The Big Over Easy (4 page)

“You do.” Briggs beckoned the policewoman over. “Jack, I want you to meet Detective Sergeant Mary.”

“Hello,” said Jack.

“
Mary
Mary,” said Mary Mary.

“Hello,
hello
?”

“Don’t play the fool, Spratt,” cut in Briggs.

“It’s Mary Mary,” explained Mary. “That’s my name.”

“Mary Mary? Where are you from? Baden-Baden?”

“First time I heard that one, sir—today.”

Jack sighed. He smiled mechanically, she smiled mechanically, and they shook hands.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” she said.

“And you,” replied Jack. “Who are you working with?”

She looked across at Briggs rather pointedly.

“Mary is your new detective sergeant,” said Briggs. “Transferred with an A-one record from Basingstoke. She’ll be with you on this case and any others that spring up.”

Jack sighed. “No offense to DS Mary, sir, but I was hoping you could promote Ashley, Baker, or—”

“Not possible, Jack,” said Briggs in the tone of voice that made arguing useless. He looked up at the ominous sky. “Well, I’m off. I’ll leave you here with Mary so you can get acquainted. Remember: I need that report as soon as possible. Got it?”

Jack did indeed get it, and Briggs departed.

Jack shivered in the cold and looked at her again. “Mary Mary, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Kind of an odd name.”

Mary bit her lip. It was a contentious point with her, and the years had not diminished the hot indignation of playground taunts regarding contrariness. It
was
an odd name, but she tried not to let her feelings show.

“It’s just my name, sir. I come from a long line of Mary Marys—sort of like a family tradition. Why,” she added, more defensively,

“is there a problem?”

“Not at all,” replied Jack, “as long as it’s not an affectation for the Guild’s benefit—Briggs was threatening to change
his
to Föngotskilérnie.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“Friedland Chymes’s investigations usually end up in print, as you know,” explained Jack, “and Briggs is habitually
not
referred to. He thought a strange name and a few odd habits might make him more…
mentionworthy.
”

“Hence the trombone?”

“Right.”

There was a short silence, during which Jack thought about who he would have preferred to have as his DS and Mary thought about her career.

“So the NCD disbanded?” she said, using her best woeful voice to make it sound like terribly bad news. “That would mean all the staff would have to be reassigned to other duties, right?”

“Along with the chairs and table lamps, yes, I suppose so.”

“When is this budgetary meeting?”

“The Thursday following next.”

Mary made a mental note. The sooner she could get away from this loser department, the better.

Jack turned his attention to the shattered remains of Humpty’s corpse.

Mary took her cue and flicked open her notepad. “Corpse’s name is—”

“Humpty Dumpty.”

“You knew him?”

“Once,” Jack sighed, shaking his head sadly. “A very long time ago.”

Humpty’s ovoid body had fragmented almost completely and was scattered among the dustbins and rubbish at the far end of the yard. The previous night’s heavy rain had washed away his liquid center, but even so there was still enough to give off an unmistakably eggy smell. Jack noted a thin and hairless leg—still with a shoe and sock—attached to a small area of eggshell draped with tattered sheets of translucent membrane. The biggest piece of shell contained Humpty’s large features and was jammed between two dustbins. His face was a pale white except for the nose, which was covered in unsightly red gin blossoms. One of the eyes was open, revealing a milky-white unseeing eye, and a crack ran across his face. He had been wearing a tuxedo with a cravat or cummerbund—it was impossible to say which. The trauma was quite severe, and to an untrained eye his body might have been dismissed as a heap of broken eggshell and a bundle of damp clothing.

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.”