The Big Over Easy

by Jasper Fforde

  “Where did you say you were from?”

  “Basingstoke.”

  “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I’m not ashamed of it.”

  “How many years in the force?”

  “Eight, four as detective sergeant. I worked with DI Flowwe for four years.”

  “As Guild-Approved Official Sidekick?” asked Jack, surprised that Briggs had offloaded a pro on him. “I mean, Hebden was Guild, right?”

  “Right. Only one of my stories got printed in Amazing Crime, though.”

  “You know I’m not Guild, Mary?” said Jack, just to make sure there wasn’t some sort of embarrassing mistake going on. He didn’t think he’d tell her quite yet that Madeleine had applied on his behalf.

  “Yes, sir, I knew that.”

  “What was the case you had printed?”

  “Fight rigging at the Basingstoke Shakespeare Company.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Mary took a deep breath. She didn’t know how much he knew and wondered whether it wasn’t a test of her own humility; she had been commended for her part in the inquiry and was naturally proud of her work. She looked across at Jack, but he was concentrating on his driving.

  “We didn’t know there was a fraud going on at all for about a year,” she began. “It all started on the last night of a Home Counties tour of Romeo and Juliet. All went well until the fight between Romeo and Tybalt at the beginning of act three.”

  “What happened?”

  “Tybalt won.”

  Jack frowned. He was no culture vulture, but he could see the difficulties. “So the play ended?”

  “There was almost a riot. A fencing referee who happened to be in the audience was called onto the stage, and he declared it a fair fight. The play finished with the company improvising an ending where Paris married Juliet, then was led to his own suicide by his failure to compete successfully with the love that Juliet held for her dead first husband.”

  “Quick thinking.”

  “You said it.”

  “So where’s the crime?”

  “At the bookies’. Tybalt, never a strong favorite, had been pegged at sixty to one, and someone pulled in an estimated three hundred grand. We were informed, but it seemed as though the bookies were just complaining that they had to pay out. It wasn’t until a matinee performance of Macbeth three weeks later that the gang struck again. At the final big fight, Macduff was the clear favorite at even money. The bookies, now more vigilant, had placed Macbeth at three to one. It seemed a foregone conclusion; Macduff had fifty-eight pounds and eight years on Macbeth, not to mention some crafty footwork and a literary precedent that stretched back four hundred years.”

  “So Macbeth won?” asked Jack.

  Mary shook her head. “No. It was smarter than that: Banquo did.”

  “Banquo?” echoed Jack in surprise. “Doesn’t he get killed off earlier in the play?”

  “Usually,” replied Mary, “but this time he returned to the stage and made a brief speech explaining why he faked his own death, then slew Macbeth.”

  “I bet the bookies weren’t pleased,” observed Jack.

  “You could say that. They hadn’t suffered such a devastating loss since David beat Goliath. A rash of late bets had dropped Banquo’s odds from five hundred to one down to a hundred to one, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “How much did the gang make?”

  “Ten million.”

  Jack whistled softly, and Mary continued: “This time there could be no mistake; someone was rigging the fights. Flowwe was put in command, and I went undercover as Lady Anne in their upcoming production of Richard III. It didn’t take long before we caught them in the final act. After a matinee performance, I saw the theater director giving out script revisions. I alerted Flowwe, and that evening we had eight undercover officers hidden in the audience, disguised variously as popcorn salesmen, tourists from the Midlands and critics from the Basingstoke Bugle. I had sneaked a look at the ‘revisions’ and knew what they were up to. At a suitable moment, we pounced, halted the Battle of Bosworth Field and arrested not only Richard III, but Lords Richmond and Stanley as well. Plots had been laid to call the battle a draw and then form a governmental coalition, a surprise result that would have netted the perpetrators over three million quid. It led directly to Flowwe gaining an extra twelve places on his Amazing Crime ranking to a creditable twenty-fifth. No Basingstoke officer had ever been higher.”

  “And a commendation for you?”

