Locked-room mystery

thumb|upright=1.3|The detective [[Sherlock Holmes searches for clues in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (1892), following a murder in a room where the door had been locked from the inside]]

The "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery is a type of crime seen in crime and detective fiction. The crime in question, typically murder ("locked-room murder"), is committed in circumstances under which it appears impossible for the perpetrator to enter the crime scene, commit the crime, and leave undetected. The crime in question typically involves a situation whereby an intruder could not have left; for example, the original literal "locked room": a murder victim found in a windowless room locked from the inside at the time of discovery. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.

The prima facie impression from a locked room crime is that the perpetrator is a dangerous, supernatural entity capable of defying the laws of nature by walking through walls or vanishing into thin air. The need for a rational explanation for the crime is what drives the protagonist to look beyond these appearances and solve the puzzle.

History

Early locked-room mysteries: 1830s—1930s

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) is generally considered the first locked-room mystery. However, Robert Adey credits Sheridan Le Fanu for "A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" (1838), which was published three years before Poe's "Rue Morgue". "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (1892) and "The Adventure of the Empty House" (1903), two Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle; "The Problem of Cell 13" (1905) by Jacques Futrelle, featuring "The Thinking Machine" Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen; often featured locked-room mysteries. His 1935 novel The Hollow Man (US title: The Three Coffins) was in 1981 voted the best locked-room mystery novel of all time by 17 authors and reviewers, although Carr himself names Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room as his favorite.

According to a report in The New York Times, March 10 and 11, 1929, Isidore Fink, of 4 East 132nd Street, New York City, was in his Fifth Avenue laundry on the night of March 9, 1929, with the windows closed and door of the room bolted. A neighbor heard screams and the sound of blows, but not shots, and called the police, who were unable to get in. A young boy was lifted through the transom and was able to unbolt the door. The police found Fink dead with two bullet wounds in his chest and one in his left wrist. No money had been taken, and no weapon was found at the scene. It was theorised that the murderer may have climbed the outside of the building and fired through the transom, but a powder burn on Fink's wrist indicated that he had been shot at close range. Interviewed some years later, Police Commissioner Mulrooney called the Fink murder an "insoluble mystery".
On May 16, 1937, Laetitia Toureaux was found stabbed to death in an otherwise empty first-class compartment of the Paris Métro. The subway train had left the terminus, Porte de Charenton, at 6:27 p.m. and had arrived at the next station, Porte Dorée, at 6:28 p.m. Witnesses did not see anyone else enter or leave the compartment where Mlle. Toureaux's body was found. The murderer had one minute and twenty seconds at their disposal. Neither the murderer nor the method of their escape was ever discovered.
In 2010, the uninjured dead body of Gareth Williams, an employee of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), was found in a bag that had been zipped up and padlocked from the outside, with a key inside. There was no forensic evidence of anyone else's involvement. Two escapologists investigated whether he could somehow have locked himself inside the bag. After 400 unsuccessful attempts one of them would still not completely rule out the possibility.

Locked-room mystery

History

Early locked-room mysteries: 1830s—1930s

See also

References

Further reading