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Yo, I already finished reading the part on Wednesday because, as I wrote in the last week’s thread, the story started to flow nicely (Except for 月夜がまくしたてる). Had to look for something else to read in the meantime to not get ahead too far.
Let’s see if I can still manage to organize all my thoughts.
First, @simias was right on the money with his assumption that they would think it is a staged suicide. Well done
The deduction from the dying message with chocolate to it being poison was crazy. It sometimes feels like I’ve read too few mystery novels for the mysteries in this book to be solvable by me ^^.
At first, I thought the story would go in the direction of 遊馬 being a failed protagonist that slowly spirals into mass murder. First, when he didn’t dispose of the poison and then when 月夜 came to talk to him. But alas, the story is really picking up steam with a murder, we as the reader know nothing about.
I suppose 老田 probably was seen in the morning before starting to set up the table, so the murder would have been committed in the morning, and not at night. I can’t see any motive for the murder yet. But my prime suspect would be 月夜, she seems the smartest to me.
It’s another closed room mystery. The fire could have started because of some lensing effect with the bright light in the dining room in the morning. Given the door locking mechanism picture (which I loved, to check I understood correctly), I also think it would be possible to lock it from the outside with a thread or something similar.
Don’t see the relevance of the blood message on the table yet.
One thing I’m curious about is the constant reminder of the amount of revolution he’s walking up and down in the spiral stairs to get to the rooms. Half expecting there to be some kind of clue later on where we find out the rooms can move or something
I’m really looking forward to the next week to see what clues the author gives us. And also love to hear any theories from you.
Once again, read mostly on trains and while moving around, so I haven’t been able to focus in as deeply on specifics or take notes like I probably would otherwise do. But the writing style I’m still very much liking, it feels very very flowy. Usually I might stop after 20 pages straight because a book is starting to feel a bit same-ish, but this one if I stop after that much, it feels like I could just immediately keep on going and going. I liked the kind of quite skittish deviations in conversation and bit of humour when 遊馬 and 月夜 were talking, and also the references to more modern mystery-stuff like Knives Out or Sherlock tucked in there with the 本格ミステリー and all of the Japanese stuff. It’s really coming through how big a mystery-buff the author is, feels quite meta-meta.
No more thoughts, will just piggy-back off of other people putting in more effort than me into trying to understand
Personally I don’t see her as a candidate at all, she seems too set up as the kind of key behind investigating it all. It would really surprise me if she was responsible, but to be honest essentially any other character wouldn’t surprise me. Although there is the element of her having gone down (presumably) to see 老田 before going up to talk to 遊馬. But the fact she was so open about that removes her even more in my eyes.
Good catch with the bright light, I’d forgotten about that. The fact that it was explicitly mentioned makes me think it might be more of a possibility.
I was thinking that there’s got to be some link to 神津島 and the unreleased mystery. Random throwing it out there, like it was something he’d set up to go off after his death, whenever it was. He seems like the kind who would make sure his servants went down with him if it meant a nice mystery to solve (speaking of which, was there some mention of Ancient Egypt and that happening with pharaohs earlier on? I’ve definitely read something about that in a Japanese book this last week or two, but my brain is so fuzzled I don’t remember if that was from this or not. If it was from this, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case).
Finished too ! I agree with all of you, this is a very fun read, that flows easily, a real page-tuner ! And yet, just as last week, when I got near the end, it felt.. I don’t know, long ? Not boring, not dragging, but … long.
Yes, that’s quite fun ! And the quote at the end had me wanting to research some more. But I guess we’ll have an explanation next week.
It HAS to mean something. It just seems too weird not to. Either moving rooms or a secret corridor or something
I was surprised when they earlier discussed light-blocking curtains and said that the morning light in the dining room was 危険. It didn’t’ make any sense at the time; now it does !
Ok I finished 一日目. I’ll leave the next part for tomorrow.
impressions
I was very excited to get the explanation for the whole Y thing and was pretty underwhelmed by the reveal. Not only did I find it a bit lame that you had to be familiar with specific detective stories, it also feels very far fetched.
I know that I need to allow some leeway to the author in these stories in order for them to craft a fun mystery, but this one really stretches my suspension of disbelief. The victim who was suffocating and mere seconds from death decided to create this elaborate mise en scene instead of just picking a pen from the desk and writing “遊馬 did it”? You can even write it in kana to save some time!
A lot of new elements have been introduced that are probably going to come into play eventually. The dining room that’s unusable in the mornings due to the direct sunlight, the door latch, the guns in the glass case with the keypad, the door of the top room that doesn’t open from the inside…
I like the character of 夜月, she’s a fun twist on the arrogant detective.
I can overlook that one because I’m not a mystery-novel nerd. But imagine, you would draw me a dog and a 7 or an 8 next to it and I would immediately know what it’s about!
This one does bother me a bit. The thinking explained in the book about why not doing that, is that if the murderer understands the dying message, they can just erase it, so you need to encode it somehow. But in this situation, it was clear that the butler was racing to reach him and while the doctor already left the room, so I also think that it would have made more sense to write it plainly (they even said that there were plenty of pen on the desk), since he had so much time seemingly before he died.
