The Big Over Easy

“Of course,” said Jack uneasily. “I need Dr. Carbuncle’s address.”

Tarsus grasped Jack’s elbow, drew him close and whispered, “You will find Hercules, won’t you?”

“Of course,” replied Jack. “He was the son you never had, right?”

As Jack, Mary and an increasingly uncomfortable Brown-Horrocks drove towards Andersen’s Wood and Dr. Carbuncle’s house, they could see a throng of traffic heading into the city center. It was still only ten, and the Jellyman’s dedication wouldn’t be until midday. That done, he would be driven on a parade route around the town, open several hospitals and an old-people’s home, meet members of the community and then have dinner over at the QuangTech facility with the mayor and a roomful of Reading’s luminaries, Spongg, Grundy and Chymes among them.

“Hercules is the answer,” said Jack as they drove rapidly down the road. “I think I know what Humpty’s plan was—I’m just not sure how he was going to execute it.”

“You don’t think…?”

“I do,” replied Jack grimly.

“You do?” echoed Brown-Horrocks, folded up in the backseat. “How, exactly?”

41. Dr. Horatio Carbuncle

DETECTIVES SLAM GENETIC DATABASE PLANS

Plans for a national genetic database could be shelved if the Guild of Detectives gets its way, it has emerged. “Cerebrally based deduction of perpetrators has fallen over the years,” wrote Guild member Lord Peter Flimsey in a leaked document to the Home Office funding committee, “and we all have a duty to protect the traditional detecting industry against further damaging loss.” MPs were said to be “sympathetic” to the Guild’s cause, but Mr. Pipette of the Forensic Sciences Federation was less receptive. “Quite frankly, they’ve been moaning ever since DNA advances narrowed their field of methodology.” A Guild spokesman angrily dismissed the accusation. “We’ve been moaning a lot longer than that,” said Mr. Celery Clean at a hastily convened press conference last night. “If we continue to allow intrusive and narratively boring work practices to flood the detecting business, we could see an undesirable shift of emphasis from detecting to forensics—which none of us want.”

—Extract from The Toad, March 14, 1997

Andersen’s Farm was a small, two up/two down, redbrick farmhouse with a thatched roof, surrounded by a vegetable plot and several outbuildings in various states of dilapidation. There was a lean-to extension on the back, and the fields that made up the smallholding had twenty or so miserable-looking sheep scattered upon them. An ancient gray mare stood in a muddy pasture and tossed her head as the Allegro approached, but since she was badly myopic, it might have been a lime green elephant for all she knew. She blew out twin blasts of hot breath in the cold morning air and thought about the good old days when she chased across fields with lots of other horses, leaping hedges and galloping after something that her rider wanted her to catch but rarely did. She watched the green elephant drive slowly past and then leaned sleepily against the gatepost.

They drove into the yard and pulled up next to a ramshackle barn that contained an ancient Austin Ten up on blocks. There was no other car anywhere to be seen, and it didn’t look as though anyone was at home. As they got out, Mary drew Jack’s attention to a ladder leaning up against a wall with a lot of discarded beer cans at the base. Humpty had definitely been here.

Jack approached slowly and knocked on the front door. After getting no reply, he thumped again, this time louder.

He cupped his hand to look through the window, but there was no sign of life. He beckoned the others to follow him and then walked around to the back of the house where the lean-to section housed the kitchen. He knocked again, then tried the door handle. It was locked.

“Pass me that walking stick, would you?” said Jack.