Vintage Murder Trivia Quiz

Answer: It went up a spiral mountain

Inspector Alleyn was in New Zealand recovering from an operation. He traveled with the Carolyn Dacres Comedy Company on their tour of New Zealand. As the train wound through New Zealand, the passengers were jolted awake by turbulence. The train started up a spiral mountain and thus made sharp, bouncing turns frequently.

Alfred Meyer, Carolyn Dacres' husband and proprietor of Incorporated Playhouses, complains to Alleyn (whose occupation as a police inspector is known only to very few members of the company) that he was nearly murdered and shoved off the train. Alleyn suspects this might have been an accident caused by the bounciness of the train or simply by someone accidentally bunking into him.

Answer: Valerie Gaynes

Valerie Gaynes was a young actress who was apparently only with the Carolyn Dacres Company because her father was rich. She had no acting talent whatsoever. Shortly after Meyer claimed to have avoided death, Valerie told Mayer that she was missing quite a bit of money her father gave her for the trip. He then gave her the replacement money as a loan.

Answer: A tiki

After the company's first show in New Zealand, Alfred Meyer threw his wife a birthday party. At the party, Alleyn presented Carolyn with a Maori tiki that was a fertility idol and was allegedly cursed. Alleyn acquired the idol with the aid of the Dr Te Pokiha who assured Alleyn that giving the tiki as a gift was not improper.

Answer: A jeroboam of champagne

Meyer created a lavish event to celebrate his wife's birthday. With the help of the cast of the theater company and the staff at the theater, he created a contraption which, when activated, would gently send down a jeroboam of champagne into a basket which he would then present to his wife.

However, when Carolyn activates the surprise, the bottle comes crashing down on Alfred's head, breaking his neck and killing him.

Answer: False

Everyone in the staff and cast knew about the surprise and Alfred went out of his way to keep Carolyn in the dark. However, she happened to walk in on a practice run and saw everything. She lied to the others and claimed she didn't see anything even during police questioning.

Answer: It was lighter than it should have been

Alleyn inspected the contraption backstage and thought he would find the weight missing entirely. Without the weight, the jeroboam had nothing to counteract it so it would have fallen very quickly. However, Alleyn is surprised to find that there was weight attached after all.

However, this weight was too light and wouldn't have done anything to slow the bottle as it fell. Moreover, he found the tiki he gave to Carolyn in the rafters.

Answer: Francis Liversidge

Courtney Broadhead was the obvious suspect because he lost a lot of money to Valerie in a poker game and mysteriously was able to pay the money back the next day. He claimed Meyer loaned him the money, but it was a personal loan with no record kept. Francis Liversidge pushed hard on this point, but Alleyn saw right through him.

Alleyn later confronted Liversidge about the money and the actor admitted to taking it, though his reasons for doing so were vague and convincing. It came to light that Meyer actually walked in on Liversidge taking Valerie's money.

Answer: Hailey Hambledon

Hailey was in love with Carolyn and he asked her several times to leave Alfred and marry her. Carolyn declined each time. When Alfred was murdered, she feared Hailey was responsible so she would be free to marry him. She knew Hailey was active in setting up the contraption.

She snuck backstage during the chaos and placed the small weight on the contraption, which made it look like a simple accident occurred. In doing this, she dropped the tiki and accidentally incriminated herself. However, Alleyn said this was a godsend because he no longer had to search for a person who went backstage after the murder, a time for which everyone had an alibi.

Answer: The cast of the theater company

Bob was a dresser for the male members of the cast who had a terrible habit of whistling backstage (which is considered bad luck). He waited in the back hallway before everyone traveled to the front of the theater for Carolyn's birthday. He saw every member of the cast traveling around and swore to Alleyn none of them went up to where the contraption was.

This seemingly eliminated everyone. However, as Alleyn noticed, although these people are all grouped together, not all of them are members of the cast.

Answer: George Mason

SPOILER ALERT *** George Mason, Meyer's partner in Incorporated Playhouses, had a sturdy alibi as a number of people saw him throughout the day and he seemingly didn't have a chance to remove the weight from the contraption. However, Alleyn noted that it wouldn't really take as much time to remove the weight as people thought it did. Mason snuck out from his office and circled around the building unseen. Although there was a doorman, the doorman didn't notice because Mason left the back door open and clung to the wall which gave him enough of a shield. He snuck into the theater again, removed the weight and then circled back around within just two minutes and gave the impression that he never left his office.

Mason and Meyer were partners for a long time, but Mason was not a good businessman. He was negligent in other projects and needed the money Meyer left him in his will to pay off his debts.

The crucial clue came from Bob, the dresser. Bob provided alibis for all of the cast members. That only left George Mason as the only possible person to rig the contraption. Mason is a partner in the theater company but he is not a member of the cast and his office is located nowhere near the dressing rooms where Bob was standing.