Only Murders in my Mind
Episode 29 Locked Room Mysteries: Solving Impossible Crimes
[Music] Welcome to Only Murders in My Mind. A random thought production. Hi, I'm Carol Bissett, a crime writer. And I invite you with my co-presenters, Liz Hedgecock and Mike Jackson, each week to our conversations on All Things Murderers. Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Only Murders in My Mind. It doesn't Thursday come round quickly. It's 5pm again and you've got us in the room with Liz Hedgecock. Hello. Mike Jackson. Good afternoon. And welcome. Hope you're all well out there. And before we start, Mike's going to give the blog a prompt. No, that's wrong. I'm going to give the blog a mention. That's it. That'll do. It goes alongside the podcast. We have Only Murders in My Mind blog, which is on WordPress. Easy to find. Lots of interesting information on there. And in particular, we encourage anybody who wants to to put stories up. Put them in the comments. And if there are any stories that we particularly like, then we're quite happy to read them out on the podcast. But please go and have a look. Have a listen because there are some stories there called Tiny Tails that are part of a video production that we've been playing around with recently. And let us know what you think. Yes. It's getting quite a lot of views, isn't it? Yes, it's slowly but surely. Mike's sort of in charge of that. He's running it. And as I say, we're getting more and more views. The common views, but more and more people are listening to the podcast. Yay! What I have started doing on the podcast, I've just introduced something. And I put a post up every now and again about it called Tiny Tails. And basically what I've done is I've created a YouTube channel where I'm taking some short stories. Some of my short stories. A couple of short stories from some of our listeners. And I've used some AI to create a voiceover. So the video comes out with this person's story with a voiceover and a picture in the background. And again, well worth having a listen to. And also if you'd like to have your story read out as a Tiny Tail, then just pop the story into the comments and see what happens. It works really well. I'm very impressed with that. Liz and Carol are going to do that any moment soon. They both promise me that they're going to be a short story that I can put on to talk to them. Can you hear me nodding? Yeah, me too. They'll do that about the same time that I publish my novel. I'm busy writing. I'm writing a book. I think I'm writing with Paula. So it's that thing of I have to keep going, I can't. I can't not do my chapter. It was funny when Liz and I were doing this little sort of literary thing a few weeks ago. And there was a lady there asking us questions. And she said, "Can you earn money because we're both independent, mostly aren't we independent?" I said, "No one is said yes at the same time." Two ends of the spectrum you see. You can be an indie publisher and a decent money out of it. But can I just say Liz puts an awful lot of work into that side of it. It's not just publishing your books. Whereas I tend to go, "Please buy them and leave it to that." Sometimes that works. Sometimes it does. Yeah. I'm just thinking Liz, I know you're very pretty writing, but you do have some short stories. I do. It's written in the past. Maybe one of those. So what's above on the book? Yeah, I could do, I suppose. I will send you a short story. How many words do you want, Mike? A couple of hundred? Oh, two, three, four, hundred, yeah. Right. Right. Actually. No, I will have a look at your prompts and see if I can do something. I have had an idea for something based on the topic of today's podcast. Oh, right. Which is locked room murders. And what's the other one Liz? It's not just locked rooms, is it? Closed circle. Yes. And escape rooms. Yeah. I mean, they do them as games now, don't they? They do. I'm going to run an escape room for birth. They had a great time. Yeah. Somebody said to me, they just managed to escape as well. Why would you want to pay and be locked into a dark room and have to try and get out? Some people like that sort of thing. They do. My granddaughter for a recent 11th birthday, her and her brother, mum and dad, went to escape room, which was an island. So they got rode out to this island. Oh, the clues were in treasure chests and things like that. Oh, wow. They sold it, they got on to the walkie talkie and got rescued off the island. Wow. It was great fun. So if you don't solve it, did they just leave you there? I think so, yes. Yeah, I may. With a fishing rod. [LAUGHTER] Some clean water. Packet, Tato, crisps. I mean, one of the most prolific locked room television series is Death in Paradise. Mm-hmm. It's nearly