The Locked Room

 Liar Liar 嘘も誠も 

Tell me Tell me 見えなくなるよ

「Face Down」（嵐）

Liar Liar  / I lose sight of

Tell me Tell me / Both lies and the truth

"Face Down" (Arashi)

Huh, I managed to read this book in one day. I've been a very, very slow reader lately, so kinda surprised by that, but then again, this was a great book.

It was many years ago when a friend recommended the author Kishi Yuusuke to me, and while in hindsight I'm pretty sure she didn't even recommend him as a mystery writer (as he also writes horror), man, I was quite impressed by his locked room mystery The Glass Hammer and it got me hooked on the Security Consultant Detective Enomoto Kei series. Enomoto Kei runs the shop Forewarned & Forearmed, which sells anything concerning crime prevention, ranging from locks to security cameras. When the attorney Junko first met Enomoto, she found his expertise in cracking a triple-layered locked room mystery indispensible, though after a while she also started to suspect that the man was in fact a thief himself, as his expertise on how to get into a secured room was a bit too practical. Nonetheless, Enomoto has become a very useful man to know, as Junko's been getting more and more cases where her client wants her to prove that what appears to be a suicide or an accident in a sealed room, was in fact a locked room murder. In the third book of the series Kagi no Kakatta Heya ("The Locked Room", 2011), Enotomo and Junko find themselves working on four different locked room mysteries.

The title Kagi no Kakatta Heya might sound familiar to the television-viewing audience here: when the Security Consultant Detective Enomoto Kei series was adapted as a television series in 2012, the series was titled Kagi no Kakatta Heya, after this third book. The series was based on all three books which were out at the time (The Glass Hammer, Kitsunebi no Ie and Kagi no Kakatta Heya: a fourth book was released last year). This series was absolutely fantastic by the way and a must-see for fans of locked room mysteries. The locked room mysteries of this series are in general already great, but the TV drama really managed to give the whole thing something extra. What was especially amazing was that for each episode, they made little scale models of the crime scenes, which Enomoto used to explain his various theories of how the locked room murder was done. It was also followed by a good TV special one year later. Anyway, I think I purchased a copy of the short story collection Kagi no Kakatta Heya soon after watching the TV series, but as I already knew the stories from the TV adaptation, I figured I'd read it later, after I'd ve forgotten most of the details. So now, in 2018, I finally decided to read Kagi no Kakatta Heya.

The book opens with Tatazumu Otoko ("The Standing Man"), which was incidently also the basis for the first episode of the TV series. Enomoto and Junko are asked to see whether an apparent suicide couldn't have been a murder. The CEO of an undertaker's had indeed been suffering from cancer, so the notion of him deciding to commit suicide wasn't too farfetched on its own, but there were still many questions. The man was found inside a small villa in the mountains, where he had been working. The room in which he had been found was completely sealed: the four French windows had all been locked (one of which broken when they first discovered the body), and the only door to the room had been practically sealed: a table had been moved so close to the door, which just enough space for the victim to be sitting there with his knees up and his back to the door. At the other end of the table, a sofa had also been placed. With the door being blocked by the victim, a table and a sofa in that order, no murderer could've left through the door, which itself was also covered by a large white sheet and flanked by flowers and a scroll with a Buddhist text, all invoking a traditional funeral service. As there was also a last will found on the table, the police have no other reason to believe that this was a suicide, but the lawyer of the victim is convinced it was a murder, committed by the victim's cousin and also the man who together with the laywer first discovered the body. A young witness who thinks he saw the murderer standing in the room however seems to be the key to solving this mystery.

An excellent opening story. As with most of the short stories in this series, the whodunnit is quite obvious and not even remotely hidden, but it's the question of how it was done that's really a brain teaser. The goal of the murderer is revealed very early on to have this case closed as a suicide, so they really did their best making sure that it couldn't be anything else but a suicide. With both a sheet and the victim themselves blocking the door directly, and a table and a sofa also preventing the door from opening wide, it really does seem impossible for the murderer to escape the room and it's both a delight and a disappointment when you see another of your ideas shot down like a lame bird. The actual solution to the conundrum is brilliantly hinted at through two seperate clues and very plausible. It might require slightly specific knowledge, though it's something mystery fans are likely to know about, so I can definitely live with that.

Kagi no Kakatta Heya ("The Locked Room") is the title story, and starts with the story of Aiichirou, a former sneak thief who had just spent five years in prison for an unintended murder during one of his outings. His sister died during those five years, but he wasn't able to go to the service, as he didn't want his nephew and niece know that he's a criminal. Now he's free, he's finally able to go visit his brother-in-law and see his beloved nephew and niece, but something is wrong: his nephew won't come out of his room, and it is locked from the inside with a new lock. After drilling a hole in the door, Aiichirou manages to use his old tools of the trade to open the lock from the inside, only to find out that the door has been taped tightly to the wall. Eventually, Aiichirou, brother-in-law and niece manage to get inside the room, but they are too late, as they find Aiichirou's nephew has committed suicide through mono-dioxide with the help of a barbecue inside his room. While Aiichirou, as a master thief who can open any lock, knows the door he opened was properly locked and taped down when he opened it, he still suspects his nephew's death was no suicide, and the suspect is his brother-in-law, who is not the biological father of the two children, but as Aiichirou doesn't know how it was done, he decides to ask his old friend Enomoto for help.

