She seemed relieved.
“Thank you, Inspector. It is good to know that, despite everything.”
She gazed out the window. In the middle of the lawn was a large brick wall. It was six feet high, three feet wide and two feet thick; the bricks were covered in moss, and the mortar was beginning to crumble.
“He loved his walls,” she said absently, looking away from the structure in the garden and staring at the floor. “He had an extraordinary sense of balance. I had seen him blind drunk and asleep, yet still balanced perfectly. I had that one built for him on his fiftieth birthday. He used to tell me that when he had to go, he would die atop one of his favorite walls, that he would remain there, stone-cold dead, until they came to take him away.”
She cast another look at the brick monolith in the back garden.
“It’s his tombstone now,” she said, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.
Jack peered beyond Humpty’s wall at a large wooden construction with a glass roof. Mrs. Dumpty guessed what he was looking at.
“That was his swimming pool. He had it built when we came here. Keen swimmer. It was about the only physical activity he excelled in. Good buoyancy and natural streamlining, you see — especially backward, with his pointy end first, if you get what I mean. If you have no other questions…?”
“Not for now, Mrs. Dumpty. Thank you.”
“Mrs. Dumpty?” said a voice from the door. “It’s time you did your thirty lengths.”
They turned to see an athletic-looking blond man aged about thirty dressed in a bathrobe. He had curly hair and large brown eyes like a Jersey cow.
“This is Mr. Spatchcock,” explained Mrs. Dumpty quickly, “my personal fitness instructor.”
Spatchcock nodded a greeting. They left her to his attentions and walked back to the car.
“Think she’s over Dumpty?” asked Mary.
“Not really. She didn’t believe he was likely to fall by accident. What did she say: ‘blind drunk and still perfectly balanced’? I think she had more to say, too. Secrets. Perhaps not to do with his death, but secrets nonetheless.”
“Most people do,” observed Mary. “Where are we going now?”
“To the Paint Box to see Mr. Foozle.”
“How is he to do with Humpty?”
“He isn’t.”
Mr. Foozle was a large man with a ruddy complexion whom Jack knew quite well, as their sons played football together. The shop was also a gallery; on the walls at present was a collection of abstract paintings.
“Mr. Spratt!” said Foozle genially. “I didn’t expect to see you in here.”
“Me neither, Mr. Foozle. Do you sell any of these things?” he asked, waving a hand at the canvases splashed with paint.
“Indeed. Two hundred eighty pounds a throw.”
“Two hundred eighty pounds? It looks like a chimp did them.”
Foozle gasped audibly and looked to either side in a very surreptitious manner. “Extraordinary! You detective johnnies have an uncanny sixth sense! You see, a chimp did do them — but that’s our secret, right?”
Jack laid the painting on the counter. “It’s my mother’s,” he explained. “It’s of a cow. She says it’s a Stubbs.”
Foozle unwrapped the canvas. “How is Mrs. Spratt? More cats?”
“Don’t ask.”
“And your delightful wife? Her cover this morning was a real corker — Oh!”
It was said with a surprised tone that made Jack wonder whether it was an “Oh!” good or an “Oh!” bad. Foozle took a magnifying glass from his coat and examined the painting minutely, hunching over it like a surgeon. He grunted several times and finally stood up straight again, taking off his spectacles and tapping them against his teeth.
“Well, you’re right about one thing.”
“It’s a Stubbs?”
“No, it’s a cow.”
“Don’t tell me it’s a fake?”
Mr. Foozle nodded. “I’m afraid so. It’s painted in his style and dates probably from the early years of the nineteenth century. It’s interesting for the fact that it’s a prize cow. Stubbs usually painted horses, so it’s unusual that a forger would copy work in his style yet not his favorite subject.”
Jack ventured a theory. “Is it possible that it was painted in his style quite innocently, and then someone else added the signature, intending to pass it off as a Stubbs?”
Foozle smiled. “You should be a detective in our business, Mr. Spratt. I think you’re probably right. In any event I don’t suppose it’s worth much more than a hundred pounds, perhaps more if an auction house would take it.”
Jack sighed. His mother would be mortified when she heard. He pulled the picture back across the counter and looked at it. It was a good painting and the only one of his mother’s that he would have had on his own wall.
“Do the best you can, Mr. Foozle.”
Foozle smiled and placed the picture behind the counter, then had an idea and pulled out a small cardboard box. “I wonder whether your mother would be interested in… these?”
He opened the box. Inside were six brightly colored broad beans about the size of walnuts. They flashed and glowed as the light caught them. They were exceptionally beautiful, even to Jack’s jaundiced eye.
“What are they?”
A smile crossed Mr. Foozle’s face. “I got them from a dealer the other day. He said they were magical and very valuable. If you planted them, something wonderful would be sure to happen.”
Jack looked at him dubiously. “He said that, did he?”
Mr. Foozle shrugged. “Take them to your mother and if she likes them, we’ll call it a straight swap. If she doesn’t, I’ll give you a hundred pounds for the painting. Fair?”
“Fair.” They shook hands, and Mr. Foozle replaced the lid of the box, then wrapped a rubber band around it for safekeeping.
It was the sort of thing Jack’s mother liked. Her house was almost full to capacity with knickknacks of every size and description; something this unusual might take the disappointment out of the Stubbs-that-wasn’t.
Jack walked out of the shop and paused on the pavement as a curious feeling welled up inside him. “Magic beans for a Stubbs cow,” he murmured to himself. There was something undeniably familiar about what he had just done, but for the life of him he couldn’t think what. He shrugged and joined Mary in the car.
7. The Nursery Crime Division
The Nursery Crime Division was formed in 1958 by DCI Horner, who was concerned that the regular force was too ill-equipped to deal with the often unique problems thrown up by a standard NCD inquiry. After a particularly bizarre investigation that involved a tinderbox, a soldier and a series of talking cats with varying degrees of ocular deformity, he managed to prove to his confused superiors that he should oversee all inquiries involving “any nursery characters or plots from poems and/or stories.” He was given a budget, a small office and two officers that no one else wanted and ran the NCD until he retired in 1980. His legacy of fairness, probity and impartiality remain unaltered to this day, as do the budget, the size of the offices, the wallpaper and the carpets.
“Make yourself at home, Mary.”
She looked around at the close confines of the NCD offices. They were cramped and untidy. No. They were worse than that. They had gone through cramped and untidy, paused briefly at small and shabby before ending up at pokey and damp. Dented and chipped steel filing cabinets ringed the walls, making the room even smaller than it was. There was barely enough space for a desk, let alone three chairs.