latch, but directly opposite the gap under the door. This method prevented the dynamic force applied to the thread to be dispersed by the door. The thread did not touch the door, but simply passed under it, heading directly for the nail in the Wara Ningyo opposite— and all the force applied was transmitted in that direction. Then the nail head acted like a pulley, turning the direction of the force twice, and leading it to the thumb turn latch. Once the door was locked, obviously, he then had to recover the thread, so he had to use a particularly long one doubled over on itself.. .which explanation
is just a bonus at this stage. As soon as he was sure the door was locked, he let go of one end of the thread and pulled on the other, successfully gathering all the thread to his side of the door. Anyone could pull this off, as long as they used strong thread that wouldn’t break. If you have time, try it in your own room. As long as you are allowed to hammer nails into the walls.
Despite this tedious explanation, the exact nature of the locked room trick is completely unimportant. Well... perhaps not completely, but to focus too much on the trick itself is to miss the real point. What really matters is that to pull this trick off, you need at least two dolls—because you need two nail head pulleys. At least two. One on the opposite wall and one on the side wall. Four dolls, three dolls, two dolls—the trick worked at the first three scenes. But at the fourth scene, where there was only one Wara Ningyo, the trick could not be used. With only one pulley opposite the door, the latch would not turn. The thread would not make a triangle, and would simply go over and come back in a straight line. So,
as I have already mentioned, the final victim, Rue Ryuzaki, turned the thumb turn latch by hand. We only know that because the locked room trick was solved before the fourth murder took place— otherwise, the fact that the locked room had been created even with only one Wara Ningyo would simply have been dropped into the file with all the other data. The weakness in his plan would evaporate—as long as the locked room remained a mystery until the fourth murder, it would remain one forever.
Naomi Misora was just in time.
Ryuzaki himself had asked absently, “What for?” Why had the killer made a locked room that he did not need? That question. A game, for fun... a puzzle. Locked rooms were designed to make a murder look like a suicide... but in this case, the locked rooms existed to make the fourth death look like it wasn’t a suicide.
To provide L with a mystery he could not solve.
Even if he could not solve it, it did not mean there was no answer. Namely: it was unsolvable.
According to Ryuzaki’s scenario, Misora would come running down the stairs when he failed to answer his phone as scheduled to find the Wara Ningyo on the far wall and Beyond Birthday burned to death— and if she had not yet figured out the locked room mystery, then everything would go as B planned, his plot executed perfectly. Since the locked room had been created even with only one Wara Ningyo, nobody would ever think of the triangulation technique.
If the police had not taken the dolls and the nails that held them in place away as evidence, Misora would probably have figured it out faster. But this was not a matter of luck, but all part of Beyond Birthday’s plan. He knew all along the police would investigate the scene first. Beyond Birthday had coldly calculated that by the time L’s pawn arrived at the scene, the actual Wara Ningyo and the actual nails would be long gone. The third scene was the only one where they might remain—and in that case, they were counted with the stuffed animals to make the numbers on the sides of the clock face, which would distract her. So the only thing that did not go according to Beyond Birthday’s plan was Misora’s investigative ability.
No, not ability
Inspiration.
But figuring out the locked room trick, figuring out that the way the killer had locked the doors would only work at the first three scenes did not tip off Naomi Misora. Rather, she had begun to wonder how the killer planned to lock the door at the fourth scene. Or to wonder if the theory was completely misguided. Her suspicions did not immediately turn toward Ryuzaki. Of course not—she had been told no details about the connection between L and B, so it never occurred to her that Ryuzaki might have a
No comments:
Post a Comment