The Big Over Easy (8 page)

Mary looked up
as Jack entered the room, but Tibbit actually
stood,
which seemed to her pointlessly correct protocol.

“Any luck with the shotgun?”

“You could say that. Remember the Andersen’s Wood murder?”

“Of course,” replied Mary. “It was titled ‘From Russia with Gloves’ and appeared in
Amazing Crime,
issue 12, volume 101, reprinted in
Friedland Chymes Casebook XVII
. It was an extraordinarily complex case. He—”

She stopped as she saw Jack glaring at her.

“I suppose you know the page number, too?” he asked.

“Sorry, wasn’t thinking. Seriously, I thought Chymes had found the weapon that killed the woodcutters. After all, it was the discovery of the engraved Holland and Holland that led him on an unnecessarily complex jaunt around Europe before he solved it.”

“It was never
proved
it was the weapon. He’s sending the cartridges down so we can check.”

“But if Humpty’s shotgun
was
the murder weapon used to kill the woodcutters…”

“Yes,” replied Jack, “Chymes would be
wrong.
Unthinkable, isn’t it?”

Mary thought about agreeing with him wholeheartedly but said instead, “A few things for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Mrs. Singh rang with some figures. They can’t be certain, as so much of Humpty’s albumen was washed away by the rain, but indications show he was twenty-six times the legal limit for driving. Even so, she reckons he would still have been conscious—it’s something to do with his coefficient of volume.”

“That’s one seriously pickled egg,” murmured Jack. “What else?”

“I’ve been collating the highlights from police databanks along with some background details Baker gleaned from a contact at the the
Reading Mercury
.”

“Go on.”

She looked at her foolscap notepad, cleared her throat and began: “Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloysius Stuyvesant van Dumpty was born on the sixth June, 1939,” she read. “His father was Gaylord Llewelyn Stuyvesant van Dumpty, a minor baronet and lecturer in classical Greek at Oxford. There seems to be some doubt over his mother. Schooled at Llanabba Castle, then Christ Church College reading mathematics and children’s literature. He played rugby for Oxford and just missed being chosen to play for England owing to a knee injury.”

“He’d make a pretty unstoppable player,” said Jack, thinking it would be like trying to tackle a cannonball.

“As long as he didn’t have to run, on those short legs,” added Mary. “Anyway, he married Lucinda Muffet in 1962, and we don’t hear anything about him until he is asked to leave a lecture post at Balliol in 1964 after being charged with a crooked property deal. Released through lack of evidence, he was not so lucky in 1969, when he was jailed for five years on a charge of money laundering for the Porgia family crime syndicate. He was questioned closely by the Serious Crime Squad about his connections but didn’t talk and, when he was released three years later, was given an apartment, reputedly a gift from Giorgio Porgia himself. His first wife died in a car accident while he was in prison, in 1970. He spent the next few years living and working in Ogapôga and was heard of next in 1978, when he requested asylum at the British consulate in Pôga City. The Ogapôgian government had charged him with smuggling gems, and, following some swift diplomatic dealing, he was deported. He returned to England in 1979 and in 1980 moved to Reading to lecture at the university. Questioned by NCD officers over spinning-wheel profiteering in 1981, then fired from the university in the same year over allegations of embezzlements. In 1984 he married Laura Garibaldi. In 1989 he shifted his interests to world development and raised forty million pounds on a limited-share issue to buy a monopoly on mineral rights in the Splotvian Republic. Six months later a coup there lost him everything when the incoming administration nationalized the land. Investigations followed complaints by the shareholders, but again he was never charged. Made a fortune in zinc between 1985 and 1991, then lost it all in 1993 when he tried to corner the market in talcum powder on the Hong Kong commodities exchange. Questioned about insider trading on the Tokyo stock exchange in 1999 but again, never charged.”

There was a pause.

“That’s all we have.”

“So…a few investigations and one conviction? For the Porgia money laundering?”

“I only gave you the
highlights.
He’s been pulled in for questioning on one hundred twenty-eight occasions, charged twenty-six times, but, as you say, only convicted once.”

“Well, we knew he was a bit of a crook.”

“There is a flip side. He has undertaken numerous charitable assignments over the years and has spent a great deal of time raising money for a myriad of good causes, St. Cerebellum’s being a notable favorite.”

“I’m sure the people defrauded by the Splotvian mineral-rights scam would be overjoyed to hear that. How long had he been an outpatient there?”

“He’d been a patient there for over four decades,” replied Mary, looking at a note she had made. “His doctor at present is someone named…Quatt.”

Both Jack and Tibbit stopped what they were doing and stared at her. There was a sudden silence in the room. You could almost hear the skin forming on the custard in the canteen next door.

