“No thanks,” said Jack quickly.
Professor Tarsus grunted, then shuffled to one side of the room and pulled a sheet off a big glass cabinet. The lock had been forced, and inside the empty cabinet was a large cotton pad the shape of an inner tube. On the side were precise controls that monitored temperature and humidity. Jack’s nose wrinkled at the cheesy odor it exuded. Tarsus pointed at the empty case with a petulant air, as if they could somehow magically restore his property.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Jack, “I don’t have any details of your break-in. We’re investigating several murders in the Reading area, and we hoped you might be able to help.”
Tarsus looked at them all suspiciously. “Murders? How can the Foot Museum be connected?”
“Thomas Thomm, Professor,” said Mary, “we understand he used to work here?”
“The name means nothing to me, Nancy.”
“He worked as a lab assistant — sponsored by Mr. Dumpty. You might have known him as… Ronald.”
“Then why didn’t you say so? Yes, I remember Ron very well. He was Dr. Carbuncle’s assistant. Left about a year ago.”
“Dr. Carbuncle?” repeated Jack, making a note. “Is he here?”
“He took early retirement,” replied Tarsus. “Ron even lived in his house for a bit, I understand. Nancy can tell you more. NANCY!”
He bellowed it so loudly that Mary and Jack jumped. A small voice said, “Coming!” and presently “Nancy” appeared. She was about the same age as Tarsus but displayed none of his infirmities. She walked with a youthful step and wore bright red leggings, a T-shirt with a picture of a foot on it and a leather jacket. She looked like some sort of aged foot groupie.
“Nancy, this is Ronald, Nancy and — er — Ronald. They’re police.”
“Hello!” said Nancy. “It’s Fay Goodrich, actually.”
They introduced themselves as she perched nimbly on one of the desktops. Tarsus looked on disapprovingly.
“Did you ever meet Mr. Dumpty?”
“Yes,” she said, as a smile crossed her lips, “he was a pal of Dr. Carbuncle. He used to come in here quite a lot.”
“What did they talk about?”
“This and that, feet ailments mostly. They were good friends. Hump was staying at his house.”
“Dumpty? With Dr. Carbuncle?”
She nodded. “Humpty said he’d been forced to leave his apartment. Carbuncle was a widower; he lived alone in Andersen’s Farm, just on the edge of the forest. I expect he took in paying guests for the company.”
Jack thought for a moment. “So when did Dr. Carbuncle retire?”
“Three months ago. We had quite a party. Humpty was there with a tall brunette, and I think almost every chiropodist in the Home Counties turned up — Carbuncle was much respected. Spongg gave a warm speech and presented Dr. Carbuncle with one of his celebrated Bronze Foot Awards for services to the foot-care industry.”
“And the break-in occurred…?”
“Two days later,” said Miss Goodrich provocatively. The Professor shot her a fierce glance.
“The two events are unconnected,” explained Tarsus. “Carbuncle would never have stolen it. I have known him for almost three decades.”
Miss Goodrich muttered something and stared at the ceiling. This was obviously an argument that had been grumbling on for some time. Jack’s attention went back to the broken cabinet as Mary took Fay off for more information.
“Perhaps you’d better tell me what was stolen?”
“In here,” said Tarsus proudly, “was my life’s work. Thirty years ago I extracted it, nurtured it, fed it, kept it warm and damp, protected it from parasites, even defended it from financial cutbacks in the seventies. It was the greatest, most stupendous… verruca in the world.”
He sat on a nearby chair and covered his face with his hands and sobbed loudly.
“A verruca?” repeated Jack. “You mean that nasty little warty thing you get on your foot? That’s all?”
Tarsus looked up at him angrily. “It wasn’t just any verruca, Ronald. Hercules was a thirty-seven-kilo champion. The biggest — and finest — in the world!”
He shed twenty years as he spoke animatedly about what was obviously his favorite subject.
“He was the son I never had. The only other verruca to come close was a lamentable twenty-three-kilo tiddler owned by L’Institute du Pied in Toulouse. Hernán Laso of Argentina claimed that he had a forty-seven-kilo specimen, but it turned out to be a clever fake made from papier-mâché and builder’s plaster.”
Jack looked at the broken case again, and Tarsus continued. “It was used primarily for research. Dr. Carbuncle was working with it when he retired; some sort of genetic engineering, I believe. Experimenting with a new viral strain of superverruca.”
Suddenly things started to come into sharp and terrible focus.
“Isn’t that unbelievably dangerous?”
“Not if conducted properly. Anyway, it didn’t bear fruit. He’d been on the project for nearly two years and eventually called a halt and retired. I came in the following week to find Hercules gone. Its only value is in research. Without precise heat and humidity control, it will dry out and die. And I think, Ron — may I call you Ron? — that even you can appreciate the uselessness of a dead verruca.”
“Of course,” said Jack uneasily. “I need Dr. Carbuncle’s address.”
Tarsus grasped Jack’s elbow, drew him close and whispered, “You will find Hercules, won’t you?”
“Of course,” replied Jack. “He was the son you never had, right?”
As Jack, Mary and an increasingly uncomfortable Brown-Horrocks drove towards Andersen’s Wood and Dr. Carbuncle’s house, they could see a throng of traffic heading into the city center. It was still only ten, and the Jellyman’s dedication wouldn’t be until midday. That done, he would be driven on a parade route around the town, open several hospitals and an old-people’s home, meet members of the community and then have dinner over at the QuangTech facility with the mayor and a roomful of Reading’s luminaries, Spongg, Grundy and Chymes among them.
“Hercules is the answer,” said Jack as they drove rapidly down the road. “I think I know what Humpty’s plan was — I’m just not sure how he was going to execute it.”
“You don’t think…?”
“I do,” replied Jack grimly.
“You do?” echoed Brown-Horrocks, folded up in the backseat. “How, exactly?”
41. Dr. Horatio Carbuncle
DETECTIVES SLAM GENETIC DATABASE PLANS
Plans for a national genetic database could be shelved if the Guild of Detectives gets its way, it has emerged. “Cerebrally based deduction of perpetrators has fallen over the years,” wrote Guild member Lord Peter Flimsey in a leaked document to the Home Office funding committee, “and we all have a duty to protect the traditional detecting industry against further damaging loss.” MPs were said to be “sympathetic” to the Guild’s cause, but Mr. Pipette of the Forensic Sciences Federation was less receptive. “Quite frankly, they’ve been moaning ever since DNA advances narrowed their field of methodology.” A Guild spokesman angrily dismissed the accusation. “We’ve been moaning a lot longer than that,” said Mr. Celery Clean at a hastily convened press conference last night. “If we continue to allow intrusive and narratively boring work practices to flood the detecting business, we could see an undesirable shift of emphasis from detecting to forensics — which none of us want.”