All Aboard: The Whodunnit That Takes You Back To A Golden Age Of Travel by Angelina Villa-Clarke for Forbes
12 June 2023
Angelina Villa-Clarke was a guest of the Belmond British Pullman, and we are delighted to share her review of ‘Dead On Time’ for Forbes.
There’s a frisson on London Victoria’s Platform 2: a trio of singers are harmonising swing classics while travellers, chatting excitedly, are bustling about looking for their carriages. Everyone is dressed in their finest and the mingled scents of heady fragrances and musky colognes are heavy in the air. A man rushes by in a mustard and green tartan suit, a vintage camera slung over his shoulder. A woman, in vertiginous heels and a marabou feather stole, laughs gaily as she climbs the steps to her carriage. It’s as though we’ve stepped back in time.
It’s within this setting that Belmond has launched a new series of murder-mystery experiences, called Dead on Time – “One train. Five courses. Ten suspects.” Classic trains and mysteries seem to be a marriage (or murder?) made in heaven. Just take Agatha Christie’s best-seller, Murder on the Orient Express, as an example. And the British Pullman’s latest offering is not only an homage to the train’s rich heritage, but also to this great British thriller tradition: an immersive experience brought to life by a lively cast of vibrantly costumed actors. Adding to the sense of fun, guests have to try and solve the mystery as it unfolds.
The immersive experience has been curated in partnership with Private Drama Events whose ensemble of characters reveal the plot, dispersing clues and red herrings as the train chugs on. The merging of past and present, fact and fiction sucks you in and is an alluring part of the all-encompassing feel of the day….
Photo courtesy of The Other Richards.