“You’re joking? Not Dr.
Quatt
of all people?”

“I’m missing something here,” she said slowly. “Who is he?”

“
She
used to be head of her own genetic research establishment until a scandal involving ethically dubious medical experiments.”

“What sort of experiments?”

“Keeping monkey brains alive in jars, reanimating dead tissue—usual stuff. We probably won’t get much sense out of her—she’s as mad as a barrel of skunks.”

A clerk came in and handed Jack a manila envelope. It contained five black-and-white glossy eight-by-tens and a note from Madeleine to say that he should call her if he was going to be late for dinner.

“Hah!” said Jack, going through the photographs. “There’s our man!”

Two of the pictures were of other celebrities with Humpty in the background. In one he was sitting at a table pouring himself a drink, in another walking past, out of focus. The third was of him at the lectern giving some sort of speech.

“He does look drunk, doesn’t he?” commented Mary.

The fourth photo was of him shaking hands with a distinguished-looking man in his sixties whom Jack recognized instantly.

“That’s Solomon Grundy, the CEO of Winsum and Loosum Pharmaceuticals and ninth-wealthiest man in the country. He’ll be pressing flesh and doing the buddy-buddy thing with the Jellyman on Saturday. Who else have we got?”

The fifth picture was of Humpty gazing a bit unsteadily at the camera while shaking hands with a somber-looking man in his early fifties.

Jack turned the picture over and read Madeleine’s caption. “‘Local celebrity Mr. Charles Pewter meets local celebrity H. Dumpty at the 2004 Spongg Charity Benefit.’ Charles Pewter. Anyone heard of him?”

Tibbit disappeared into the next room to find out.

Jack pinned Dumpty’s photo on the board and stared at it for a moment.

“Jack?” said Briggs, who had appeared at the door. “Can I have a quick word?”

“Of course.”

Briggs beckoned him out of the door and down the corridor a few yards. He looked left and right before speaking and lowered his voice.

“I’ve just had a call from DCI Chymes—”

Jack sighed audibly. “No way. No way on God’s own earth, sir. NCD is
my
jurisdiction. Humpty is
my
jurisdiction. This is what I do.” He felt his voice rising.

“I know that,” said Briggs, trying to be conciliatory and authoritarian at the same time, “I just wanted you to
reconsider.
Chymes is Guild and high-profile. If you let him take over the Humpty investigation, it might bode well for the division.”

“No, sir. I’ve been shafted once too often by Friedland. You’d have to suspend me before I’d let go.”

Briggs took a deep breath and stared at him for a moment.

“Jack, please! Don’t piss Chymes off. If the Guild of Detectives gets involved, it could all get really messy.”

“Then,” said Jack, “it’s going to get messy. Are we done, sir?”

Briggs glared at him, then nodded, and Jack departed. He loosened his collar and felt his heart thump inside his chest. Humpty. Something told him it was going to be a tricky one.

As he walked back in, Tibbit and Mary were waiting for him with a hefty volume of
Reading Who’s What?
Mary looked at him quizzically, but Jack didn’t say anything.

“Pewter,” said Tibbit, “Charles Walter. He’s a commodities broker. Has been partnered to Mr. Perkupp at Perkupp and Partners since 1986. Active on the charity scene, married, with one son. Special interests: Victoriana, walking. Lives and works from Brickfield Terrace.”

Jack picked up the phone and dialed Pewter’s number.

After only two rings, a woman with a cultured voice answered the phone. “Perkupp and Partners. May I help you?”

“Yes,” he replied, “this is Detective Inspector Spratt, Nursery Crime Division. I wonder if I might speak to Mr. Pewter?”

“Certainly, sir. Please wait a moment.”

She put him on hold, and a rather poor recording of Vivaldi came down the line. A moment later she was back.

“I’m sorry, sir, Mr. Pewter is in a meeting. Can he call you back?”

Jack knew when he was being fobbed off.

“Tell him I’m investigating Humpty Dumpty’s death.”

There was a short pause, and then a man’s voice came on the line.

“DI Spratt? My name is Charles Pewter. Perhaps you’d better come around.”

Brickfield Terrace
was a tree-lined avenue of houses built in the late 1890s and was situated only a few miles from the town center. Mr. Pewter’s house, Jack discovered, was the last one in the street and also seemed to be the only house not dissected into undistinguished flats. As he tugged on the bellpull, he noted an ugly hole where the boot scraper should have been. After a moment, the door opened, and a tall man with Victorian clothes, a large beard and a face like a bloodhound stood on the threshold.

“If you’re from
The Owl
,” began Mr. Pewter without waiting to see who either Jack or Mary was, “you spelt my name wrong on the guest list for the Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit. It’s not Pooter but
Pewter,
as in tankard.”