  She blushed and tossed her head modestly. “That, too.”

  Jack remembered now where he had seen her name before. She had been commended not only for her sterling police work but also for her memorable performance as Lady Anne.

  “Impressive. Is there anything you want to know about me apart from the fact that I’m not Guild?”

  “Yes,” replied Mary. “What happened to your last DS?”

  “His name was Alan Butcher. A good man. He died in a car accident.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as I was; I was the one that ran over him in my wife’s Volvo. But it wasn’t my fault—he stepped out in front of me.”

  “Was he…tall?” asked Mary a bit recklessly.

  Jack shook his head sadly. “You’ve heard about the giant killing already? Sometimes I think the station talks of almost nothing else. Well, hear it from the horse’s mouth: Aside from Butcher, they were all self-defense. When someone that big comes at you with a knife, you don’t stop to worry about using lethal force. It was him or me. Same as the other two. Mind you, only one of them was technically a giant—the rest were just tall. But you know what really annoys me?”

  “No, what really annoys you?”

  “Well, did you hear about the time I saved Hansel and Gretel from being eaten alive by a witch?”

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t.”

  “Or the time I rescued a hundred children from the Pied Piper of Hamelin?”

  “Don’t…think so.”

  “What about dealing with serial wife killer Bluebeard?”

  “Only when Briggs mentioned it yesterday.”

  “How about the time I closed down the illegal straw-into-gold den?”

  “Not really.”

  “Convicted Jill of aggravated assault against Jack?”

  “Nope.”

  “Stopped Mr. Punch throwing the baby downstairs?”

  “Must have missed that one.”

  “This is my point. I’ve worked hard at the NCD for twenty-six years, trying to bring justice to everyone within my jurisdiction. I deal with most things within the NCD, and I like to think I make a difference. Is any of that remembered? Not a bit of it. I kill a few tall guys and all of a sudden I’m nothing but a giant killer.”

  They reached Mrs. Dumpty’s house a few minutes later. It was named, ironically, the Cheery Egg.

  6. Mrs. Laura dumpty

  OYSTERS ONE STEP CLOSER TO VOTE

  Animal rights took a giant leap away from the dark ages yesterday with the passing of the Animal (anthropomorphic) Equality Bill. The act will guarantee the rights of animals considered human enough to function within Homo sapien society. Applicants are required to take a “speech and cognitive ability” test and, if passed by the five-strong board, are issued with an identity card that allows them to live unmolested within the designated safe haven of Berkshire. “It’s a major triumph,” said Mr. Billy Gruff, one of the main lobbyists. “For too long now we have been marginalized by society.” The rights of standard nonanthropomorphized animals are unaffected by the act, and they may still be hunted, killed, farmed and eaten with impunity.

  —Article in The Owl, January 13, 1962

  “He had it coming. Who was it, a jealous husband?”

  “We never said he was murdered, Mrs. Dumpty.”

  The ex-Dumpty residence was a large mock Tudor dwelling. It was cheaply elegant, the furniture and pictures all reproductions, and they trod on marble
-effect linoleum in the entrance hall. Mrs. Dumpty spoke to them sitting at a faux-wood Formica table in the large kitchen, wearing a mock-leopardskin jacket and smoking a Sobranie through a silver gilt cigarette holder with affected grace. Her hair was dyed jet black, and her last face lift had pulled her features into a grimace. She spoke in elocuted upper-class tones and looked as though her tan had been applied with a roller. Everything in the house was false, and that included Mrs. Dumpty. She fixed Jack with a stern eye.

  “What difference does it make? He’s dead isn’t he?”

  “So you weren’t close, then?”

  She laughed again. “Once upon a time, Inspector. ‘Fidelity’ was not a word in Humpty’s word stock as much as—” She paused, trying to think up a suitable word.

  “Vocabulary?” suggested Mary.

  “Right. Fidelity was not a word in Humpty’s word stock as much as ‘vocabulary’ isn’t in mine. I knew he was sleeping around. He had great charm, and any moppet that came his way he used to regard as fair game.”

