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THE ART OF DEDUCTION
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, June 1973.
The girl in front of me at the loading gate was a slim, shapely brunette with a deep tan, nice features and a cute little nose that was just beginning to peel from sunburn. While we waited, I made up my mind that I would do my best to get the seat next to her, if I could manage it without being too obvious.
When we boarded the plane I was in luck. All the window seats but one were taken. When she took that, it was quite natural for me to slide in beside her. As no one took the aisle seat, I had her to myself.
I made no attempt at conversation right then, because I am always a little nervous on takeoff and landing, but when we were airborne and the stewardess had finished her little welcome-aboard talk, I turned an expansive smile on the girl.
“Hi, seatmate,” I said. “My name is Albert Shelton.”
She looked a little startled, but after examining me speculatively for a moment, she seemed to decide I was harmless. “How do you do, Albert? I’m Diane Wharton.”
“Shall we get the vital statistics out of the way?” I inquired.
“What do you mean?”
“I always talk to the person next to me on a plane, and from past experience it seems likely that in the course of conversation I will reveal a good deal of data about myself, and in return will learn a good deal about you. It would save considerable time if we disposed of this matter at once, so we could get on to more interesting things. I am twenty-five, unmarried, and two months ago graduated from U.C.L.A. I finished school at such an advanced age because I spent from age eighteen to twenty-one in the army. I am en route to Buffalo to accept a job with the Appleton Detective Agency, which happens to be owned by my uncle. Fred Appleton, of whom you may have heard since you also are from Buffalo, is my mother’s older brother.”
She gave me another startled look. “How do you know I’m from Buffalo?”
“Elementary, my dear Wharton. I looked over your shoulder when you handed in your ticket at the gate, and the flight-reservation envelope you took it from showed you had bought a round-trip ticket from Buffalo.”
She emitted a tinkling little laugh. “You’re funny. You sound just like Sherlock Holmes. But I suppose that’s appropriate, since you’re going to be a private eye.”
“We in the profession prefer the term ‘confidential investigator.’”
Her eyes twinkled. “Excuse me. I suppose you took your degree in either criminalistics or police administration.”
I shook my head. “I was not, until a week ago, planning a career as a confidential investigator. I majored in philosophy and logic, but in our technological society there doesn’t seem to be much demand for specialists in those fields. In a sense, I am accepting my uncle’s job offer as a last resort. Yet the prospects interest me intensely, and actually I feel my educational background will be of considerable value. Great criminalists of the past have often depended more on deductive reasoning than on scientific knowledge; men such as the late Raymond Schindler, for example.”
“You seem to have some deductive talent,” she said. “I was quite impressed by your guess that I am from Buffalo. Can you tell me anything else about myself?”
After studying
her judiciously, I said, “Well, for starters, your purpose for being in Southern California was simply vacationing.”
“Oh? How did you deduce that?”
“From three factors. First, you wouldn’t have bought a round-trip ticket if you were out here looking for work, or had planned to live here for some other reason, then changed your mind. Second, August is a vacation month. Third, your fresh suntan indicates you have recently spent a good deal of time on the beach. I know it’s a fresh suntan because you got your nose sunburned acquiring it. You neglected to put suntan oil on your nose, didn’t you?”
She regarded me with a mixture of amusement and awe. “You’re amazing. Tell me more.”
“All right. You were visiting your fiancé out here, and just before you left, you broke your engagement.”
She gave me a suspicious side-glance. “You’ve been following me, haven’t you, private eye? Excuse me; I mean confidential investigator.”
“I never saw you until just before we boarded the plane. I know you broke your engagement because the white circle around the ring finger of your left hand is just the size and shape of an engagement ring. Its whiteness indicates you have not been out in the sun since you took it off. Ergo, you gave it back at the very end of your vacation.”
She emitted another of her tinkling little laughs.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“It sounds so simple when you explain it. I would be more impressed if you kept the explanations to yourself. Is that it, or is there more?”
“Oh, yes. Your fiancé either has been studying criminalistics and police administration at U.C.L.A., or is teaching one or the other.”
She cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “How in the world did you deduce that?”
“Because you asked me if I had taken my degree in either subject. Being from Buffalo, how would you know they are taught at U.C.L.A. unless you had a close relationship with either a student or teacher in that department?”
“Goodness, you’re remarkable.”
“Quite elementary, really. One last item. You graduated from the University of Buffalo a year ago, probably from the school of nursing.”
She cocked an eyebrow at me again. “I suppose the explanation for that deduction is just as simple as the rest,” she said teasingly.
“Even more so. I cheated a little this time. I recognized the class ring you’re wearing on your right hand because my last year in service I dated an army nurse who had graduated from the University of Buffalo. And the year of graduation is embossed on your ring in large enough figures to be seen quite plainly.”
“That doesn’t explain your deduction that I am a nurse.”
“That was just a wild guess,” I admitted. “Sort of a hunch. Because the only girl I ever knew who wore a similar ring was a nurse, I guess I was guilty of a sophism that just happened to be valid.”
“Sophism,” she said. “I remember that from my one course in philosophy. A specious argument based on a false premise.”
“Yes. All R.N.s graduating from the University of Buffalo are entitled to wear school rings. Therefore all girls wearing U. of B. school rings are R.N.s.”
Diane giggled.
“I’ll concede it was nothing more than a lucky guess,” I said. “But my other deductions were based on sound enough evidence, weren’t they?”
“I think you’re wonderful,” she said with apparent sincerity.
Although by then I was reasonably sure that Diane liked me as much as I was growing to like her, she volunteered very little information about herself other than what I had deduced. For instance, she told me nothing about her ex-fiancé or what had caused their breakup, and naturally I didn’t pry. She did tell me that she lived with her parents in a two-family house on Fillmore in Buffalo, however, and when I asked if I might call her sometime, she consented and wrote her phone number on the inside of a matchbook.
