Читать книгу The Pilot Who Wore a Dress: And Other Dastardly Lateral Thinking Mysteries - Tom Cutler, Tom Cutler - Страница 15

The mystery

It is a September day in 1925, on the outskirts of a small Yorkshire town tucked into a quiet nook in the Dales. It is lunchtime and the bells from the moorland church are chiming the quarter. Coming over the bridge is a solitary walker dressed in hiking tweeds, his cap pulled down over his eyes against the rain, which is now coming on hard. Across the high street he spies a cosy pub where he decides to shelter and have a bite to eat.

Inside the pub, our walker, whose name is Gerald, shakes the rain from his cap and hangs it on a peg beside the fire. He orders a pint of beer and a piece of cheese from the rosy-faced landlady and looking around the low ceilinged room he spots in the corner an old man in a straw hat, nursing a drink in a china mug.

Gerald leans his stick against the chimney corner and goes over to sit beside the old man. ‘Good afternoon,’ he says.

‘Aye’, replies the man, taking a pull at his ale and drawing a rough sleeve across his muttonchop whiskers.

Through the window Gerald can see, on the other side of a dry-stone wall, a huge Victorian factory building and its handsome reflection in the millstream. A plume of smoke rises from the chimney, and the factory name, S. GARTONS, is reflected in gigantic back-to-front capitals in the water. The old man removes the long clay pipe from his lips and says, ‘You’re not from round here, are you?’

‘No,’ replies Gerald.

The man pauses. ‘I’ll tell you what, lad,’ he says. ‘If you can tell me in one guess what it is they make in that factory I’ll buy you as much beer as you can drink. If you fail, you’ll do the same for me. One guess only.’ Gerald muses for a minute, staring into the shimmering water of the millstream opposite.

‘Well, I’ve no idea,’ he says. Then he takes a longer look at the name reflected in the water. ‘All right,’ he says suddenly, ‘I’ll tell you.’

The old man grins. ‘What is it then?’

‘Handkerchiefs!’ exclaims Gerald.

‘You cheated! You knew already,’ gasps the man.

‘No I didn’t,’ says Gerald. ‘It was easy.’

The problem

How did Gerald know what was made in the factory?

Tap here for the solution.