The Big Over Easy

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.