always a locked room type of mystery that can possibly have been done by anybody that is with that person. That's very interesting. It's not really a locked room, is it? Because they can be on the beach, but nobody could have done it. Yes. Mm. And quite often it is a lot of room. It is, isn't it? Yeah. I think they said the same. This door was locked from the inside of how good anyone would have possibly. I think they said the same with Jonathan Creek. Yes. Oh, they were good. Because magic in them. He does magic stuff, doesn't he? Yes. So again, it's that. Yeah. So I can see how that fits in really well. Yeah. That was brilliant. I'm not recently, but I think it was just after Christmas, watch the whole series should start to finish again. Mm-hmm. I am a sad person that likes watching these things. Oh. Oh. So what's your version of a locked room? What comes to mind when I say a locked room mystery to you? It makes it pops into your head. Because as I say with me, it was the, I'm going to cut them. What I said now. The Death and Paradise, they always seem to be all solvable. The one that I think of is the case of the speckled band. Yes. Sherlock Holmes. Yes. Where yes, someone has died and it's like, how could this possibly have happened? And there's, there's, you know, you're thinking about anything. There's no way. How, how on earth does this happen? And of course, you know, Sherlock Holmes is going to solve it because that's what he does. Yeah. I think that's one of the attributes, isn't it? It's that seemingly impossible crime. Yeah. It can't have happened, but it has. And the clues get dropped out. I think as, as a watcher, if you're watching it on the television, or as a reader, the clues get dropped in so that, in a way, you're playing the detective as well. You can have a go at trying to solve the, the seemingly impossible crime. Yeah. So I think they were quite popular during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, where it was that who done it and you're encouraged to solve it along with. Because you remember we did the episode on Knox's Rules. Yes. Yeah. It's that same kind of idea of, you know, the reader needs to be given a fair chance to solve it. Yeah. And I think we all want that, don't we? Yeah. We don't, we don't want a crime that we're reading about or watching. And to be solved with a clue that's never come up at all. A person that has never appeared on the, you know, on the page. All of a sudden, no, it was Fred. He was hiding in that shed down there and he did it. Yeah. We don't want that. We want it to be solved. The characters we've got used to in the, in the boot, haven't we? Mm-hmm. What's, any of your, any favourites that you've got, Mike, have locked rooms? No particular favourites. I mean, you know, I'd still go back to something like murder on the Nile. Yes. Because it's, because it's that enclosed community. Yeah. Yeah. That's that close circle idea, isn't it? Because I'd kind of conflated the two. And I think lots of people when they say it's a lot grim mystery mean that it's closed circle mystery. Yes. Because we were talking, weren't we? In the amateur sleuth thing about, you know, having a small community. Yes. And how that works. And I suppose the closed circle thing takes it a little bit, makes it a little bit more enclosed in that you'll have one place like a country house is the classic. Yeah. So knives out, for example. Yes. Yeah. Here's a closed circle thing because it all takes place in the house in the ground. Yeah. So. Yeah. And it's also, I mean, as I mentioned a couple of times, I'm really into monk at the moment. I think I'm on about season three, it's only five more seasons to go. I'm ahead of you. I'm on. Yeah. Low spoilers. And, but many, many of the mysteries that he has to solve seem impossible. You know, it's, I watched one last night where this, this woman gets killed in a lift because her scar gets caught in the lift. The lift goes up as she gets strangled. Everybody saw it happen. So, you know, everybody assumed it was an accident. Monk comes along and says, no, no, no, she was murdered. And everybody is saying, how could that possibly be? Because we all saw it happen. So that's sort of an enclosed. Have you seen them all about the astronaut yet? No. Oh, that'll get you. But when they are, it's this seemingly impossible murder, crime. Yeah. There's also that one, Monk's going, but he did it. He was in space, but he did it, but he was in space. If you've never watched Monk, it's well worth watching. I have to give it a go. Yeah, absolutely. I'm not quite sure how to describe Monk. He's a bit of a puero because he's always, in fact, he's a mixture. He's a bit of a puero because he uses those great little gray cells. He's a bit of