A
week or two ago, Mike Gray of Ontos
posted a notice on his blog, titled "Certainly
It Was Impossible," which highlighted an obscure short
science-fiction story that was published in a 1953 issue of Amazing
Stories and the plot description promised a traditional detective
yarn set in the 22nd century – complete with a locked room murder
and an old-fashioned detective. I have to say, I was not disappointed
by what I read.
Kendell
Foster Crossen was a reviewer and writer of popular fiction,
under a battery of pennames, who has strong ties to the locked room
sub-genre. John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, reviewed The
Invisible Man Murders (1945) and The
Case of the Phantom Fingerprints (1945), but Robert Adey
listed two additional titles in Locked Room Murders (1991).
However,
Adey apparently overlooked a short story, "The Closed Door," that
appeared in Amazing Stories. A genuine impossible crime story
with a dying message and an original solution, grounded in
science-fiction territory, but with an old-fashioned twist that
harked back to our own time – even one of John
Dickson Carr's famous detective characters gets a mention ("If
Gideon Fell could have lived to see this..."). My only quibble
is that this story would have worked better, as a detective story,
had it been a novella or even a novel-length story, because it would
have given Crossen the opportunity to fully explain the science
behind this universe.
A
better understanding of the science, behind the science-fiction,
would have given the reader an honest shot at working out the locked
room trick for themselves, which is a combination of old-fashioned
trickery and futuristic treatment of plastic. Like a 22nd century
version of an Arthur
Porges locked room story. But this really should have been a
longer story to do full justice to the plot. And it would bolstered
the fair play element. Anyway, the story is still pretty good for
what it is.
The
setting of "The Closed Door" is set at the Planetary Rest Hotel,
which is the only hotel in the universe capable of "catering to
every life form in the galaxy," because the entire building is
constructed out of "two hundred and seventy-three different
plastics." So even the extremely radiating Mercurians can stay
there and one of the passing the locked room, around the time of the
murder, turns out to play a key in the solution! One of those clever
little cheeky things that you can get away in science-fiction
detective.
At
the time of the story, the Planetary Rest Hotel is hosting The
Galactic Acrylic Convention and the over-worked manager, Alister Chu,
receives a disturbing call on his visiphone from the hotel's most
important guest, Mr. G.G. Gru – a silicon-based Terran from Sirius
II. Gru tells Chu that he can't abide practical jokers and orders him
to come to his room immediately, but than all of a sudden, Chu sees
Gru shaking on the screen, as if he's falling apart, and falling
over. The last thing Chu saw on the video screen was a gloved hand
turning off the transmission.
As
per Gru's instructions, the door of his room was replaced with a
special Plexilite door that has been fitted with "a palm-lock
keyed to the atomic structure of the guest." Only he could
lock, or unlock, that door without damaging it. Inspector Jair
Calder, of Planepol, has to blast open the door with a hydrocarbon
gun and inside they find Gru slumped across his desk in front of the
visiphone screen. A torn piece of paper is found with "a crude
drawing of a six-sided figure and the letters COO," but most of
this dying message has been made off with by the murderer. Only
question is how the murderer managed to get past a door only a dead
man could have locked behind him?
The
solution to the impossible murder has a foot firmly planted in two
genres. On the technical side, the explanation is pure
science-fiction and I know this is not very popular with everyone out
there, but Crossen succeeded in pouring this science-fiction plot in
the mold of the traditional detective. I also appreciate how the
trick was not used as a simple, throw-away answer as to how to get
pass a locked door, because the murderer still had to do some
considerable work. And rely on some misdirection. But even more than
that, I loved how this futuristic locked room trick hinged on a then
historic item that is a normal, everyday object in our own time. You
know when you read it.
On
the downturn, the dying message is unsolvable and the identity of the
murderer, alongside the motive, is not as inspired as the impossible
crime, but I blame the short length of the story for that. As a short
(locked room) story, it was already better than Manly Wade Wellman's
Devil's
Planet (1942), which also deals with a locked room murder in
space, and expanding the story might have resulted in something
comparable to Isaac Asimov's The
Caves of Steel (1954) – i.e. a minor gem.
So, "The Closed Door" is a good example of how a detective story can
be resettled in a science-fiction universe and an excellent
demonstration how even speculative technology opens up, instead of
closing down, new avenues for mystery writers who know how their way
around a plot.
