Sherlock Holmes

"The simplest method?" Hopkins asked calmly: "That kind of thing, no matter how you think about it, it has nothing to do with the word [simple]."

"That's just something you can't think of according to normal thinking. Once you think of the method, you will find that everything is so easy.

Let’s take a recent case as an example.

That female stage actress.

She died in a secret room with only a door leading to the outside, but the door was sealed with her body, and one arm and ankle were nailed to the wall of the room.

From this point of view, it is certainly impossible for the murderer to finish nailing her body and then leave the room.

But in fact, the description of the scene itself is wrong, or the murderer made everyone think that the scene was like that.

At that time, I remember I said that in this kind of murder that happens indoors, you have to open the door before you can see the scene inside the door. That being the case, before Gregson opened the door, he had no idea what was inside the door. Looks like.

He just kicked the door open, and then saw that the hands and feet on the left side of the body were nailed to the door. He also saw blood holes penetrating the hands and feet on the right side, and there were two huge bloody nails on the wall. It is natural to fall into a misunderstanding and think that the right limb of the deceased was also nailed to the wall.

But in fact, the murderer just nailed her limbs, and then pulled her right hand and ankle off the nails, then walked out of the door and locked the door.

When someone breaks in and sees the corpse, they will think that the corpse has been nailed to the wall.

It’s just a very simple habit of thinking. "

Speaking of this, Hopkins was silent for a while, and then naturally raised a question: "But... just like you said, this door is locked from behind.

But the key to the door was hanging around the corpse's neck.

How to explain this? "

"It's easy to explain. Didn't I say it before? This room is basically connected to the outside world. The wooden door has shrunk from top to bottom due to the constant humidity in London, and there is a gap of about a centimeter or two between the door frame and the door frame.

Therefore, you only need to tie the deceased's hair into a bunch, like a braid, and cross it over the door panel.

Because of this, after closing the door, a state is formed where [the corpse is inside the door, but a section of the corpse's hair is outside the door].

After that, the murderer could easily use the key to lock the door from the outside.

As for how he hung the key around the deceased's neck after locking the door, I guess you can think of it at this point.

The murderer was outside the door, put the rope holding the key through his hair, then grabbed his hair and threw the key into the crack of the door. Then the key would naturally slide to the neck of the deceased along with gravity.

At this time, the murderer stuffed his hair back into the door, giving the appearance of [the door key hanging around the neck of the deceased].

As I have always emphasized, there is no secret room at all. "

With just a few words, Sherlock cracked the corpse chamber.

It is indeed very simple, but before he said it, no one could have imagined that under normal circumstances, someone should be able to crack it. It just takes some time. But with the blessing of the Ripper name, all People's thoughts are all thinking in the direction of those weird contract abilities, or weird curses, so no one tries to use this traditional reasoning method to explain everything.

"Well, this method is indeed feasible, but it is only 'feasible'." Hopkins' tone seemed to have changed slightly: "Because even if you found the secret room method, the banker Where is death's vault?

I don't believe anyone has access to that vault.

Moreover, I don’t believe that anyone can force a person to starve himself to death! "

His attitude was very firm, because he was convinced that what he said was the absolute truth, and that the vault was an absolute secret room.

And Sherlock naturally admitted his statement:

"Yes, no one can enter that vault, but if you can't enter, it doesn't mean you can't kill people.

Again, the vault is connected to the outside world. It has a delivery port for the demon sedative, and the delivery port is connected to the ventilation ducts of the entire bank, which provides the murderer with the possibility of killing. "

"What do you mean, you can kill people just through those few small windows?" Hopkins' tone was not so much doubtful as questioning:

"You should have seen those small windows. They are all embedded with layers of iron bars. The gaps in each grid are very narrow, less than one centimeter. Nothing can pass through, not even human hands, nor the muzzle of a gun. No, it can even be said that except for gas, nothing can pass through. Of course, the most important thing is that the deceased was starved to death!

Do you want to say that the murderer is lying across the grid, chatting with the people in the vault, and hypnotizing them with words? Then he saw a fantasy of some kind of monster, which caused him to not dare to approach food, so he starved to death?

Or do you want to overturn your own conclusion and the results of the autopsy conducted by the Inquisition, saying that the murderer used some kind of drug to make the deceased sleepy, making him unable to eat in his sleep? "

Hopkins speaks very fast. It can be seen that he seems to be thinking about these things every day these days, so he can express these doubts so quickly. Anyway, he is like this, almost all possibilities All were rejected.

But Sherlock still had that calm, even lazy attitude.

This time he did not express his reasoning directly. Instead, he seemed to find it boring to keep talking in the car, and suddenly looked at the girl next to him.

"So Miss Nightingale, would you like to play a simple detective game?" he asked.

"Huh?!" Nightingale was startled. She was actually still in this weird atmosphere and couldn't calm down. But when Sherlock asked her, she felt some courage again for no reason. , although he didn’t know why the other party asked him, he still nodded:

"Okay, but I'm not that smart."

"You are too modest." Sherlock said nonchalantly:

“Anyway, let’s start with a simple question.

According to your opinion, if a person starved to death, what would be the reason? "

"The cause of starvation." Nightingale thought for a few seconds and felt that this question was indeed very simple, so she quickly answered:

“There should be only three reasons.

First, he had nothing to eat and could only starve to death.

Second, because he is unable to eat due to his own reasons, such as illness, he will naturally die of hunger.

Third, he couldn't get food and could only watch, so naturally he could only wait for death. "

"Haha." Sherlock laughed happily after hearing these three answers, and then said to Judge Hopkins in front of him:

"Look, isn't this very simple? Even our Miss Nightingale, who has not received any detective training, cracked a seemingly incredible secret room in just 10 seconds.

Yes, as long as the deceased cannot get food, then of course he will starve to death.

Judging from your memory, you probably haven't forgotten it yet.

At that time, the bank clerks placed the large cardboard box containing food and water in the corner of the vault.

Do you need me to be more straightforward?

them

Place the box containing the deceased's food under the air vent.

After we opened the vault, we saw the books and pillows scattered on the floor. We thought the deceased had seen something terrible and wanted to blow it away.

Not really.

The deceased saw his food right in front of him, but he couldn't reach it. "