The Big Over Easy (14 page)

“Are you new? I haven’t seen you here before.”

“Only since 1978, Mr. Sleaze. You’re usually out the door before I even stand up.”

“Whatever. Humpty Dumpty?” repeated Sleaze incredulously. “You mean the large egg?”

“That’s correct.”

“Any suspects?”

“No.”

“Any motive?”

“No.”

“Any weapon?”

“No.”

“That’s me all questioned out,” said Hector, getting up and leaving.

“Anyone else?” Jack asked, addressing the room, which now had only Fatquack in it.

“Inspector Spratt,” began
The Gadfly
’s editor, “can you confirm that in 1978 the British government negotiated for Mr. Dumpty’s safe exit from Ogapôga in exchange for information about oil reserves in the Ogapôgian Basin?”

Jack sighed. “I haven’t heard of any deals with the Ogapôgians or anyone else, Mr. Fatquack. What’s your interest in Humpty Dumpty?”

“I’m writing a biography, but I find more questions than answers when I begin to delve.”

“Really?” replied Jack warily. He wasn’t going to tell Fatquack that he had found exactly the same.

“Yes,” continued Archie, leaning closer, “but he wasn’t arrested for gem smuggling. I have spoken to a journalist who told me that he was actually trading guns to arm rebels to fight the government-backed land grabbers. Is this true?”

“You tell me, Mr. Fatquack.”

“Is this part of your investigation?”

“Mr. Dumpty has a long and colorful history,” replied Jack,

“from fraud to land speculation in Splotvia. All of these facets are part of our investigation, but we’ll be looking closer to home first.”

“Like Oxford?” asked Fatquack. “You knew he went to Christ Church?”

“Yes,” replied Jack, “1946. Just missed being chosen for the English rugby team.”

“1946?” echoed Fatquack with surprise. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why?”

Fatquack drew in a dramatic breath. “You know that the Jellyman was at Christ Church between 1945 and 1947?”

“They might never have spoken.”

“I doubt it. The Jellyman was captain of the rugby team.”

“His Eminence has met many people in the past,” said Jack quickly.

“Of course,” replied Fatquack awkwardly, eager for Jack to know that he would never accuse the Jellyman of any wrongdoing.

“I’m not suggesting for one moment that he had any dealings with Mr. Dumpty, but it is
interesting
nonetheless. Is it true that you’ve applied to join the Guild?”

“Word gets around, doesn’t it?”

“I know it’s not likely you’ll get in, but if by the remotest chance it happens, you will remember your friends at
The Gadfly
when
Amazing Crime
rejects the manuscript?”

“You have the nicest way of putting things, Archie.”

“So it wasn’t stealing gems in Ogapôga,” murmured Mary as they walked back to the NCD offices. “It was gunrunning to rebels.”

“His crimes never seem to benefit
himself,
do they?” Jack nodded his head thoughtfully.

“Diddling the City financial establishments out of forty million pounds in the name of freedom and democracy has the nub of a fine joke about it,” continued Mary.

“I agree. It looks as though the egg had a social conscience—and he didn’t mind risking everything if he thought it would do some good.”

“Like a Spongg share scam that liberated fifty million pounds for the rebuilding of the woefully inadequate and outdated St. Cerebellum’s mental hospital?”

“Could be. He might be a crook—but with a noble purpose.”

Gretel was hunched over papers and a calculator when Jack and Mary walked in. She gave a cheery wave without turning around.

“Have they found the bullet at Grimm’s Road?” asked Jack.

“Not yet.”

“I couldn’t remember whether you liked tea or coffee,” said Ashley, bringing in a steaming mug for Jack, “so I brought both.”

“Thank you.”

“In the same cup.”

Jack sighed. Ashley was still having trouble getting used to the way things were done.

“Thank you, Ashley. Next time it’s coffee, white, one sugar—yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mary was talking to a uniformed officer at the door. After taking a few notes, she thanked him and walked back into the office.

“Bessie Brooks has done a runner,” announced Mary, trying to find somewhere to sit in the cramped offices and eventually perching on the table edge. “They had a look around her flat, but she’s not been there for a couple of days. Suitcase missing and clothes scattered everywhere from a hurried pack. Can I issue an arrest warrant? It would make things easier if we’re to try and track her down though credit cards.”

The phone rang and Mary picked it up. She listened for a moment and winced. “Thanks for calling. We’ll be straight there.”

She put the receiver down and looked up at Jack.

“I’ve got a feeling this is bad news,” he said slowly.

“It’s Mrs. Dumpty.”

“At last! When can we talk to her?”

“Never—unless you know a good spiritualist. There’s been an accident down at the Yummy-Time Biscuits factory. She’s…
dead.
”

“She was on
an inspection of the chocolate digestive production line,” explained a very shaken executive less than half an hour later down at the Yummy-Time factory, a clean and efficient facility full of clanking machinery, stainless-steel vats and the smell of baking and hot sugar.