a Sherlock Holmes because he'll notice that, you know, you've got mud on your boot, which must have come from the canyon just outside Los Angeles. Of course, yes. So he's a mixture of these different detective characters. With a little bit of autism throw here. A little bit of autism. Yeah. Apparently he's got something like 300 phobias. He's psychiatrist as a really big partner. That's right. But he fits your life as well. Yeah. But he fits many of those sort of that we've talked about before. The crime detective, how much is sleuth? He's not. He used to be part of the police. Yes. If it's many of those bits and pieces that we've talked over through the podcast and fits into this courtroom because many of his crimes that he has to help out to solve are seemingly impossible. I don't think when I've been writing, I've ever written one where people have gone, "How on earth did that happen?" Mine are, "Who on earth did it?" They're that sort of crimes. But you have, haven't you, Liz? You've written something akin to a lot of drama. Not so much the lot from close circle, definitely. Right. Yeah. I mean, thinking about murder at the play group, it had to have been someone who was there at the time. You know, there's no way it could, because, you know, they don't realize immediately afterwards and then when they start thinking about it. So I've actually got a reading, which is the passage where it happened. Please. Yeah, because then we'll know what's going on. So the police have come. They've all been interrogated and they've been told you can go now, but, you know, no, no sneaking off anyway. You've got to stick around. Okay, so they've all gone to the pub together. As you do after, you know, a murder. The fiddler. The fiddler and flag him to be exact, because the pub pippered gone to one her first day in much gadding. Her heart sank a little as they entered, but instead of the texting woman, a lanky lad bobbed behind the bar. He whistled as they tripped him. "I'll put some tables together for a year," he said, raising the bar flap. "Are you stopping for lunch?" A quick conference of whispers and nods. "I'll get you some menus, raise hands if you need a high chair." A few minutes later, they were settled at a collection of rickety tables and drinks were on the way. "What did you think of the policeman?" pippered ass, generally. Bit full of himself, at Caitlyn. He's new. Norman retired last year? Anyway, Norm was dead friendly, always said hello. Helped to all the community events. I reckon this one's trying to be a quiro or something. She shivered. It's creepy, isn't it? "I was trying not to think about it," said Sam. "Are they sure it was..." she mouthed. "Oh, damn." Pippen nodded. I asked. Apparently, she leaned in and lowered her voice. Barbara was whacked on the head. "No!" Sam exclaimed, her mouth and o. "That means..." "What?" asked Caitlyn. "Don't you see?" Sam looked round the group. The fire exits in the corner of the main hall. The only other door is the front one. And none of the windows open more than a couple of inches. Pippa swallowed. So what you're saying is, "Yes." Sam had an odd little smile on her face. It was one of us. Someone at the playgroup killed Barbara. The table fell silent. Everyone eyed each other. "Or Lila," said Eva, flicking her straight brown hair. She left early. She could have done it, come back in, waited a bit so it wasn't suspicious and then legged it. "You know she and Barbara don't get on." "Yeah, but that doesn't mean she'd kill her," Nick said. "She's got a temper, though," Eva folded her arms. "Or what about Imogen?" said Sam. She got banned last time. She might have got in, hidden somewhere, done it and sneaked off. "How?" said Caitlyn. "First you'd have to get in without anyone sitting. Okay, maybe she pecked in when Barbara was back with..." "Oh, sorry." She bit her lip. "But where would she hide?" "The toy cup is tiny and people are in and out of the loo all the time." "The police will have checked the kitchen." "And she couldn't have done it and left before we arrived because we all saw Barbara alive at the start of playgroup." "Oh, what about you?" Sam leaned forward. "Barbara got your conservatory rejected, didn't she? You were hopping mad." "Don't be ridiculous," snapped Caitlyn. "Calm down everyone," said Nick. "Please." He looked round the table. Barbara wound up a lot of people. Probably we all had a reason to be angry with her, but flinging accusations won't help. Let the police handle it. "Well, there's one person who didn't have a reason." Caitlyn turned to Pippa. "You've just moved here." She paused, considering. "Unless you're a long lost relative with a grudge." "Do pack it in, Caitlyn," Nick said weirdly. "Come on, Nick, I was joking." Caitlyn