“No, what really annoys you?”
“Well, did you hear about the time I saved Hansel and Gretel from being eaten alive by a witch?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t.”
“Or the time I rescued a hundred children from the Pied Piper of Hamelin?”
“Don’t… think so.”
“What about dealing with serial wife killer Bluebeard?”
“Only when Briggs mentioned it yesterday.”
“How about the time I closed down the illegal straw-into-gold den?”
“Not really.”
“Convicted Jill of aggravated assault against Jack?”
“Nope.”
“Stopped Mr. Punch throwing the baby downstairs?”
“Must have missed that one.”
“This is my point. I’ve worked hard at the NCD for twenty-six years, trying to bring justice to everyone within my jurisdiction. I deal with most things within the NCD, and I like to think I make a difference. Is any of that remembered? Not a bit of it. I kill a few tall guys and all of a sudden I’m nothing but a giant killer.”
They reached Mrs. Dumpty’s house a few minutes later. It was named, ironically, the Cheery Egg.
6. Mrs. Laura dumpty
OYSTERS ONE STEP CLOSER TO VOTE
Animal rights took a giant leap away from the dark ages yesterday with the passing of the Animal (anthropomorphic) Equality Bill. The act will guarantee the rights of animals considered human enough to function within Homo sapien society. Applicants are required to take a “speech and cognitive ability” test and, if passed by the five-strong board, are issued with an identity card that allows them to live unmolested within the designated safe haven of Berkshire. “It’s a major triumph,” said Mr. Billy Gruff, one of the main lobbyists. “For too long now we have been marginalized by society.” The rights of standard nonanthropomorphized animals are unaffected by the act, and they may still be hunted, killed, farmed and eaten with impunity.
“He had it coming. Who was it, a jealous husband?”
“We never said he was murdered, Mrs. Dumpty.”
The ex-Dumpty residence was a large mock Tudor dwelling. It was cheaply elegant, the furniture and pictures all reproductions, and they trod on marble-effect linoleum in the entrance hall. Mrs. Dumpty spoke to them sitting at a faux-wood Formica table in the large kitchen, wearing a mock-leopardskin jacket and smoking a Sobranie through a silver gilt cigarette holder with affected grace. Her hair was dyed jet black, and her last face lift had pulled her features into a grimace. She spoke in elocuted upper-class tones and looked as though her tan had been applied with a roller. Everything in the house was false, and that included Mrs. Dumpty. She fixed Jack with a stern eye.
“What difference does it make? He’s dead isn’t he?”
“So you weren’t close, then?”
She laughed again. “Once upon a time, Inspector. ‘Fidelity’ was not a word in Humpty’s word stock as much as — ” She paused, trying to think up a suitable word.
“Vocabulary?” suggested Mary.
“Right. Fidelity was not a word in Humpty’s word stock as much as ‘vocabulary’ isn’t in mine. I knew he was sleeping around. He had great charm, and any moppet that came his way he used to regard as fair game.”
She paused for a moment, thinking. Neither Jack nor Mary said anything, so she continued:
“He married me for my money. My family name is Garibaldi. I suppose that means something to you?”
“Indeed it does,” said Jack. He knew as well as anyone that the Garibaldi family was big in biscuits. Yummy-Time Cakes and Snacks (Reading) was valued at over £130 million, and its Reading manufacturing facility churned out five thousand packets of chocolate digestives a day — and that was just the milk chocolate variety.
“When my father died, he left the biscuit concern entirely to me. It was my money that attracted Hump.”
“For high living?” asked Jack, wondering why Humpty had been working from a dive in Grimm’s Road.
“Speculation,” replied Mrs. Dumpty, taking the spent cigarette from the holder and stubbing it out in a mock-tortoiseshell ashtray.
“What did he speculate in?”
“Mostly bankrupt stock, that sort of thing. He bought shares when they went low before a possible merger and then sold when the shares rose — if they did. It was a very high-risk venture. He spent over eight million pounds of my money on his harebrained schemes. South American zinc, North American zinc, Canadian zinc…. In fact” — she paused for a moment — “I don’t think there was much zinc he didn’t speculate in. Some he made a killing on; most of them failed. We lived together for eighteen years, and in that time he made and lost five fortunes. His philandering always got worse when he was worth a lot of money. I thought it would blow over, small indiscretions that only served to prove he could still charm the ladies. It carried on, Mr. Spratt, grew more and more blatant, until I told him it had to stop. He refused, so I told him he couldn’t have any more of my money.”
“What did he do?” asked Jack.
Mrs. Dumpty paused for a moment. “He did what any other man would do in the same situation. He walked out. He went that same morning.”
She lit another cigarette. “I changed the locks. I got a divorce. An ironclad prenuptial against adultery denied him any of my Yummy-Time fortune. I know nothing about his tawdry affairs because I chose not to be interested. I’m afraid to say I cannot tell you anything more.” She paused and stared at the end of her cigarette.
Mary consulted her notebook.
“Do you know where he stayed after he left you?
“I have no idea. With one of his conquests, I imagine.”
“Do you have any idea what he was up to?”
“None. He was out of my life.”
“Did he ever get depressed?” asked Jack.
She visibly started at the question and said with some surprise, “Depressed? Are you considering this might be suicide?”
“I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions, ma’am.”
She pulled herself together and assumed an air of haughty indifference. “Why should I care, Inspector? He is no longer part of my life. Yes, he often got depressed. He was an outpatient at St. Cerebellum’s for longer than I had known him. Easter was always bad for him, as you can imagine, and whenever he saw a cooking program featuring omelettes or eggs Benedict, he would fly off the handle. Whenever the salmonella recurred, I know he found life very painful. Sometimes he would wake up at night in a sweat, screaming, ‘Help, help, take me off, I’m boiling.’ I’m sorry, Officer, do you find something funny?”
She directed this last comment at Mary, who had let out a misplaced guffaw and then tried to disguise it as a sneeze.
“No, ma’am, hay fever.”
“Mrs. Dumpty,” continued Jack, unwilling to lose the momentum of the interview, “do you recognize this woman?” He placed the Viennese photo in front of her.
“No.”
“It would help if you looked at the picture before answering.”
Her eyes flicked over to it, and she inhaled deeply on the Sobranie, blowing the smoke up in the air. “One of his tramps, I daresay.”
She looked at Jack, her eyes narrowing. “I haven’t seen him for two years, Mr. Spratt. We were divorced.”
She got up and walked to the window and paused for a moment with her back to them before asking in a quiet voice, “Do you think he was in any pain?”
“We don’t believe so, Mrs. Dumpty.”