by Tom Cutler
Teddy Roosevelt recovered from the wound and it was another seven years before he died, anticlimactically, in his bed, from something else. It was said that Death had to take him in his sleep because if he’d been awake there would have been a fight.
Roosevelt had always loved the wide open prairies of the Great American Plains. ‘We have taken into our language the word prairie,’ he said, ‘because when our backwoodsmen first reached the land and saw the great natural meadows of long grass … they knew not what to call them, and borrowed the term already in use among the French inhabitants.’
Beautiful in the summer, the prairies can be fearsome in winter. Blizzards howl across the great flat nothingness, blowing snow into huge mounds and tearing roofs off barns. A man who recently broke down in a snowstorm on the prairie decided to get out of his car and head for the light of a farm. They found him weeks later, frozen solid under a hillock of snow.
It was one day during the winter of 1889, close to the town of Bismarck on the broad plains of the newly established state of North Dakota, that a settler by the name of Hudson Flint found himself cut off from his farm by a sudden blizzard. Visibility was down to a few yards, but he was dressed thickly against the wind and his boots were stout. Somewhere nearby, he knew, was his prairie cabin, with a stove, fuel and dried foods. He must find it or he would soon leave his wife a widow. Time was not on his side.
Evening was coming on, it was getting dark, and the snow was fine and sharp. It stung as it speckled his face. Trudging through the knee-high drifts, Flint followed the line of a fence he knew well, having staked it out himself long before.
Finally, against the fading light of the swirling sky, he saw the familiar silhouette of the cabin. About the size of a garden shed, it was only yards away. Flint made it to the door, kicking the snow away from the entrance.
Inside, he clapped his arms around himself and knocked the snow from his boots. The room was as cold as the prairie outside, but, except for the thin blades of icy air that sliced between the slats, the wind was no more.
By now darkness had fallen and the cabin was pitch black. By touch alone, Flint found and gathered together an armful of firewood and kindling for the stove. Patting around the table in the darkness, he discovered a candle, an oil lamp and a matchbox containing a single match.
A ghastly idea now occurred to him. ‘I have firewood, a candle and an oil lamp,’ he thought, ‘but only one match. If I cannot light the lamp, nobody will see my bright window and my fuel will run out before I am discovered. If I cannot light the candle I will not be able to relight the lamp if it blows out, which it usually does. If I cannot light the fire I’m as good as dead.’
The wind groaned and whistled around the chimney. Being a religious man, Hudson Flint fell on his knees and prayed for guidance.
The problem
Flint has a candle, an oil lamp and some firewood, but only one match. Which should he light first?
Tap here for the solution.
The two prime ministers
The mystery
When Thomas Carlyle got married, Samuel Butler remarked that, ‘It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry each other, and so make two people unhappy instead of four.’ Like Butler, Carlyle had a way with words. He called the hostilities of 1739–48 between Spain and Britain ‘The War of Jenkins’ Ear’, because one Captain Robert Jenkins had said that a Spaniard had cut one of his off when their coastguards boarded his merchant ship. Jenkins’ ear was later exhibited before the British Parliament and is supposed to have lit the fuse that launched the war.
The Prime Minister at the time of the War of Jenkins’ Ear was Sir Robert Walpole, who is regarded as the first ever British Prime Minister, and also the longest serving. There is some debate about all this as the position of PM was never deliberately created, and didn’t start on a particular date but evolved over time, like the nylon-eating bacterium. Walpole was in power for more than two decades and was enormously influential, but declined into ill health after he was accused of corruption, and of frequently going to bed with a woman who wasn’t his wife. It sounds very much like the politics of today.
At the time of writing there have been 75 premierships in the UK, including some famous names such as the Duke of Wellington (who invented the boot), Earl Grey (who invented the tea) and Sir Robert Peel (who invented the police). There was Gladstone, Disraeli, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher (who invented being the first woman PM), along with a few not so famous names, such as John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, who was Prime Minister for less than a year.
The tallest Prime Minister is believed to have been Lord Salisbury, who was about six feet four. The most sexually fertile was without doubt Earl Grey, who had seventeen children. I take my hat off to him – it must have been all that tea.
Two lots of father and son have held the office, the first being George Grenville and his son William Grenville. The second lot were the Pitts: William Pitt the Elder and William Pitt the Younger. Pitt the Younger also had a family connection with William Grenville. They were cousins, their fathers being brothers-in-law.
The only brothers ever to have been Prime Minister were Henry Pelham and Thomas Pelham-Holles, who immediately succeeded him.
But the most interesting, and strangest, case among all these family relationships is the following. This is the matter of the man who was the 60th prime minister and the man who was the 62nd prime minister. Both these prime ministers had the same mother and father, but were not brothers.
Sort that one out.
The problem
If the 60th and 62nd British prime ministers (both male) were not adopted or fostered, and both had the same biological parents but were not brothers, how could this be?
Tap here for the solution.
LOCKED ROOMS AND IMPOSSIBLE MURDERS
‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.’