sipped her white wine. "You can't blame me for trying to lighten the mood a bit." "Like I said, leave it to the police." Nick drank his pine to lowering expression on his face. "Are we in trouble, Daddy?" Grace stared at him a red crayon in her hand. "No, sweetheart, no one's in trouble. The police are just doing their job," said Nick in a soothing voice. "What are you drawing?" He leaned over and the muscles in his jaw tightened. Pippa glanced at the sheet of paper. It showed a stick figure wearing a triangle for a skirt and a jumper made of loop the loops, with a sword sticking out of its tummy spurting blood. Pippa's eyes met Nick's. "I guess it's imaginative?" You could say that. "You're ready to order?" Pippa wondered how long the barman had been standing there. "Now, would anyone like a starter?" Pippa looked at the mix of anger, confusion and resentment around the table. "I think we'll go straight to Maine." [laughter] Yeah, so they're all laying each other up because they're wondering which of them has done the deed. Yeah, it feels like the minute they realise they're like, "Ooh, was it you? Was it you? Was it you?" That would be. Yeah, and it is kind of interesting that they're all accusing each other and not thinking what if they actually are and I've just accused them. I'm probably not very safe now, but they just go for it. That's the thing who's going to be next to me now. Yeah, I do like a closed circle mystery. I mean, if you think of - and then there were none. Yes. Agatha Christie, where they're all on the island together. I mean, a bit like your granddaughters escape. I had a few less murders. Yeah. It's your murders. Yeah. I was trying to think of one of the ones. I've got to be honest with you. The ones that really fascinated me were the ones about Jonathan Crete mysteries because I felt towards the end it was getting a bit too ridiculous. But some of the earlier ones that were jumping the shark, they had a little bit of jumping the shark. Yeah. But, you know, like where bodies disappeared in rooms and all that. Wasn't there something when we did Knox's 10 commandments about not having hidden doors or trap doors or. Yeah. I think you could have a secret passage group going to use it once. That's right. Yeah. Because that's what we always suspect, isn't it? You know, if somebody is dead in a room and it's locked from the inside and the person's been murdered that somebody's gone through in passage. You know, and it's not necessarily the case. Do any stick in your mind, Mike, that you, when you've watched it, you've gone. Oh, I wonder how this happened. I think I, I mean, going back to Jonathan Crete, going back to some of the other ones that we've talked about, some of the... I love that. ...the Christian and the monk ones. You always start off thinking... How could that have happened? How could that have happened? Yeah. I think there's a sort of a different quality to a locked room mystery from a closed circle mystery, though. I think a locked room, by the very nature of the terminology, is more constrictive in as much as it is a locked, you know, you've either got a group of people in... Well, no, that would be a closed circle, wouldn't it? Yeah. A locked room, to me, sounds like. It's like, it couldn't have happened, but it has. Yeah. There's been a there's some there's challenging your sense of reality almost. Yeah, there's usually a body inside a locked room. Yeah, and the first one the inside up. Yeah. So the first thing you got to try and figure out is how. Yeah. How did the murderer get in and get out? Yeah, where did the person kill themselves? Yes. Yeah. Oh, with a close circle. It is everybody suspecting everybody else. Well, I think I think close circle. You've got a bigger group of people. Whereas with the locked room, you've got one space, which is the room. Yeah. With one victim. But normally have people coming in from outside to solve it. Yes. Right. Yes. Close circle. It's more likely to be if it's a country house one and quite often it's somewhere that's cut off, like in and then there were none. Yeah. There's that thing of right, you know, somebody who's here has killed someone and they're still here. They can't have gone. There was there. They're still here and they've murdered one person already. There was a viewer like that. It was actually on the television where she's driving through heavy snow and she finds an abandoned car and in the car's child, the baby, and she takes it to the nearest house, which is actually happens to be relatives of hers, you know, sort of removed a few times. And the murderer had to be somebody really in that house because the snow was so thick. Yeah. The person that the adult that had brought the child was found dead in the snow