Tom Cutler - The Pilot Who Wore a Dress - And Other Dastardly Lateral Thinking Mysteries

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First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2015

FIRST EDITION

© Tom Cutler 2015

Illustrations © Bart Aalbers

Match diagrams © Alexei Penfold

Cover layout design Holly Macdonald © HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Tom Cutler asserts the moral right to be

identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008157210

Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008157203

Version: 2016-02-25

This book is dedicated to Dr John H. Watson,

‘the one fixed point in a changing age’.

‘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

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.

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

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, Frank 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.