Albert Einstein
The Tea-leaf
by Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace
The mystery
Inventor and scientist Arthur Kelstern and iron engineer George Willoughton are firm enemies who, despite their mutual hatred, both make regular visits to a Turkish bath in Duke Street, in an exclusive area of London, where they scowl at each other through the steam, on the second and last Tuesday of the month.
One Tuesday in October Kelstern arrives at the baths at four, bringing with him as usual a thermos flask of China tea, which he likes to drink in the hottest room. Willoughton arrives shortly afterwards, joining his enemy in the same room, where the pair, who are alone, are overheard arguing loudly. Willoughton is heard to yell, ‘Oh, shut up, you old fool! Or I’ll make you!’ In a foul temper he storms out of the hot room and goes into the shampooing room. A minute later a man enters the hot room where the pair have been arguing and discovers the body of Kelstern sprawled on a blood-soaked couch with a gaping wound in his chest. Willoughton is promptly arrested but angrily protests that the crime is nothing to do with him.
The police decide that Kelstern has been stabbed while absorbed in drinking his tea. The flask is on the floor in front of him and some tea-leaves are lying in a puddle. Willoughton, they conclude, must have hidden his weapon under his towel, and brought it out of the room in the same way after the murder. But there is a problem: since coming from the hot room Willoughton has been in full sight of the shampooers and other bathers, who are all above suspicion. Despite searching, the police can find no weapon on Willoughton or anywhere in the Turkish bath, and neither is there any sign of blood on Willoughton or his towel.
Furthermore, the wound on Kelstern has been inflicted by a circular, pointed weapon nearly three-quarters of an inch in diameter, possibly something like an iron rod sharpened like a pencil. There is nowhere in the baths to hide such a weapon and, in any case, why would anyone planning to murder a man in a Turkish bath choose such a cumbersome thing when a hat-pi
n would have done just as well, and be hidden much more easily?
During the autopsy doctors concur with the police’s supposition that Kelstern had been drinking his tea when he was stabbed: they find pieces of a tea-leaf, which has been driven into the wound by the missing weapon. They also, incidentally, discover signs of cancer in the old man.
Despite the lack of solid proof, the circumstantial evidence against Willoughton is overwhelming and it looks as though he will hang.
The problem
How was Kelstern killed? Was Willoughton the murderer? If not, who was? Did the murder weapon really drive a tea-leaf into the death wound? And where on earth is this missing weapon?
Tap here for the solution.
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
by Arthur Conan Doyle
The mystery
One day a young lady named Helen Stoner visits Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. She explains that she lives in Surrey with her stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, in the crumbling family mansion. She says that Dr Roylott had married her widowed mother in India but that she died, so he returned to England with his stepdaughters, Helen herself and her sister Julia.
Miss Stoner’s mother had bequeathed a large sum of money to Dr Roylott for as long as his stepdaughters lived with him. In the event of their marriage, however, each would receive a considerable annual income.
Two years ago Julia became engaged. Her stepfather offered no objection, but within a fortnight of the day fixed for the wedding her sister died in an extraordinary and horrible way.
On the night of her death, Julia came into Helen’s bedroom. ‘Have you ever heard anyone whistle in the dead of the night?’ she asked. ‘Because during the last few nights I have always, about three in the morning, heard a low, clear whistle.’
Helen suggested that it was the Gypsies whom her father allows to camp on the estate, and her sister went back to her room.
The wind was howling and Miss Stoner could not sleep. Suddenly, amid the gale, she heard the wild scream of a terrified woman, followed by a low whistle. Rushing into the corridor she saw Julia in her doorway, swaying to and fro in her nightdress like a drunkard. Then she fell to the ground, writhing in pain.
‘Oh, my God! Helen!’ she shrieked. ‘It was the band! The speckled band!’
Hurrying from his room in his dressing gown, Dr Roylott reached his stepdaughter’s side only in time to see her die.
Sherlock Holmes asks Miss Stoner what she makes of the reference to a ‘speckled band’. She tells him that she believes it may refer to some band of people, perhaps the wandering Gypsies, who wear spotted handkerchiefs around their necks.
The coroner finds no evidence of violence or poison. At the time of her scream, Julia’s door had been locked from inside, and the windows blocked by fastened shutters. There is no doubt that she was quite alone when she met her end.
Miss Stoner now explains that she herself has recently received a marriage proposal. Her stepfather has offered no opposition but some repairs have been started in her room, so she has had to move into the bedroom in which her sister died.
‘Last night, as I lay awake,’ she says, ‘I suddenly heard in the silence of the night the low whistle which had been the herald of her own death.’
‘These are very deep waters,’ remarks Holmes, and he arranges to come to the family home directly.
Later that afternoon Holmes and Watson arrive at the country house and Miss Stoner shows them round. Only one wing is inhabited and the bedrooms are on the ground floor, the first being Dr Roylott’s, the middle that of Miss Stoner’s late sister, and the third Helen’s own. There is no communication between these bedrooms, but they all open onto the same corridor. The rooms’ windows all look out onto the lawn. Dr Roylott keeps some animals from his time in India, including a cheetah, so the sisters’ bedroom doors are always locked at night, and the window shutters are impenetrable.