  She paused for a moment, thinking. Neither Jack nor Mary said anything, so she continued:

  “He married me for my money. My family name is Garibaldi. I suppose that means something to you?”

  “Indeed it does,” said Jack. He knew as well as anyone that the Garibaldi family was big in biscuits. Yummy-Time Cakes and Snacks (Reading) was valued at over £130 million, and its Reading manufacturing facility churned out five thousand packets of chocolate digestives a day—and that was just the milk chocolate variety.

  “When my father died, he left the biscuit concern entirely to me. It was my money that attracted Hump.”

  “For high living?” asked Jack, wondering why Humpty had been working from a dive in Grimm’s Road.

  “Speculation,” replied Mrs. Dumpty, taking the spent cigarette from the holder and stubbing it out in a mock-tortoiseshell ashtray.

  “What did he speculate in?”

  “Mostly bankrupt stock, that sort of thing. He bought shares when they went low before a possible merger and then sold when the shares rose—if they did. It was a very high-risk venture. He spent over eight million pounds of my money on his harebrained schemes. South American zinc, North American zinc, Canadian zinc…. In fact”—she paused for a moment—“I don’t think there was much zinc he didn’t speculate in. Some he made a killing on; most of them failed. We lived together for eighteen years, and in that time he made and lost five fortunes. His philandering always got worse when he was worth a lot of money. I thought it would blow over, small indiscretions that only served to prove he could still charm the ladies. It carried on, Mr. Spratt, grew more and more blatant, until I told him it had to stop. He refused, so I told him he couldn’t have any more of my money.”

  “What did he do?” asked Jack.

  Mrs. Dumpty paused for a moment. “He did what any other man would do in the same situation. He walked out. He went that same morning.”

  She lit another cigarette. “I changed the locks. I got a divorce. An ironclad prenuptial against adultery denied him any of my Yummy-Time fortune. I know nothing about his tawdry affairs because I chose not to be interested. I’m afraid to say I cannot tell you anything more.” She paused and stared at the end of her cigarette.

  Mary consulted her notebook.

  “Do you know where he stayed after he left you?

  “I have no idea. With one of his conquests, I imagine.”

  “Do you have any idea what he was up to?”

  “None. He was out of my life.”

  “Did he ever get depressed?” asked Jack.

  She visibly started at the question and said with some surprise, “Depressed? Are you considering this might be suicide?”

  “I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions, ma’am.”

  She pulled herself together and assumed an air of haughty indifference. “Why should I care, Inspector? He is no longer part of my life. Yes, he often got depressed. He was an outpatient at St. Cerebellum’s for longer than I had known him. Easter was always bad for him, as you can imagine, and whenever he saw a cooking program featuring omelettes or eggs Benedict, he would fly off the handle. Whenever the salmonella recurred, I know he found life very painful. Sometimes he would wake up at night in a sweat, screaming, ‘Help, help, take me off, I’m boiling.’ I’m sorry, Officer, do you find something funny?”

  She directed this last comment at Mary, who had let out a misplaced guffaw and then tried to disguise it as a sneeze.

  “No, ma’am, hay fever.”

  “Mrs. Dumpty,” continued Jack, unwilling to lose the momentum of the interview, “do you recognize this woman?” He placed the Viennese photo in front of her.

  “No.”

  “It would help if you looked at the picture before answering.”

  Her eyes flicked over to it, and she inhaled deeply on the Sobranie, blowing the smoke up in the air. “One of his tramps, I daresay.”

  She looked at Jack, her eyes narrowing. “I haven’t seen him for two years, Mr. Spratt. We were divorced.”

  She got up and walked to the window and paused for a moment with her back to them before asking in a quiet voice, “Do you think he was in any pain?”

  “We don’t believe so, Mrs. Dumpty.”

  She seemed relieved.

  “Thank you, Inspector. It is good to know that, despite everything.”

