The Big Over Easy

by Jasper Fforde

  Jack knelt down to get a closer look. “Do we know why he’s all dressed up?”

  Mary consulted her notebook. “He was at something called the Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit—”

  “What?” interrupted Jack. “The Spongg bash? Are you sure?”

  “The invite was in his shirt pocket.”

  “Hmm,” mused Jack. He would have to talk to Madeleine—she might even have a few pictures of him. “It was an expensive do. We’d better speak to someone who was there. We should also talk to his doctor and find out what we can about his health. Depression, phobias, illness, dizzy spells, vertigo—anything that might throw some light on his death.”

  Jack peered more closely at Humpty’s features. He looked old, the ravages of time and excessive drinking having taken their toll. The face of the cadaver was a pale reflection of the last time they had met. Humpty had been a jolly chap then, full of life and jokes. Jack paused for a moment and stared silently at the corpse.

  Mary, to whom every passing second was a second not spent furthering her career, had made a choice: She would keep her head down and then try to get a good posting when the division was disbanded. If she did really well with Jack, perhaps Chymes would take notice. Perhaps.

  She said, “How did you know him?”

  “He used to lecture on children’s literature and business studies at Reading University. Good company and very funny, but a bit of a crook. He was being investigated by the university in 1981 when Chymes and I questioned him—”

  “Whoa!” said Mary suddenly. “You worked for Friedland Chymes?”

  “No,” replied Jack with a sigh, “Friedland and I worked together. You didn’t know he started at the NCD, did you?”

  “No.”

  “He doesn’t spread it around. I’ve had some good officers through here, but they don’t stay for long.”

  “Really?” said Mary, as innocently as she could.

  “Yes. It’s a springboard to better things—if you consider that anything is better than this. Unless you run it, in which case—”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, but Mary knew what he meant.

  “So…how long have you been here?”

  “Since 1978,” mused Jack, still staring at Humpty’s unseeing eye.

  “Twenty-six years,” said Mary, perhaps with a little too much incredulity in her voice than she would have liked. Jack looked at her sharply, so she changed the subject.

  “I heard Friedland Chymes was a joy to work with.”

  “He’s an ambitious career officer who will lie, cheat and steal as he clambers over the rubble of used and discarded officers on his way to the top.”

  “Boy, did I read that wrong,” she replied, not believing a word—she knew how the brightest stars always invoked jealousy from those left behind.

  “Yes, you did. You’ve heard, I suppose, about the murder of Cock Robin?”

  “No.”

  Jack sighed. No one ever did these days. Chymes made certain of it. It had been two decades ago anyway.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter—it’s ancient history. To get back to Humpty, Friedland and I questioned him about a racket in which he imported eight containerloads of spinning wheels the week before the government ban. The compensation deal netted him almost half a million, but he’d done nothing illegal. He was like that. Always up to something. Ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving. He was fired from the university when they suspected him of having his hands in the till.”

  “They couldn’t fire him over suspicion, surely?”

  “No, but he’d made the mistake of having an affair with the dean’s wife, and it didn’t go down too well. Last I heard of him, he had hit the sauce pretty badly and was into commodity speculation.”

  Jack looked at Humpty’s features again. “How old was he?”

  Mary consulted his driving license. “He was…er, sixty-five.”

  Jack looked up at the wall again. Humpty had always sat on walls, it was his way. He’d even had one built in the lecture room where he taught, a plaster and wooden mockup that could be wheeled in when required.

  “Have uniform been round to break the news to Mrs. Dumpty?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We should have a word with her. Find out what state she’s in. Good morning, Gladys, what does this look like to you?”

  Mrs. Singh stood up and stretched her back. She had just celebrated her fiftieth birthday and was the pathologist allocated by default to Jack and all his cases. In real life she was an assistant pathologist, but the chief pathologist wouldn’t do NCD work in case he got laughed at, so he sent along Mrs. Singh and rubber-stamped her reports without reading them. Like Jack, she was doing the best she could on limited resources. Unlike Jack, she loved cats and people who loved cats and had six grandchildren.

  “They hung us out to dry over the pig thing, Jack,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Were you surprised?”

  “To be honest, no. When was the last time we got a conviction?”

  “Five years ago,” replied Jack without even having to think about it. “That guy who was running the illegal straw-into-gold dens. What was his name again?”

  “Rumplestiltskin,” returned Mrs. Singh with a faint smile at the memory. “Twenty years, no remission. Those were the days. Who’s the new blood?”

  “DS Mary Mary,” said Jack. “Mary, this is Mrs. Singh.”

  “Welcome to the house of fun,” said Mrs. Singh. “Tell me, did you actually request to work here?”

  “Not…as such.”

  Mrs. Singh flashed an impish smile at Jack. “No,” she said,

  “they never do.”

  She waved a rubber-gloved hand at Humpty’s remains. “That’s a lot of shell. I never saw him alive—how big was he?”

  Jack thought for a moment. “About four-foot-six high—three foot wide.”

  She nodded. “That makes sense. He would have been quite heavy, and it’s a fall of over twelve feet. I’ll know a bit more when I get him back to the lab, but I can’t see anything that would preclude a verdict of either accidental death or suicide.”

