Jasper Fforde
The Locked Room Mystery mystery
‘So who's the victim?’ asked Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, shaking his overcoat of the cold winter rain as he entered Usher Towers. ‘It's Locked Room Mystery,’ explained his amiable sidekick, Detective Sergeant Mary Mary. ‘He was found dead at 7.30pm. But get this: the library had been locked … from the inside.’
‘Locked Room killed inside a locked room, eh?’ murmured Spratt. ‘What was that tired old plot device doing out here anyway? I thought he was at the At the End of The Day retirement home for washed-up old cliches.’
‘It was the Mystery Contrivances Club annual dinner,’ explained Mary. ‘Locked Room was going to be given a long-service award—you know how they like to stick a gong on ideas before they die out completely. Last year it was the Identical Twins plot device.’
‘I always hated that one,’ said Jack.
They stepped into the spacious marble-lined entrance vestibule and a worried-looking individual ran up to them, wringing his hands in a desperate manner.
‘Inspector Spratt!’ he wailed. ‘This is a terrible business. You must help!’
‘Jack,’ said Mary, ‘meet Red Herring, president of the club and owner of Usher Towers.’
‘Perhaps you'd better show me the body,’ said Jack quietly, ‘and tell me what happened.’
‘Of course, of course,’ replied Red Herring, leading them across the vestibule to a large oak-panelled door. ‘We were about to present Locked Room with his award but he'd gone missing. We eventually found his body in the library. I swear, the room was locked, the windows barred, and there is no other entrance.’
‘Hmm,’ replied Spratt thoughtfully. ‘You knew him well?’
‘Locked Room and I have been friends for a long time,’ replied Red Herring, ‘despite the fact that he had an affair with my wife, fleeced me on a property deal in the 60s and has been secretly blackmailing me over my indiscretion with a Brazilian call girl named Conchita.’
‘Conchita, eh?’
‘Damn,’ said Herring. ‘You know about her?’
‘It's my business to know things,’ replied Spratt coolly, ‘I also know, for instance, that this mystery conforms to the Knox Convention.’
‘You mean—?’
‘Right,’ said Jack. ‘There's no chance of someone we've not mentioned turning out to have done it.’
‘That also rules us out as the detectives,’ added Mary, ‘and there must be clues.’
‘And in a story this short,’ continued Jack, ‘some of them might be in italics—so keep a sharp eye out.’
Jack turned back to Red Herring. ‘Who else was in the house at the time?’
Herring thought for a moment and counted the guests off on his fingers: ‘There was myself, Unshakeable Alibi, Cryptic Final Message, Least Likely Suspect, Overlooked Clue, and the butler, Flashback.’
Spratt thought for a moment. ‘Tell everyone to wait in the drawing room and we'll speak to them one by one without a lawyer present and in clear contravention of any accepted police procedures.’
Red Herring departed, and Jack and Mary ducked under the ‘Police line—do not cross’ tape into the library. They cautiously approached the desk where lay the corpse of the old lady, with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off.
‘This MO seems somehow familiar,’ mused Spratt, looking around for a sharp object and finding nothing.
‘Definitely locked from the inside,’ added Mary, having made an impossibly rapid examination of the room. Luckily for them both, the dark-humoured pathologist stereotype was the guest of honour at the Mystery Contrivances Club dinner, and was able to give an improbably precise time of death.
‘About 7.02, give or take nine seconds,’ he said, munching on a sandwich.
The first suspect they spoke to was Unshakeable Alibi, who presented them with a photograph of herself taken earlier that evening—with a clock prominent in the background that read precisely 7.02.
‘You knew Locked Room well?’ asked Spratt.
‘We were both there right at the beginning with Poe's Dupin mysteries,’ she mused. ‘Strange as it may seem now, Inspector, Locked Room was once the brightest star of the genre. He said he was going to make a comeback, but it never happened—it was all a bit sad, to be honest.’