Jack approached slowly and knocked on the front door. After getting no reply, he thumped again, this time louder.
He cupped his hand to look through the window, but there was no sign of life. He beckoned the others to follow him and then walked around to the back of the house where the lean-to section housed the kitchen. He knocked again, then tried the door handle. It was locked.
“Pass me that walking stick, would you?” said Jack.
Brown-Horrocks raised his eyebrows and scribbled a note as Mary passed the stick over. Jack cleared the windowpane with a few well-placed blows of the stick, the sound of shattering glass cutting harshly through the peace of the surroundings. He climbed into the kitchen, checked the back door for any booby traps, then let the others in.
“This is highly questionable procedure,” warned Mary. “Anything we find here and want to use as evidence will be disallowed.”
“I’m trying to stop a serious crime from being committed,” said Jack. “We’ll worry about convictions afterwards.”
They moved into the front room and nearly jumped out of their skins when a large and very angry goose honked at them and beat its wings in a highly agitated manner. They took a step back as it settled down again on the sofa and hissed at them angrily. The floor was covered in goose shit.
“A goose?”
“It explains the bird shit in Humpty’s office.”
“Yes, but why indoors?”
As they watched, the goose made itself more comfortable and a flash of something yellow pierced the gloom from within the nest it had made on the sofa. Mary moved forward and rolled up her sleeve. The goose opened its beak and hissed at the intrusion, but Mary made clicking noises with her tongue and very gently pushed her hand under the bird. Jack looked at his watch. He didn’t have a lot of time for farm animals; he was more used to seeing them wrapped in plastic at the supermarket or flanked by roast spuds and carrots.
Mary withdrew her hand, and the egg shone brightly even in the relative gloom of the living room. The egg was gold. Solid gold. Jack’s jaw dropped open. Mary smiled triumphantly, and the goose hissed again as she passed it over to him. The egg was surprisingly heavy and still warm.
“So that’s where he got the gold,” said Jack. “I should have guessed. The woodcutters found the goose but weren’t too clever about keeping it quiet. Tom Thomm was living here. He hears about it, follows them into the wood, greed overcomes him and pow—that was it.”
There was nothing else down here, so Jack turned his attention to the stairs, stepping softly up the treads until he reached the upstairs corridor, which had a narrow carpet running down the center with bare boards on either side. At the opposite end was a leaded-glass window. To the left and right were doors leading off into the bedrooms. The first room they visited was a jumble of chemistry equipment: retorts, dirty beakers and racks of test tubes. There was a pungent smell of decayed cheese in the air, and in the far corner, upon a grimy sofa and surrounded by two three-bar electric fires, was what appeared to be something child-size curled up beneath a dirty bedsheet. It stirred ever so slightly as they watched, and Jack, using his best authoritarian voice called out: “Police! You, under the sheet—move out slowly!”
There was no response, so Jack advanced and slowly pulled the sheet off. But it wasn’t a child. It was something that closely resembled a large and very rotten misshapen potato, but about the size of two watermelons. The smell of sweaty feet rose up to greet them, and they all gagged.
“What the…?” murmured Jack, staring at the strange object that seemed to shudder as he watched. He covered his nose and mouth with a hankie and put out a curious hand to touch the gently heaving object. Just as he was about to make contact, Mary’s hand deftly grabbed his wrist. He looked up at her with a quizzical expression, but she merely nodded at a warning sign that read:
BIOHAZARD—EXTREME CAUTION!
“Good Lord!” muttered Jack, glad that Mary had stayed his hand. “It’s Hercules, Professor Tarsus’s champion verruca. Would you look at the size of it!”
Mary nodded sagely and passed him an empty bottle that had been lying on a table nearby. It was unused but had been labeled, and Jack shuddered as he read:
CONCENTRATED LIVE VERRUCA SPORE.
USE RATIO 1:100 IN HUMIDITY CONTROL
RESERVOIR EVERY WEEK FOR MAXIMUM INFECTION.
There was another bottle that confirmed Jack’s fears. It was labeled:
SUPERVERRUCA: ANTIDOTE
Humpty hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d drunkenly boasted that his shares would be worth a fortune in a few months’ time—with an outbreak of verrucas that only Carbuncle and Humpty knew how to cure, they could ask what they wanted for the antidote. With the cure sold to Spongg, Humpty’s shares in the ailing foot-care empire would be worth a hundred times what he paid within a few months.
“Get on the phone,” said Jack, “and speak to Briggs. Tell him to contact the Communicable Disease Control Center and declare the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center a hot zone—he needs to have it checked by a biohazard squad before we can even think of the Jellyman dedicating it.”
“What!?” said Mary.
“It all makes sense. Don’t you see? The Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center is the ideal place to spread the verruca virus. Air-conditioned and with precise humidity control—and everyone having to walk with reverential bare feet. Ordinary verrucas are bad enough, but this monster is capable of anything.”
“Professor Hardiman was expecting ten thousand visitors this afternoon and more than a million over the next six months,” observed Mary, dialing feverishly.
“And every single one of them taking home ultrainfectious superverrucas to spread around their homes. No wonder Humpty was confident he could pledge fifty million to St. Cerebellum’s.”
“So who killed Mr. Dumpty?” asked Brown-Horrocks.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Jack replied. “Dr. Carbuncle. They were partners. Humpty buys the shares, and Carbuncle supplies the virus. Only Carbuncle gets greedy. He kills Humpty in order to keep all the shares for himself. Winkie tries to blackmail him, so Carbuncle kills him, too. Then we get too close for comfort, so he wires the Zephyr. He was good, but not quite good enough.”
Brown-Horrocks ticked a few boxes and scribbled a note. “So who did Humpty marry?”