His deep voice showed little emotion and was about as salubrious as his features.

Jack held up his ID card. “Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, Nursery Crime Division. This is Detective Sergeant Mary Mary.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Mr. Dumpty. You’d better come in.”

Jack thanked him, and they stepped inside. It was like walking into a museum, for the whole house was decorated and furnished in a middle-class Victorian fashion. There was no expensive furniture; all the pieces were of low-quality boxwood and poor veneer. A pair of plaster of paris antlers painted brown were waiting to be put up on the wall, and fans and other Victorian knickery-knackery filled every vacant space. Mr. Pewter contemplated Jack’s curious gaze with pride.

“It’s all original, Mr. Spratt. Every single piece, from the screens to the bedstead to the fans on the sideboard. As very little of poor-quality Victorian furniture survives, for obvious reasons, it’s of almost incalculable value. I bought these plaster of paris antlers at Christie’s last week for seven thousand pounds. I had to beat off stiff competition from Japan; they love this stuff almost as much as I do. Shall we repair to my study?”

“Please.”

Mr. Pewter led them through to a library, filled with thousands of antiquarian books.

“Impressive, eh?”

“Very,” said Jack. “How did you amass all these?”

“Well,” said Pewter, “you know the person who always borrows books and never gives them back?”

“Yes…?”

“I’m that person.”

He smiled curiously and offered them both a seat before sitting himself.

“So how may I help?” he asked.

“You were at the Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit last night at the Déjà Vu Ballrooms?”

“I was.”

“And you spoke with Mr. Dumpty?”

“Indeed I did, Inspector. Although, to be honest, I didn’t really get much sense out of him.”

“Was Mr. Dumpty drunk when he arrived?”

“Mr. Dumpty was a bit drunk all the time. He had a brilliant mind, but he wasted himself. I sat next to him, as I thought I could get him to join one of my self-help groups. You may not know, Mr. Spratt, but I run the Reading Temperance Society. We do what we can for people like Mr. Dumpty, using a combination of group reliance, prayer and electroshock aversion therapy. I spoke to him sternly about his habit when he joined the table.”

“What did he say?”

Mr. Pewter coughed politely. “He said, ‘Pass the Bolly, old trout, I’ve got a tongue like the Gobi Desert.’ I refused, and he got Marjorie to pass it over instead. I tried to make him see reason, but he just told me not to be an old, er…”

“Fart?” inquired Mary helpfully.

“Exactly so, young lady. I tried again to make him see sense but he became sarcastic. I warned him about that, too, as I also run Reading’s branch of Sarcastics Anonymous—”

“And
after
he became sarcastic? Then what happened?”

“He drank more and more until he was picking arguments with just about anybody on any subject. The whole sordid business came to a head when Lord Spongg approached the lectern and announced he was starting a fifty-million-pound fund for the rebuilding of St. Cerebellum’s, the woefully inadequate mental hospital. Mr. Dumpty got up before any of us could stop him and pledged the full fifty million plus any ‘brown envelopes’ that might be necessary. There was an embarrassed hush, and his lordship made a joke of it. Mr. Dumpty told him he would be coming into a lot of money in the next couple of months, called Randolph a clot and then fell flat on his face.”

“Unconscious?”

“Not quite. Lord Spongg escorted him outside with a waiter. Upon his return he apologized for his absence and explained that he had sent Mr. Dumpty home in Spongg’s own car.”

“What time was this?”

“About eleven.”

“Did you know Mr. Dumpty well?”

“Socially, hardly at all. But in the course of my professional life, I had reason to see quite a lot of him.”

Jack and Mary leaned closer. “Go on,” said Jack.

Pewter pressed a lever on the office intercom and said, “The Dumpty file, please, Miss Hipkiss.”

He then turned back to Jack and Mary and continued. “Humpty approached Perkupp and Partners about eighteen months ago with respect to some share dealings he was interested in. Since he had a considerable sum of money to invest, it was thought best that a partner in the firm should advise him. I was allocated as his personal broker.” He shook his head sadly. “Mr. Dumpty dead! What a dreadful business. Who inherits his estate?”

Jack and Mary glanced at each other. Neither of them had considered probate. His will had dictated “all to wife,” but he was divorced, so it seemed a bit gray.

“We don’t know yet. Why do you ask?”

“Only because I have to move fast to try to sell these shares. Barring miracles, Spongg’s will be bankrupt within the next two months, and Mr. Dumpty’s shares will be worth nothing. If we could get probate sorted out straightaway and I could start selling, then I might make something out of this whole dismal mess.”

Jack was still in the dark. “Just how many shares did he have?”