We had left Los Angeles at 11:50 a.m. By the time we landed at Detroit at 5:50 p.m., Detroit time, we had become firm friends.
After the passengers who were getting off at Detroit had deplaned, the stewardess signaled for the rope at the loading gate to be removed and passengers began streaming toward the plane.
The plane took off, and as soon as the seat-belt sign was lifted I excused myself to go back to the rest room. In the last seat on the left, I noticed two men handcuffed together. Both men were in their late forties. It was easy enough to tell which man was the cop and which the prisoner. The man nearest the aisle had to be the cop, because his left wrist was cuffed to the other man’s right. He was a tall, very pale man somewhat resembling Abraham Lincoln without a beard. The other was also tall, but heavier-set and with a round, fleshy face, deeply tanned.
The stewardess was taking dinner orders, and I heard both men order coffee with their meals. I got back to my seat at the same time the stewardess got that far. Diane and I both ordered Swiss steak. Then I told her about the two men in the back seat.
“What does the prisoner look like?” she asked.
“Quite ordinary. Pushing fifty, I would guess.”
We dropped the subject then, because our dinners came.
When dinner period was over and the stewardess had collected everyone’s dishes, a buzz of excited conversation behind us caused us both to rise to our feet and peer toward the rear of the plane. The tall, pale police officer was in the act of lifting the limp form of his seatmate out into the aisle to lay him flat on his back. He had unlocked the cuff from his own wrist, but the other ring was still clamped about the prisoner’s wrist. He knelt next to the unconscious man, feeling his pulse.
The stewardess hurried along the aisle from the front to see what was going on.
Looking up at her, the detective said, “I think he’s having a heart attack. His pulse is very slow and weak.”
Like us, most of the other passengers toward the rear of the plane had risen to their feet to gaze back that way. A lean, rather distinguished-looking man in his mid-forties, who had been seated all alone across the aisle from as and one seat back, stepped out into the aisle as the stewardess started to kneel next to the prone man and said, “I’m a doctor, Miss.”
The stewardess immediately rose and stepped aside so that the doctor could squeeze past her. The detective introduced himself to the doctor as Sergeant Copeland, then got out of the way by reseating himself.
Kneeling next to the unconscious man, the doctor thumbed back an eyelid, peered into the eye, then unbuttoned the man’s suit coat, stripped off his necktie and unbuttoned his shirt. Looking up at the stewardess, he said, “My medical bag is beneath my seat. Will you get it, please?”
She brought him the bag, he drew a stethoscope from it and listened to the patient’s heartbeat. After a few moments he put the stethoscope away, zipped his bag shut and stood up.
“Coronary thrombosis, probably,” he said to the stewardess. “Fortunately you’re equipped with oxygen. How long before we land at Buffalo?”
Glancing at her watch, she said, “It’s seven, and we’re due in at quarter to eight.”
“Roughly three-quarters of an hour,” the doctor said. “I suggest you have the pilot radio to have an ambulance standing by to take the man to City Hospital. He can tell them no intern need come along with the ambulance, as I am on the City Hospital staff and will ride in with the patient. As a matter of fact, no one but the driver will be necessary, as the sergeant and I can act as litter bearers. As soon as you’ve delivered the message, bring a blanket to keep the patient warm.”
“Yes, sir,” the stewardess said, and hurried forward to disappear into the pilot’s cabin.
The doctor said to the detective, “Let’s get him up on the seat so that we can start giving him oxygen. If you’ll retract the armrests between seats, we can lay him on his back.” He glanced around and his gaze fell on me. “You look pretty husk
y, young man. Will you give us a hand?”
I went back and helped lift the inert form onto the seat. When the patient was on his back across all three seats, the doctor pulled out the seat’s oxygen mask and affixed it to the man’s face. Then he checked his heart with his stethoscope again.
“No worse, but no better either,” he said as he slipped the instrument back into his bag. “He might be more comfortable without that manacle dangling from his wrist, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Copeland took a key from his pocket, unlocked the cuff and dropped the handcuffs into his coat pocket.
“Incidentally, my name is Martin Smith,” the doctor said, offering the detective his hand.
Shaking it, the sergeant said, “Glad to know you, Dr. Smith. And I’m certainly glad you were aboard.”
“My name is Albert Shelton,” I offered.
Both of them looked at me. The doctor said politely, “Thank you for your help, Albert.”
“You’re welcome. Dr. Smith, my seatmate is a registered nurse, if you need her help.”
He gave me a surprised look. “Well, thanks, but there is nothing she could do at the moment.” Turning to the elderly man who was the sole occupant of the seat directly across the aisle from the patient, he said, “Sir, would you mind moving up to the seat I was occupying, so that I can sit here near the patient, in case he—”
“Not at all,” the man said, immediately moving forward.
“Want to sit next to the window, Sergeant?” the doctor asked. “I had better stay on the aisle so that I can keep an eye on him.”
“In a minute,” the detective said. “I just had a weird thought.” Leaning over the patient, Sergeant Copeland rummaged in the unconscious man’s coat pocket and withdrew a small bottle of liquid. He handed it to the doctor. Looking over the doctor’s shoulder, I read the label the same time he did. It said: Sweet-as-Sugar. Below that, in smaller print, was Concentrated Sweetener and No Cyclamates.
Looking up, the doctor said, “A common sugar substitute. What about it?”
“At dinner he wanted to put some in his coffee. After examining the bottle, I let him. It just occurred to me there might be something other than artificial sweetener in there. This could have been attempted suicide, since he was going back to New York to face twenty more years of hard time.”
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