The Big Over Easy

“I’ll know more when I get him back to the lab,” said Mrs. Singh, “but while you’re here, I’m having a few problems with the dynamics of Humpty’s shell breakup.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know me—I’m never happy until I have all the answers. Skinner and I have been running a few tests using ostrich eggs. He set them up on the range and fired a .22 bullet through them and then used the data to try to build a usable model for egg disintegration. It’s as much for our own interest as for anything else, but we’re having trouble equating Humpty’s destruction with what we’re seeing on the range. It’s possible that one shot and a fall might not have been enough to destroy him. I’m looking for other evidence of postfall damage, but with one hundred twenty-six pieces, it’s tricky to tell. Mind you, ostrich eggs are like cannonballs, so it might not be a good test. I’ll know more in a day or two.”

“What about the analysis of his albumen?”

“Inconclusive—but then the Ox and Berks forensic labs are not really geared up for eggs. I’ve sent swabs from the inside of his shell to the SunnyDale Poultry Farm for an in-depth oological analysis. Couple of days, I imagine.”

Jack thanked her and stepped out of the tent. It had stopped raining, but the sky was dark and portended more to come.

“What news, Mary?”

“His wife has been informed,” she explained, still looking a little pale. “One of her relatives is going to go around and look after her.”

“Who found Winkie?”

“A man walking his dog. He’d seen the body earlier but thought it was just a bundle of rags. He alerted us at ten-thirteen.”

“Find out what time Winkie came off shift and have a word with his workmates. See if he was boasting of a windfall or something.”

“Connected to Dumpty’s murder?” asked Mary.

“Possibly. Here’s a workable scenario: Mr. Winkie did see something the night that Humpty was killed and tried to blackmail the killer, who then arranged the payoff and a permanent good-night for Wee Willie Winkie.”

“Why the bit about the tongue? Unnecessarily gruesome, isn’t it?”

“A lot of Nursery Crime work is gruesome, Mary—it comes with the turf. Tongue splitting was a Porgia crime family method of dealing with anyone they suspected of speaking to the authorities. ‘Telling tales,’ they called it. They used to cut it up so that all the dogs in the town could have a little bit.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“It’s classic NCD stuff. The thing is, Chymes and I jailed them all twenty years ago. But they were very powerful—perhaps they still are. Call Reading Gaol and get us an interview. I think we’ll have a word with Giorgio Porgia himself. What news, Tibbit?”

“Not much, sir. Nobody seemed to see anything. There was talk of a white van, though.”

“Box van?”

“They couldn’t tell.”

Jack and Mary left Tibbit to do more house-to-house and walked back to the Allegro in silence. Jack leaned on the car roof, deep in thought.

“Did you find anything on Solomon Grundy?”

“Clean as a whistle. Never been investigated for anything, no criminal record—not so much as a speeding fine. A trawl through the Mole archives shows a healthy ruthlessness in his business dealings, but nothing we didn’t know already.”

“Blast. Winkie worked at Winsum and Loosum’s, and Solomon Grundy had a two-million-pound motive to have Humpty killed.”

“It’s small beer to him, sir,” said Mary. “Ninth-wealthiest man in the country. He said he could lose two mil a week for ten years before it would worry him. It’s true—I’ve checked. He’s worth over a billion.”

“He could have been lying. He might actually be a very vindictive man indeed. Trouble is, Briggs says I can’t speak to him until this Jellyman Sacred Gonga thing has come and gone.”

“Then why don’t we speak to his wife? She might let something slip.”

“Are you kidding? I can’t think of a better way to piss off Grundy and Briggs.”

“Not really,” replied Mary. “Grundy told us we could ask his wife about his whereabouts the night Humpty died—and with his blessing.”

Jack smiled. This idea he liked.

“Good thought. I think we’ll do precisely that.”

As they drove away, Mary noticed that the passenger window had let rainwater leak onto her seat.

“Yes,” said Jack when she pointed it out, “it usually does that.”

26. Meet the Grundys