The Chocolate-Covered Contest

"Life is like a box of chocolates."
"Forest Gump"

Oh, wow, are we going from the yellow/brown covers for this series to blue? I love the art!

It's been over a year since I last discussed Ooyama Seiichirou's wonderful The Clockmaker Detective series here, which is perhaps better known nowadays as known as Alibi Kuzushi Uketamawarimasu ("Alibi Cracking, At Your Service"), which is not only the title of the books, but also of the live-action drama series. In January 2024, Ooyama started the third "season" of this series with the online publication of Tokeiya Tantei to Shinnen no Alibi ("The Clockmaker Detective and A New Year's Alibi"), the first story to be included in what should become the third short story collection. It took over a year for Ooyama to publish the second story, but it has now finally arrived,and you can read it for free on the J-Novel site of the publisher (the first story of this season is also still available). The basic premise of each story is of course the same: the unnamed narrator is a police detective who frequents Mitani Clockmakers, which is run by Mitani Tokino, a young woman who inherited the shop from her grandfather. As per her grandfather's instructions, she also offers an alibi cracking service, because alibis are are "time-related" and therefore part of a clockmaker's work. While he understands that passing on confidential information pertaining to police investigations to Tokino is probably not quite legal, and that it could cost him his job, it is also true that Tokino has managed to solve each of the problems he has brought to her, and that her exploits have helped the police immensely, even if his co-workers think it's him who has solved all these cases. Another reason for our narrator to visit Tokino frequently is the woman herself, as he's quite smitten with her and is trying to woo her.

The stories in this third collection seem to be themed after special events this time, for after the murder on New Year's Eve in the first story, this time we have a Valentine's Day-themed story with Tokeiya Tantei to Doku-iri Chocolates no Alibi ("The Clockmaker Detective and the Alibi of the Poisoned Chocolates"). The narrator this time arrives at the shop with some souvenirs from Kyoto for Tokino: his current investigation had brought him to the ancient capital, but with no clear results, he now has turn to Tokino for help. Hirata Yuuichi, a day trader, was been sent a box of poisoned chocolates and he died immediately after consuming one of them: the parcel had just been delivered, and soon after the housekeeper had given the box to Hirata, she heard how her master toppled loudly on the floor, convulsing in pain and by the time the ambulance arrived, it was already too late. The shipping documents on the parcel had been sent by Oohara Arisa, living at an address in Kyoto. The box also came with a letter, stating the chocolates, Miracle du Février, were a Valentine's Day gift. Because it seems a bit unlikely the poisoner would send the chocolates under her own name, the police don't believe the sender information, but when they call the number noted in the sender information section, they are indeed connected to Arisa, who does know Hirata, as she's in his day trading course, but she denies having sent chocolates to him.

The police do investigate her just to be sure, but it seems Arisa can't be the poisoner, as she has an alibi for when the chocolates were posted. The chocolates had been sent via the Kujira courier service, and by tracing the shipping slips, they trace the parcel back to a convenience store in Kyoto: it had been sent from that convenience store on the seventh of Feburary, with instructions for the parcel to be delivered on Valentine's Day. The chocolates meanwhile came from a specialty shop that makes special Valentine's Day chocolates each year, and they start selling at 10 am on the seventh of February. Because all nine chocolates in the box had been injected with poison, the police thinks the box of chocolates could have been posted at the convenience store at about twenty-five past ten at the soonest, considering the time needed to prepare the chocolates and moving from the chocolate shop to the convenience store. Arisa however boarded the Shinkansen train to Fukuoka at 10:32, meeting with a friend inside said train and they were travelling together the following three days. This makes it impossible for her to have sent those chocolates. However, as the investigations continues, the police learns Arisa has been deliberately hiding information from them that gives her a very clear motive for wanting to kill Hirata. But how could she have posted the box of chocolates at a convenience store at Kyoto's Matsugasaki Sakuragi-cho and appear minutes later in the Shinkansen train at Kyoto Station?

I thought Matsugasaki Sakuragi-cho sounded strangely familiar, but that's a part of town I passed by relatively often when I was living in Kyoto! At least, it's basically on one side of the river, while I went almost daily shopping on the other side of the river. And am I overthinking things, or is the name of Inspector Ayuta of the Kyoto police a reference to Ayukawa Tetsuya? You know, Ayukawa ('kawa' being 'river') and Ayuta ('ta' being 'field')...

Anyway, this is an interesting problem! While all of the stories in this series revolve around the seemingly obvious culprit having an alibi for the time of the crime, this is a rather interesting alibi, for the alibi revolves around the time the murder "weapon" was sent to the receiver/victim. Once a parcel is signed and been placed in care of the courier (and in this case, in the care of the convenience store until the courier comes and picks it up), you generally don't have any chance to tamper with it anymore. In this case, the parcel was also sent a full week before it would be delivered, and with a box of special chocolates that were first sold on that very day, so it doesn't appear like the suspect could've tampered with the parcel after she had left it at the convenience store, if she's the murderer. Oh, and it should be clear by now, but this is of course also Ooyama's take on Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case, taking its basic premise, but not (really) doing the multiple solution thing. I really like this problem, while I do think that when a certain fact is mentioned, the reader will likely be pushed very close to the solution, though a lot of the details are not that easy to solve.

In fact, I really, really love one of the clues in this story, one I really think is brilliantly hidden. I had in fact noticed that Ooyama had mentioned something, but at the time I thought that was just a cute detail he had added to flesh out the world, only for that detail to be used in the solution in a very clever way... With a story so much about moving objects, it seems almost silly I completely overlooked that one moving object. Absolutely a killer clue. The way Ooyama uses a rather cliche trope for an alibi trick to create a rather surprising "hidden alibi trick" is also very clever, and it really shows Ooyama has been specializing in these stories for some years now, as he's able to cook with familiar, sometimes even overcooked ingredients and still come up with something fresh.

But now I am wondering what the next story will be. Is it going to be a March story? One story for each month, something like Tokino's Labours of Hercules? But a project like that would probably span two volumes instead of one, similar to Norizuki Rintarou's Horoscope stories, considering the length of the previous books... Anyway, I sure hope the next story won't take over a year to come and that Ooyama'll pick up the pace from now on!

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎「時計屋探偵と毒入りチョコレートのアリバイ」