The Big Over Easy

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king’s horses

And all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

—Traditional

Author’s Note

1. Mary Mary

2. Jack Spratt

3. The Fall Guy

4. Mrs. Hubbard, Dogs and Bones

5. Prometheus

6. Mrs. Laura Dumpty

7. The Nursery Crime Division

8. The Armory

9. Back at the Office

10. Charles Pewter

11. The Sacred Gonga

12. St. Cerebellum’s

13. First on the Right

14. Meeting the Detective

15. Granny Spratt’s Displeasure

16. Mrs. Singh Turns the Story

17. The Inquiry Begins

18. Lord Randolph Spongg IV

19. Solomon Grundy

20. Press Conference

21. RIP, Mrs. Dumpty, and “the Case…Is
Closed
!”

22. Titans and Beanstalks

23. Mary’s Doubts

24.

Briggs v. Spratt

25. Good Night, Wee Willie Winkie

26. Meet the Grundys

27. Perplexity, Complexity

28. Castle Spongg

29. Lola Vavoom

30. Another Press Conference

31. Home, Sweet Home

32. Giorgio Porgia

33. What Bessie Brooks Had to Say for Herself

34. Investigated

35. Summing Up

36. Refilling the Jar

37. The Man from the Guild

38. Lola Vavoom Returns

39. The Red Ford Zephyr

40. The Goring Foot Museum

41. Dr. Horatio Carbuncle

42. Return to Castle Spongg

43. Loose Ends

44. The End of the Story

It was the week
following Easter in Reading, and no one could remember the last sunny day. Gray clouds swept across the sky, borne on a chill wind that cut like a knife. It seemed that spring had forsaken the town. The drab winter weather had clung to the town like a heavy smog, refusing to relinquish the season. Even the early bloomers were in denial. Only the bravest crocuses had graced the municipal park, and the daffodils, usually a welcome splash of color after a winter of grayness, had taken one sniff at the cold, damp air and postponed blooming for another year.

A police officer was gazing with mixed emotions at the dreary cityscape from the seventh floor of Reading Central Police Station. She was thirty and attractive, dressed up and dated down, worked hard and felt awkward near anyone she didn’t know. Her name was Mary.
Mary
Mary. And she was from Basingstoke, which is nothing to be ashamed of.

“Mary?” said an officer who was carrying a large potted plant in the manner of someone who thinks it is well outside his job description. “Superintendent Briggs will see you now. How often do you water these things?”

“That one?” replied Mary without emotion. “Never. It’s plastic.”

“I’m a policeman,” he said unhappily, “not a sodding gardener.”

And he walked off, mumbling darkly to himself.

She turned from the window, approached Briggs’s closed door and paused. She gathered her thoughts, took a deep breath and stood up straight. Reading wouldn’t have been everyone’s choice for a transfer, but for Mary, Reading had one thing that no other city possessed: DCI Friedland Chymes. He was a veritable powerhouse of a sleuth whose career was a catalog of inspired police work, and his unparalleled detection skills had filled the newspaper columns for over two decades. Chymes was the reason Mary had joined the police force in the first place. Ever since her father had bought her a subscription to
Amazing Crime Stories
when she was nine, she’d been hooked. She had thrilled at “The Mystery of the Wrong Nose,” been galvanized by “The Poisoned Shoe” and inspired by “The Sign of Three and a Half.” Twenty-one years further on, Chymes was still a serious international player in the world of competitive detecting, and Mary had never missed an issue. Chymes was currently ranked by
Amazing Crime
second in their annual league rating, just behind Oxford’s ever-popular Inspector Moose.

“Hmm,” murmured Superintendent Briggs, eyeing Mary’s job application carefully as she sat uncomfortably on a plastic chair in an office that was empty apart from a desk, two chairs, them—and a trombone lying on a tattered chaise longue.

“Your application is mostly very good, Mary,” he said approvingly. “I see you were with Detective Inspector Hebden Flowwe. How did that go?”

It hadn’t gone very well at all, but she didn’t think she’d say so.

“We had a fairly good clear-up rate, sir.”

“I’ve no doubt you did. But more important, anything published?”

It was a question that was asked more and more in front of promotion boards and transfer interviews and listed in performance reports. It wasn’t enough to be a conscientious and invaluable assistant to one’s allotted inspector—you had to be able to write up a readable account for the magazines that the public loved to read. Preferably
Amazing Crime Stories
, but, failing that,
Sleuth Illustrated
.