  “Any idea on the time of death?”

  “Difficult to say. The rainstorm last night pretty much washed everything away. There are scraps of inner and outer membrane—and this.” She held up a gelatinous object.

  “A jellyfish? This far inland?”

  “I’m no expert when it comes to eggs,” confessed Mrs. Singh,

  “but I’ll try to identify it.”

  “What about time of death?”

  She dropped the section of Humpty’s innards into a plastic Ziploc bag with a plop and thought for a moment. “Well, the remaining viscera are still moist and pliable, so sometime within the last twenty-four hours. Mind you, the birds would have had most of it if he’d fallen off the wall yesterday, so if you want me to make a guess, sometime between 1800 hours yesterday evening and 0300 this morning. Any later than that and the rain wouldn’t have had time to wash away all that albumen.”

  Mary jotted it down in her notebook. Jack was sure there must be relatives, and they would almost certainly ask him one important question.

  “Was it quick?”

  Mrs. Singh surveyed the wreckage. “I think so. When he hit the ground his lights, quite simply, went out.”

  Jack thanked her as she spoke a few words in Hindi to her assistant, who very gently—as befits the deceased—began to lift the larger pieces of shell into a PVC body bag.

  Jack carefully climbed up the ladder and looked at the top of the wall. It was barely a foot wide, and he could see an oval dip that had been worn by Humpty’s prolonged use. He climbed back down again, and both he and Mary went into the yard next door to look at the wall from the other side.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Mary.

  “Anything that might have been used to push him off.”

  “Pushed? You suspect foul play?”

  “I just like to
keep an open mind, Mary, despite what Briggs said.”

  But if Jack expected to find anything incriminating, he was to be disappointed. The yard was deserted, and a precarious heap of rubbish and full garbage bags was stacked against the wall underneath where Humpty had sat. An assailant would have had to clamber over the heap but the rubbish was undisturbed. Jack was just looking in the outhouse for a rake or something when he noticed a small boy staring at him from the kitchen window. Jack waved cheerfully, but the little boy just stuck his middle finger up. He was grasped by the ear and pulled away, only to be replaced by a very small man in a nightgown and nightcap. He looked a bit bleary-eyed and fumbled with the latch before opening the kitchen window. Jack showed him his ID card.

  “Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, Nursery Crime. You are…?”

  The small man rubbed his eyes and squinted at the card.

  “Winkie,” he replied, blinking with tiredness. “William Winkie.”

  “Mr. Winkie, there was an accident last night. Mr. Dumpty fell off the wall.”

  “I heard.”

  “Him falling off?”

  “No, the news I mean. He was a nice fella. He used to play ball and that with the kids in the alleyway. My kids are well choked by his death.”

  One of the “well-choked” kids continued to pull faces at Jack through the window. Mr. Winkie gave him a clip round the ear, and he ran off bawling.

  “Did you hear anything out of the ordinary last night?”

  Willie Winkie yawned. “Pardon me. I got in from my shift at Winsum’s at about two and went straight to sleep. I have a sleeping disorder, so I’m on medication.”

  “Anyone else in the house?”

  Willie turned and shouted. “Pet! Did you hear anything strange last night? It’s about Mr. Dumpty.”

  A large, florid woman came to the window. She wore a purple nylon dress and had her hair done up in rollers. A small unlit rolled cigarette was stuck to her lower lip and bobbled as she spoke.

  “There was a truck reversing sometime in the small hours—but that’s not unusual around here. I sleep in a separate room to Willie so he doesn’t wake me. Sorry, love, I’d like to be able to help, but I can’t.”

  Jack nodded and started on another tack. “When did you last see him?”

  “Last night at about seven-thirty. He asked me to iron his cravat.”

  “Cravat?”

  “Or cummerbund. It’s difficult to say with him.”

  “How did he appear to you?”

  “Fine. We chatted about this and that, and he borrowed some sugar. Insisted on paying for it. He was like that. I often ironed his shirts—on a wok to get the right shape, of course, and he always paid over the odds. He helped us out with a bit of cash sometimes and sent the kids on a school trip to Llandudno last summer. Very generous. He was a true gent.”

  “Did you ever see him with anyone?”

  “He kept himself to himself. Liked to dress well, quite a dandy, y’know. One for the ladies, I heard. Come to think of it, there was a woman recently. Tall girl, quite young—brunette.”

  Jack thanked them and gave Willie his card in case he thought of anything else, then returned to the yard, where Mrs. Singh was still searching for clues as to what had happened.

  “Where was his room?” asked Jack.

  Mary pointed to the window overlooking the backyard.