Again a masterpiece: with the door and windows locked and taped down, and the expert testimony of a thief who specialized in opening locks, it seems like this couldn't have been anything but a suicide, but it's of course murder. But how?! Like in the previous story, some rudimentary knowledge of science is quite handy, especially as the necessary piece of knowledge is not really well hinted at this time (if you don't know it, you'll only learn about this at the conclusion), but it's a gem, and also perfectly designed, with every single element in the story serving a clear purpose. What makes this a surprisingly devious scheme is that in a different setting, the solution might be easily guessed at. However, set in a normal house, in the room of a teenager, this solution isn't likely to come up in your head any time soon. 

In Yuganda Hako ("The Crooked Box"), a teacher is all set to marry with his collegue and move into their new home, but there's one problem: their newly built home is a total disaster. A small earthquake (which happen fairly often in Japan) has revealed a whole list of fatal flaws in the house, as the far too weak concrete foundation has cracked, resulting in a crooked house: the living room has a horrible slant which also collects all the leaking water in a corner, the doors don't fit in their frames anymore and the kitchen might collapse. He decides to kill the contractor, who denies any blame, as his aunt, who is the vice-president of the company, will no doubt build a new home for him. He dresses the death like an accident, by making it seem like the man slipped and hit his head while in the living room. We don't get to see how the teacher manages this, so we are only presented with the result, which is a true locked room mystery: the windows were covered in plastic sheets taped to the wall from the inside, the door to the kitchen was kept closed at all times and taped off carefully because it had become a supporting wall due to the shifting foundation, and the door to the hallway wasn't exactly locked, but simply jammed stuck into the framework: the doors of the house didn't fit the frames anymore, so to "close" the door, one needed to kick, punch, hit and push the doors at multiple spots to get them inside the framework, and this could only be done from inside. The living room was thus a locked space, so how did the teacher escape from this room?

I vividly remember the TV adaptation of this story, and again, it was absolutely fantastic. The introduction of a certain object used in the story could've used a bit more build-up, but the way the murderer managed to create this locked room is absolutely brilliant. It has some parallels with the solution of the Detective Conan episode Noroi no Kamen wa Tsumetaku Warau, though still very different. What I realize now as I write this is that Kishi also manages to use very different kind of solutions even though these first three stories are very alike in concept: namely simply a locked room. There's no question of whodunnit, and each story is solely about how the murderer managed to create a locked room. While all the solutions are very mechanically inclined, they all focus on different elements in the room, and nothing is reused or redressed. In terms of "visualization", I'd say both this story, or the opening story Tatazumu Otoko came out really well in the TV adaptation, and I'd certainly recommend at least these two stories from this collection.

The last story in this collection is Misshitsu Gekijou ("Locked Room Theater"), which is a sequel to Inu Nomizo Shiru DOG KNOWS in the previous short story collection. Enomoto and Junko solved a murder within a theater groupe back then, and this time, they are invited to see ES&B's latest play: Yonder Bird. It's the most horrible play Junko has ever, ever witnessed, but at the end of the play, a performer who starred in the pre-show with three other performers is found dead in one of the dressing rooms. The problem is that the murderer couldn't have escaped from the crime scene: the victim was found in the dressing room to the left of the stage, and the hallway with the dressing room in question only has two exits: either to the lobby (where someone was standing watch all the time), or the stage itself. The troupe members of ES&B all came from the dressing rooms on the right side of the stage, meaning that the only persons "free" to kill the victim were the three other performers in the pre-show. Yet not one of them could've left the crime scene without being seen by either the people in the lobby, or the audience and the actors on stage. Enomoto however says he can solve the case in a mere thirty minutes.

Like Inu Nomizo Shiru DOG KNOWS, Misshitsu Gekijou has a different tone from the other stories, which is distinctly more nonsensical and focused on comedy. And once again, I have admit I didn't really like the comedy here. The humor just doesn't work for me. The solution to the locked room murder is also a bit hard to swallow: I can definitely see it work in a smaller scale, but it's not likely to work in reality and in this particular situation, even if it's a fairly well-hinted solution that works well in the general setting.

Kagi no Kakatta Heya was overall an excellent short story collection though that provided some fantastic locked room mysteries. Even though I knew these stories already from the TV adaptation, I really enjoyed reading them, and I had forgotten just enough about them to be still surprised by some of them. I know a fourth book in this series, Mystery Clock, is already out, though I'm still waiting for the paperback pocket version to be released, but I'll be sure to read it once it's out!

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介『鍵のかかった部屋』：「佇む男」/「鍵のかかった部屋」/「歪んだ箱」/「密室劇場」