Locked Room Mystery - Examples

Examples

The following are examples of "impossible" or "locked-room" crimes:

• A woman and her daughter are murdered in an inaccessible room, which is locked from the inside. The mother's throat is cut so badly that her head is barely attached, and the daughter is found strangled and stuffed into a chimney. ("The Murders in the Rue Morgue", a short story by Edgar Allan Poe)
• A British minister is threatened. Investigations commence, newspapers report, Scotland Yard offers protection. Even though the assassins precisely predict the minister's death, the vast police force protecting him at the time and place announced by the assassins cannot prevent the murder. The minister is alone in a room, locked from within and protected from without. The room is empty of all but the murdered man and even upon finding the corpse, it cannot be determined what the man died of. (The Four Just Men, first in a series of novels by Edgar Wallace)
• The victim is walking alone in the middle of a snow-covered street. A voice is heard to threaten him, and a shot rings out. An examination of his body shows the shot was fired from close range, but no killer is to be seen and no other footprints are found on the scene. (The Hollow Man (U.S. title: The Three Coffins), a novel by John Dickson Carr)
• A man is found on a rock with his throat cut in the middle of a footprint-free stretch of sand wet from the receding tide. The crime is so recent that the victim's blood has not yet clotted, yet the occupants of a fishing boat less than 100 yards (90 m) away swear they saw nobody approach the rock for hours. (Have His Carcase, a novel by Dorothy L. Sayers)
• A man is seen committing a crime by several witnesses, and is found dead later. Examination of the body indicates he was already dead before the crime was committed. ("The Amorous Corpse", a short story by Peter Lovesey;"Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer", a short story by Edward D. Hoch)
• A man dies in a room at the top of a tower in a Scottish castle that is believed to be haunted. Similar deaths occur. Despite evidence showing the people had no reason to kill themselves, they are shown to have been alone at the time of the murder. (The Case of the Constant Suicides, a novel by John Dickson Carr)
• A man is shot and disfigured beyond recognition with a sawed-off shotgun in an impregnable castle, to which the only entrance is sealed. (Arthur Conan Doyle's The Valley of Fear, the third novel featuring Sherlock Holmes. Other Holmes "Locked Room" mysteries are "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", "The Adventure of the Crooked Man", "The Sign of Four", and "The Adventure of the Resident Patient")
• A man is shot in a guarded room, while the still-smoking gun was delivered next door in a sealed envelope prior to the shots being fired. ("The X Street Murders", a short story by Joseph Commings)
• The murderer is seen entering a room by a witness, but when the room is opened only the corpse of the victim is to be found. (The Hollow Man)
• A man volunteers to spend the night in an attic room reputedly haunted by the spirit of a woman stabbed to death there in impossible circumstances. The door is sealed. When the seals are broken, a complete stranger lies there dead from stab wounds and the other man has vanished. (La Quatrieme Porte by Paul Halter)
• A man is found dead, and his wife dying, in a room locked from the inside. She had been able to call for help after shots were heard. There is no gun in the room and a search reveals no other person present. (Six Crimes Sans Assassin by Pierre Boileau)
• A woman is found dead in a room with her ex-husband, with the gun that killed her in his hand. Although the gun is proven to have killed her, her ex-husband is a detective whom the reader has grown to trust over a long series of short stories featuring him as the explainer of locked room mysteries. ("The Leopold Locked Room", a short story by Edward D. Hoch)
• A man is stabbed to death in a summer house to which every access route is guarded and in which no weapon is to be found. ("The Oracle of the Dog", a short story by G. K. Chesterton)
• A horse and buggy vanish in a covered bridge. Their tracks can be seen going in to the bridge, but none come out on the other side. ("The Problem of the Covered Bridge", a short story by Edward D. Hoch)
• The audience is allowed to inspect the magician's cabinet from all sides before he steps inside to perform his vanishing trick and the curtain descends. When the curtain goes up again, the magician is still in the cabinet – strangled. ("Death by Black Magic", a short story by Joseph Commings)
• The drunken brother of a billionaire industrialist fires an empty gun in the direction of his brother, who is some distance away sealed inside a safe-room. At that precise moment, the industrialist is shot, and no gun can be found in the sealed and guarded room. (The King is Dead, a novel by Ellery Queen)
• Two people are found shot to death at point-blank range inside a room locked on the inside. No gun is found in the room, and no bullets are found in either body. See the True Crime section.
• The killer rents an apartment beneath the victim, opens a box with radioactive materials and leaves. After the death of the victim in the overhead apartment, the killer returns and departs with the box. (Kill-Box by Lawrence Lariar under the pseudonym Michael Stark)