The big over easy

They’d never seen Chymes bested, and to them — although they would never admit it — it was a not-unpleasant spectacle. The great man made to eat humble pie.

“Very well,” said Chymes at length, “I withdraw all interest in the Humpty investigation.”

“And I want your vote if I ever make it to a Guild final application.”

“I can do that,” said Friedland grudgingly. He was only one of five on the board, so it wasn’t a huge concession.

“And I want you to resign from the force.”

Chymes laughed, and Jack realized he’d taken it a step too far. Friedland, for all his faults, was almost untouchable. The Jellyman himself had requested him to look after his personal security for his visit on Saturday. The man was a legend. A flawed one, but a legend. And they don’t tumble that easily.

Chymes glared at Jack, then leaned closer. “We aren’t finished yet, Spratt.”

And he left the room. They heard him thump the door farther on down the corridor and a cry as he took out his rage on a subordinate.

“Are we done?” asked Jack.

Briggs and Bestbeloved exchanged another nervous glance. If Jack was capable of talking like that to Chymes, he was capable of anything.

“I will return when I have conducted further investigations,” announced Bestbeloved hurriedly, “and I may be some time.”

He ejected both tapes, threw them in his bag and left without another word.

“Well, Jack,” said Briggs when they were alone, “you really enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

“Friedland’s a jerk who’s become obsessed with circulation figures.”

“No,” retorted Briggs, “Friedland’s a jerk with power and influence. I hope you know what you’re doing. As far as he’s concerned, I’m now in your camp.”

“So?”

Briggs shrugged. “I just hoped he’d write me into his stories so I could do the rounds of the Friedland Chymes conventions. Watson did almost nothing else when Sherlock retired — made him a fortune. Still, I don’t think there’s much chance of that now.”

Jack relaxed. He had every reason to dislike Briggs, but he didn’t. He wasn’t bad, just weak.

“If I ever make it to the Guild, I’ll include you in my stories.”

Briggs seemed to cheer up at this. He’d wanted to be like Fried-land Chymes for years — yet now he was thinking he’d prefer to be like Spratt. A bit down at heel and almost invisible locked away at the NCD — but honest.

“If you do,” said Briggs, a glint in his eye, “will I get to suspend you at least once in every adventure?”

“Of course.”

“And should I change my name to Fongotskilernie?”

Jack smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Briggs will be fine.”

35. Summing Up

STRAW-INTO-GOLD DEFENDANT NAMED

The jury was shocked into wakefulness on the eighth day of the Straw-into-Gold trial by the dramatic naming of the defendant yesterday. The previously unnamed illegal gold-spinner had been making a mockery of British justice by his insistence that the judge try to guess his name before he would agree to plea. After seven days and 8,632 guesses, the judge finally hit upon the correct name, whereupon Rumplestiltskin (this reporter can now faithfully record) flew into an inflamed passion, accused the judge of “listening down chimneys” and stamped his foot so hard it went through the floor. The defendant thus identified, the trial came to a speedy conclusion, and he was jailed for twenty years.

From The Gadfly, April 30, 1999

“What’s your prose like, Mary?”

“Rusty — but not too bad.”

“Good. There exists the faintest possibility that I might make it into the Guild. If I do, I want you as my Official Sidekick.”

“I’m flattered of course, sir — but Chymes is on the selection committee. How would you get him to change his mind?”

“Need-to-know basis, Mary. What news?”

“Mrs. Singh sent up the initial autopsy report on Winkie.”

Jack took it from her and read. There was nothing that had changed dramatically since her initial ideas the night before. One cut, very savage, leading to death from shock and loss of blood. The look on Winkie’s face, partial rigor and the fact that he had urinated on himself might relate to his witnessing something terrifying.

“Terrifying?” queried Jack. “I suppose someone coming at you with a broadsword would be terrifying.”

Jack handed the report back. It seemed unusual, but what in this inquiry wasn’t?

“Okay, boys and girls,” Jack announced to the NCD officers who had waited patiently and a little nervously for him to return from almost certain suspension at the hands of the IPCC, “it’s the end of day four. The body count is rising, and we’re no closer to finding out who killed Humpty. Here’s the story so far: Mr. and Mrs. Christian, the woodcutter and his wife, find a missing consignment of gold. Ashley, any luck on this?”

“Nothing recently stolen, sir — just the usual urban myths of missing Nazi bullion.”

“Keep on it. Small-time criminal opportunist Tom Thomm murders them both with the Marchetti shotgun we find at Humpty’s and steals the gold. He takes it to his old friend and mentor Humpty Dumpty, who starts to sell the gold to buy shares in a company that’s rapidly going down the tube. All goes well until Humpty comes home to his flat six months later to find Tom Thomm shot dead in the shower. He correctly assumes it was his ex-wife, Laura, and the shots were meant for him, so he goes to earth. Where, we don’t know.”

“Why didn’t he report it?” asked Otto.

“Probably because he’s in over his head laundering money from the original theft. It would make him an accessory.”

“Ah.”

“He then buys shares in Spongg’s with the laundered gold money, but not even Randolph Spongg has any idea how he could raise the share value — the company has been sliding downhill for years. Humpty has a jealous mistress named Bessie Brooks, who tries unsuccessfully to kill him, and this afternoon we learn from her that he remarried sometime in the past two weeks.”

He paused for a moment.

“His will had ‘all to wife’ written on it, so until Humpty’s Spongg shares are worthless, she is a wealthy woman and a thirty-eight percent shareholder of Spongg’s. On Sunday, Humpty breaks cover and is seen drunk at the Spongg Charity Benefit, offering to pledge fifty million to rebuild the woefully outdated and inadequate St. Cerebellum’s mental hospital, somewhere he has been an outpatient for nearly forty years. He offers to offload his shares to Grundy, who refuses. That night someone kills Humpty. It’s likely that William Winkie saw the murderer from his kitchen window and tried to blackmail whoever it was. So he’s killed, too.”

“It was a Porgia MO, wasn’t it?” observed Gretel.

“It was,” conceded Jack, “but I’m pretty sure he had nothing to do with it.”

Mary nodded in agreement.

“The killer might have done that to send us off looking in other directions, a logical inference of which is that we just might be looking in the right place,” said Jack.

Then he paused for a moment.

“We need to know several things: who his new wife is and where he’s been living for the past year. Grimm’s