But who knows, maybe there is something more to it, maybe he did want to somehow include clues to his big reveal or what not.
Unfortunately, I fear we might be in for more of the same. It fits the general theme (why have murder mystery enthusiasts, and not use their talent ?) and the general 本格ミステリ tribute meta-theme. I haven’t read further than this week’s designated reading, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more specific references popped up. Try to see it this way, maybe ? It just adds fun reads to you To-Be-Read pile
First of all you can tell this book is pure fiction, there were 0 technical issues with plugin the smartphone to the screen in the cinema theater.
I have heard the joke dying message VS dinning message recently in Furuhata Ninzaburo which I binged recently (Japanese Columbo, so quite useful vocabulary and situations for our book here)
Had already forgotten that 遊馬 wasn’t a girl and freaked out a bit when a man appeared in their room at the end of the first day
It did almost go that way!
I thought about her too, seeing as she kind of has an alibi because she is talking to 遊馬 “while” it happens, so we would suspect her the least and be the most surprised by the reveal. Isn’t that how writing mystery novels work?
Another good candidate is 夢読, she would plant something on the crime scene and then guess it to prove that she can has a supernatural power, typical
By the way here’s the picture for our audiobook friends, it’s from the middle of day 1 section 2, when the doctor first notices the lock:
Thinking that there has to be something there too, otherwise why not just one room per etage..
Yes very meta. Chuckled a bit at the mention of 『容疑者Ｘの献身』 that won the 直木賞 and the 格ミステリ大賞, seeing that this book also won a prize, would have been even more funny had it been the same one.
I feel like it could go any way of course, I’m betting it will be someone who has been introduced as a minor character but will be shown to have a hidden strong motivation to kill. However, I have to say so far that I will go with 加々見 as my main candidate (not because I’ve read too many mysteries where the detective themselves is the killer, of course…) He seems to be written to be the stereotypical rough-around-the-edges detective, and he doesn’t want anyone interfering in the crime scene and evidences of course, but I wonder if it’s so 月夜 or the others don’t actually discover something?
This also feels weird to me. I wonder if there’s something more we are missing?
I’ve started to wonder if there’s a chance 遊馬 could be an unreliable narrator, and that we are not getting all the information from him…
I’m also very curious about the message that was left near 老田, because I have absolutely no idea what it means.
I have read every day since Saturday and I have still a bunch of pages left before I finish the week. I wish I could pretend that I can read this amount of text casually, but it’s far from being the case…
I started reading the book 3 weeks in advance to make sure I’m able to follow, so I finished week 1 before we actually started and now I’m a little ahead on week 2 it does take me quite some time/effort to read it all, though. I echo @simias on this, it’s definitely not a casual read for me.
I’m in a bit of a special situation at the moment. I’m on sick leave and have nothing else to do than read Japanese all day (excluding some chores and exercise).
I’m honestly pretty slow with only about 9pg/h, but I can butter in as much time as I want.
That will change from next week onwards, so I’m reading ahead already. Please don’t feel pressured by me instantly replying to a new week thread -.-
The ramblings about detective stories towards the end almost broke me. I appreciated that the dullness of the monologue was acknowledged humorously immediately after.
The main difficulty for me here is the sheer amount of text, the Japanese itself is pretty straightforward and easy to follow.
No idea who killed the butler and what the message means. I suspect the cook for no particular reason. I’m interested to see what it will do for 月夜’s theses, it seems that she was about to expose 遊馬 (or maybe I believe that because I share some of his paranoia? Why would she confront him alone if she thinks he’s a murderer? Then again he was visibly collapsing in front of her at the end of their conversation).
But now she knows that 遊馬 hasn’t done anything here since he was with her.
Yeah I don’t think you need a string or anything to lock from the outside, just carefully rest the spinny thing against the door as you close it and it will fall into place.
I don’t think he has poison left, he just has an empty, accusatory pill case that contains traces of poison. The rest of the poison is in the vial in the exhibition room.
I wonder if 月夜 found the case and hid it in her handkerchief. The narration pointedly described her jamming it in her pocket.
Oooh, and that’s why 遊馬 saw a weird stain earlier, because it had almost happened once already. Very good catch! I didn’t consider that. Happy that’s it’s not another “yeah so it’s just a reference to episode 14 of Columbo, you had to be there”.
I do think he has poison left. As far as I understood it he laced normal pills for blood pressure with the puffer fish poison. And it wasn’t described that there’s only one pill in the case.
I don’t remember 100% if he let him take the pill or gave it to him himself, but either way I think he laced all of them in the case.
Side tangent, If he gave it to him. How potent is that poison? Could the traces he left on the door + key with his fingers that touched the pill be deadly?
I thought I read something about where the case is now. But I don’t remember if it was in next week’s part so I don’t say no more .
Week 2
it does take me quite some time/effort to read it all, though. I echo 
.