“Only one story in print, sir. But I was the youngest officer at Basingstoke to make detective sergeant and have two commendations for brav—”

“The thing is,” interrupted Briggs, “is that the Oxford and Berkshire Constabulary prides itself on producing some of the most readable detectives in the country.” He walked over to the window and looked out at the rain striking the glass. “Modern policing isn’t just about catching criminals, Mary. It’s about good copy and ensuring that cases can be made into top-notch documentaries on the telly. Public approval is the all-important currency these days, and police budgets ebb and flow on the back of circulation and viewing figures.”

“Yes, sir.”

“DS Flotsam’s work penning Friedland Chymes’s adventures is the benchmark to which you should try to aspire, Mary. Selling the movie rights to
Friedland Chymes—the Smell of Fear
was a glory moment for everyone at Reading Central, and rightly so. Just one published work, you say? With Flowwe?”

“Yes, sir. A two-parter in
Amazing Crime
. Jan./Feb. 1999 and adapted for TV.”

He nodded his approval.

“Well, that’s impressive. Prime-time dramatization?”

“No, sir. Documentary on MoleCable-62.”

His face fell. Clearly, at Reading they expected better things. Briggs sat down and looked at her record again.

“Now, it says here one reprimand: You struck Detective Inspector Flowwe with an onyx ashtray. Why was that?”

“The table lamp was too heavy,” she replied, truthfully enough, “and if I’d used a chair, it might have killed him.”

“Which is illegal, of course,” added Briggs, glad for an opportunity to show off his legal knowledge. “What happened? Personal
entanglements
?”

“Equal blame on both sides, sir,” she replied, thinking it would be better to be impartial over the whole affair. “I was foolish. He was emotionally…
dishonest.
”

Briggs closed the file.

“Well, I don’t blame you. Hebden was always a bit of a bounder. He pinged my partner’s bra strap at an office party once, you know. She wasn’t wearing it at the time,” he added after a moment’s reflection, “but the intention was clear.”

“That sounds like DI Flowwe,” replied Mary.

Briggs drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment.

“Do you want to hear me play the trombone?”

“Might it be prejudicial to my career if I were to refuse?”

“It’s a distinct possibility.”

“Then I’d be delighted.”

So Briggs walked over to the chaise longue, picked up the trom-bone, worked the slide a couple of times and blew a few notes, much to the annoyance of whoever had the office next door, who started to thump angrily on the wall.

“Drug squad,” explained Briggs unhappily, putting the instrument down, “complete heathens. Never appreciate a good tune.”

“I was wondering,” said Mary before he had a chance to start playing again. “This detective sergeant’s job I’m applying for. Who is it with?”

He looked at his watch.

“An excellent question. In ten minutes we’re holding a press conference. I’ve a detective in urgent need of a new sergeant, and I think you’ll fit the bill perfectly. Shall we?”

The pressroom was five floors below, and an expectant journalistic hubbub greeted their ears while they were still walking down the corridor. They stepped inside and stood as unobtrusively as possible at the back of the large and airy room. Mary could see from the “Oxford & Berkshire Constabulary”–bedecked lectern and high turnout that press conferences here were taken with a great deal more seriousness than she had known, which probably reflected this city’s preeminence over Basingstoke when it came to serious crime. It wasn’t that Reading had any
more
murders than Basingstoke—it just had better ones. Reading and the Thames Valley area was more of a “fairy cakes laced with strychnine” or “strangulation with a silk handkerchief” sort of place, where there were always bags of interesting suspects, convoluted motives and seemingly insignificant clues hidden in an inquiry of incalculable complexity yet solved within a week or two. By contrast, murders in Basingstoke were strictly blunt instruments, drunkenly wielded, solved within the hour—or not at all. Mary had worked on six murder investigations and, to her great disappointment, hadn’t once discovered one of those wonderful clues that seem to have little significance but later, in an epiphanic moment, turn the case on its head and throw the guilty light on someone previously eliminated from the inquiries.

She didn’t have time to muse upon the imaginative shortcoming of Basingstoke’s criminal fraternity any longer, as there was a sudden hushing of the pressmen and a burst of spontaneous applause, as a handsome man in his mid-fifties strode dramatically from a side door.

“Goodness!” said Mary. “That’s—”

“Yup,” said Briggs, with the pride of a father who has just seen his son win everything at sports day. “Detective Chief Inspector Friedland Chymes.”

Friedland Chymes! In
person.
There was a hush as the famous detective stepped up to the lectern. The assembled two dozen newspapermen readied themselves, pens poised, for his statement.

“Thank you for attending,” he began, sweeping back his blond hair and gazing around the room with his lively blue eyes, causing flutters when they lingered ever so slightly on the women present in the room, Mary included. She found herself almost automatically attracted to him. He was strong, handsome, intelligent, fearless—the most alpha of alpha males. Working with him would be an honor.