Helen Stoner shows her visitors the room in which she now sleeps, and in which her sister met her end. Sherlock Holmes observes a bell-pull hanging beside the bed, with its tassel lying on the pillow. Miss Stoner says that it was installed a couple of years before, but that neither she nor her sister has ever used it. Holmes gives it a brisk tug. ‘Why, it’s a dummy,’ he says. It is fastened to a hook just above a little ventilator in the wall. He remarks that it must have been a foolish builder who opened a ventilator into another room, when he might have communicated with the outside air. ‘Dummy bell-ropes, and ventilators which do not ventilate!’ he muses.
They enter Dr Grimesby Roylott’s room. It is furnished with a camp bed, a plain chair and a large iron safe, which Miss Stoner says contains her father’s business papers. ‘There isn’t a cat in it?’ asks Holmes, lifting a small saucer of milk which is standing on top of it.
‘No; we don’t keep a cat,’ says Miss Stoner.
‘Well, a cheetah is just a big cat,’ remarks Holmes, ‘and yet a saucer of milk does not go very far in satisfying its wants.’
A small dog lash is hanging on one corner of the bed, tied into a loop at its end. Watson says it is a common enough lash, but does not know why it should be tied. ‘That is not quite so common, is it?’ says Holmes. ‘Ah, me! It’s a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst of all.’
Holmes tells Miss Stoner that Dr Watson and he will both spend the night in her room. They gaze at him in Victorian astonishment but he explains that when her stepfather comes back she must confine herself to her room, on pretence of a headache. Then, when he retires for the night, she is to open the shutters and put her lamp in the window as a signal, before withdrawing quietly to her old room. Watson and he will see the lamp from the village inn, where they are staying, and will come across and climb in through the window so they can investigate the cause of the whistle which has disturbed her.
That evening, from their room at the Crown, they see Dr Grimesby Roylott driving home, but Watson is puzzled by the whole affair.
‘Well, there is at least a curious coincidence of dates,’ says Holmes. ‘A ventilator is made, a cord is hung, and a lady who sleeps in the bed dies. Did you observe anything very peculiar about that bed? It was clamped to the floor … It must always be in the same relative position to the ventilator and to the rope – or so we may call it, since it was clearly never meant for a bell-pull.’
‘Holmes,’ cries Dr Watson, ‘I seem to see dimly what you are hinting at. We are only just in time to prevent some subtle and horrible crime.’
The hours pass slowly until finally they see Miss Stoner’s signal. They cross the road and are soon inside the bedroom. Holmes whispers that they must sit without a light because Dr Roylott would see it through the ventilator.
He puts a long thin cane on the bed next to him. Beside it he lays a box of matches and a candle. He turns down the lamp, and they are left in darkness.
Suddenly there is a gleam of light up in the direction of the ventilator, and a gentle sound, like a small jet of steam escaping from a kettle. Holmes springs from the bed, strikes a match, and furiously lashes at the bell-pull.
‘You see it, Watson? You see it?’
There is a low whistle. Then suddenly in the silence they hear a dreadful shriek. They enter Dr Roylott’s room. On the table a lantern throws a brilliant light upon the iron safe, the door of which is ajar. On the wooden chair sits Dr Grimesby Roylott, clad in his dressing gown with the unusual lash across his lap. His eyes are fixed in a rigid stare and tightly bound around his brow is a peculiar yellow band, with brownish speckles.
‘The band!’ whispers Holmes. ‘The speckled band!’
The problem
What is the speckled band and how is it implicated in the death of Julia Stoner? Is Dr Grimesby Roylott trying to murder his remaining stepdaughter, and if so how? What is the reason for the dummy bell-pull and the bed clamped to the floor? How did Dr Roylott die, and what was happening in that bedroom on the fateful night?
; Tap here for the solution.
The Glass Coffin: an Inspector Jibson Mystery
by Anthony Butterworth
The mystery
One hot August evening Sir Herbert Hardcastle fails to respond to the dinner gong at his home, Bulstrode Manor. After a search of the grounds, his butler peers into Sir Herbert’s large conservatory and sees the dead body of the 92-year-old man lying face-up on the coconut-matting floor. The door is locked from the inside and Meadows cannot get in, so he calls the police.
As soon as they arrive, Constable Ferry smashes a pane, pushes a hand through the hole, and turns the iron key from the inside to let people enter.
The conservatory is tidy, and, save for the damage caused by the policeman, not a pane of glass is broken. All the roof ventilators are tight shut, and leaning neatly against a banana plant is the pole that Sir Herbert used every evening to close the vents, which can be unlocked only from the inside by pushing them open or pulling them shut.
A small hammer is lying on a nearby glass table, along with a half-finished cup of tea. Ferry sees something in the liquid and, poking his pencil into the teacup, lifts out a blunt and rusty hook, about the size of a curled finger. It is coarsely broken off at the wider end. Meadows says that the hammer was used for smashing pots. He doesn’t recognise the hook and wonders what it is doing in the old man’s tea.
Inspector Jibson arrives. According to Meadows, Sir Herbert always finished in the conservatory at 5.20, before dressing for dinner, which he took alone. The housemaid reports that at about 5.20 she heard a loud bang, ‘like a muffled shot or a door banging very loud’.
