The Big Over Easy

“He had been preoccupied and a bit jumpy—about what, no one could say. Are you still thinking Solomon Grundy might be involved?”

“I don’t think so. He laid all his cards on the table for us, and as you say, he’s got enough money to write off a two-million-pound scam without thinking. And as Briggs pointed out, it was fourteen years ago.”

Jack took a swig of tea. His trip over to St. Cerebellum’s had been equally inconclusive. Winkie’s doctor, a helpful chap named Dr. Murphy, told him that Winkie had been treated for narcolespy as an outpatient for nearly eight years, with sessions twice weekly. Winkie had missed the previous day’s session, so it was possible something was on his mind. Jack had also bumped into Dr. Quatt, who asked him how things were going. She had referred to Humpty as “Hump,” so Jack wondered whether perhaps she might not have a floral tribute for him, too.

Jack finished his sandwich, wiped his hands and mouth on a hankie and thought for a moment. All those women.

“By the way,” said Baker, “Giorgio Porgia said he’d see you tomorrow at nine A.M. sharp.”

Jack snapped his fingers as he suddenly thought of something. “Of course. Baker, the apartment that Porgia gave to Humpty in return for the money laundering…?”

“What about it?”

“Do we have an address? I know Humpty lived over at the Cheery Egg with Laura for eighteen years, but he might have kept it on. He would have had to take all those girls somewhere.”

Baker rummaged through paperwork and eventually came up with an address in one of Humpty’s old arrest reports. “Here it is,” he announced: “614, Spongg Villas.”

Humpty Dumpty’s old residence was in a large block of flats that had been built by the Spongg Building Trust in the early part of the century for Reading’s trendiest set. After a period of fashionable existence in the thirties and forties, its popularity had begun to wane. Expensive to maintain, the unprepossessing block had changed hands regularly for ever-decreasing amounts as successive landlords took the rent and never bothered to bring the place up to date or even carry out anything other than essential repairs. It had started out as a good address but was now a shabby wreck, an upmarket version of Grimm’s Road, its paint long since faded and the stucco rounded and softened by the corrosive action of the wind and rain.

Jack, Mary and Baker stepped into the musty hall and were greeted warmly by the ripe odor of decay. Out of two hundred apartments, they understood from the ancient doorman, who wore a stained bellhop’s uniform, barely eight were still occupied. The others had been boarded up and the basins, baths and toilets smashed to discourage squatters. The owner was a wealthy financier who was waiting for the last tenants to leave before he flattened the site and built a deluxe car park in its place. The doorman pointed the way up the stairs. The lift, he explained, had been out of order since 1972.

Humpty’s apartment was on the sixth floor, and as Baker led the way up the creaking circular staircase, Jack looked over the banisters and up at the domed skylight, whose myriad leaks he could see had been crudely repaired with waterproof tape. The banisters were rickety, and the dust of dry rot rose when they touched them. Padlocked doors greeted them on every landing.

“Which was his apartment again?” asked Jack.

“Number 614,” whispered Baker. “This way.”

He led them slowly down the hall, through fire doors that were wedged open and past corroded wall lights glowing with bulbs of minuscule wattage. Dust rose from the aged carpet as they approached Humpty’s front door. Jack pulled out his penlight to examine it more closely. They could see that the dirt and fluff had drifted against it; the doorknob had a small spider living on it, and everything was veiled with a thin coat of dust.

“No one’s been in here for rather a long time,” observed Baker.

A low, husky woman’s voice answered from behind them.

“About a year, actually, dahlings.”

They turned to see a woman of perhaps fifty-five standing dramatically in the shaft of light that shone out of her apartment door and pierced the stygian gloom of the corridor. She watched them all with a well-practiced air of laconic indifference, a half smile on her lips. Her hair was up in rollers, and she was smoking an expensive-looking cigarette. She had hastily covered her mouth with crimson lipstick and wore a lacy blouse that was unbuttoned enough to display a large volume of cleavage. Her shoulders were draped with a light tan cashmere sweater, and she wore a knee-length skirt that hugged her well-proportioned frame tightly. She paused for a moment, leaned on the doorframe and regarded them in a manner that might have been described as “smoldering sexuality” had she been twenty years younger.

“Sorry?” stammered Jack, quite taken aback by the curious vision that had appeared in front of them.