The Big Over Easy

“Exactly. Never mind about Briggs. Better get a Scene of Crime Officer out here to dust the gun and give the room the once-over. Ask for Shenstone; he’s a friendly. What else do you notice?”

“No bed?”

“Right. He didn’t live here. I’ll have a quick word with Mrs. Hubbard.”

Jack went downstairs, stopping on the way to straighten his tie in the peeling hall mirror.

4. Mrs. Hubbard, Dogs and Bones

The Austin Allegro was designed in the mid-seventies to be the successor to the hugely popular Austin 1100. Built around the proven “A” series engine, it turned out to be an ugly duckling at birth with the high transverse engine requiring a slab front that did nothing to enhance its looks. With a bizarre square steering wheel and numerous idiosyncratic features, including a better drag coefficient in reverse, porous alloy wheels on the “sport” model and a rear window that popped out if you jacked up the car too enthusiastically, the Allegro would—some say undeservedly—figurehead the British car-manufacturing industry’s darkest chapter.

—The Rise and Fall of British Leyland, A. Morris

Jack knocked politely on the door. It opened a crack, and a pinched face glared suspiciously at him. He held up his ID card.

“Have you come about the room?” Mrs. Hubbard asked in a croaky voice that reminded Jack of anyone you care to mention doing a bad impersonation of a witch. “If you play the accordion, you can forget about it right now.”

“No, I’m Detective Inspector Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division. I wonder if I could have a word?”

She squinted at the ID, pretended she could read without her glasses and then grimaced. “What’s it about?” she asked.

“What’s it about?” repeated Jack. “Mr. Dumpty, of course!”

“Oh, well,” she replied offhandedly, “I suppose you’d better come in.”

She opened the door wider, and Jack was immediately assailed by a powerful odor that reminded him of a strong Limburger cheese he had once bought by accident and then had to bury in the garden when the dustbinmen refused to remove it. Mrs. Hubbard’s front room was small and dirty, and all the furniture was falling to pieces. A sink piled high with long-unwashed plates was situated beneath yellowed net curtains, and the draining board was home to a large collection of empty dog-food cans. A tomcat with one eye and half an ear glared at him from under an old wardrobe, and four bull terriers with identical markings stared up at him in surprise from a dog basket that was clearly designed to hold only two.

Mrs. Hubbard herself was a wizened old lady of anything between seventy-five and a hundred five. She had wispy white hair in an untidy bun and walked with a stick that was six inches too short. Her face was grimy and had more wrinkles in it than the most wrinkled prune. She stared at him with dark, mean eyes.

“If you want some tea, you’ll have to make it yourself, and if you’re going to, you can make one for me while you’re about it.”

“Thank you, no,” replied Jack as politely as he could. Mrs. Hubbard grunted.

“Is he dead?” she added, looking at him suspiciously.

“I’m sorry to say that he is. Did you know him well?”

She shuffled across the room, her short walking stick making her limp far more than was necessary.

“Not really,” she replied, settling herself in an old leather armchair that had horsehair stuffing falling out of its seams. “He was only a lodger.” She said it in the sort of way that one might refer to vermin. Jack wondered just how fantastically unlucky you would have to be to have this old crone as a landlady.

“How long had he a room here?”

“About a year. He paid in advance. It’s nonreturnable, so I’m keeping it. It’s very hard getting lodgers these days. If I took in aliens, spongers or those damnable statisticians, I could fill the place twice over, but I have standards to maintain.”

“Of course you do,” muttered Jack under his breath, attempting to breathe through his mouth to avoid the smell.