The Pilot Who Wore a Dress: And Other Dastardly Lateral Thinking Mysteries. Tom Cutler
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surveyor, a man used to dealing in numbers and space. How high is the window that you claim to have looked through?’
SNARBES: ‘I didn’t measure it.’
SCRUNT: ‘Well, roughly – as well as you can remember.’
SNARBES: ‘I should say, about … I suppose about eight feet off the floor. It’s a tall room and it’s a small square window.’
SCRUNT: ‘Eight feet? That is indeed a high window. It’s about the height of a single-decker bus, isn’t it? How tall are you, Mr Snarbes? In feet and inches if you prefer.’
SNARBES: ‘I’m five feet ten.’
SCRUNT: ‘Could you look over the top of a bus?’
SNARBES: ‘No.’
SCRUNT: ‘Yet you claim that you looked through a tiny, dirty window obstructed by bars, eight feet off the floor.’
SNARBES: ‘Yes.’
SCRUNT: ‘It’s a smooth wall, isn’t it? Or is there a projecting window sill or anything to grab hold of?’
SNARBES: ‘Nothing to get hold of, no.’
SCRUNT: ‘You didn’t use rope of any sort?’
SNARBES: ‘Rope? No, I didn’t use rope or anything like that.’
SCRUNT: ‘Mr Snarbes, we took pains to visit this room. It’s exactly as you describe it, entirely empty and the window is almost eight feet off the floor. We took Mr Niblet, our solicitor, with us. Mr Niblet is six feet tall and plays basketball, and he couldn’t see out of the window, even when he jumped up. And yet you say that you saw our client through this tiny aperture when you are only of modest height.’
SNARBES: ‘Yes. Though I disagree that five feet ten is “modest”.’
JUDGE QUATERMASS: ‘Ms Scrunt, this is easily settled. We will adjourn, and you and Mr Cumming will take a couple of police officers and you will visit the room in question. Take Mr Snarbes too, please, and find out whether he, or anybody, can see through this high window in this completely empty room. You may report back after the adjournment.’
MS SCRUNT: ‘Thank you, Your Honour.’
After the adjournment the court reconvened.
JUDGE QUATERMASS: ‘Now Ms Scrunt, perhaps you can tell us: could you or the police officers, or anyone, see through the window in question?’
MS SCRUNT: ‘Yes, we all did, thank you, Your Honour. I’d like now to move on to the badly blurred pictures from the CCTV camera on top of the Hungry Pussy nightclub …’
The problem
How is it that Mr Snarbes, a man of normal height, was able to see easily through a small window eight feet off the floor in an entirely bare room? Even Ms Scrunt was able to see through the window when she tried for a second time. Mr Snarbes didn’t use rope, wire, mirrors, a camera or any unusual aid. How is this possible?
The mystery
During the early part of the 20th century, when people had less money to throw around than they do now, manufacturing firms, especially in the industrial north of England, used to organise works outings for their employees. They would send their grateful staff to seaside resorts or other out-of-town destinations to blow the cotton fluff out of their hair and the coal dust out of their lungs.
In the earliest days workers were ferried to Blackpool and other exotic destinations in charabancs. The strange name of these vehicles comes from the French char-à-bancs, meaning, ‘carriage with seats’, and your typical charabanc was an open-topped horse-drawn contraption that over time gave way to the modern motor coach, with two decks, toilets, tinted windows, air conditioning, entertainment facilities, vast luggage capacity and fat driver.
The first charabanc in Britain was presented to Queen Victoria by Louis Philippe of France and is today kept in the Royal Mews. Just the sort of present every queen needs. It is part of history now, and the word itself is seldom heard any more, though some older people still refer to modern coaches as ‘charabancs’.
Works outings are a thing of the past too. Nowadays, tradesmen such as plumbers and painters seem quite flush with the old wonga, unfurling great curled wads of the stuff in the pub on a Saturday night, or flying off to Crete, Cuba and Thailand for what are now called ‘breaks’. Many of them also seem to have second homes in Malaga or Florida, and zoom around town in flash cars and dark glasses, iPhones clapped to their ears. Am I straying into the land of caricature here?
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