It’s 11am and the champagne is being poured. You’re settling into your armchair aboard the British Pullman, a restored 1920s train of peerless luxury. You’re about to begin your five course lunch. All signs point to a deeply relaxing afternoon. Only – would you believe it – there’s been a murder. What are the odds?
The odds are very much 100%, assuming you’ve signed up for ‘One Way Ticket’, a lavish five-hour fine-dining murder mystery brought to you by Belmond, they of the world’s most beautiful trains, including the Royal Scotsman and the legendary the Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express. Whilst many of those journeys employ the conventional ‘from’ and ‘to’ approach to travel, here the journey begin and ends at Victoria Station – but the joy is in the journey, not the destination.
The experience begins before you board, when you arrive at the well-appointed Belmond lounge at Victoria station. Here, jazz singers are in full voice, Bellinis are being distributed, and smartly-dressed porters introduce themselves and assign you your carriage. It’s golden age stuff, and it only gets more decadent as you clamber aboard the beautiful Pullman.
The train already has a storied theatrical heritage – it was the onetime commuting method of Sir Lawrence Olivier, who ate his poached eggs when travelling in style from Brighton to London each morning to run the Old Vic.
And now the train serves as the perfect setting for a high-drama, high-camp immersive experience, which combines savoury food and unsavoury characters. A caddish politician, an unusually efficient ticket officer, a brash American couple, a nervous botanist – the list goes on. You’re off to a brand new community known as Arcadia – the utopian fever dream of a power-mad industrialist – but given that the world renowned actress who was to be the face of the endeavour was found dead in the Savoy Hotel the night before, the entire project seems imperilled.
If the whole thing doesn’t sound to your taste, then it probably isn’t – but if you are tempted by theatricality, silliness, dressing up, good food and good wine, and the chance to ride a gorgeous train through the rolling English countryside (and, sure, some of London’s grottier suburbs) then you’re in for a treat. Everything about the experience is delivered with panache and absolute commitment. You could even call it a killer day out.
So whodunnit? Well, that would be telling. But, with three theatrical ‘novellas’ to experience across the nine different carriages, there’s the chance for return visitors to explore a whole different slice of the ingeniously-structured performance.
Even when things go off the rails, it’s a first class experience.
NOTE: The Only Moving Murder Mystery takes place on board The British Pullman. The train leaves from London Victoria on Saturday 8th March. You can find out more about the immersive experience on the Belmond website. Journeys start from £585 per person.
London Victoria Station | London SW1V 1PZ
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