Proposal · Prepared for Aaron, StoryStream
Online murder mystery events that drop your Brighton and London teams into the same investigation. No acting. No travel. We run the whole thing while everyone just plays detective.
Exhibit A · The demo
Victor Hartley, property developer, found dead in his suite. A box of handmade chocolates that came from nobody's shop, a severe peanut allergy the hotel knew about, and an adrenaline pen missing from his bag.
You questioned the suspects, pulled the financial records, showed James the transactions he didn't want to explain, and put in a warrant. Then you named your killer.
Verdict · Confirmed
The £340,000 you found was money he'd been taking from Victor. You also placed Lena Marsh's theft from the hotel and Sophie Drayton's forged insurance policy, and ruled them both out as the murderer. Full marks.
Final score
445Out of
445Killer
CorrectOther leads
ClearedThat was the short version. Twenty minutes. A full event gives your teams a proper case to get lost in, and gives the quiet ones the time they need to surprise everybody.
The format · How an event runs
You told me the hard ones are the events in between summer and Christmas, where Brighton and London end up doing their own thing and the day feels split in two. This is built for exactly that gap.
Everyone joins online, wherever they are. We split them into teams of five to seven and set them loose on the same case, competing for the verdict. You don't lift a finger on the day. We run it all in the background as the investigation unfolds.
They ask questions, read evidence, argue about who's lying. The suspects do all the work. No costumes, no scripts, no one put on the spot in front of colleagues.
We drop into each team as the Chief Inspector, judge when to release the next wave of evidence, and steer the pace so no team is bored and no team is drowning.
Smaller teams mean nobody hides. More often than not it's the quietest person in the room who looks up and says exactly who did it.
Plenty of teams run it in the evening with partners and family round the laptop. We can send gin out beforehand, or set it up as a charity night with a small entry donation.
The casebook · Two stories I'd put in front of you
Both are fully facilitated, both work brilliantly online, and both come in at the same price. The only real question is the mood you're after.
Runtime · around 90 minutes
The Spring Racing Carnival at Chelford Park is in full swing. Champagne, big hats, bigger bets. Then the racecourse goes into lockdown. Stanley Drummond, the bookmaker who runs the betting operation at the heart of the course, has been found strangled in his own private office, the door locked from the outside. Your team walks in as the investigators. Three people had reason to want him gone.
The victim
"Steady Stan" to the racing world. A veteran bookmaker who built the betting empire that keeps Chelford Park running, and who was, quietly, about to walk away from it all for a fresh start abroad. Charismatic, well-connected, and owed favours by half the people at the carnival. Plenty of them would rather his secrets had died with him.
Young, glamorous, married into the family for the money and the racing set. Guarded and evasive from the very first question, and clearly hiding something.
Charm on the surface, something colder underneath. He plays the grieving son almost too smoothly.
Aristocracy on its last legs. Imperious, proud to the point of self-sabotage, and £200,000 in debt to Stanley. Secret meetings, lowered voices, envelopes passed in quiet corners.
The hook
The betting empire was never just a betting empire. Underneath the carnival sit secrets that would bring the whole thing crashing down. Any one of them is worth killing over. Can you work out which one got him killed?
Runtime · two hours or more
Ashworth Hall, a country estate in Oxfordshire. After a tense family dinner, the patriarch is found dead in his study. Your teams arrive as investigators with two hours, a house full of people who'd rather talk about anything else, and fifteen years of buried history to dig through.
The victim
Head of the family, owner of the estate, and a good deal less respectable than the portrait in the entrance hall would suggest. Wealthy, controlling, and about to make a decision that would have changed everyone's future.
The overlooked second child who worked out long ago that in this family, information is the only currency worth holding. She watches everything, volunteers nothing, and always knows more than she lets on.
Charming, entitled, and allergic to detail. He stands to inherit the lot and behaves as though it's already done. Where you'd want a straight answer, you get bluster.
The steady hand at every Ashworth crisis for two decades. Calm, respectable, perfectly pleasant on the surface. It's the questions he steers around, rather than the ones he answers, that start to itch.
The hook
Each suspect has a secret. One of them led to a man's murder. Are some secrets worth dying for?
The idea you had on the call
Same case, both sites, one winner. Run the investigation across Brighton and London at once and let them race each other to the right verdict. It's the most natural way to get the two halves of the company in the same room without anybody leaving their desk.
Tech against Customer Success works just as well. However you want to draw the lines, we'll set the teams up to match.
The fit · Built around StoryStream
You mentioned a few teams that would be a strong first outing. Any of these is a good place to begin, and the AI suspects should land well with a company that builds with AI all day.
Further down the line we can write a custom story around StoryStream itself. Real names, real in-jokes, the references your people will actually get. I'd spend some time with a few of the team first to get the culture right, then build it onto the platform.
And it doesn't have to be a murder. We've run embezzlement cases, a faked death, even a kidnapping against the clock where you have to find them before time runs out. The platform stays the same. The story can be almost anything.
The investment
You provide the people and the time. We bring everything else.
Either story, AI suspects, up to 30 people, run entirely by us.
The same story, run twice. Up to 30 people per event. Ideal for Brighton and London, or two dates.
Trained actors play the suspects in Zoom breakout rooms instead of the AI. £1,500 with one actor, £2,500 with two. Around three months' notice, please.
A one-off to write your own case and build it onto the platform. Yours to run again.
Next steps
Odds On for something lighter, The Ashworth Inheritance for the full whodunnit.
Up to 30 people, split into teams of five to seven. Brighton against London works well. We set the teams up for you.
You send the link round. We do everything else on the day.
Whenever you're ready, reply to my email or pick a date and we'll lock it in.
Thanks again for playing along this morning. It was good fun, and you've clearly got the instinct for it.
Adam
Cinderella Events
020 3432 2609