The Fourth Bear

“I’m not sure,” said Jack, beginning to get a trifle annoyed and wanting to skip to the “clean bill of health” part. “Listen: I sleep well, eat well, have no problems with anyone except for people who… want to stop me from doing my job.”

“Eat well?” asked Virginia, consulting Jack’s medical records.

“That’s what you said? ‘Eat well’?”

“Ye-e-es,” replied Jack, trying to figure where this was going.

“And your name is Jack Spratt?”

“You know it is.”

“Who eats no fat?”

“A lot of people don’t eat fat,” replied Jack defensively, suddenly realizing what Kreeper was up to. The interview had started out quite innocently, but now she was probing right under the skin, and he didn’t like it—not one little bit.

“And your wife—your first one—she ate no lean, is that correct?”

“Do you have to bring my first wife into this?” said Jack, rubbing his hands together because they had begun to itch. “You know she died?”

“I’m sorry, Inspector, but it might be important.”

“Yes, she only ate the fat. Only ever ate fat. What of it?”

“So together,” said Kreeper in a meaningful tone, “you licked the platter clean?”

“Metaphorically speaking—you could say that,” snapped Jack, rubbing his brow. The room had suddenly grown hot, and he pulled at his collar to try to stop his shirt from sticking to him.

“Are you feeling okay, Inspector?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t want to stop and carry on another time?”

“No.”

“And none of that ‘eat no fat / eat no lean / platter clean’ stuff strikes you as unusual?”

“Not at all.” replied Jack. He looked down at his hands and noticed a slight tremor. He tried to smile and clasped his fingers together, then felt an itch on his neck that he had to scratch but didn’t in case Kreeper thought he was acting strangely. If this was a test to see if he would crack and admit his PDRness, it was a good one.

“Have you heard of the Jack Sprat nursery rhyme?”

“Never,” he replied angrily. “Is there one?”

“Yes. Do you want to hear it?”

Jack felt his heart thump heavily in his chest, and his scalp prickled. “No, I don’t.”

“I see,” replied Virginia with infuriating calm. “So, Jack, what is the meaning of all this… GIANT KILLING?”

Jack jumped to his feet. “Station tittle-tattle!” he exclaimed, more forcefully than he had intended. “Yes, yes, there were three of them, but only one was technically a giant; the rest were just tall. I was cleared of wrongdoing on every occasion.”

He found himself pacing the room, stopped, gave a wan smile, then seated himself with his hands under his thighs to keep them from fidgeting.

“Is that all you need to know?”

“I’m only just beginning,” replied Kreeper with a unpleasant smile. “Tell me about the beanstalk.”

“What beanstalk?”

“The one that grew in your mother’s garden. The one that grew after you swapped the Stubbs cow for the ‘magic’ beans. The one you chopped down to destroy that giant… thing.”

“Oh, that beanstalk.”

“Yes, that one. Doesn’t the whole scenario ring with even the slightest familiarity to you?”

“What do you want from me, Kreeper?”

“Nothing,” she replied evenly. “I’ve just been asked to do a psychiatric evaluation to see if you are mentally fit enough to continue your duties, and I think it’s important to understand why it is that you are so suited to nursery crime work.”

He stared at her, and she stared back. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. Something about her manner wasn’t right. She had brought her own selfish agenda to the meeting. This wasn’t an evaluation; it was simply a hurdle in the narrative. And as soon as he realized that, he knew he could go on the attack. He remembered some advice that DCI Horner had given him when he had passed the NCD reins across to him. “Remember, m’boy,” his old boss had said, eyes twinkling, “that if anyone tries to get the better of you, stand up straight and say to yourself in an imperious air, ‘I am the new Mrs. de Winter now!’ You’ll find it works wonders.” Jack stared at Kreeper and narrowed his eyes.

“Mrs. de Winter,” he murmured.

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing. In answer to your question as to why I’m so suited to NCD work: After many years working among the nursery characters living in Reading, I have grown to have an affinity with their way of thinking. Call it intuition if you like, but there it is, and I can’t explain it.”

Kreeper’s face fell at Jack’s recovery. She thought she’d gotten him. “Nothing else?”

Jack felt his heart stop thumping and was suddenly calmer.

“Nothing at all. Tell me, what kind of parents named Kreeper give their daughter a name like Virginia?”

She scratched her chin and looked away.

“Virginia Kreeper is a plant, isn’t it?”

“Possibly. But this interview isn’t about me, Inspector.”

“You’re wrong. It’s about us, And since you have to stand in judgment of me, I think I’m entitled to know just what sort of a person I’m dealing with and where you fit into the grand scheme of things. A tall, thin, beaky appearance with colored-frame spectacles. Pointlessly aggressive, doubtlessly single and seemingly without a clue as to the proper procedure for a psychiatric evaluation. From where I’m sitting, you look like a poorly realized stereotype, a one-dimensional character without backstory or future—and a name to match your bearing and position within the bigger picture.”

It was Kreeper’s turn to be flustered. She ran a hand through her lank hair, trembled for a moment and then said, “I… I… don’t know what you mean, I’m sure. A stereotype? Bigger picture? What are you suggesting?”

“Let’s put it this way,” said Jack, suddenly feeling a lot more self-assured. “You and I have perhaps more in common than you think. And you sitting behind that desk questioning my motivations smacks of the very worst kind of hypocrisy. Essentially, you’re nothing but a vehicle for a series of bad psychiatric jokes and a plot device to stop me from getting to the truth. A threshold guardian, whose only purpose in existence is for me to circumvent—which I’m doing right now, if you haven’t noticed.”

Kreeper stared back at him, trying to adopt a bemused air of condescension to disguise her sudden nervousness.

“A one-dimensional threshold guardian? No, no, you’re quite wrong. Look, here!” She opened her purse and passed him a picture of a teenager in pigtails and wearing glasses. “It’s my niece,” she explained. “I take her out on her birthday to all kinds of places. Last year we went to the Natural History Museum. So you see I’m not poorly realized at all—I’m flesh and blood and fully in command of my own destiny—and having a recollectable past proves I’m not one-dimensional.”

She glared at him hotly, but Jack had enough experience of PDRs and incidental characters to know one when he saw one.

“What’s her name?”

“Her… name?”

“Yes. Your niece has a name, I take it?”

Kreeper blinked at him, and tears started to well up in her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said at last, breaking out in a series of sobs. “I just… don’t…know!”

Jack felt sorry for her. It can’t be easy to have your entire life summed up in a few perfunctory descriptive terms, the sole meaning of your existence just a few lines in the incalculable vastness of fiction. Still, this was his career in the balance. If he didn’t deal with her, the Jack Spratt series was likely to stop abruptly at the second volume. No third book and definitely no boxed set.