The Pilot Who Wore a Dress Read online

  Copyright

  HARPER

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

  FIRST EDITION

  © Tom Cutler 2015

  Illustrations © Bart Aalbers

  Match diagrams © Alexei Penfold

  Cover layout design Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

  Tom Cutler asserts the moral right to be

  identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Source ISBN: 9780008157210

  Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008157203

  Version: 2016-02-25

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Dr John H. Watson,

  ‘the one fixed point in a changing age’.

  Epigraph

  ‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’

  Sherlock Holmes, in The Sign of the Four (1890),

  by Arthur Conan Doyle

  About the Author

  Tom Cutler began his career with numerous false starts, as a teacher, set designer, speechwriter, printer, wine waiter, City drone and radio reporter, before settling down in book and magazine publishing. After building up extensive scar tissue he finally threw caution to the wind and launched himself as a humorous writer upon a reading public that had done nothing to hurt him.

  Tom’s books cover a variety of subjects, including language, sex and music. Among his several international bestsellers are, A Gentleman’s Bedside Book and the Amazon number-one blockbuster, 211 Things A Bright Boy Can Do. His work has been translated into more languages than you can shake a stick at. Tom has written for the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Huffington Post and BBC radio, and he has a regular column in The Chap magazine.

  He is a practising magician and member of the Magic Circle, as well as a detective story fan and longstanding Sherlock Holmes aficionado. A lifetime’s experience as a very devious bugger has helped him in the writing of this book.

  Tom lives at the seaside, where he enjoys kicking pebbles.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTION

  LATERAL THINKING CLASSICS

  The sailor who ate the cream tea

  The Wishing Cup of Keriput

  Murder in the snow

  The Yorkshire factory

  The riddle of the Burns supper

  The annoying computer password

  Terry’s girlfriends

  The lorry driver slaying

  The magic bucket

  The impossible brothers

  Arms and the child

  The window cleaner in the sky

  The troublesome signpost

  The Knightsbridge barber

  The fastest beard in the world

  The high window

  The confusing coach trip

  The pilot who wore a dress

  Picking up the children from school

  The car in the river

  The sad end of Felicity Ffolkes

  The blind beggar

  A birthday message from the Queen

  Talking rubbish

  The Flood

  Hospital assault

  The two Italians

  House painting made simple

  The absent-minded taxi driver

  Plane crash in no man’s land

  The strange story of Antony and Cleopatra

  Bird strike

  Contradictio in adjecto

  Unconscious sexism

  The short week

  The man in the lift

  Mary’s mum

  The deserted prairie cabin

  The two prime ministers

  LOCKED ROOMS AND IMPOSSIBLE MURDERS

  The Tea-leaf

  The Adventure of the Speckled Band

  The Glass Coffin: an Inspector Jibson Mystery

  A Game of Roulette

  The Two Bottles of Relish

  The Problem of Thor Bridge

  LATERAL THINKING MYSTERIES FROM REAL LIFE

  Arsenic and Old Luce

  The rather-short-very-long baseball game

  The curious case of dihydrogen monoxide

  The Mary Celeste affair

  The story of Big Ben

  The Euston Road poisonings

  Kentucky blues

  Uncle Bob’s magic pipe

  The incredible story of Kaspar Hauser

  The great Epping Jaundice mystery

  The fastest submarine in the world

  LATERAL THINKING BETCHAS AND GOTCHAS

  The cocktail glass

  Nailed it!

  Five into four will go

  The kiss

  Twelve minus two equals two

  Nine plus nothing makes ten

  Betting edge

  The house move

  Blind date

  Magnetic matches

  The glass mousetraps

  Fire under water

  Saucer sorcery

  How to put your head where your bottom should be

  Bend me your ears

  The easy restaurant bill-dodging betcha

  Thinking outside the box

  THE SOLUTIONS

  Also by Tom Cutler

  About the Publisher

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  If you put your lateral thinking cap on you’ll realise that the more people I put in my acknowledgments the more books I will sell. This is because everyone I mention will buy at least one copy as a souvenir, and more to give to their friends to make them envious. Maybe The Book of Acknowledgements will be the next big seller.

  Anyway, I’d like to offer a genuine thank-you to the following people. First, my editor at HarperCollins, Jack Fogg, whose idea this book was, and who first approached me to write it. Second, my always-encouraging agent Laura Morris, for sensible advice, several disgraceful lunches, and at least one wild champagne party that I only dimly remember. Third, my illustrator Bart Aalbers, who has added an exuberant twang to the whole shebang.

  Hats off to two old friends, Terry Guyatt, who first told me the story of the man with two girlfriends and gave me some early advice and encouragement, and John Kirby, for checking in regularly.

