Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl
And if the bowl had been stronger
My song had been longer
Anyone read The Poe Clan? Not a formal mystery tale, but I really like the Cock Robin story there...
All the short stories in this series are patterned after Mother Goose rhymes, and the title story of this book is themed after one of the best known ones. Dare ga Cock Robin wo Korosou ga - Kidd Pistols no Saitei no Kikan also has the English title Who Killed Cock Robin, I Don't Care and introduces us to Robin Cockrill (Count Manford), and his wife "Lady Dove" Sophia. Dr. Bull is visiting his former student Cockrill, who has a collection of weapons. The Manford Manor consists of a main building flanked on both sides by two towers, but all parts are not directly connected. As impoverished nobels, the manor's maintenance is subsidized, though in return, they have to receive viewers a few times per week. Cockrill's weapon collection is therefore found on the top floor of one of the towers, while the corresponding room in the other tower showcases the family jewelry. While Cockrill and his wife are showing Dr. Bull, Kidd and Pink the jewelry exhibition room, the count explains he's been into Japanese archery lately. But unable to grasp the spiritual aspect of Japanese archery, Cockrill has been having arguments with his teacher Robert Jakuemon Komadori lately, so they made a bet. Jakuemon is to fire an arrrow from the weapons exibition room in the other tower into the jewelry exhibition room to prove his skill. Given that the distance is over a hundred meters, it's very unlikely he could pull it off, and indeed, the experiment seems to fail. As an archer's courtesy however, Cockrill also fires an arrow back to the other tower. When the party decides to go to the weapon's exhibition room however, they find it locked from the inside. The door is broken down, and inside the room they find Jakuemon dead, with an arrow in his body. It seems impossible that anyone could've shot Jakuemon with an arrow as he was high up in this room, but Cockrill seems intent on claiming his arrow must've actually crossed the hundred meters to kill his master. That also seems very unlikely, but how was Jakuemon then killed so high up?
A story that didn't turn out as great as I had hoped it would be. The very limited circle of suspects makes it easy to guess who's probably the guilty party (especially after a certain intermezzo), and once you know that, it's also fairly easy to guess how the impossible murder was committed. The trick behind that is also predictable for fans of the genre. I guess the most interesting part was seeing how the story included the parts of the Who Killed Cock Robin rhyme as a story theme, but as a standalone mystery tale, we've seen much better locked room mysteries in this series.
Alibi no Awa or Bubbles of Alibi is a very short story, set outside Parallel Britain for a change. As the various Masters of Detective have been taking the credit for Kidd's exploits, it didn't take that much pressure for Kidd and Pink to blackmail their boss to give them an extended holiday. While enjoying their vacation in a holiday resort in Australia however, the two punk detectives are asked by the owner (a friend of their boss) to assist in a murder investigation. Chiang was a wealthy businessman who was having a holiday with his adopted triplet sons. Their three brothers each run a different branch of the Chiang empire, but they had messed up big, and Chiang was going to have them know about that really good during their stay here. When Chiang's body was found dead on board of their cruiser, it was only natural his sons became the main suspects, but they have an alibi. While their father remained on the cruiser, the three sons were out scuba diving and at the time of the murder, they were staying in one of the various "underwater houses" of this resort, providing a place for divers to rest up a bit at the bottom of the sea. While the brothers are indeed seen on the security footage of the underwater house, it appears there are always only two of them simultaneously on the screen as they walked around in the house, which gives the police the idea that one of them committed the murder on the cruiser, while the other two pretended to be three for the camera. The solution is very simple, with a simple slip of the tongue, and ultimately, there's very little that makes this short tale stand out.
In Kyouso to Shichin no Nyoubou no Nanabukuro no Naka no Neko or Gur, Seven Wives and Cats in Seven Sacks, Dr. Bull, Kidd and Pink are on their way to St. Ives when they are stopped at the outskirts of Capeville, right in front of the lonely nine-mile road leading to St. Ives. Asking around, they learn that there's a small sect in St. Ives called The Lost Sheep, led by a certain Ferchi. Seven women (and their children) live with him, and all consider them Ferchi's wives. The women's families obviously want to save the women from Ferchi and have formed a little group to watch Ferchi's every step, though legally, there's little they can do. However, today's different, as the team in St. Ives saw him leaving town in his big truck, and more importantly, they saw children in the back in sacks. Having an excuse now to arrest him for child abuse, the group arranges with the Capeville police to have him detained the moment his car arrives there. The nine-mile road from St. Ives to Capeville is just one long stretch, flanked on one side by the Dover Sea, and on the other side by a steep cliff, a remnant of old mining days. With men on both sides of the road, Ferchi has no way to go. But after an hour, Ferchi's truck still hasn't arrived in Capeville, so curious, the men decide to check the road out, only to find a crashed truck around the midway point. While Ferchi and some of the women are around, the group is surprised to learn there's no sign of the children. Ferchi claims there never were children in sacks in his car, and shows that while he had sacks in his truck, they were filled with cats (which they were going to bring to a shelter) and litter sand. The men in St. Ives know they saw and heard children though when the truck left St. Ives though, so where are they know?
