St Richard's

A traditional Catholic co-educational boarding school
from Nursery through to Preparatory School

Who Killed the Headmaster ?
February 2011

To be murdered once may be regarded as a misfortune;
to be murdered twice looks like carelessness.




But careless he was as, yet again, the Headmaster of St Richard’s was indeed murdered. Panic not, for on both occasions (the first time being a couple of years ago), he was on stage (although there was no stage - but thereby hangs another tale) and the murder was witnessed by over 100 people.  Were they all so keen to see his demise?




The setting, coincidentally, was in a school – in many ways a rather topsy-turvy St Richard’s, where everything was not quite as it seemed. The (murdered) Headmaster was played by our own perfectly-cast Headmaster, Mr Cheesman; the mad Science teacher was played by our own highly intelligent, mildly off-the-wall Science teacher, Boz; and the ‘devilishly handsome’ PE coach was played by our own ‘devilishly handsome’ PE coach, Hardy.

I think it’s fair to say that that is where the similarities between stage and real life end.  On stage, the Headmaster was a philandering Headmaster wanted dead by all his staff; his wife, played by the charming Mrs Pearson, was rather keen on the afore-mentioned PE teacher; the brilliantly ill-educated English teacher, played by Mrs Whitney, thankfully turned out not to be an English teacher at all but a spy (she would, no doubt, have attributed the above misquote to Wordsworth !); the secretary, played by a seductive Pip Jones, and her dim but endearing brother, played perfectly by Mr Jones (no relation in real life despite the name), turned out to be the culprits behind the whole plot.


Murder took place, so exit the Headmaster and enter the very humorous Inspector Spence (aka Mr Ashton).  Reading (actually ‘listening’) between his lines we got an amusing  running commentary on his outlook on wives, life, the staff room and more.  However, he succeeded in guiding a very small portion of the bewildered audience towards the solution and congratulations must go to the Hawkins/Singleton/Archer team who correctly solved the murder.



Members of the audience were rewarded for their efforts to solve the mystery with wine to start with (if this was meant to stimulate the brain cells it didn’t work for most of us !) and a delicious curry supper midway.  But there was no time to relax during supper as we had to write down our solution for the murder (with reasons), concoct a humorous solution and also solve a general knowledge quiz.  Further congratulations must go to the Bell team who won the both the humorous solution and the general knowledge (on the tie-breaker, [written with feeling !]).



As always, enormous thanks to Mrs Cheesman and her crew – a superb and often hilarious performance which was hugely enjoyed by young and old alike. Thanks, too, to Caroline for the delicious supper and Amy for doing the lighting and keeping the cast happily fed and watered throughout.

With thanks to Clare Williams Photography for the photographs