  I thank my pal Chris Tuohy, who alerted me to the joke I used in ‘The annoying computer password’ mystery, and my new friend David Johnson, for sitting me down in the sunshine at the Yacht Club and listening to my early ideas. Cheers also to another new friend, Patricia Hammond, for sending me the most lovely and unexpected fan letter I’ve ever received.

  I’m indebted to two excellent pub landlords, Richard at The Old Star and Mark at The Royal Sovereign, for providing me with old-fashioned liquid cheer when I was at low tide. I compliment Rob Sr and Rob Jr, Fran
k and Matt, and Richard, on their hard work, and I especially thank Arthur, for his zest, good humour, craftsmanship and strange unearthly whistling. His ‘Greensleeves’ is like something out of The Twilight Zone.

  I’m grateful to the experts in the Magic Circle library, and at West Sussex Libraries, for providing, in the first case, information, and, in the second, refuge when the six people in the previous paragraph were making too much noise.

  This book would have been a shadow of itself without the inspiring work of the towering Martin Gardner: mathematician, magician, sceptic, wit, puzzle collector and abundant author. I commend Michael Howell and Peter Ford for their superb 1985 page-turner, The Ghost Disease and Twelve Other Stories of Detective Work in the Medical Field, which filled me in on the Epping Jaundice, the Euston Road poisonings and the mysterious ailment that felled Clare Boothe Luce. I bow down also to Paul Sloane and Des MacHale, whose years of painstaking collecting and publishing of lateral thinking puzzles helped me track down some of the quirkiest, and I propose a resounding three cheers to those anonymous geniuses who came up with them all in the first place.

  Finally, I thank Marianne, as usual, for everything.

  FOREWORD

  When people talk of the ‘Golden Age’ of crime fiction they’re usually referring to the 1920s and 30s, but some authorities believe that we are currently going through another ‘Golden Age’. The range, profile and quality of contemporary crime fiction are probably as high as they have ever been.

  But one thing the current Golden Age lacks – which was very much present in the previous one – is a sense of fun.

  As embittered middle-aged Inspectors with drink and relationship problems try to identify serial killers, as forensic pathologists sift through decomposing organs, and as dour Scandinavian detectives confront the unalterable bleakness of human existence, crime fiction has lost its traditional link with high spirits. Noir is the new black, and that’s just something readers have to take on board.

  I’m sure, at universities all over the world, doctorates are even now being written about the reasons for this change. Whodunits in which the puzzle was paramount came to a natural end because there were no more puzzles left that hadn’t already been done. The country houses, perfectly designed for weekend house parties for guests with ‘dark secrets in their past’ and offering a wonderful range of domestics to act as witnesses, informants and suspects, did not survive the Second World War. No longer could their owners ‘get the staff’, and many were converted into hotels, boys’ prep schools and secret military training centres.

  The great carnage of the war also made the Golden Age tradition of treating death as a kind of parlour game seem a little tasteless. Publications like The Baffle Book, a collection of murder puzzles very popular in the 1930s, appeared to be offensively trivial.

  Another development, the abolition of the death penalty in 1965, meant crime novels were left with a lot more loose ends to be unravelled. No longer could the pointing finger of Hercule Poirot at the perpetrator in the library signal the permanent end of a case, with the hangman’s noose tying everything up in a neat bow. What had been black and white moved on to a colour-chart of greys.

  So it was no surprise that crime fiction grew darker.

  I’m sure I’m not alone in slightly regretting that change. ‘Murder as parlour game’ still holds a strong attraction, and it is no surprise how many books from the original Golden Age are now being successfully reprinted. Murder Mystery Dinners are a hugely popular form of entertainment, and new generations of young people are introduced every day to the fun of Cluedo.

  It is firmly within that tradition of having fun with crime that this book by Tom Cutler fits. He has taken the original idea of selecting lateral thinking challenges and writing them up as mini detective stories, then asking the reader to work out the solution. The Crime Puzzle Book, thought to be dead after 1939, has been reborn in a new form for the 21st century.

  I’m sure a great many readers will relish the challenges that it presents to them.

  Simon Brett

  Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger award-winner

  and President of the Detection Club

  INTRODUCTION

  Two men are playing tennis together. After an exhausting three-set match, both of them win. How can this be? All will be explained in a moment.

  The reason lateral thinking problems are so tricky, and such fun to solve, is that we tend to think in a routine way. Our ingrained habits, inhibitions and false assumptions hinder us in winkling out the less apparent possibilities tucked away inside the lateral thinking shell. But if we can look at the problem from another perspective, the answer often pops out. As Sherlock Holmes tells Dr Watson, ‘When once your point of view is changed the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.’

