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

Чтение книги онлайн.

      The problem

      Can you decipher the mysterious inscription around the top of the Wishing Cup of Keriput?

       Tap here for the solution.

Murder in the snow

      The mystery

      Known as the ‘Big Freeze’, the winter of 1962/63 was one of the coldest and longest British winters ever documented. December had started foggy and London was in the middle of what would turn out to be its last pea-souper. Halfway through the month a cold snap brought snow, causing people to ready themselves for a white Christmas. They began in earnest to shop for presents.

      It continued bitterly cold for the rest of Advent and over the Christmas holiday. Persistently heavy snow fell on Boxing Day and into the following day, as delighted children threw snowballs at their guffawing uncles.

      By the end of the month a savage blizzard was sweeping across the country. Freezing gales sculpted the snow into twenty-foot drifts, blocking roads and burying steam trains up to their shoulders.

      Wythenshawe in Cheshire was particularly badly hit, and it was here, on 20 January, that the papers reported a disturbing occurrence that had diverted the authorities from their road-clearing, burst-pipe-repairing and train-excavating duties.

      Imagine the scene: the body of a man, dressed in a heavy coat over layers of clothing, has been spotted in the middle of a snow-covered field by some children coming home from school for their lunch. One of them, Charlie Shaver, braver perhaps than the rest, crosses the field to look at the body. The man’s face has been blasted away by something like a sawn-off shotgun, a weapon typical in country post office robberies around these parts. He is on his back in the snow, which is stained pink with his blood. There is no sign of a weapon.

      Charlie races to the other side of the field and knocks on the door of his auntie, Ada Ferribridge. Ada, who had heard a single gunshot ring out about twenty minutes earlier, at once calls the police, who, keen to get away from shovelling their station forecourt, arrive at the scene with a good deal of important fuss.

      They immediately recognise the body as that of local charmer and ladies’ man Raymond Trethewey. His manicured nails and fancy tattoo are known to all the regulars in the pub. Photographs are taken and the body is removed.

      The autopsy report describes a short, very slight young fellow, in good nick but minus his appendix. He has died from a shotgun blast fired from below his chin, which has removed his previously handsome face.

      Trethewey, it seems, had been on his way to the Cross In Hand pub in the high street, where he always goes for a lunchtime glass of beer with his next-door-neighbour and friend, the blacksmith Jack Ferrario. But today he hadn’t turned up.

      Apart from young Charlie’s footprints going towards and away from the body, there is only one other set of marks, quickly identified as footprints made by the wellington boots habitually worn by Trethewey. These are expensive, specially commissioned boots. Though they look like normal wellingtons they have on their sole a handmade tread incorporating the victim’s initials, RWT.

      Trethewy’s distinctive boot prints start at his front door and continue unbroken to the middle of the field, where his body lay. They are easy to track because of the monogram, which, up to the position of the dead body, has been very heavily trodden into the deep snow.

      But none of this makes sense, because Trethewy is not wearing his famous boots. He has on instead a pair of totally unsuitable moccasins. Furthermore, the boot prints continue from the body in an unbroken line into a copse of trees between the field and the village high street, where they disappear, the snow having not penetrated the overgrown wood. Even odder, the prints beyond the body appear somewhat lighter and less deep, though still heavy enough.

      The local police are quick to spot the problems. How can a man in light shoes walk into the middle of a field, leaving boot tracks, shoot himself in the face, and then continue on his merry way, taking his weapon with him?

      Stirring a mug of Ada Ferribridge’s steaming tea, Sergeant Swainston remarks that the prints might actually be those of the murderer, who stealthily approached Trethewey, his feet muffled by the snow, shot him, and then continued into the wood, there disposing of the firearm. ‘So where are the victim’s footprints, then?’ asks a young constable, passing round some of Ada’s biscuits. To this Swainston has no answer so he strolls over to the pub to relieve himself of the several teas he has had that afternoon.

      As he is emerging from the gents an old man СКАЧАТЬ