Host kit · 6–10 players · 2 hours

A Murder in the Margins: the whole evening.

A free sample: the host guide, the invitation to send, the first prop, and the opening act of the player scripts. Everything else — the other acts, the words you say aloud and the sealed solution — unlocks with the paid kit below.

Back to the kit

The reading library closes at six. At seven, Mr. Edgar Rusk is dead between the stacks with a letter opener in his hand, and six people are locked in with a collection worth more than the building. This is the shortest kit in the library: two hours, one bottle of something good, no dinner required.

Before the night

Print the booklets on cream paper and fold them like pamphlets — this table will notice stationery.
Set the room as a reading library: lamps, a stack of books on every surface, and one long table with six chairs and no space for a dinner service.
Make the catalogue card and the bequest letter in advance; the letter opener takes five minutes with a file and should be done last.
Chill one bottle properly. The kit runs on two glasses and good conversation, not a buffet.

Running order

6:50 pmClosing time

Greet guests at the door as the librarian locking up, hand each a booklet, and let them browse the shelves for five minutes.

7:00 pmAct I — The Archive

Read the welcome, then the bequest. Let each guest read their page, and end the act on the discovery that a volume is missing from the catalogue.

7:30 pmAct II — The Stacks

Announce the body and the chained door, then hand out the evidence envelopes. This is the heart of the evening — let it run twenty-five minutes.

8:15 pmAct III — The Preface

Bring everyone back to the table and ask each guest to read the passage from their booklet that they have been dreading.

8:40 pmThe last page

Take accusations, read the solution, and let the guilty guest read the confession card. Two hours, done properly.

Seating

Six is the ideal table. Put the archivist nearest the catalogue, the benefactor at the head, and the publisher and scholar opposite each other. With more than eight, add 'readers' who share a booklet and vote together.

If it goes wrong

If the table solves it early, point out that the library door was chained from the outside — which means the killer had help, or a key, or both.
If guests are shy about reading aloud, ask them to summarise their page instead. It works just as well.
If the evening runs short, read the four clues in the back of the booklet aloud and let the table re-vote.

After the night

Give the pressed foxglove to whoever guessed right. The rest of the props go back in the box; the letter opener should be blunted before storage.

Send this

The reading room closes at six. You are asked to stay after.

Dr. Frances Ainsley requests the pleasure of your company at a private viewing of the Rusk bequest, in the reading room of the Ashdown Library, on Friday evening at seven.

The collection is not yet catalogued and the door will be locked at seven. Guests are asked to bring nothing but their reading glasses and their discretion.

You are invited as a scholar, a benefactor, a publisher or a friend of the library. Please come as the person named on your card; the library has enough real scholars already.

Reply to the library office by Thursday. Six chairs, six readers, no observers.

If you send it digitally

Send it as a library notice: a small caps heading, the three paragraphs, and the words 'SILENCE PLEASE' at the foot of the page. A cream background and a serif face is all it needs.

Three physical props carry this story. Each one is buildable in under half an hour with things you probably already have.

Prop 01 · 20 minutes

The two-handed catalogue card

Proves the collection was tampered with by someone who knew the old hand as well as the new.

What you need

Index cards
Two pens with different nibs, or a fountain pen and a biro
A typewriter, optional
A card catalogue drawer or a shoebox

How to make it

Type or write the top half of the card in a slanted, old-fashioned hand: 'RUSK BEQUEST — 1911 — 41 VOLS'.
Write the bottom half in a different, upright hand: '42 VOLS — one withdrawn'.
Add a small pencil tick in the corner and smudge it with your thumb.
File it in the middle of the drawer so it is found rather than handed over.

Sealed in the paid kit

The other 2 props

The remaining build sheets: materials lists, cutting guides and the folds that make them convincing by candlelight.

Unlock the full kit — $26

Print one booklet per guest from these pages. Each act has a line to read aloud and a secret for that character alone — the lines are what the table hears, the secrets are why they lie.

Act I · 7:00 pm

The Archive

Host: Lock the door audibly, welcome the table to the reading room, and read the bequest. Then take each guest's first page in turn, beginning with the benefactor.

Dr. Frances Ainsley

The archivist

The library has been my charge for nineteen years and I have catalogued every volume in it twice. The bequest is not complete, and I would rather discuss that before we discuss the will.

Only you know You sold the 1611 Vesalius eighteen months ago to pay for the roof, and you replaced it with a facsimile that you catalogued as the original.

Cyril Fenwick

The publisher

I came for a memoir and I find a corpse — or I will, at this rate. Edgar promised me his life's work and I paid him an advance for it in the spring.

Only you know You paid Edgar for a memoir that would have exposed three members of this table, and he had written only forty pages of it.

Hester Vane

The scholar

I have cited sources in this room that no living person has read, and I would like to keep it that way. The missing volume is one I have cited twice.

Only you know Two of your citations are invented, and the volume that would prove it is the one missing from the catalogue.

Mr. Otis Bray

The benefactor

I paid for this library and I have come to see it empty — of Edgar, at least. He was writing a book about my father's estate, and I was told it would not be published.

Only you know You threatened Edgar in front of two witnesses last month, and you have been paying the publisher to delay the memoir ever since.

Sealed in the paid kit

The other 2 acts

Every remaining character script, the line they read and the secret they are protecting, laid out to print and fold into booklets.

Unlock the full kit — $26

The welcome

“The door is locked at six and the reading room is ours until morning. Mr. Rusk's bequest is not yet catalogued, so I ask you to touch nothing without gloves and to speak quietly until we have read the letter he left with it.”

Sealed in the paid kit

The dinner toast and the accusation

The two speeches that open the second half and close the night, with the cue for when to stand up and how to hand over the confession.

Unlock the full kit — $26

Host’s eyes only

The culprit, the method, and how the clues fit

The solution never appears on this page. It arrives with the paid kit, sealed, to be read aloud only after every guest has accused.

Unlock the full kit — $26

Unlock

Everything, printed.

What you have just read is the sample. One payment unlocks the whole kit on this page — every act, the props, the speeches and the solution — ready to print the moment the card clears.

3 acts of player scripts, one booklet per guest
3 prop build sheets
The dinner toast, the accusation and the cue list
The sealed solution, for the host only

One payment, one kit, yours to print again for the next party. Bought it already? Open the printable kit.