  It’s like the joke about the man who dies and goes to hell. He sees an ugly old villain making love to a beautiful young blonde. When he objects that this is hardly a harsh enough fate, the Devil replies, ‘Who are you to question that woman’s punishment?’

  The term ‘lateral thinking’ was coined in 1967 by a man who liked to use an overhead projector named Edward de Bono (the man is named Edward de Bono, not the projector). Edward de Bono has said that the mind can see only what it is prepared to see, but that we can solve some otherwise tricky problems if we look at things from the side – which is what ‘lateral’ means.

  For example, if we hear that Dr Alex Bernard is a vicar we will probably make several unconscious assumptions about him. But, as Sherlock Holmes also said, ‘There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,’ for Dr Alex Bernard is a woman. Thinking that a vicar named Alex is a man is not sexism, as some people would insist, but just a forgivable mistake, because if we didn’t make assumptions based on our experience of the way the world normally works we would be so abstract that we wouldn’t be able to laugh at jokes or get on with people at parties.

  In this book I’ve decided to make the most of the combination of riddle and story that most lateral thinking problems embody. Solving these mysteries won’t require unusual intelligence or imagination, and all the information you need is there in the tale – though the solution may be hidden in plain sight by the way in which the puzzle has been framed. There is no cheating, but there is, of course, a fair sprinkling of red herrings.

  The first section of the book contains celebrated standards from the lateral thinking hall of fame. There’s everything from the immortal ‘Man in the lift’ to the baffling ‘Murder in the snow’, along with some less familiar, and a few entirely original, problems.

  It is a feature of lateral thinking mysteries that they involve lots of death and destruction, with a fair number of hangings, shootings and suicides. What is so alluring about all this violence I can’t say, but I’ve kept it all in, along with a few laughs, I hope.

  Besides the classics, I’ve included a section featuring some of the finest ‘locked-room’ mysteries and ‘impossible’ crimes from detective fiction, adapted to the lateral thinking format. Some of the very best head-scratchers from masters such as Lord Dunsany and Arthur Conan Doyle are included.

  A Real Life section features mysterious true events such as the curious case of the Mary Celeste, the dihydrogen monoxide affair and the riddle of the Epping Jaundice.

  Finally, there is a part featuring bar betchas and gotchas, with lateral thinking matchstick puzzles, counter-intuitive gags and unlosable bets.

  The Pilot Who Wore a Dress makes great solo reading but you can also use it to challenge a roomful of players. You can even pass the book round and take turns reading out the stories. Apart from the monkey business behind the betchas, which is included with the bet, you will discover the fun and quirky solutions to the mysteries in their own section at the back of the book. They are as compelling as the enigmas they explain.

  I hope you find these lateral thinking mysteries as much fun to solve as I did to write. Good luck.

/>   Oh, by the way, if you’re still wondering about those two tennis players, the answer is that they are partners playing a doubles match. Of course!

  LATERAL THINKING CLASSICS

  ‘These little grey cells. It is up to them.’

  Agatha Christie

  The sailor who ate the cream tea

  The mystery

  On the western outskirts of Plymouth lies the little seaside town of St Havet. It has a striped lighthouse, a rocky foreshore and a few red cliffs, which fossil-hunters say are a goldmine of echinoids and ammonites.

  The town’s pretty high street has the tang of salt in its nostrils, and several old-fashioned shops line the cobbled roadway: a haberdashery, a fishmonger’s where the gulls circle, and a greengrocer’s. There is a friendly pub, The Lion and Lobster, and a charming tearoom – Marianne’s – famous for its homemade clotted cream and giant scones. The tearoom boasts lace tablecloths, an excitement of doilies, and those things that look like three flying saucers on a stick, which they put cakes on at teatime. On the walls hang faded photographs of the skiffs of Worlock’s Hole.

  One afternoon, not long ago, the bell on the door of Marianne’s tearoom tinkled brightly. A young man walked in and sat down in the sunshine by the window. He was the only customer. Daisy, the waitress, daughter of the late Marianne, and now sole owner of the establishment, greeted him with a warm smile.

  After consulting the dainty menu for a minute the man caught her eye again. She approached the table and asked him what he would like. ‘One of your famous cream teas, please,’ he said.

  Daisy wrote this down carefully in her notebook and bustled off to the kitchen, emerging in due course with a steaming brown teapot, and a blue cup and saucer from a different tea service. She handed her customer his pot of tea and retired again to the kitchen. After a minute she was back, staggering under a tray laden with two scones the size of half-bricks, half a pint of strawberry jam in a pretty bowl with a silver spoon, and a saucer piled high with yellow clotted cream.