  They entered the house and climbed the creaking staircase. There was damp and mildew everywhere, and the skirting had come away from the wall. The door to Humpty’s room was ajar, and Jack carefully pushed it open. The room was sparsely furnished and in about as bad a state of repair as the rest of the house. Hung on the wall was a framed print of a Fabergé egg next to a copy of Tenniel’s illustration of Humpty from Through the Looking Glass. There was a shabby carpet that looked as though it hadn’t been hoovered since the turn of the last century and a wardrobe against one wall next to a sink unit and a cooker. A large mahogany desk sat in the center of the room with a small pile of neatly stacked bricks behind it which Humpty had used as a seat. On the desk was a typewriter, some papers, a fax and two telephones. The previous week’s edition of What Share? was open at the rare-metals page, and an undrunk cup of coffee had formed a skin next to Humpty’s spectacles. There was a photo in a gilt frame of Humpty with his hand on the leg of a pretty brunette in the back of a horse-drawn carriage in Vienna. Jack knew because he’d been there once himself and recognized the Prater wheel in the background. They were both well dressed and looked as though they had just come from the opera.

  “Any name?”

  Mary checked the back of the picture. There was none.

  Even from a cursory glance, it was obvious that not only had Humpty been working the stock market—he had been working it hard. Most of the paperwork was for a bewildering array of transactions, with nothing logged in any particular order. The previous Thursday’s Toad had been left open at the business news, and Jack noticed that two companies listed on the stock exchange had been underlined in red pencil. The first was Winsum & Loosum Pharmaceuticals, and the second was Spongg Footcare. Both public limited companies, both dealing in foot-care products. Winsum & Loosum, however, was blue chip; Spongg’s was almost bust. Mary had chanced across a file of press clippings that charted the downfall of Spongg’s over the past ten years, from the public flotation to the fall of the share price the previous month to under twenty pence. Jack opened another file. It was full of sales invoices confirming the purchase of shares in Spongg’s for differing amounts and at varying prices.

  “Buying shares in Spongg’s?” murmured Jack. “Where did he get the money?”

  Mary passed him a wad of bank statements. Personally, Humpty was nearly broke, but Dumpty Holdings Ltd. was good to the tune of ninety-eight thousand pounds.

  “Comfortable,” commented Mary.

  “Comfortable and working from a dump.”

  Jack found Humpty’s will and opened it. It was dated 1963 and had this simple instruction: “All to wife.”

  “What do you make of these?”

  Mary handed Jack an envelope full of photos. They were of the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center in various states of construction, taken over the space of a year or more. But the last snap was the most interesting. It was of a young man smiling rather stupidly, sitting in the passenger seat of a car. The picture had been taken by the driver—presumably Humpty—and had a date etched in the bottom right-hand corner. It had been taken a little over a year ago.

  “The Sacred Gonga,” said Mary, thinking about the dedication ceremony on Saturday. “Why is Humpty interested in that?”

  “You won’t find anyone in Reading who isn’t,” replied Jack.

  “There was quite an uproar when it was nearly sold to a collector in Las Vegas.”

  They turned their attention to the wardrobe that held several Armani suits, all of them individually tailored to fit Humpty’s unique stature and held up on hangers shaped like hula hoops. Jack checked the pockets, but they were all empty. Under some dirty shirts they found a well-thumbed copy of World Egg Review and Parabolic and Ovoid Geometric Constructions.

  “Typical bottom-drawer stuff,” said Jack, rummaging past a signed first edition of Horton Hatches the Egg to find a green canvas tool bag. He opened it to reveal the blue barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. Jack and Mary exchanged glances. This raised questions over and above a standard inquiry already.

  “It might be nothing,” observed Mary, not keen for anything to extend the investigation a minute longer than necessary. “He might be looking after it for a friend.”

  “A friend? How many sawed-off shotguns do you look after for friends?”

  She shrugged.

  “Exactly. Never mind about Briggs. Better get a Scene of Crime Officer out here to dust the gun and give the room the once-over. Ask for Shenstone; he’s a friendly. What else do you notice?”

  “No bed?”

  “Right. He didn’t live here. I’ll have a quick
word with Mrs. Hubbard.”

  Jack went downstairs, stopping on the way to straighten his tie in the peeling hall mirror.

  4. Mrs. Hubbard, Dogs and Bones

  The Austin Allegro was designed in the mid-seventies to be the successor to the hugely popular Austin 1100. Built around the proven “A” series engine, it turned out to be an ugly duckling at birth with the high transverse engine requiring a slab front that did nothing to enhance its looks. With a bizarre square steering wheel and numerous idiosyncratic features, including a better drag coefficient in reverse, porous alloy wheels on the “sport” model and a rear window that popped out if you jacked up the car too enthusiastically, the Allegro would—some say undeservedly—figurehead the British car-manufacturing industry’s darkest chapter.

  —The Rise and Fall of British Leyland, A. Morris

  Jack knocked politely on the door. It opened a crack, and a pinched face glared suspiciously at him. He held up his ID card.

  “Have you come about the room?” Mrs. Hubbard asked in a croaky voice that reminded Jack of anyone you care to mention doing a bad impersonation of a witch. “If you play the accordion, you can forget about it right now.”

  “No, I’m Detective Inspector Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division. I wonder if I could have a word?”

  She squinted at the ID, pretended she could read without her glasses and then grimaced. “What’s it about?” she asked.

  “What’s it about?” repeated Jack. “Mr. Dumpty, of course!”

  “Oh, well,” she replied offhandedly, “I suppose you’d better come in.”