The Mystery at Lilac Inn

「Aの予感」

『名探偵コナン　14番目の標的』

 

"A sign of 'A'"

"Detective Conan: The Fourteenth Target"

Like the two Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de volumes and Kagi no Kakatta Heya last month, we have a novel today I had been postponing for several years now because I already knew the contents in some way.

The Villa Lilac was once the home of a wealthy merchant, but after his suicide, the house in the mountains of Chichibu fell in the hands of the Japan Art Academy, which offered the facility to its students. One day, the caretaker and his wife welcome a group of seven students who are to stay a few days in the Villa Lilac. The Japan Art Academy is the result of a recent fusion between a music academy and an art (as in paintings) academy, and the background difference between these schools is also reflected in members of the colorful group, who don't really all get along with each other. Part of that is because of professional rivalry, but human emotions also play a role: the first night Tachibana and Salome announce their engagement to the others, which shocks at least three people heavily. The change in atmosphere is clear, and small, but strange happening occur afterwards, like a raincoat being stolen and all the spades being taken from a deck of cards. The following day, a local charcoal burner is found dead near the villa, with the stolen raincoat. At first, the police thought it was murder, but the fact the Ace of Spades was found near the body raised some questions. But they could never have expected that more deaths would follow in the Villa Lilac, and besides every body a Spade is found, counting up as the number of murders increase in Ayukawa Tetsuya's Lila Sou Jiken ("The Villa Lilac Case", 1959).

Ayukawa Tetsuya (1919-2002) was an influential post-war mystery writer and editor who specialized in classic puzzle plot mysteries. Lila Sou Jiken is one of his best known novels (Kuroi Trunk is probably the best known) and actually one I already sorta knew before I even read this book! For long, long ago, I read the short story Jubaku Saigen, which served as the prototype for Lila Sou Jiken. While a lot was changed, with complete sections omitted or changed (the setting for example was from Kumamoto to Chichibu) and the overall backstory quite different, one can still recognize the core plot of Jubaku Saigen in Lila Sou Jiken, although one of the more remarkable elements is missed, as Jubaku Saigen was also a crossover between Ayukawa's two best-known detectives Inspector Onitsura and the private detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou, while in Lila Sou Jiken, it's only Hoshikage who appears at the end of the novel to explain everything.

Given the premise, it shouldn't surprise the reader Lila Sou Jiken is breathing classic puzzle plot mystery from every single page. Seven students (and two caretakers) staying at a mountain villa who are killed one by one is as classic a set-up as you can get, and with a prop like the playing cards being placed beside every body, you know somethings fishy is going on. People who have read The Decagon House Murders will certainly notice the influence Lila Sou Jiken had on Ayatsuji, with the students gathering at a remote location, the cracks of the friendship between the students showing and even a scene where they play cards together. A lot of people die over the course of this story, which is even a bit unbelievable considering the fact that after the first couple of murders, the police is at the scene to keep an eye out on the situation, and even then people die, and even then the police doesn't allow the students to move to a safer place for the time being. Anyway, many murders happen, but interestingly enough, they all get killed in different manners, and that is also a driving mystery of the plot: why is the murderer being so varied?

As you read this novel though, you might notice that Ayukawa's writing is a bit... dry. One can feel that he was focusing everything on constructing a tightly plotted whodunnit, but the result is that a lot of the events feel rather abrupt and sudden, brought to the reader just as a matter of fact. Like I mentioned, you'd expect the students, and certainly the police to react a bit more, either emotionally or with action, to the fact a serial murder is in the house and committing murders while the police's there, but the narrative brings each subsequent murder just as 'oh yeah, that happened.' The novel's not short, and the string of events that happen, but don't really happen to the characters can feel rather long because of that. Usually, when a new murder or some new mystery occurs in a novel, you're given all kinds of new information to process, or new clues that either bring new light to prior events or manage to muddle things even more, but in Lila Sou Jiken, most of it feels like discrete events happening one after another, with each subsequent event not having much effect on previous events, so by the end of the novel, you might feel a bit tired. There's variation in the murder methods, but besides that, it's just reading on as you're given new murders every few pages.

So how does Lila Sou Jiken fare as a whodunnit? I'd say this is a well plotted and complex mystery, that does suffer a bit from the aforementioned lack of real effect and consequence shown to the reader. Looking solely at the core plot, one can see Ayukawa's skill: a lot of ideas and tricks are utilized for the murders, and all of them are used very competently. One particular, physical clue I liked especially, as it's so obvious in hindsight once you think about it as it's part of everybody's daily life. Other parts of the mystery are well-done, but a bit dependent on trivia: the clue that explains how a certain poisoning was done is really impossible to get unless you just happen to know one certain, obscure fact. There's another gimmick that Ayukawa often likes to use I think (I have certainly seen it in another of his short stories), that was handled pretty well, with multiple, diverse clues that help the reader deduce a certain fact in a fair way (one clue wouldn't be fair perhaps: multiple yes). But the plot does feel a bit sterile: each event is given little time to really settle, and with so many things going on, nothing really gets a chance to stand out. A lot of these ideas would've worked very good in short story whodunnits, but now they're thrown into one novel (even if connected in a believable way), weakening the impact of each seperate element. I think you have material here for three excellent short stories, but with this novel, you know that each part is pretty smart, and that they are still connected in a meaningful way, but you still wonder, perhaps the sum of everything isn't equal or more than the parts.

That is not to say that Lila Sou Jiken is a badly plotted mystery novel, as it really isn't. Most authors would kill to come up with something as tightly plotted as this. But having read my share of Ayukawa novels and short stories, I feel that this book wasn't as "novel-like" as his other novels. That said though, Lila Sou Jiken is an impressively structured whodunnit mystery that is as classic as you can get. Lila Sou Jiken isn't considered as one of Ayukawa's best known novels for nothing, and for those who really enjoy a traditional puzzler, this is a no-brainer.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也『りら荘事件』