"What has this to do with the Jigsaw Murders?" requested Alice.
"Quentin Tarantula was a maker of Chimera. Surely I explained that already? He was murdered, and then all of his eight legs were sliced off and stitched to his head! Stitched, I say! And this pathetic Catgirl has suffered the same fate: her body parts have been rearranged."
Alice felt quite sick.
"This is why we call these killings the Jigsaw Murders. Take a look at this..." Inspector Jack Russell opened his paws to dangle a small piece of wood in front of Alice's face. "We found this clutched in the Spiderboy's legs." It was another jigsaw piece! Alice recognized the fragment: the missing picture of a deadly spider from her long-ago puzzle of London Zoo.
"That's my jigsaw piece!" Alice cried.
"Is it indeed?" Jack Russell replied. "Well then, take a look at this..." And with this ellipsis the policedogman prised open the only exposed claw of the currently dead Catgirl, revealing yet a further jigsaw piece hidden there. "Does this jigsaw piece also belong to you, I wonder?" he asked, brandishing a crooked portion of the golden eye of a cat.
"That is also mine!" Alice said.
"Alice the human-girl," Inspector Jack Russell coldly growled, "I am hereby arresting you for probable involvement in the Jigsaw Murders. I believe you to be in league with the Ramshackle Badgerman, our main suspect, and that together you have brought about these rearranging killings. The Civil Serpents will be most keen to interrogate you."
Just then it started to rain!
To rain and rain and rain.
An astonished (and drenched) Alice felt a pair of police manacles folding around her wrists, and at the very same time she saw Captain Ramshackle himself being led on leads by a cluster of policedogmen. The Badgerman looked at Alice as he passed by. "Alice, you know that I'm innocent," he muttered in the downpour. "Won't you please help me?"
"Good Captain, I will do my utmost to help you," Alice replied, whilst being dogmanhandled herself onto the back of a police-auto. "I shall prove us both innocent yet..."
The last thing that Alice saw as the auto-horse galloped off with her, was the porcelain look on Celia Doll's face from the crowd of dripping spectators. "Oh Celia!" Alice cried out, "I'm losing you all over again. Whatever shall become of us now?"
Alice's ride on the auto-horse's back was a terrifying rain-beaten gallop into the centre of Manchester. Wilmslow Road changed into Oxford Road, towards the centre, and many a wonder Alice passed on her journey into Manchester, surrounded as she was by a skidding and flashing drive of other auto-horses, all carrying their very own intrepid riders (or should that be drivers?). Alice passed the Infirmary and the University, she also passed the Central Library and the great Town Hall of Manchester.
The police auto-horse eventually drew to a standstill at the police station, opposite the Town Hall.
Languishing in Gaol
Five minutes later Alice found herself being locked up inside a minuscule gaol cell in the cellar below the police station. "This is not fair!" she shouted to Inspector Jack Russell as he forced her into the cell. "I'm innocent! Let me free!"
"The Over Assistant Civil Serpent will be along shortly," Jack Russell briefly replied. "You may plead your case to her."
Inspector Jack Russell left the cell and clanged the door shut behind him.
Alice could hear the key turning in the lock, just so that she now knew she was completely alone.
A long, long time passed and nobody at all came to visit her, not even a Civil Serpent. Hours and hours must have passed. Alice was feeling very lonely and unwanted -- very much unloved. The gaol cell contained no furniture other than a rude bed and no windows other than a tiny, barred hole set high up on the wall, through which Alice could catch only a glint of distant raintight. Alice was so very hungry, not having eaten since lunchtime. That's lunchtime, 1860, by the way. Alice was left to her own devices. Of course, Alice's devices amounted to nothing more than Whippoorwill's plucked-out tail feather, and five small pieces from a jigsaw of London Zoo, which offered hardly any comfort at all (especially to the stomach).
Alice quickly became bored of doing nothing at all, so she decided to play with her feather and her jigsaw pieces.
First of all she placed the feather on the bed's rough blanket. Then she dug deep into her pinafore pocket to find the five jigsaw pieces she had collected in her travels so far: the termite, the badger, the snake, the chicken and the zebra. She laid these pieces face-up in a circle surrounding the green-and-yellow feather.
"Now then," Alice said to herself, "what game shall I play with you? Shall I play Feather-Escape-the-Zoo? Or shall I play Zoo-Catch-a-Feather?"
Alice moved the jigsaw pieces around the feather, and then the feather amongst the jigsaw pieces, and then she threw the whole lot of them to the floor!
"Oh! What difference does it make?" she cried. "I don't know the rules to either game and even if I did, what fun is it to play with myself? If only Automated Alice were here! She would certainly know the rules to both the games. In fact, Automated Alice would know the rules so well, she would beat me in every single game! And I couldn't be doing with that at all! But still, it would be nice to have somebody to talk to. And also something to eat!"
Just then the key turned again in the lock and the door to the cell banged open. Inspector Jack Russell stepped into the room, carrying a plate of food. "I thought you might be hungry, Alice," he growled, setting the plate down on her bed.
"I am hungry," stated Alice, "but I shan't be eating that!" (It was a plateful of boiled radishes!)
"Very well," Jack Russell replied, "I shall take it away then."
"Where is Captain Ramshackle?" Alice asked.
"The Badgerman is being questioned by the Over Assistant at this very moment, and the Lady of Snakes will be interrogating you presently."
"But I'm innocent, I tell you!"
"That's for the Serpents to decide, meanwhile, I'm giving you a cell-companion..."
A slug was then dogmanhandled into Alice's cell. A rather large slug, at that! And the door clanged shut on them both. Imagine, Alice the sweet girl and a greasily enormous slug shut up tightly in a mere pigeonhole of a space? (Although, truth be known, even a pigeon would find that space rather too encroaching for comfort, let alone a young girl and a giant slug!) The slug wasn't just a slug, of course; he was also a man -- a Slugman. He was dressed in a suit of silky, shiny cloth, with a jacket and tie and trousers of glitter. On his black and glutinous head rested a large twirled hat of spirals, below which his pair of twitching horns moved slowly through the dank air. In his human hands he held a golden trumpet of finely polished brass.
"Who are you?" asked Alice, nervously.
"I... am... Long... Distance... Davis..." the Slugman sluggishly replied, putting an age between each word. "And... who... are... you?"
"I'm Alice," replied Alice, "and you're a slug!"
"I... am... not... a... slug..." Long Distance Davis replied, just as slowly as before. "I... am... a... snail..."
"So where is your shell?" (Alice knew just enough about gastropodology to understand that a snail had a shell, whereas a slug did not.)
"Wherever... I... lay... my... hat... is... my... shell..." With this utterance the Snailman lay down on the dirt floor and then started to smooth his body into his hat. Around and around the spirals he went, until he had almost vanished, in fact, only his golden trumpet remained in sight. "Please don't go home to your shell, Mister Snailman!" Alice pleaded. "Please talk to me."