The Magic Bullet: a Locked Room Mystery by Larry Millett

Author:Larry Millett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4529-3199-9
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The new St. Paul Public Library was a handsome building of pink Tennessee marble that overlooked Rice Park on the western side of downtown. In the main reading room, beneath a graceful row of arched windows, Rafferty found a librarian who knew all about the Collected Papers of the Solvers’ Club, 1915–16, and retrieved the volume from the stacks. Rafferty went to page forty-seven, where he found what Holmes wanted him to read. It was a long essay titled “The Locked Room Mystery: Its Seven Common Types and How to Solve Them.” The author was Dr. Gideon Fell, identified as a “connoisseur of mystery who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.” Rafferty assumed the name was a pseudonym.

Rafferty knew of the Solvers’ Club. Holmes—who else?—had founded it some years earlier and had even written its inaugural paper, a brilliantly reasoned essay titled “A Comparison of English and Continental Shoe Treads.” Holmes had invited Rafferty to join, but he’d politely declined. His investigative style wasn’t especially scientific, and in any event, he knew he’d never have time to read the papers.

Now, he wished he’d taken Holmes up on his offer because the essay on locked room mysteries was dazzling. It broke them down into distinctive types, each with its own colorful name. “Out of Time” concerned cases in which the murder occurred much earlier than appearances suggested. “Down and Dazed” covered crimes in which the victim was somehow incapacitated before being killed. “Revenge by Suicide” told how acts of self-destruction could be staged as homicides. “Gas, Guns, and Goonies” dealt with killing agents—chemical, mechanical, or animal—secretly introduced into the locked room, as in Holmes’s celebrated case of “The Speckled Band.” “Disguised for Death” centered on all manner of masquerades used to confuse the locked room investigator. “Last Wrongs” focused on murders committed during or after the supposed discovery of the body.

But it was the seventh and longest chapter—“Tricks and Tampering”—that Rafferty found most instructive. It offered an exhaustive analysis of how a room, even one as seemingly impregnable as Dodge’s office, could be penetrated by means that ranged from the surprisingly simple to the amazingly complex. None of the tricks fit the exact circumstances of Dodge’s murder. Even so, the chapter opened Rafferty’s mind to new possibilities.

When he got back to the tavern, he told Thomas, “I’m beginnin’ to see how the thing could have been done. ‘Tis possible we’ve been lookin’ in the wrong direction all along.”

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