some of the characters are unnecessary. I don't like those ones so much, as it's generally blatantly obvious that the characters aren't part of the plot. Luckily, Em was with me, and she had the phone number of an ALT who I thought would be well up for it, if only he was free. He said he'd get back to us, as he had some stuff going on. I left the shop to try to get a costume (this is how prepared I am) and try to find cognac somewhere, stressed and panicked.

I ended up getting a military style shirt for my RAF pilot character, which I later got Emily to sew a name tag into. She sent me an email saying our maybe-ALT was now in, so that calmed me down a little. I made the rest of the cheesecake and Emily came over and tidied my apartment while I tried my hand at French cuisine. I substituted cheap Suntory Japanese brandy for Cognac, since Cognac cost three times as much, and after adding it to the chicken I had to light it. I was afraid of doing this, but in the end it didn't explode so it was fine.

The guests arrived a little before six, with everyone dressed up to the nines. The story was very engaging. We were all on a train carriage from which a body was thrown at six o'clock, and we were the only possible culprits. Each round brought more sordid secrets to light until we finally had to guess who the killer was. I guessed correctly, though I admit I actually thought myself guilty. At the last round I served the cheesecake, which hadn't set like I wanted it to - probably too little or too much of something, but it tasted fine and disappeared in a few short minutes. The French chicken thing was also good - at least, it tasted much better than its reddish brown mess of an appearance would have suggested.

It was a great night, but it'll be a while before I put myself through all the stress of organising an event like this again.