A Matter of Deduction is the ninth short story in the sixth anthology of Biggles Air Police short stories entitled Biggles of the Interpol. The story first appeared in the Express Annual 1956 and was later expanded and collected for the Interpol anthology published in 1957 by Brockhampton. In the anthology, this story is preceded by Murder by Thirst and followed by The Man Who Came by Night.
Synopsis[]
Marcel and Biggles investigate a Tiger Moth which has gone far off course, crashing in France. A murder is uncovered and the murderer swiftly apprehended through a series of logical deductions.
Plot[]
See article under Dennis Adrian Crayford for a summary of the plot.
Characters[]
The Special Air Police/Scotland Yard[]
- Biggles
- Algy Lacey
- Ginger Hebblethwaite
- Bertie Lissie
Others[]
Aircraft[]
- De Havilland Tiger Moth - GB-XKZ, belonging to Holmwood Flying Club
- Percival Proctor - general transport for the Air Police
Places[]
Visited[]
- Air Police Operations Room, Gatwick - Biggles goes out to get the Proctor out and is back in a quarter of an hour.
- Provins, on the main line south of Paris
- Bron Airport - refuelling stop enroute to Nice
- Nice
- Nice Airport
- Railway station - for a mainline train from Paris, likely to be Gare de Nice-Ville.
Mentioned[]
- Holmwood Flying Club
Research Notes[]
- In British aircraft registrations, the hyphen comes after the "G" and should read G-BXKL. As the letters after the "G" were allocated mostly in alphabetical order from AAAA onwards, BXKZ was not used until 1997 and was issued to a hot air balloon.[1]
- Biggles: "He may have dropped off to sleep .... I once did it myself on a long night run. I might never had known it had I not had a dream...."