Printable Murder Mystery Game, 1960s Geneva Auction House Detective Case for Couples

Seller's description

Geneva, October 1968. An hour before a great estate sale, Hortense Verre, the star appraiser of Galerie Vernaz, is found dead among her perfume flasks, a lot ticket on the desk beside her. Two nights earlier a night clerk fell to his death at the freeport warehouse, and nobody connected the two. The next morning the gallery's quiet secretary, Julian Pell, hands the police six typed pages confessing to both deaths.

The gallery's president doesn't believe a word of it. He hires you as authenticators, the experts who tell a real painting from a fake, and asks you to examine the confession the same way, line by line, against the sale catalogue on Pell's desk. The sale reopens in a week. Eight people are in the file: the secretary who confessed, the chief auctioneer, a Zurich collector, a penniless Viennese baron, the young porter who found her, the gallery's restorer, the manager of the freeport warehouse, and the dead woman's niece.

What's included
• 28 pieces of evidence in three sealed envelopes: the president's letter with a card for each suspect, the police photograph of the scent library, the typed confession, the sale catalogue, first statements, warehouse plans, ticket books, a 1951 catalogue, ledgers, letters, a city map, a recorder chart, a switchboard book and more
• Hands-on puzzles: cut out provenance labels and paste each one on the paragraph it explains, measure the confession's pages with a cut-out typewriter gauge, fit torn lot tickets to their stubs, check a sight line on a warehouse plan, and set a recorder chart right
• A Start Here guide
• A Scoring file: you write your verdict in your own words first, then score yourselves question by question
• Hints for every question, a nudge first and then a pointer, so nobody stays stuck for long
• The full story, with a timeline
• A printable gift invitation

Players, time and difficulty
• 2 to 6 players, ages 18+
• Medium: each envelope turns the case, and the answer comes together in the last one
• One evening, about 2 hours. Your table may be quicker or slower
• Content: two deaths, told in the reports, no gore; an old fraud, a ruined refugee family, cigarettes and wine

How it works
Print the pages and open Envelope 1. Read the evidence together, compare the papers and keep your notes. When you've read every page, open the next envelope. After the last one, write down your verdict in your own words: who killed Hortense Verre and Emil Brandt, how, and why. Then open the Scoring file. It asks each question and gives the answer, and you add up your points before reading the full story.

Printing
• US Letter (with US units) and A4 (with metric units), each in Deluxe (full color) and Ink-saver (light on ink)
• 38 pages to print, plus the one-page gift invitation if it's a present
• Print at 100% scale, single-sided, at home or at a copy shop
• You'll need scissors and a glue stick or tape

Written and illustrated with the help of AI tools, from our own story, prompts and edits, and checked by us.

Digital download, nothing is shipped. You receive PDF files to print yourself.

FAQ
• Can we play it on a screen? Start Here opens on a phone, but you'll cut, paste and measure the papers, so printing works best.
• Do we need a host? No. Everyone plays together, and the hints, the scoring and the full story each sit in their own file until you need them.
• Can more than 6 play? Yes, but the papers go round more slowly. Print a second copy of the busiest pages if you like.
• Is it a role-play party game? No. You're the authenticators working the case file, and nobody plays a character.
• How hard is it? Medium. The hints are there whenever you want them.
• Letter or A4? Letter for US printers, A4 for most of the rest of the world. Choose Ink-saver if your printer is low on ink.