Mystery of the Week

Although the last Mystery of the Week was a Friday, it was so easy that a new one is appropriate. Leave your answer as a comment.

ONE MORNING AT THE FESTIVAL

The village of Knordwyn in Northumbria, England, was celebrating its annual Queen Anne Festival. For several August days, people from around the shire came to enjoy craft displays, athletic competitions, farm shows, and cooking and music contests.

Also attending the festival was Thomas P. Stanwick, the amateur logician. He visited the village every year or two, and found Knordwynians invariably intriguing: about half were lifelong liars, and the rest were lifelong truthtellers. Conversations with them were thus real tests of his skill at deduction.

On the second festival day, Stanwick arrived at the grounds early to see the pigs. He was curious to see a particularly hefty specimen named Miss Porky Pine (because of her prickly disposition, according to a wag at the village pub). When he reached the stalls, however, he found hers empty and her owner, Ian Craigmore, angrily questioning three men and a woman. Upon seeing Stanwick, Craigmore turned to him.

“Tom, my lad,” he sputtered, “someone stole Miss Porky Pine from her stall last night. It must have been one thief: she is nervous and squeals loudly if two try to handle her.”

“And you suspect these four?”

“Yes. Charles Hagman, Thomas Leary, and Dora Glasker are festival attendants, and Louis Parrella was cooking a suspiciously early barbecue not far from the festival grounds, so I brought him over. All four are from the village.”

Stanwick knew Craigmore to be a villager and a truthteller. Turning to the suspects, he asked if they could tell him anything about the theft.

“Louis never attends the festival,” said Hagman. “Also, Thomas and Dora are not both truthtellers.”

“Dora stole the pig,” announced Leary. “She and Louis are both liars.”
Glasker cleared her throat angrily. “Neither Charles nor Thomas is the thief,” she said. “Louis attends the festival every other year.”

“Either Dora or Thomas is a liar,” stated Parrella. “The thief, however, is not Charles or Dora.”

Stanwick smiled pleasantly.

“In an admittedly indirect way,” he said, “you’ve been very helpful. And now,” he continued, turning to one of them, “perhaps you could tell us why you stole the portly pig.”

WHO STOLE MISS PORKY PINE?

As adapted from Five-Minute Crimebusters by Stan Smith (Sterling Publishing, 2000)