The Clue/Cluedo Mansion

I have blogged before about Clue/Cluedo, in fact I did a post in French about it last year. So Cluedo, or Clue as we call it in America, was my favourite board game as a child. I always played Colonel Mustard, for various trivial reasons: I loved the dark yellow colour of the pawn, yellow was in fact one of my favourite colour as a child, I thought a military officer was a cool alter ego, and I always loved mustard. He was also the male character that moved earlier in the game, he was second after Miss Scarlet.

But I am not blogging about the characters today. After I blogged about English countryside and crime last week, I just thought about the Cluedo Mansion. THE Mansion. As a child, I thought it was the coolest place ever and the best hideout for a badguy, the best setting for a crime, the best place to spend a weekend too. All rolled into one. I have stopped reading whodunits years ago, but I remember what got me into them when I was younger. It was not the stereotypical characters but the setting, those remote English houses. And I received this image of them from Clue. The mansion or manor (what is the difference?) has many rooms set for leasure: the library, the ball room, the billiard room. It has a piano, so if one of the guests can play you have music, or in my case someone to accompany me while I sing. And it has secret passages! More than one, which is against Ronald Knox's Ten commandments of Detective Fiction. But this is game and wish fulfilment, not "proper" crime fiction, so the place is allowed such abundance of secret passages. It is really a dream house, especially if you have a dark side...