At that moment Miss Hipkiss entered with a heavy buff folder. Mr. Pewter thanked the secretary with a badly concealed wink and then consulted the file.

“At a rough estimate I’d say about…twelve million.”

Jack had to get him to repeat it. He wrote it in his pad and underlined it. “Twelve million shares? In how many companies?”

“Oh!” said Mr. Pewter. “I thought you knew.
Every single one of them is in Spongg Footcare PLC!
”

There was a pause as Jack and Mary took this in.

“So the egg had all his eggs in one basket,” observed Mary. “Is that normal?”

“It’s against
all
logical thinking, Miss Mary. If you have a large portfolio of shares, it is always considered prudent to spread the risk.”

“So how much is all that worth?” asked Jack.

Pewter picked up a calculator and consulted a list of stock-market prices in a copy of
The Owl
. He pressed a few buttons.

“At current rates a little over a million pounds.”

Jack whistled. “That’s a very good portfolio.”

Pewter didn’t agree. He leaned back in his swivel chair, which creaked ominously.

“No, Inspector. It’s a very
bad
portfolio. He spent about two and a half million pounds on its acquisition.”

“You’re losing me I’m afraid, Mr. Pewter.”

The stockbroker thought for a moment. “Against my advice he continued to buy even when the share price dropped hourly. He holds—
held
—thirty-eight percent of Spongg’s.”

Jack was not too familiar with the machinations of share dealings, but one question seemed too obvious not to be asked.

“Why?”

There was a pause.

“I have no idea, Mr. Spratt. I can only think that he wanted Spongg shares to recover and to then sell them at a profit.”

“How much
could
they be worth?”

Pewter smiled. “At the all-time high in the sixties, Humpty’s share would have been worth almost three hundred million. But the possibility of that, given the downward trend of Spongg’s fortunes, is infinitesimally small. He might as well have smeared the cash with gravy and pushed the bills into the lions’ enclosure at the zoo.”

Jack thought for a moment. “Did Mr. Dumpty seem naive in money matters?”

Pewter looked quite shocked. “Oh, no. He was quite astute. He had been playing the stock market for a lot longer than I’ve known him, although I understood he had a bit of trouble in Splotvia. He floated a company to exploit mineral rights, but a left-wing government took power and nationalized the land.
Badly
burned.”

Pewter paused for a moment and played absently with a pencil from his desk.

“So what was he up to?” asked Jack.

“I have no idea,” replied the stockbroker. “He became obsessed with Spongg’s about eighteen months ago. I never found out why. Spongg’s
will
go under; it’s only a question of time. Unless,” he added, “there was
another
plan.”

“Such as?” returned Jack, craning forward and lowering his voice.

Mr. Pewter fixed him with a steely gaze. “Winsum and Loosum Pharmaceuticals would have paid a lot of money to get hold of the shares. They’ve been trying to take over Spongg’s for years. They might pay him a good return on his investment.”

“How much?”

“Today? Ten million. Fifteen if he got Grundy in a generous mood. But I must say if that was his plan, I’m surprised he left it so long. Spongg’s demise is pretty much inevitable, and Winsum and Loosum can just wait until it goes and then pick up the pieces.”

“Solomon Grundy was at the Spongg benefit, wasn’t he?”

“He never misses them, Inspector. Along with Randolph Spongg and the Quangle-Wangle, he’s Reading’s most generous philanthropist. Did you know that he
personally
paid forty million pounds to keep the Sacred Gonga in Reading when the museum threatened to sell it?”

“Of course,” said Jack, “everyone knows. Thank you for your time, Mr. Pewter. You’ve been most helpful.”

“Delighted to be of service, Inspector. I am always here if you need to talk again.”

Mr. Pewter saw them to the door, and they walked back to the Allegro.

“You can drive,” said Jack, tossing the car keys to Mary.

She got in and looked around the spartan controls dubiously.

“Seventies design classic,” said Jack. “The Allegro was a lot better than people give it credit for. The clutch is on the way out, so it bites high, and don’t be too aggressive with the turn signal—I broke it the other day, and I’m still awaiting a replacement.”

She turned the key, and the little engine burst into life. Jack was right, the clutch did bite high, but aside from that it drove very well—and with a surprisingly comfortable ride, too.

“Hydrogas suspension,” commented Jack when Mary asked. “Best thing about it.”

“So,” said Mary as they made their way back towards the city center, “Humpty was buying shares in a company that is heading rapidly downhill—why do you suppose that is?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he wanted a staff discount on corn plasters. Perhaps he liked Randolph. Perhaps he’d gone mad. Speaking of which, let’s see if we can get any sense out of Dr. Quatt. But not quite yet. Take a right here and pull up outside Argos. I said I’d drop in and check out the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center—we’re on duty there Saturday.”