a bit further along. So that was that type of thing where you were wondering, well, it got through one of them, but they all had alibis. I think the difference to me anyway, the difference between that scenario, the closed room scenario, and the locked room is that the main part of a locked room is the somebody that detected the amateur sloop, whoever, working out. How the room was locked from the inside. So how did somebody get in, do the murder and get out again. Yes. And to me, that's, that's almost the essence of the whole mystery. Who did it? So certainly, it's almost irrelevant. It's like, how did they do it? Yeah. Yeah, it was more important. Yeah. I mean, one of the Jonathan Creaks, and I don't think involved in murder, it was a painting going missing out of basically a cupboard. The children were all going in in two and threes to see this beautiful painting. Yeah. And then when the next lot went into the painting and gone off the wall, you know, that was a real sort of head scratcher. You know, because it went through all the normal things. And I'm not going to tell you the result, because if you're going to watch it, it will spoil it. And again, it was so simple, you know, by the time I saw a beyond paradise with a similar painting goes missing type going on. Yeah. Yeah. But sometimes, I mean, again, going back to this month that I watched last night, this one getting killed in the elevator on the left. And actually, very over on, you know, who did it. Yes. Okay. And that the whole story is the how it's the important part. Yeah. We've said before with them at murder mysteries, there's a couple of ways of writing them is that there's the one where you've got no idea and you've got, it's got to be solved by the end of the the book. And there's a sort where, you know, from the beginning, who the murderer is, but the police have got to prove it. And, you know, that they're quite psychological those aren't they, because they're, you know, the murder is basically laughing at them going in and you prove it. Yeah. That sort of thing. We were as a close circle, again, going back to something like a Christian, you know, murder on the Nile, the murder itself, you know, who's been murdered and how they've been shot. Yeah. And then it's got this great host of people there. And so it has to be one of them. Yes. And that's the mystery of, you know, or murder on the Orient Express death in the clouds as well. The role of an airplane. Yeah. You know, that is a real, I mean, you know, obviously, absolutely had to be someone who was there. But I mean, yeah, murder on the, the first time I saw a murder on the Orient Express. I keep saying murder on the, I mean, definitely not. Yes. Well, yeah. We know what you mean, Mike. I'm glad one of you does. I thought that was so clever, the first time I saw murder on the Orient Express, which is one of the reasons I wanted to go on the Orient Express ever since. And I suppose most people that go on to think, you know, I'll be a murder on it. Hopefully not. So the thing about this sort of crime and mystery is have they all been done before, because they do tend to astound us when we see these things. Somebody's thought up something new, which people like, they're like, they're like, oh, that's what so and so did 10 years ago. They just modernized it a little bit. In some ways, there are no new story basis as such. It's just, it's just different. Well, I'm sure someone said there's only seven of us in the world. I mean, if you look at how many books there are in the world and how many films, how many TV shows. So it's the way it's the way you, it's a way of right. It's a combination of elements. I think quite often, you know, the characters that you have as well. Yes. Yes. You know, and then there were none. It's like, the way people get picked off all the time, you know, and it just builds and builds and builds and, you know, those poor people. And that's what a lot of horror films are based on though, aren't they? This is people being stuck somewhere and being picked up once a time, usually in a more scurry way sort of thing. You know, with lots of screaming and music. Yeah. And that's jobs, isn't it? And then there were none. I mean, there's no detective. It's there. It's just a group. There's no detective. No, no, no. I mean, you have people trying to work it out, sure, and forming alliances. I mean, in that way, it's kind of like the traitors or something. Yes. You know, when I was, oh, it couldn't be like, you know, it's like, I'm a face, I'm a face, but I couldn't possibly do anything like that. I was with you or I was with you when you know where I was and, you know, don't you trust me? People thinking, no, I don't trust you. So really interesting. Another interesting