“During our afternoon tour, she asked me to fetch her shawl from her office. When I returned, I found a group of workers clustered around the industrial food mixers. It was no use, of course; Mr. Aimsworth said he saw her jump into the main dough mixer—not just for the digestives but for the entire range of biscuits, all the way from custard creams to Abernethys.”

He broke down and gave out a muffled sob, then blew his nose on a bright yellow hankie.

“She’d been a leading light of Yummy-Time since she took over from her father ten years ago,” said the executive. “She knew shortbread fingers like the back of her hand and upside-down cakes back to front.”

Jack and Mary peered cautiously into one of the vast mixing vats, which, they had been informed earlier, held almost five tons of dough mixture. Of Mrs. Dumpty they could see only a foot and part of a blue dress. Already firemen had put a ladder into the vat and were wading through the sticky mixture to try to retrieve what was left of her.

“You better get a statement from the fellow who saw her jump, Mary. I’m going to look at her office.”

He was escorted off the factory floor by the executive, who bemoaned the loss of Mrs. Dumpty and her biscuit expertise. They stepped into the spotless interior of the administration side of the building, up two flights of steps and on to Mrs. Dumpty’s office, which would have afforded a fine view of Reading if low clouds hadn’t been scudding across the city.

“This is her office,” said the executive. “What a terrible thing to happen! I didn’t think she would want to…
you know
…herself. She seemed in such fine fettle.”

Jack walked around her desk and noticed a picture of her and Humpty in a gilt frame. There was a computer, telephone, correspondence. He stopped. There, on the blotter, was a single piece of paper folded once, with his name written clearly on the front. He took out a fountain pen and pocketknife to avoid touching it, delicately opened the note and read it. He read it again, to make quite sure.

It was signed Laura Garibaldi-Dumpty. Jack opened her desk diary and compared the handwriting. It was quite distinctive and there was no doubt in his mind that she had written it. He looked at last week’s entries in the diary, but there was nothing of interest, just dinner dates, tennis, that sort of thing. She hadn’t been planning anything out of the ordinary.

Mary appeared at the doorway as Jack was going through the desk drawers.

“Have a look,” he said, indicating the note.

She read it and gave a low whistle.

“So she
did
kill him.”

“Probably with this,” replied Jack, pointing at a small nickel-plated .32 automatic pistol he had discovered hidden under some papers. “Better get SOCO over here to take possession of the evidence. We’ll need to double-check the handwriting on the note and check the pistol for prints and residue. It kind of surprises me she has a gun, though.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Mary, pointing to one of the many pictures on the wall. It depicted a smiling Laura celebrating a win at the British Small-Bore Rifle Championships. Humpty was in the group, holding a bottle of champagne—and Randolph Spongg was there, too. Pistols, it seemed, were not as alien to her as one might have supposed.

“What did Mr. Aimsworth say?”

“He saw her climb over the barrier, pause for a moment and then jump. By the time they had hit the emergency stop, it was already too late.”

SOCO arrived within half an hour, but there wasn’t much to do. The note was taken away with three other examples of her handwriting, and one of the officers named Shenstone gently lifted the pistol from the bottom drawer. There were five cartridges missing from the clip, but nothing else that could be found. The team was gone in under forty minutes. It was different on the main biscuit-manufacturing level. It took eight firemen, Mrs. Singh and her two assistants the best part of six hours to find all of Mrs. Dumpty. Biscuit manufacture wouldn’t restart for another week.

“It seems fairly clear-cut,” said Mary as they drove back to the office in the Allegro.

“Keep talking.”

“She kills him early yesterday morning, realizes after we visit her that she will be first in the frame, has a fit of remorse and then…kills herself.”

“It seems a bit too perfect.”

“How can it be
too
perfect?” said Mary, wondering whether Chymes would still want her on his team without the Humpty investigation to poach. “She wrote the note, didn’t she?”

Jack shrugged. Mary was right. The case was as clear as it could be, and that was good, because that was what he was there for. But from a purely selfish viewpoint, he felt somehow
cheated.
Murder inquiries didn’t come around every week, and he had hoped this one would make up for the pig fiasco. It had welcomed him in with open arms, only to spit him out half chewed. The mystery—such as it was—had rapidly devolved to just another crime of passion, an act of desperation that destroyed two lives and ruined countless others. The investigation was over and with it, as likely as not, him and the NCD. He imagined that this was how Friedland felt when a plum mystery collapsed into a simple case of robbery in front of him. And feeling like Chymes made him feel even worse. Besides, he needed a case like this more than at any time before. To prove to Briggs and his blasted budgetary meeting, if not to himself.

“Shit,”
he muttered.

“Sir?”

“Shit,” he reiterated slightly louder, “and bollocks.”

