The Big Over Easy (27 page)

Andersen’s Farm
was a small, two up/two down, redbrick farmhouse with a thatched roof, surrounded by a vegetable plot and several outbuildings in various states of dilapidation. There was a lean-to extension on the back, and the fields that made up the smallholding had twenty or so miserable-looking sheep scattered upon them. An ancient gray mare stood in a muddy pasture and tossed her head as the Allegro approached, but since she was badly myopic, it might have been a lime green elephant for all she knew. She blew out twin blasts of hot breath in the cold morning air and thought about the good old days when she chased across fields with lots of other horses, leaping hedges and galloping after something that her rider wanted her to catch but rarely did. She watched the green elephant drive slowly past and then leaned sleepily against the gatepost.

They drove into the yard and pulled up next to a ramshackle barn that contained an ancient Austin Ten up on blocks. There was no other car anywhere to be seen, and it didn’t look as though anyone was at home. As they got out, Mary drew Jack’s attention to a ladder leaning up against a wall with a lot of discarded beer cans at the base. Humpty had definitely been here.

Jack approached slowly and knocked on the front door. After getting no reply, he thumped again, this time louder.

He cupped his hand to look through the window, but there was no sign of life. He beckoned the others to follow him and then walked around to the back of the house where the lean-to section housed the kitchen. He knocked again, then tried the door handle. It was locked.

“Pass me that walking stick, would you?” said Jack.

Brown-Horrocks raised his eyebrows and scribbled a note as Mary passed the stick over. Jack cleared the windowpane with a few well-placed blows of the stick, the sound of shattering glass cutting harshly through the peace of the surroundings. He climbed into the kitchen, checked the back door for any booby traps, then let the others in.

“This is highly questionable procedure,” warned Mary. “Anything we find here and want to use as evidence will be disallowed.”

“I’m trying to stop a serious crime from being committed,” said Jack. “We’ll worry about convictions afterwards.”

They moved into the front room and nearly jumped out of their skins when a large and very angry goose honked at them and beat its wings in a highly agitated manner. They took a step back as it settled down again on the sofa and hissed at them angrily. The floor was covered in goose shit.

“A goose?”

“It explains the bird shit in Humpty’s office.”

“Yes, but why indoors?”

As they watched, the goose made itself more comfortable and a flash of something yellow pierced the gloom from within the nest it had made on the sofa. Mary moved forward and rolled up her sleeve. The goose opened its beak and hissed at the intrusion, but Mary made clicking noises with her tongue and very gently pushed her hand under the bird. Jack looked at his watch. He didn’t have a lot of time for farm animals; he was more used to seeing them wrapped in plastic at the supermarket or flanked by roast spuds and carrots.

Mary withdrew her hand, and the egg shone brightly even in the relative gloom of the living room. The egg was gold.
Solid
gold. Jack’s jaw dropped open. Mary smiled triumphantly, and the goose hissed again as she passed it over to him. The egg was surprisingly heavy and still warm.

“So that’s where he got the gold,” said Jack. “I should have guessed. The woodcutters found the goose but weren’t too clever about keeping it quiet. Tom Thomm was living here. He hears about it, follows them into the wood, greed overcomes him and pow—that was it.”

There was nothing else down here, so Jack turned his attention to the stairs, stepping softly up the treads until he reached the upstairs corridor, which had a narrow carpet running down the center with bare boards on either side. At the opposite end was a leaded-glass window. To the left and right were doors leading off into the bedrooms. The first room they visited was a jumble of chemistry equipment: retorts, dirty beakers and racks of test tubes. There was a pungent smell of decayed cheese in the air, and in the far corner, upon a grimy sofa and surrounded by two three-bar electric fires, was what appeared to be something child-size curled up beneath a dirty bedsheet. It stirred ever so slightly as they watched, and Jack, using his best authoritarian voice called out: “Police! You, under the sheet—move out slowly!”

There was no response, so Jack advanced and slowly pulled the sheet off. But it wasn’t a child. It was something that closely resembled a large and very rotten misshapen potato, but about the size of two watermelons. The smell of sweaty feet rose up to greet them, and they all gagged.