  She gazed out the window. In the middle of the lawn was a large brick wall. It was six feet high, three feet wide and two feet thick; the bricks were covered in moss, and the mortar was beginning to crumble.

  “He loved his walls,” she said absently, looking away from the structure in the garden and staring at the floor. “He had an extraordinary sense of balance. I had seen him blind drunk and asleep, yet still balanced perfectly. I had that one built for him on his fiftieth birthday. He used to tell me that when he had to go, he would die atop one of his favorite walls, that he would remain there, stone-cold dead, until they came to take him away.”

  She cast another look at the brick monolith in the back garden.

  “It’s his tombstone now,” she said, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.

  Jack peered beyond Humpty’s wall at a large wooden construction with a glass roof. Mrs. Dumpty guessed what he was looking at.

  “That was his swimming pool. He had it built when we came here. Keen swimmer. It was about the only physical activity he excelled in. Good buoyancy and natural streamlining, you see—especially backward, with his pointy end first, if you get what I mean. If you have no other questions…?”

  “Not for now, Mrs. Dumpty. Thank you.”

  “Mrs. Dumpty?” said a voice from the door. “It’s time you did your thirty lengths.”

  They turned to see an athletic-looking blond man aged about thirty dressed in a bathrobe. He had curly hair and large brown eyes like a Jersey cow.

  “This is Mr. Spatchcock,” explained Mrs. Dumpty quickly, “my personal fitness instructor.”

  Spatchcock nodded a greeting. They left her to his attentions and walked back to the car.

  “Think she’s over Dumpty?” asked Mary.

  “Not really. She didn’t believe he was likely to fall by accident. What did she say: ‘blind drunk and still perfectly balanced’? I think she had more to say, too. Secrets. Perhaps not to do with his death, but secrets nonetheless.”

  “Most people do,” observed Mary. “Where are we going now?”

  “To the Paint Box to see Mr. Foozle.”

  “How is he to do with Humpty?”

  “He isn’t.”

  Mr. Foozle was a large man with a ruddy complexion whom Jack knew quite well, as their sons played football together. The shop was also a gallery; on the walls at present was a collection of abstract paintings.

  “Mr. Spratt!” said Foozle genially. “I didn’t expect to see you in here.”

  “Me neither, Mr. Foozle. Do you sell any of these things?” he asked, waving a hand at the canvases spla
shed with paint.

  “Indeed. Two hundred eighty pounds a throw.”

  “Two hundred eighty pounds? It looks like a chimp did them.”

  Foozle gasped audibly and looked to either side in a very surreptitious manner. “Extraordinary! You detective johnnies have an uncanny sixth sense! You see, a chimp did do them—but that’s our secret, right?”

  Jack laid the painting on the counter. “It’s my mother’s,” he explained. “It’s of a cow. She says it’s a Stubbs.”

  Foozle unwrapped the canvas. “How is Mrs. Spratt? More cats?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “And your delightful wife? Her cover this morning was a real corker—Oh!”

  It was said with a surprised tone that made Jack wonder whether it was an “Oh!” good or an “Oh!” bad. Foozle took a magnifying glass from his coat and examined the painting minutely, hunching over it like a surgeon. He grunted several times and finally stood up straight again, taking off his spectacles and tapping them against his teeth.

  “Well, you’re right about one thing.”

  “It’s a Stubbs?”

  “No, it’s a cow.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s a fake?”

  Mr. Foozle nodded. “I’m afraid so. It’s painted in his style and dates probably from the early years of the nineteenth century. It’s interesting for the fact that it’s a prize cow. Stubbs usually painted horses, so it’s unusual that a forger would copy work in his style yet not his favorite subject.”

  Jack ventured a theory. “Is it possible that it was painted in his style quite innocently, and then someone else added the signature, intending to pass it off as a Stubbs?”

  Foozle smiled. “You should be a detective in our business, Mr. Spratt. I think you’re probably right. In any event I don’t suppose it’s worth much more than a hundred pounds, perhaps more if an auction house would take it.”