fact was given to by these detectives that I saw a few weeks ago. Oh, yes. If you interview, there's an incident, you know, a man gets horribly stabbed in the middle of the road in broad daylight. And you interview 20 people and they will all have a different perspective and a different statement to give you. And he said something that we've said before, if they are on the same, it's because they've been talking to each other. So obviously they want to get these people separate them. They don't want them discussing what they've seen. And you're getting a bit of truth off each one. Not that they've lied. No. It's a bit of real evidence. Truth is probably not the wrong word to say. You're getting a bit of actual evidence off each one that you can then put together and form something. Because it's true. We're shocked and other things go in. We don't always take in everything as it happens, do we? Yeah. When I used to work, I used to run some courses for other head teachers and teachers. And I won't go into the detail of the course, but one of it was around the idea that our perception is our reality. So how we perceive things has to tie in the reality of life. And we all look at things in a very different way. We could all look at this room and have a different perception of what it is, what it means to us. Or it's like on social media, someone will say something or there'll be a gif or a video or whatever it is. And some people will think it means one thing and some people will think it means another. And how they can go back when they're looking at cold cases and ask somebody to try and tell them what happened 10, 15 years ago. Is that going off a lot, isn't it? Well, I lead a very sad life, but I've been, sometimes I listen to the Post Office scandal, you know, the inquiry. Oh, yes. And then they're asking these people to remember what they said or what somebody might have said to them 10, 15 years ago. Very, very difficult. I think it's more difficult. I think some of those people are also trying to cover their backs. Yes. They're being very careful at what they can remember, what they can't remember. That's probably where you refer to our podcast about lying. Yeah, we did a good one on lying. That was actually a good one. How people lie. Yeah. But what's the attraction then of locked room and closed circle mysteries. It's just that mystery. Yeah. That seemingly impossible crime. When you start off with a premise that no, that couldn't have happened. It's impossible. Yeah. You're hooked. It's the small scope as well. Yeah. Very self-contained nature of it. Yeah. And even when the answer comes out at the end, you think so. Oh, yes. But I would never have thought of that. Yeah. You still enjoyed that. It doesn't spoil it for you. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, if you had a closed circle mystery and it turned out in the end that it had been like the air and boy that nobody had seen who happened to have a girl and they'd just shot them and went. You'd be like, that was rubbish. Yeah. You feel cheated then, don't you? Yes. I mean, it is, just what Mike said, the mystery is unlocked and we know what happened and who did it and we go. Oh, why did they see that? And the reason we didn't see it was because it was really well written and well acted if it's a play and if it was a book, it's been really well written. You recently, I read a story out of it. Upset. Oh, lovely sentence. I've got an old one. Go on. Oh, gosh. It's not quite, it's only a hundred words this one. And it's only a hundred words of misery. It's good afternoon fun. It's not quite a lot room, but the stretch of the imagination, it might just fit into the theme we've been talking about. He watched helpless as the door closed behind her. What had started as her fun afternoon had gone wrong when he told her there was no way he was leaving his wife. There was nothing serious in what they got up to. He thought she'd understand that. Obviously, she hadn't. As he called out her name, he heard the front door slam. Oh, no. She's really gone. How the hell was he going to explain to his wife? What he was doing tied stark naked to a kitchen chair with a pair of three knickers stuck on his head. Is that a locked room? Well, it should be. I think that's probably opening a shot case. Right. I'm sorry. You know it's fine. A little more lighthearted than what I used to come up with. Yes, it was. It was. It made us all smile. But on that, I will finish our podcast with today. And we will be here at the same time, next week with only murders in my mind. You have been listening to only murders in my mind. A random thought production. Produced by John Bissett. The music in peril was composed and recorded by OM Studio Strings. [MUSIC]