Ask anyone in Moscow, Beijing or New York what the name Scotland Yard evokes and the chances are that their responses will be the same: foggy streets, a stout constable with a blue helmet and perhaps a rain cape, piercing police whistles and detectives in thick overcoats instantly uncovering tiny but vital case-cracking clues.
This ought, for the British, to be a source of national pride. Just how many police forces around the world attract tourists who will queue to have their photo taken beneath the headquarters’ signs? New Scotland Yard–and its 1970s vintage revolving sign–attracts countless visitors daily. Tourists ask for selfies with officers going in and out of the building. The institution has an unshakeable grip on the global imagination. This is partly because of the wealth of fiction set in and around the Yard–atmospheric novels, lovingly detailed period films–but it is also because the Yard’s real history is a frequently dazzling narrative of ingenuity and wild inventiveness in the face of seemingly insoluble crimes. It is an enduringly human institution that has taken on, and beaten, some of the most charismatically wicked criminals the world has ever seen.
The image of the Scotland Yard detective is not the same as the other-worldly, lateral portrayals of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The Yard’s moments of inspiration are quieter, the method grittier and more dogged. Unlike Holmes, our real-life detecting heroes are men and women who, as well as having an acute eye for discrepancies, also have wide experience of the hinterland of human nature. The Yard’s universal image is of a place that transcends class. Here the men and women are drawn from all sorts of backgrounds across the country, and their encyclopaedic knowledge of habitual criminals and the streets and districts in which they live allows them to move largely unnoticed between the social strata. Whether it’s an alley-haunting robbery look-out man or a languidly aristocratic murderer, Scotland Yard’s detectives are expected to understand the common human motivations and criminal appetites that link them all.
We are also, of course, universally fascinated by the mind of the detective. Is the ability to make brilliant deductions a skill that can be taught? Or does one have to be born with the talent? Can eyes be trained to instantly take in all the details of a room in which a ghastly murder has taken place, and see the tiny clues–a drop of blood where it shouldn’t be, a tiny scrap of paper beneath a glass–that elude everyone else?
The story of Scotland Yard has shown across the years that while alertness is definitely a talent that can be cultivated, a detective also needs what might seem like an odd combination of doggedness, slow patience and sudden lightning-storm inspiration. The lightning is the glamorous part, but the doggedness is the most important. One of the constants in the story of Scotland Yard is the institution’s devotion to facts, not only of names and places and past deeds, but also the history of pubs and clubs, businesses both legitimate and marginal. When pulled together, through referencing, cross-referencing and double checking, these facts become a library of the streets stored in the head of every great Yard detective.
Lastly, we must acknowledge that part of the enduring affection for and fascination with Scotland Yard derives from a universal appetite for challenging, enigmatic puzzles. This is certainly the case in fiction–each reader seeking to out-think Agatha Christie, and each reader always failing–but it is also the case in real life, too. What sort of a puzzler’s mind must a detective have? The stereotyped aptitude for cryptic crosswords? The possibility-juggling challenge of Sudoku? Or the fact-sifting long-term analytical skills demanded by classical logic problems?
And what of that puzzler’s psyche when faced with a criminal intent on setting out ever more devious challenges? Throughout the years there have been a variety of quite extraordinary jewellery and safe heists across London in which the question was not only who carried out the crime, but how was the crime carried out in the first place? Later in the book, we shall see such examples, including the diamonds that were apparently turned into lumps of coal, and the thief who apparently managed to be simultaneously in Kent and over 150 miles away in Somerset, seen by scores of honest witnesses.
The goal of a detective is clearly not only to solve the crime, but also to find the means to outwit, out-think and finally catch the perpetrator before a permanent escape can be made. In these terms, the detective is sometimes working against a time limit, a new twist of tension in an already difficult job.
We have all daydreamed, at one time or another, about whether we could become great detectives. Is there a fearsome written exam to be passed, filled with lateral logic problems and knotty questions about the law? Actually, there have been exams for decades and within these pages, among the other puzzles, you will find some vintage examples of the head-scratchers that were set for those who wished to be promoted to Detective Sergeant.
Further puzzles within these pages are designed to reflect a range of other skills required by all the very best detectives: quick-wittedness; the willingness to worry at a problem, gnawing at it until you reach the core of it; the ability to keep a step ahead of your opponents; and the priceless talent for taking a problem and turning it on its head to find a completely new approach towards the solution.
When faced with apparently impossible conundrums in the 1940s–tracking down a violent assailant using only a tiny scrap of cloth torn from the attacker’s pocket, or pursuing an elegant cat-burglar who committed his crimes in full evening dress, leaving no prints or marks behind–Robert Fabian, one of Scotland Yard’s finest detectives, used to say to himself: ‘Give your eyes a chance’. That is, size up the problem, look not only at it, but around it too. As we will see, while Scotland Yard has always developed exciting new detection innovations and works of scientific wonder, none of these would be effective without detectives simply using their eyes and wits. Here then are over a hundred puzzles that aim to put you in the detectives’ shoes and ask: have you got what it takes?