The Detective Society - The Cursed Exhibition - Envelope 1

 As part of my recent Kickstarter backing of Murder on the Moon by The Detective Society, I also picked up their entire back catalog. I have a friend in town visiting who’ll tolerate my insanity, and contribute to it, so we are diving into the Cursed Exhibition Collection.

Envelope 1 opens to three envelops, and a clue card - which we are going to ignore hopefully not needing them. One of the envelopes is helpfully marked start your investigation here, the other two have City of Manchester Police on them. One is marked Evidence. We begin!

The start envelope includes a note to us, the National Museum of Legends and Mythology needs our help! There is a strange artefact - MISSING!! An archivist is dead! The curator needs our help! The police are useless so it is up to our brilliance to solve! 

After realizing this may have been a returned item with all the tape and some of the envelopes opened prior, we start with the larger envelope. There are a map/activity pack and STICKERS, two letters, and a padlocked envelope, as well as some evidence logs.  The stickers say to mark 8 of our most interesting sites on the map, but you know I’m going to use post its, and save the cool stickers for my journal. #I’manadultdamnit.

We are directed to a short video from the Curator, one Angus Phillips, who cares far more about the artefact than the murderer of Archivist Claudia Cobb. Different actor from those in the kids series, but well delivered. 

We then open the evidence-Thames item 03093. It contains an artefact cleaning cloth (which will become my glass cleaner post this game), a branded pencil, a slightly sticky measuring tape, and a series of evidence photos showing some of the items in situ. There is also a note from the police, detailing the chief officer’s. He said there was also a mug of water and a mobile phone. I now want to put EVERYTHING into a mug of water. Maybe not the mobile phone. 

With the papers for the artefact info, we have a letter from an antiquities expert, Jeremiah Picklesworth,  telling us that the artefact is CURSED! The Museum must be warned! He claims the artefact is responsible for the death of his wife, Belinda Picklesworth, and that he donated it to another museum which he claimed also had bad things happen to them. As my puzzling companion pointed out, the artefact clearly has a gender bias. 

We recreate the curator’s desk, with much amusement from the cats, using the evidence photos. Nothing is immediately illuminating. However, we do notice that one evidence photos is sticky, possibly from contact with the sticky tape measure. The mug of water is not visible in the evidence photos. We hypothesize that the approximately 40 inches created by the loop may be the size of the artefact. 

Having recreated the crime scene, we go back to the maps and stickers and such. We know we have the security logs and need to both find the code for the bag as well as interview the security guards. We carefully read the brochure. We then identify a couple of related websites. Using the website and info from the brochure, we catch all of the stickers (post its because they’re too cute). We then dig out my CLUE tokens to track movements from the evidence sheet.

20+ minutes later, we realize we’ve jumped the gun, and go back to the drawing board on her desk. And stare. And stare some more. And then give up and get hints. Then bang our heads at the solution, which is persnickety and requires some squinting. We then take a break for dinner. While banging our heads more.

Later, following a delicious dinner and breezy walk back, we begin our attempt to overcome our post prandial stupor and solve Ms. Cobb’s mysterious murder. We open the bag…

Inside, we find username and passwords for an as yet unknown site, camera placements, hidden passageways, the Robin Hood file itself, with notes on the back. The notes detail Ms. Cobb’s fear of the artefact as well as who was going to be in the museum and what their roles are - the pieces we were trying to move around earlier. Multiple words are underlined, not clear if that’s a clue or a red herring. We’ve gone fishing a LOT tonight already ;) The notes ALSO have the numbers of the security guards! We send them WhatsApps, as requested, or emails. We got the following:

• Yelena - Security - in front of Lift B - top floor - protecting Bermuda Triangle - didn’t see anything
• Artemis - Cleaner - Didn’t see anything, but there was a timeline gap
• Eddie-  Gift Shop Owner - Claims to have not left the gift shop all night - from our other notes, we know this is not correct. 
• Leslie - Admin - claimed her door was always closed. 
• Scarlett - Head of Security - was in the security office all night and saw nothing. This is confirmed by our earlier investigations 

My puzzling partner then used the diagram to place the cameras specifically on the map. Then we identified the locations of the hidden passageways, going full on murder board with red string. We use her notes regarding passages and movements, avoiding cameras, to identify her likely location for stashing the object. We email the Curator with our hypothesis. After a brief misunderstanding, we realize Claudia may be the unknown person on the cameras, disguised! We also realized that one of our doors was hidden by my sticky notes… I stand by my decision to steal the stickers. We then get a long email from the Curator, telling us about the specific exhibit and where individual sections are. My puzzling pal happens to like maps, which is VERY HANDY. I log into the linked staff page while they make the map.

With fun maps and audio clues, we determine where the artefact is hidden, and email the Curator with our findings. Unfortunately, while congratulating us on our success, the Curator is mysteriously killed! Probably why there are 5 more envelopes to go :) We also note that there are unused clues regarding the whereabouts of certain staff who may have lied about their locations… Could they be in on it?! We will see next time. For now, we are DETECTIVES!