The big over easy

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 splashed 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.”