He sighed, finally coming to terms with the fact that the inquiry was over.

“There are always a few unanswered questions at the end of an investigation, Mary. But this one’s over, and I’d be clutching at straws to think otherwise. Now, I’d better get this sewn up all nice and neat, just as Briggs wants it.”

To say that Ashley, Baker and Kandlestyk-Maeker were disappointed would be a severe understatement. This investigation was a holiday from their usual dull duties, and they grumbled and moaned as Jack told them the news.

“We’re waiting for the results of handwriting analysis before we can officially close the case, so I want all notes spick and span by ten tomorrow.”

“Sir—” began Ashley, but Jack silenced him with a gesture.

“Is this a pertinent question regarding the inquiry?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, then. Let’s just keep ourselves to ourselves for a bit and catch up on paperwork. Where’s Otto?”

“Still trying to ID the man in those photographs we found in Humpty’s desk, I think.”

“Better get him back.”

Ashley and Gretel looked at each other and sat down quietly to do his bidding, as Mary slipped out the door.

Jack flicked through the message slips stuck to his telephone. There was a request from Bo-peep, who had once again lost her sheep, and another message from the Allegro Owners’ Club asking whether he had checked the torque settings on the wheel bearings. There were several from his mother, the last one of which was marked “urgent.”

Blast!
he said to himself. He had forgotten to do anything about the bean refund. He picked up the phone and rang the Paint Box and was informed by a very helpful assistant that Mr. Foozle had departed unexpectedly and at very short notice to London, where he was to attend a Stubbs auction; he wouldn’t be back until Friday. She knew nothing about the beans and had no idea why Foozle would be going to a Stubbs auction, at short notice or otherwise. Jack put the receiver down and stared at his computer terminal blankly. Something about the whole Humpty affair felt wrong, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Sadly, “hunches” and “feelings” didn’t really sit well with Briggs—unless you were Guild, in which case you could base a thousand-man-hour investigation on one.

“1000 010011 1010010 10010,” said Ashley in hushed tones on Gretel’s phone in the next room. “10010 11010 00100111 1011.”

“Are you talking to your mother on the office phone?” bellowed Jack.

“Sorry,” said a sheepish voice, and all was quiet. Jack stared at his “four-and-twenty blackbirds” screensaver in a desultory manner until he left to go to the Jellyman security briefing.

While Jack was attending the briefing along with all the other officers of inspector rank and above, Mary was sitting in the Platters Coffeehouse, feeling a bit nervous—and annoyed. From the way things looked, her chances of working with Chymes had been seriously scuppered, and she might have risked her reputation for being trustworthy for nothing if Chymes decided to drop her. If it got out that she had acted behind the back of her senior officer, she’d probably have to transfer to the sheep-theft unit in Lerwick or something. Chymes must have been wrong about the Humpty case, but it didn’t matter. She had fulfilled her part of the bargain—she hoped he would fulfill his. She took a sip of coffee and flicked through her notes. She had even photocopied Mrs. Dumpty’s confession.

“Mary?” said Flotsam, who was approaching with a coffee of his own. “You don’t mind me calling you Mary? You can call me Eddie if you want.”

She smiled and invited him to join her.

“How’s it going?” asked Flotsam.

“Haven’t you heard? The ex-wife killed him. Motive, opportunity and, best of all, a note.”

Flotsam didn’t seem overly concerned. “Knowing the Guv’nor, tricky—but not insurmountable. He’s resurrected more dropped investigations than I’ve had hot dinners. All that ‘cold case’ stuff is really popular these days. Just the sort of thing for the
Amazing Crime
Summer Special—now, what have you got for us?”

“This is a copy of the confession note, and these are copies of her handwriting. I’ve made a few notes and will talk you through it, if you want.”

“Well done,” he enthused. “The Guv’nor will be pleased—you’re definitely backing the right horse here.”

So for the next half hour she talked about the investigation and all the pertinent points that she felt had been raised. All the while Flotsam nodded and took voluminous notes and mentioned every now and then how the Guv’nor would like
that
or the Guv’nor would do something with
this,
and when she had told him everything she knew, he thanked her, told her they would be in touch and left, leaving his coffee undrunk.

She waited a few minutes to gather her thoughts, then walked back to the NCD offices just as Jack was returning from the Jellyman briefing.

“Ah, Mary. I’ve told Briggs it’s a murder/suicide, and I’ll be seeing him tomorrow at ten to wrap up the Humpty case. I’ll need everyone together tomorrow morning for a heads-up on this Sacred Gonga protection-duty operation, so better make it sometime after that. Yes?”

“Very well, sir.”

“Good. I’m going home.”

And he left her alone to her thoughts in the tiny offices. Annoyingly for her, they weren’t good thoughts. She was about to start a career with Chymes, something she had always wanted—but it somehow just didn’t seem
right.
The price tag had been high—and might become even higher.