“It was the small traces of pastry around the gunshot wound on Colonel Peabody’s corpse that turned the case for me,” began the great detective, his sonorous tones filling the air like music,

“minute quantities of shortcrust whose butter/flour ratio I found to be identical to that of a medium-size Bowyer’s pork pie. The assailant had fired his weapon through the tasty snack to muffle the sound of the shot. The report heard later was a firecracker set off by a time fuse, thus giving an alibi to the assailant, who I can reveal to you now was…”

The whole room leaned forward in expectation. Chymes, his only apparent vanity a certain showmanship, paused for dramatic effect before announcing the killer.

“…Miss Celia Mangersen, the victim’s niece and, unbeknownst to us all, the sole beneficiary of the missing will, which I found hidden—as expected—within a hollowed-out statuette of Sir Walter Scott. Yes, Mr. Hatchett, you have a question?”

Josh Hatchett of
The Toad
newspaper had raised his hand in the front row.

“What was the significance of the traces of custard found on the Colonel’s sock suspender?”

Chymes raised a finger in the air.

“An excellent question, Mr. Hatchett, and one that pushed my deducting powers to the limit. Bear with me if you will while we go through the final moments of Colonel Peabody’s life. Mortally wounded and with only seconds to live, he had somehow to leave a clue to his assailant’s identity. A note? Of course not—the killer would find and destroy it. Guessing correctly that a murder of this magnitude would be placed in my hands, he decided to leave behind a clue that only I could solve. Knowing the Colonel’s penchant for anagrams, it was but a swift move to deduct his reasoning. The sock suspender was made in France. ‘Custard’ in French is
crème anglaise
—and an anagram of this is ‘Celia Mangerse’—which not only correctly identified the killer but also told me the Colonel died before he was able to finish the anagram.”

There was more applause, and he quietened everyone down before continuing.

“But since anagram-related clues are now inadmissible as evidence, we sent the pork pie off for DNA analysis and managed to pinpoint the pie shop where it was purchased. Guessing that Miss Mangersen might have an affinity for the pies, we staked out the shop in question, and yesterday evening Miss Mangersen was taken into custody, whereupon she confessed to me in a tearful scene that served as a dramatic closure to the case. My loyal, and annoyingly chirpy, cockney assistant and biographer DS Flotsam will of course be writing a full report for
Amazing Crime Stories
in due course, after the formality of a trial. Ladies and gentlemen: The case…is
closed
!”

The assembled journalists rose as one and burst into spontaneous applause. Chymes dismissed the adulation with a modest wave of the hand and excused himself, muttering something about needing to open a hospital for orphaned sick children.

“He’s amazing!” breathed Mary, somehow convincing herself—as had all the other women present—that Chymes had winked at her across the crowded room.

“I agree,” replied Briggs, standing aside as the newsmen filed out, eager to get the stories into the late editions. “Don’t you love that ‘the case is closed!’ stuff? I wish
I
had a catchphrase. He’s an asset not only to us here at Reading but also to the nation—there aren’t many countries that haven’t requested his thoughts on some intractable and ludicrously complex inquiry.”

“He’s remarkable,” agreed Mary.

“Indeed,” went on Briggs, seemingly swept up in a paroxysm of hagiographic hero worship. “He’s also a hilarious raconteur, has a golf handicap of two, was twice world aerobatic champion and plays the clarinet as well as Artie Shaw. Speaks eight languages, too, and is often consulted by the Jellyman
himself
on important matters of state.”

“I’m going to enjoy working with him, I can see,” replied Mary happily. “When do I start?”

“Chymes?” echoed Briggs with a faint yet unmistakably patronizing laugh. “Goodness gracious, no! You’re not working with
Chymes
!”

“Who then?” asked Mary, attempting to hide her disappointment, and failing.

“Him.”

Mary followed Briggs’s outstretched finger to an untidy figure who had taken his turn at the lectern. He was in his mid-forties, had graying hair and one eye marginally higher than the other, giving him the lopsided look of someone deep in thought. If he
was
deep in thought, considered Mary, it was clearly about something more important than his personal appearance. His suit could have done with a good pressing, his hair styled any way but the way he had it. He might have shaved a little less hurriedly and made more of an attempt to exude some—
any
—confidence. He fumbled with his papers as he stared resignedly after the rapidly vanishing press corps.

“I see,” said Mary, sounding a great deal colder than she had intended. “And who’s he?”

Briggs patted her arm in a fatherly manner. He could sense her disappointment, but it wasn’t up to him. Chymes picked his own people.