“What the…?” murmured Jack, staring at the strange object that seemed to shudder as he watched. He covered his nose and mouth with a hankie and put out a curious hand to touch the gently heaving object. Just as he was about to make contact, Mary’s hand deftly grabbed his wrist. He looked up at her with a quizzical expression, but she merely nodded at a warning sign that read:

BIOHAZARD—EXTREME CAUTION
!

“Good Lord!” muttered Jack, glad that Mary had stayed his hand. “It’s Hercules, Professor Tarsus’s champion verruca. Would you look at the size of it!”

Mary nodded sagely and passed him an empty bottle that had been lying on a table nearby. It was unused but had been labeled, and Jack shuddered as he read:

CONCENTRATED LIVE VERRUCA SPORE.
USE RATIO 1:100 IN HUMIDITY CONTROL
RESERVOIR EVERY WEEK FOR MAXIMUM INFECTION
.

There was another bottle that confirmed Jack’s fears. It was labeled:

SUPERVERRUCA: ANTIDOTE

Humpty hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d drunkenly boasted that his shares would be worth a fortune in a few months’ time—with an outbreak of verrucas that only Carbuncle and Humpty knew how to cure, they could ask what they wanted for the antidote. With the cure sold to Spongg, Humpty’s shares in the ailing foot-care empire would be worth a hundred times what he paid within a few months.

“Get on the phone,” said Jack, “and speak to Briggs. Tell him to contact the Communicable Disease Control Center and declare the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center a hot zone—he needs to have it checked by a biohazard squad before we can even
think
of the Jellyman dedicating it.”

“What!?”
said Mary.

“It all makes sense. Don’t you see? The Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center is the ideal place to spread the verruca virus. Air-conditioned and with precise humidity control—and everyone having to walk with reverential
bare feet.
Ordinary verrucas are bad enough, but this monster is capable of
anything.
”

“Professor Hardiman was expecting ten thousand visitors this afternoon and more than a million over the next six months,” observed Mary, dialing feverishly.

“And every single one of them taking home ultrainfectious superverrucas to spread around their homes. No wonder Humpty was confident he could pledge fifty million to St. Cerebellum’s.”

“So who killed Mr. Dumpty?” asked Brown-Horrocks.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jack replied. “Dr. Carbuncle. They were partners. Humpty buys the shares, and Carbuncle supplies the virus. Only Carbuncle gets greedy. He kills Humpty in order to keep all the shares for himself. Winkie tries to blackmail him, so Carbuncle kills him, too. Then we get too close for comfort, so he wires the Zephyr. He was good, but not quite good enough.”

Brown-Horrocks ticked a few boxes and scribbled a note. “So who did Humpty marry?”

Jack stopped and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Not sure about that yet—but when we find Carbuncle, we’ll find her, too.”

“Then I suppose congratulations are in order,” said Brown-Horrocks. “I’ll be honest. When I first met you, I thought you were a complete imbecile. But now I’m very glad to be present at the conclusion of what must have been at times a very tricky investigation.”

“Well,” said Jack modestly, “it was touch and go for a moment there.”

“Sir?” said Mary in a hoarse whisper.

“Not now, Mary. So, Mr. Brown-Horrocks, how does your report read?”

“I’m really not at liberty to discuss it, Inspector, but—”

“Sir!”

“Excuse me for a moment.”

Jack went out into the corridor and joined Mary.
“What is it?”

“It’s Dr. Carbuncle.”

“Where?”

She jerked a thumb in the direction of the second bedroom. “In here.”

Jack glanced at Brown-Horrocks, but thankfully he was engaged in making some notes. Jack stepped into the bedroom and stopped. Lying on the floor with a single bullet hole in his chest was Carbuncle.

“Shit! Are you sure it’s him?”

“Quite sure. Look at the picture.”

He compared it to the photo Professor Tarsus had given them. There was no mistake.

“Blast! I’ve just told Brown-Horrocks that it was Carbuncle who killed Humpty!”

“Problems?” asked Brown-Horrocks, who was wondering what they were talking about.

“Not really,” said Jack, “I just might have been a little over-hasty with the summing up I gave you.”

“It’s Carbuncle in there, isn’t it?”

