The big over easy

“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.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Did Arnold get hold of Mary?”

Jack held on to the door handle as Mary bounced through the park and drove out the other side, made a sharp left and then a right and took off over a humpback bridge, on landing transforming an eighth of an inch of the Allegro’s sump into a shower of hot sparks. Brown-Horrocks’s head hit the roof with a hollow thud.

“Tell Mrs. Singh I’ll ring her when I can. Call Baker and inform him and Gretel we’ll be with them” — he looked across at Mary —

“soon. Call me back once Briggs has managed to secure an armed-response unit for our use.”

Ashley answered in the affirmative and rang off.

They were now driving out the other side of the town, against the heavy traffic — all full of people hoping to catch a glimpse of the Jellyman. They picked up speed, and the needle on the speedometer touched eighty; Jack looked nervously at the temperature gauge, which was already into the red, and then at Mary, who was concentrating on the road. He turned to give a confident smile to Brown-Horrocks, who had wedged himself in the back and was staring grimly at the road ahead. After another ten minutes, they approached their destination: Castle Spongg.

42. Return to Castle Spongg