Epilogue: Three Years and One Month After Japan's First Locked Room Murder
Riria's escape from the hotel was captured on the security camera on the gate. But where she went from there, we don't know. The bridge was still down, so she probably went into the forest like Yashiro. Whether she was alive or dead was still unknown. The police and media were still searching for the national actress-slash-murderer.
As for Shitsuri Mitsumura, she isn't being hounded by the media after having her locked room trick exposed. In fact, she was living a peaceful life. Mitsumura had said that the trick used in Yashiro's murder was the same one she'd used in the past. But thinking about it calmly, that was impossible. That trick could only be used in the library, which could only be opened with the master key. If the trick had been used in a room that did have its own key, that key would have had to have been left behind at the scene. And the first discoverers would have confirmed whether or not that key was genuine. But since the door to the crime scene was replaced with another door, the real key wouldn't have been able to lock it. As a result, the key would be mistaken for a fake, and the locked room would collapse.
However, if the correct key wasn't left in the room, it would be impossible to establish that a locked room had been committed at all. That was because in most cases, a locked room is only possible if all the keys that can lock it are inside the room.
That was why you couldn't use the door swapping trick on a room that had its own key. And in the case where Mitsumura's father was murdered, the real key was found at the scene.
When I asked her about that as we left the House of Snow, she shrugged and said “I misunderstood.” I don't know if she really did misunderstand something or if she was just teasing me.
But I'll probably never see her again. We didn't exchange contact information, so there was no way we could meet up. It's a sad, lonely thing I regret to this day.
When I returned to school after winter break, there was a lot of talk about a transfer student joining the class next door. It seemed she was quite a beauty. When I didn't respond much, my friend insisted “No, I'm serious. Even her name sounds like a beauty's!” “A name like a beauty's?” That was a strange way of putting it. “And what is her name?” “Everyone's saying it's Matsuri Natsumura.”
“Matsuri Natsumura...” It was true that the kanji for “Summer” and “Festival” did sound like a beautiful girl's name. But what else? I'd heard that name somewhere before...
“I'm going to the bathroom real quick,” I told my friend and got out of my seat. “Hey, morning homeroom's starting soon!” my friend said, and I responded with a mysterious bravado “I'll be right back.”
I quickly went to the bathroom. On my way, I saw a teacher walking the other way towards me. It was the homeroom teacher for the next class. Next to him was a girl. She was the new transfer student. She was indeed a beautiful girl, as the rumors said. But I didn't care about that anymore. How good looking she was did not matter right now.
We both gasped at each other. I said one word to her.
“Mitsumura.”
I heard her suck in a breath.
“Who's Mitsumura?” said Mitsumura. “I'm Natsumura.”
No, no matter how you look at it, she's Mitsumura.
I grabbed her hand and took her to the corner of a hallway. We spoke in low voices.
“Who's Natsumura?” “That's my real name.” “No it isn't! What, are you using a fake name?” “Yes, it's a fake name.” “Why are you using a fake name?” “I am famous in certain circles, you know. It's a bit difficult to go to school using my real name.”
She allowed herself a small smile.
“So, call me 'Natsumura' while we're at school.”
I nodded back at her. Then I gave a smile of my own and said,
“But while we're at club, I'll call you Mitsumura.”
Mitsumura tilted her head and asked “What club?” I replied “The literature club. Well, I'm the only member right now, so it might get shut down at any moment.”
Mitsumura gave a “Hmm,” for a moment. Then she laughed and said “Why not just let it be shut down?” I said “I can't let that happen,” and started trying to persuade her to join. I talked about the books that lined the bookshelves and the board games that, for whatever reason, were kept in the club room.
As Mitsumura listened to my sales pitch, she kept going “Hmm, I don't know...” But I had a hunch. I was sure our locked room adventures weren't ending here.
Seeing me talk so passionately, she said “You look happy.” Then she jokingly asked “Happy to see me?”
I tried to avoid answering, but in the end, I told her my honest feelings.
“I am... I'm so, so happy I could see you again.”
Mitsumura rolled her eyes and, somewhat embarrassedly, said “I see.” Then I told her.
“Because I finally saw through your locked room trick.”
“Let me ask you something.”
After school, we gathered in the literature club room. Our first club activity now that Mitsumura had joined was to uncover the truth behind the locked room murder she was said to have committed.
“I'll warn you now, I'm not sure of this,” I said, sitting in a cantilever chair. “It's just one hypothesis that could explain the locked room. So please, take it with a grain of salt.”
“It's lame, suddenly chickening out like that.”
“I'm the type who specializes in dirty deductions.”
“It isn't dirty, it's just uncool.”
We both sat in chairs by the window, facing each other. It was nostalgic, somehow. We used to do this a lot when I was in middle school. Playing Othello, showing each other our stories, talking about nothing...
