Not so elementary, my dear Watson

On the case: Sherlock Holmes

Mystery. It’s the biggest category in any bookshop or audiobook catalogue. Movies and TV series ditto. From Raymond Chandler to Scandi noir via Agatha Christie (still the top-selling fiction author in publishing history), it’s crime, crime, crime – strange murders that seem beyond explanation even by Hercule, Sherlock or recent arrivals like Jonathan Creek. Until, finally, with suspects to spare and seconds to go, their little grey cells reveal all. Voila! Mystery solved.

This column announces the end of this era. During lockdown I’ve come up with a way for miscreants to avoid the lockup. Mysteries without solutions.

You know the set-up. Lord Bertie Wooster of Blandings Castle is found dead in the library. He has been shot, strangled, poisoned, suffocated or made to look like a victim of suicide. The library is locked from the inside and the key will never be found. Some papers have recently been burnt in the grate.

His Lordship’s demise is discovered when he fails to respond to either the first or second dinner gong – as struck by Jeeves, his loyal 85-year-old butler. The dozen guests, each of whom has a motive for murder (because of a missing will – the ashes in the grate perhaps?), help break the door down and discover the aristocratic cadaver.

The French windows are locked from the inside (aren’t they always?) and there are no footprints on the rain-drenched lawn. The chauffeur has disappeared along with both Wooster’s Rolls-Royce and valet – with whom the chauffeur may be having an affair. I think that covers everything, except for the standard ingredient of the broken wall mirror and the tramp seen lurking beneath the ancient oak tree on the south lawn.

At this point Holmes, Poirot or any other detective you fancy would arrive at Blandings, ask searching questions of all the staff and guests, and solve the case quick-smart; then an Inspector Japp-type character would make an arrest, usually charging the least likely person, such as the local vicar. Game set and match.

But not in the tragic case of the Wooster death outlined previously. All will admit defeat. Indeed, they are so perplexed that they doubt his death was even possible and, after the funeral, demand an exhumation – only to find an empty coffin. The Mystery of Blandings will remain the coldest of cases.

Apart from my unsolvable mysteries I’m working on other time-wasting innovations, copyright and patents pending. Puzzles that can’t be unpuzzled, jigsaws that are cleverly designed not to fit, codes that cannot be broken even by a team of Turings, maps that lead you round in circles, narcotics that have no effect. Elections that have no point (Oops! We have those already), a version of Scrabble without vowels. Each week there will be a quiz with silly questions and erroneous answers. And I’m launching a new version of Monopoly with only Trump properties (go directly to jail, Donald!) that will have you scurrying back to the simple morality of Snakes and Ladders.

Crime in all its multimedia iterations has nothing to do with justice. Like watching sport, mysteries are simply another way to waste time, to spackle the cracks in life. It is time to relax, to let meaninglessness triumph.

Breaking news… It is my sad duty to report that, despite my confidence in its insolvability, the Mystery of Blandings has in fact been solved. The butler did it! The clue was the lack of fingerprints – a dead giveaway, really, as he alone in the household wore gloves. Japp has arrested Jeeves.