Timetable Affair

「レールの上を走れる電車は走らない電車よりもいい電車」

『クビキリサイクル』 

"A train which runs on rails is still better than a train which doesn't run at all."

"The Kubikiri Cycle"

This is a very odd (e-book) cover: it has the text you usually find on the back of a book, on the front!

Disclosure: I translated Ayukawa's short story collection The Red Locked Room. Advertisement: if you haven't bought the book yet, please do!

As a Japanese puppet state located in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia, Manchukuo had a very international population, which of course brought its own set of troubles when it came to fighting crime. Inspector Onitsura is one of the many Japanese police detectives who has been posted in the city of Dalian and one day, he is put on the case of the murder on the Russian Ivan Petrov. The man lived all on his own in a secluded place, but was known to be quite wealthy. He had no family of his own, but his deceased siblings all had children, and he has taken good care of his three cousins Anton, Nicolai and Alexander. But as of late, things didn't go smooth between the three cousins and their uncle, as Ivan was a far too-proud Russian and wouldn't allow for his cousins to marry non-pure Russians. This obviously gave all three of them a good reason for killing the old man. At first, Onitsura may think it's an easy job, but to his great surprise he finds that all three cousins have perfect alibis for the time of the murder: Anton was travelling across the country by train and was seen several times by various witnesses, Nicolai went to collect research materials at a local farmer and Alexander had been on a date with his fiancée the whole day. One of them must be lying, but who? That is the question that drives the plot of Ayukawa Tetsuya's debut novel Petrov Jiken ("The Petrov Affair" 1950).

If you have read the introduction by Ashibe Taku in Ayukawa's The Red Locked Room, you might remember there's quite a tale behind the debut of Ayukawa, a person who would become one of the most important figures in the history of puzzle plot mysteries in Japan. Ayukawa had been brought up in Manchukuo, as his father worked for the Manchurian railways. He had written his first novel (Petrov Jiken) there, but his family had to flee Manchukuo when World War II intensified, and he lost the manuscript during that chaos. And even after re-writing the story and winning a competition with it after the war, luck still wasn't on Ayukawa's side, as financial problems at the publisher again proved to be an obstacle. But after all of that, Petrov Jiken finally did get published, and it's very much a story like you'd expect from Ayukawa.

For when you think of Inspector Onitsura, you think of mystery stories revolving around perfect alibis that need to be cracked, and that's also true in Onitsura's first appearance. All three of Onitsura's suspects have perfect alibis that depend on very different elements, so not only does he need to figure out which of them could've been faked, he also has to dig deeper to see whether the fact a person faked an alibi also means they killed old Petrov. The story's setting is definitely what makes Petrov Jiken an interesting read: not surprisingly, this is the very first novel I've ever read that is set in Manchukuo, and the region around Dalian makes for a captivating locale. The fact that Ayukawa grew here is definitely noticable, and the city truly comes alive within the pages of this book. Dalian has a very international population, and one of the earliest scenes that stands out involves local policemen not being being able to speak all of the many languages used around here: some may speak Japanese, but no Russian or Chinese, and the customs and 'common sense' of the various people living here is also of importance to the mystery plot: some of the minor mysteries Onitsura manages to solve depend on unspoken, yet important cultural differences which create interesting and even ingenious problems. None of this is necessary knowledge to solve the big questions, so as a reader, I just thought it was educational and amusing to see such ideas pass by. There's some cultural stereotyping here, but on the whole Ayukawa portrays an interesting international cast in an international setting that is now nothing but a memory of the past, as Manchukuo doesn't exist anymore of course (the cities themselves of course still exist).

One of the witnesses's alibis depends on his trip by train, and of course: everyone associates Ayukawa with trains nowadays. In this case, the most interesting note to mention is that Ayukawa apparently made use of actual railway schedules of that time while planning out this character's trip across Manchukuo. I like mystery stories that incorporate real railway schedules, like Matsumoto's Ten to Sen. The little maps of the railways and Dalian itself in the book also help you in making you imagine how the setting must've looked like. Oh, and in case you thought I spoiled something substantial by mentioning fake alibis and trains here: not only is it Ayukawa's MO, let's say everyone has something to hide here and there's definitely more here than just 'haha, his alibi was fake because he took another train.' It's certainly not only the character on the train who has a perfect alibi that is not really perfect.

Though that brings me to the point of the length of the plot. As a novel, Petrov Jiken is definitely not long at all. But it does feel very slow, too slow even. Perhaps it's the very methodological structure that reminds of Crofts (Ayukawa was obviously inspired by Crofts), where you have a chapter about the investigation of X's alibi followed by a chapter about the investigation of Y's alibi followed a chapter about the investigation of Z's alibi, and then again with chapters about Onitsura trying to break each alibi in subsequent chapters. But I also have the idea that some ideas seen in this novel would've worked better as a short story. Perhaps it's because I'm more used to seeing Ayukawa as a short story writer (though I have read a few of his railway novels), but especially the core idea of this novel would've perhaps make even more of an impression if it had been standalone and with a more focused plot. In Petrov Jiken, it appears Ayukawa had an interesting core idea for a perfect alibi, but then tried to be even cleverer than his own idea: the final solution ultimately falls a bit flat because Ayukawa's attempt at outsmarting the core idea doesn't really work and doesn't feel satisfying after all we've read until then. Perhaps this is because it was Ayukawa's first novel and he wanted to outsmart everyone, even himself, but I think the novel would've been more satisfying if he had more confidence in the core trick he came up with and gone 100% with that.

Petrov Jiken is everything you'd expect from an Inspector Onitsura story by Ayukawa, featuring unbreakable alibis and a very original setting, but you can also tell it's his debut novel, as some of the concepts shown here are that of a person who is perhaps too eager to be cleverer than everyone, including himself, resulting in an ending that isn't nearly as satisfying as some of the other ideas he has shown in the book earlier. Obviously, I read this book after translating The Red Locked Room, but I have also read a lot more Ayukawa stories/novels besides the ones I translated, and I think that's perhaps for the best. Petrov Jiken is not a bad mystery by any means, but it's not as keenly thought out or focused as some of Ayukawa's other output. Interesting read if you're already into Ayukawa and want to see how he started!

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也『ペトロフ事件』