Reminiscence 4: April, Four Years Ago
“There are no new locked room tricks.”
Shortly after I met Mitsumura, I once talked to her about locked rooms in the literature club room.
There are no new locked room tricks – that was my stance on the issue.
“All these so-called 'new tricks' are just variations of existing tricks. Sure, there might be a new way to move a key through a locked door, or a new way to turn a thumb turn. But that isn't a new trick, is it? And yet, that's all we see. Every time I turn the page to find the solution, I immediately say 'oh, I already know this trick' and go back to picking my nose.”
Mitsumura gaped at me in horror.
“Kuzushiro, you pick your nose while reading?”
“...It was a metaphor.”
“Thank goodness, you don't actually pick your nose while reading.”
Mitsumura touched her chest in relief. Then she said “I think there are new locked room tricks.”
“Tricks in mystery novels can be compared to mineral deposits, right? Let's assume that God has predetermined the number of locked room tricks in existence, just like there's a finite amount of material in the Earth's crust. However, I think that your claim that, in the 180 year history of the mystery genre, we've exhausted all that wealth is wrong.”
I was a bit intrigued and asked “How do you figure?” She replied “Because locked room tricks are like mineral deposits.”
“Do you think it's possible to completely exhaust a vein of gold?”
I put on a wry smile.
“It's a kind of Devil's Proof.”
If you keep digging into a vein, it will eventually stop returning gold. However, there's no way to prove there's no gold left. As long as you keep digging, there's the possibility that you'll hit gold someday.
However, it's easy to prove that there is gold. All you have to do is dig it up, then yell “There's still gold here!” as loud as you can.
“I think a mystery writer's job is to dig.”
Mitsumura laid a finger on her chin as she told me that.
“So even if an author is at a loss, they should never say 'there are no locked room tricks left.' Because that would be denying their own work. Even if they think they're lying, they should put up a false front. Because the day may come when their lie becomes the truth.”
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