There didn’t seem any point in hiding it, so Jack gave up on the possibility of becoming Guild and had a good look around the house. In the room where they found Carbuncle, there was also Humpty’s bed, a large divan with an oval cut out of it. There were magazines scattered about, a lot of copies of
The Financial Toad
and several prospectuses that outlined the St. Cerebellum’s rebuilding appeal. He pulled up the mattress and found a few love letters from Bessie Brooks but not much else. He walked despondently outside to await SOCO and the biohazard team. Brown-Horrocks was making some notes, and Mary was on the phone. Jack still wasn’t there yet. He had missed something. But what?

He looked up at the sky, which was covered by a thick layer of stratus clouds that moved slowly across the landscape. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen the sun. Then, to the south, a small hole opened up in the cloud and a beam of light spilt to earth, warm and welcoming after the prolonged winter and dismal spring. The pool of bright sunlight fell to earth two fields away, startling some sheep who had forgotten they possessed shadows. Then the hole closed again, and soft, directionless light once more settled on the earth.

“He
lied
to us,” said Jack quietly to himself as something clicked in his head. “He lied to us all along. He had all the motive anyone would ever need. I was a fool not to see it!”

He turned, took Mary’s phone and hurriedly dialed the NCD offices. If he was right, then he knew who had killed Humpty—and Carbuncle.

The little Austin Allegro sped along the narrow country track with Jack in the passenger seat, Mary driving and Brown-Horrocks folded up in the rear. Despite the misdiagnosis, Brown-Horrocks seemed determined to see the whole thing through, if not for anything but a strange sort of curiosity to watch what Jack would do next. They left Carbuncle’s smallholding as soon as an officer arrived to keep the area secure; Briggs had called Jack to confirm that the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center had been cordoned off. Chymes, thought Jack, must be kicking himself—he’d never had anything as dramatically complex as a biohazard incident.

The traffic was appalling. No, it was worse than appalling. The news of the Jellyman’s visit had had a magical effect, and almost everyone in the Home Counties was trying to converge on Reading for a brief glimpse.

“I expect this sort of thing happens all the time when you’re examining potential Guild members?” asked Jack, who felt he had to say
something.

“No,” said Brown-Horrocks, “I have to say this is all quite a new experience.”

“Good or bad?”

“You’ll find out in due course,” replied Brown-Horrocks enigmatically.

Jack turned on the radio and was gratified to hear the news that the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center would be closed until further notice.

Mary’s phone rang, and Jack answered it. “DI Spratt.” He listened for a moment. “Do I?” He pressed his finger on the “mute” button. “It’s Arnold. He says I sound uncannily like your father.”

“Tell him I never want to see him again,
ever.
”

“Hello, Arnold? She’ll call you back.”

He flipped it shut and looked at Brown-Horrocks, who raised an eyebrow. Jack pointed out a side street that he knew was a good shortcut as the phone rang again.

It was Ashley.

“Your suspect is at home,” he reported. “I had a call from Baker. When he and Gretel knocked at the front door, several shots rang out from an upstairs window.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“No. I’ve requested armed response, but the Jellyman has used up all available manpower. Briggs said that since we were now excused from Sacred Gonga protection duty, we could do it ourselves.”

“With what? Using our fingers and making ‘bang’ noises? Get back onto him and tell him I’ve
specifically
requested it.”

“Righto, sir. Did Mrs. Singh get hold of you?”

They ground to a halt in some heavy traffic.

“Show some blue, Mary. We might not have too much time.”

Mary switched on the siren and placed a magnetic blue light on the roof of the Allegro. Jack held on tightly as she swerved across the verge and rapidly overtook the stationary traffic.

“Mrs. Singh?” asked Jack. “What—MIND THE CURB!!”

Mary swerved to avoid a curbstone and took a left the wrong way down a one-way street. Several cars scattered as she drove up the middle.

“Are you still there, sir?” asked Ashley.

“For now. Who knows, I may just live to see the summer.”

Jack wedged his feet into the footwell and stamped on an imaginary brake as Mary took a red light at full speed, cut across some grass and entered Prospect Park through a gap in the fence.

“So what did Mrs. Singh want?” Jack asked Ashley.

“She didn’t say. But she said it was important. Something about Humpty.”