I cleared my throat.
“Then, first off, let's review the scene. It was a perfect locked room – No gaps in the door large enough to admit even a thread, let alone a key. The windows sealed shut. No duplicate or master keys for the room where the crime took place, and the only key was found in a drawer in the desk next to the body. That drawer, in turn, was locked with a key found in the victim's pocket.”
“The key had a tag with the room number on it, but the room number wasn't engraved on the key itself, so by changing the tag to a different key, it would have been possible to disguise the key to another room as the key to the crime scene. But in reality, that wasn't done. That's because the butler and the maid, the first to find the body, confirmed that the key was genuine. They actually used the key to lock and unlock the door. So, the key in the desk drawer was real, and there's no way it could have been replaced.”
When I finished speaking to the empty air, Mitsumura rolled her eyes.
“Kuzushiro, did you just remember all of that?”
“Well...”
“That's gross. You sound like a stalker.”
She'd expressed her disgust. I was very hurt. She distanced herself from me for a while, but eventually, she got tired and returned to the topic at hand.
“So, what trick did I use?” she asked, leaning forward slightly. “No matter how you look at it, it seems like a perfect locked room.”
I nodded at that.
“It certainly is a perfect locked room. I thought about it, but I couldn't fit it into any of the fifteen classifications of locked room tricks created by the Ministry of Justice. That's why... I thought maybe the sixteenth would work.”
“That's just the door swapping trick again.”
“But that didn't work either. The room where the crime took place has its own key.”
The door swap trick couldn't be used in any room that had its own individual key. I'd already concluded that.
“Then what will you do?” Mitsumura laughed. “In the end, you can't break the locked room after all.”
I laughed, too.
“Oh, but I can. Although it's kind of a cheat.”
“Wait, a cheat?”
“There is no duplicate key to the crime scene – that is the key premise here.”
Mitsumura tilted her head. She stared at me for a while, then ran a hand through her black hair and asked,
“What do you mean?”
“'There is no duplicate key to the crime scene.' I'm not going to overturn that premise. I'm just going to interpret it in a way that's more beneficial to me. You could call it a loophole in the rules. That's why it might be a cheat.”
Mitsumura seemed interested in my theory. She smiled slightly, but looked straight at me as she said:
“Then I have to ask, how do you interpret that premise, Kuzushiro?”
“I interpret it,” I said, “as allowing duplicate keys to rooms other than the crime scene.”
Mitsumura's eyes slowly went wide. I told her the conclusion I'd reached.
“If we assume there's a duplicate key to another room, we can use the unusable door swapping trick after all. Let's say that the door to the crime scene was swapped with that of 'adjacent room A'. Then, the crime scene could be locked with a key to adjacent room A. Since there's a duplicate key to adjacent room A, one key to that room could be left at the crime scene. You could have then locked the door with the other key. The key had a tag, but it didn't have the room number on itself, so you could have swapped the tag over and disguised the key to adjacent room A as the key to the crime scene. That way, even if the first person to discover the crime tried to confirm whether the key was real, since the door had been replaced, the key to adjacent room A would lock it. Therefore, even though it was a fake, it would be mistaken for the key to the crime scene.”
After saying that, I looked closely at Mitsumura's reaction. However, there were problems with this trick. Replacing the door would cause two keys to work on the crime scene – that is to say, it would create a duplicate key. Conversely, the duplicate key to adjacent room A would disappear. It would have appeared to have gone missing. The police might not have concerned themselves with a key to somewhere other than the crime scene, but it would certainly be noticeable.
And there was a bigger problem with this trick. I didn't know if adjacent room A even existed; that is, I didn't know if there were any rooms in the mansion that had the same type of door as the crime scene and could be opened by at least two keys. I'd read every book on the incident, but none of them contained the information I needed. I still didn't have the most important piece of the puzzle.
“That's why I wanted to ask you,” I told Mitsumura, who still sat across from me. “Is there a room that fits the qualifications of adjacent room A in the building where the crime took place?”
Mitsumura, sitting on the cantilever chair, laughed a bit. Her black hair was turning dark brown in the light of the sunset out the window.
As I waited for her answer, I knew there were two possible responses she could give, and I thought I'd be okay with either one of them.
If adjacent room A existed, I'd have solved the mystery of her locked room. And I'd find that very gratifying.
And if adjacent room A didn't exist...
It would mean there was still a locked room trick in this world that no one knew.
And that would be a joy for the whole human race.
In the winter evening, as the club room turned a brilliant red...
I waited for Mitsumura's answer.
Eventually, she gave it in a cool voice.
This translation comes with many thanks for the patience of our patron,
ISAAC WARD
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