1920s Speakeasy · 2026-07-15
The gin is cold, the jazz is loud — tonight the Gilded Cage loses its canary.
The Gilded Cage Speakeasy is a 1920s murder mystery game set in a Prohibition-era jazz club. Behind a tailor's shop, down twelve steps, the Gilded Cage pours the smoothest gin of Prohibition. Its headliner is Vivienne "The Canary" LaRue — singer, secret part-owner, keeper of its real ledger. On the last Saturday of June 1926, she finishes her second set, steps into her dressing room, and never comes out.
She is found at her mirror, one small-caliber wound, the shot swallowed by the night's loudest jazz number. The alley door was barred from inside; every other exit passes the hat-check. Whoever fired walked back into the crowd for the encore.
Rumor had already reached the bar: Vivienne was seen near the federal building. The ledger came out of the safe missing its final page. Five regulars kept a page in that book or a place in her life — one is drinking on a lie.
Headline singer and secret part-owner
Thirty-four, a chorus girl who sang from tent circuits to top billing, then quietly bought a third of it. She kept the second ledger — every case of whiskey, every payoff, every debt. Three nights before she died, she told the barman she was "done singing for thieves."
Owner of the Gilded Cage
Tailored smile, majority share, the public face of the club. The ledger, people whisper, tracks money that left and reached no one. Silk spent the number greeting an alderman at the door — who remembers no greeting.
Bandleader
Four years writing Vivienne's arrangements — at least three of them, the waiters say, in love with her. That night he tore up the setlist and called the loudest number at eleven sharp. For the dancers, he insists.
Liquor supplier
His trucks fill the cellar; his patience keeps the club alive. The ledger shows three payments behind. Vico swears he never goes past the bar — yet his brand of cigarette sat in the dressing-room ashtray.
Cigarette girl
Vivienne's protégée, rehearsing the Canary's numbers in the cellar after hours. She kept the dressing room's only spare key on a ribbon at her neck. When the police asked, the ribbon was there — the key was gone.
Vice sergeant and regular
Drinks free at the rail — the torn page, the whisper goes, listed what kept his raids polite. Off duty and in the room when the shot came, yet three witnesses put him on the back stairs, badge in hand.
Case Status
UNSOLVED
The killer's identity is sealed inside the case engine — it is generated live when your investigation begins, and no two investigations unfold the same way. The only path to the truth runs through the interrogation room.
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