Interesting story in the sense that the solution of the disappearing children is fairly simple to think off, especially after one fairly crude piece of foreshadowing, as well as the set-up for the conclusion where Dr. Bull makes a very short lecture about impossible disappearances. But I really like how it's all fleshed out into a full story. The misdirection with the sacks filled with cats is absolutely brilliant and fits wonderfully with the solution of the disappearance. It's a story that is designed to be very fair, I think, with perhaps a bit too obvious clewing, but I've rather have that than a story that genuinely assumes you to think of the most ridiculous things based one minor clue and then pretends it's being fair. And there's even a nice surprising endgame to the story, which makes this tale overall the most consistent and tightly-plotted story of the whole collection.
Nezumi ga Mimi wo Sumasu Toki (When Mice Listen) is another short one. Kidd, Pink and Dr. Bull are enjoying a performance by the band Three Blind Mice, featuring three blind musicians. Their old manager "Cat Fish" who made off with their money some years ago has returned, having learned Three Blind Mice is going to sign a record deal and still in possession of their (valid) contract. During the performance, Cat Fish is killed, but how could any of the three blind man have done that? The trick... is not pure science-fiction perhaps and can work in some contexts, but even despite the admittedly well-intended attempts by Yamaguchi to ease the reader into the conclusion, the trick behind the murder still feels out-of-there.
Interestingly enough, Chou Kodomotachi no Ansokujitsu or A Sabbath of Super Children feels fairer, despite it actually featuring supernatural elements. In this story Kidd and Pink are reunited with the Master of Detective Beverly Lewis (from The 13th Detective). Beverly has received a letter by "Monday," one of the children living the Royal Research Laboratory for the Supernatural. This institution researches children with supernatural powers like telepathy and teleportation. Some months earlier, Beverly was investigating rumors of child abuse there, though she could not find any evidence to support those claims. But today she found a note by the child with the code name "Monday" in her inbox, where he pleads for help because he will be murdered at five o'clock on Monday. Beverly, Kidd and Pink travel to the Research Laboratory to see Monday and figure out what's going on. Kidd and Pink learn at this Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters that the children here do indeed have various supernatural powers, ranging from mind reading to psychokinesis. When they're finally ready to meet Monday however, they're told he's in his room. They find his brother Sunday in front of the room, seemingly puzzled by the locked door. When they break the door open, they find Monday has died inside the locked room. An alluring story, as it first presents itself to be a kind of locked room mystery with a supernatural angle, but you soon learn that the powers of each of the children is fairly limited and can not be used to straight-out create a locked room murder, so then the story changes into something else: how to use each of the children's special abilities to solve the murder? As a standalone locked room murder, this story is nothing special, but once it moves beyond that, it's a really good story that uses the special abilities to do a very different kind of mystery story (explaining it would be spoiling it too) and both the clewing and the misdirection is really good here.
Weird to see actual supernatural powers in this series by the way, though I have always had slight problems envisioning what's possible and not in Parallel Britain. It's supposed to be mostly the same as comtemporary times, but in the videogame adaptation of The 13th Detective (which was how I first got into the series), you also had a talking intelligent robot and stuff like that, so I always imagined Parllel Britain to also be slightly more advanced than ours, or at least a bit different.
Kidd Pistols no Saitei no Kikan is on the whole not a bad collection per se, but I do feel it misses a genuine standout story. The previous volumes all had at least one story that was really worth reading and then some others that were good as "side dishes" to that main course, but this fourth volume doesn't really have a highlight story that feels as a pure must-read. Again, I wouldn't label this volume as a bad mystery collection, just too tame, especially compared to earlier volumes. But anyone who has come this far and is still having fun with Kidd and Pink should also read the fourth volume, and with only one more volume to go, I'll obviously continue reading the adventures of Kidd and Pink.
Original Japanese title(s): 山口雅也『キッド・ピストルズの最低の帰還』:「誰が駒鳥を殺そうが - キッド・ピストルズの最低の帰還」/「アリバイの泡」/「教祖と七人の女房と七袋の中の猫」 /「鼠が耳をすます時」/「超子供たちの安息日」
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