The Big Over Easy

2. Jack Spratt

Jack drove home that evening with a feeling of frustration that would have been considerably worse had it been unexpected. He and the prosecution had tried to present the pig case as well as they could, but for some reason the jury didn’t buy it. Briggs hadn’t said anything to him yet, but mounting prosecutions such as The Crown v. Three Pigs was undeniably expensive, and after the failed conviction of the con men who perpetrated the celebrated emperor’s new-clothes scam the year before, Jack knew that the Nursery Crime Division would be under closer scrutiny by the bean counters. Not that the NCD was consistently racked with failure — far from it — but the fact was that few of his cases attracted much publicity. And in the all-important climate of increased public confidence, budget accountability and Amazing Crime circulation figures, Friedland’s crowd-pleasing antics were strides ahead of Jack’s misadventures — and hugely profitable for the Reading police force, too. But all of this was scant comfort to Mr. Wolff, who went to his casket unavenged and parboiled.

He drove along Peppard and took the left fork into Kidmore End.

“Shit,” muttered Jack under his breath as the whole wasted six-month investigation sank in. He didn’t want murder cases, of course — he would be happier not to have any, ever — but there was a slight frisson that went with them that he welcomed. The NCD, after an early rush of celebrated cases, had settled down into something of a workaday existence. There is a limit to how many lost sheep you could track down, how many illegal straw-into-gold dens you could uncover, how many pied pipers arrived in town trying to extort money from the authorities over pest control and how often Mr. Punch would beat his wife and throw the baby downstairs. He knew there was not much prestige, but there was an upside: He was left pretty much to his own devices.

He stopped the car outside his house and stared silently into his own kitchen, where he could see his wife, Madeleine, attempting to feed the youngest of their five children. They had brought two children each from previous marriages — the two eldest, Pandora and Ben, were Jack’s, and Megan and Jerome were Madeleine’s. As if to cement the union further, they had had one that was entirely down to the pair of them — Stevie, who was a year old.

“This is why I do this,” he muttered under his breath, opening the car door. Pausing only to place a block of wood under the rear wheel to stop his Allegro from rolling down the slope, he picked up his case, bade good evening to his neighbor Mrs. Sittkomm, who was glaring suspiciously at him from over the fence, and took the side entrance to the house.

“Honey,” he yelled without enthusiasm as he dumped his case on the hall table, “I’m home!”

She coo-eed from the kitchen, and the sound of her voice made all the stresses of the day that much more bearable. They had been married almost five years, and neither of them had any regrets over their choice. She bounded in from the kitchen, gave him a kiss and hugged him tenderly.

“Otto called me about the Wolff thing,” she whispered in his ear. “Bum deal. The pigs deserved to fry. I’m sorry.”

And she hugged him again.

“I’d say ‘you win some,’ but I don’t seem — ”

She placed a finger on his lips and took him by the hand to walk him through to the kitchen, where Stevie was attempting to reduce his dinner to a thin film that might, through careful skill, be made to cover the entire room.

“Hi, kids!” Jack shouted, summoning a small amount of enthusiasm.

“Hullo!” said Jerome, who was just eight, was enthusiastic about everything and smelt strongly of fish fingers. “I can wiggle my ears!”

He then attempted to demonstrate his newfound skill, and after about a minute of grunting and going bright red and with his ears not wiggling even the tiniest bit, said, “How was that?!”

“Awesome,” replied Jack, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Wiggle them any more and you’ll be able to fly.”

“Jack!” began Megan, her mouth full. “My teacher Miss Klaar eats… puppies!”

“And how do you know that?”

“Johnny said so,” she replied intensely, all curls and big questioning blue eyes the color of a Pacific lagoon.

“I see. And does Johnny have any corroborative evidence?”

“Of course,” said the ten-year-old, knowing a few technical police terms herself. “Johnny said that Roger told him that a friend of his who lives next door to someone who knows Miss Klaar said it’s a fact in her street. Do we have a case?”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Jack. “I often go to court with far less.”

“Da-woo!” screamed Stevie, waving a spoon as he scattered food around the room, much to the pleasure of the cat, with whom, it was generally agreed, Stevie had an “understanding.” Ripvan — as in “Winkle,” naturally — was the laziest cat that had ever lived, ever. She would sleep in corridors, roads, paths, puddles, gutters — anywhere she suddenly felt tired. She would rather sit in the cold and have to be revived from near hypothermia with a hair dryer than trouble herself to use the cat flap. If she hadn’t had the sense to lie on her back under Stevie’s high chair with her mouth open, she would probably have starved.

Madeleine sidled up to where Jack was absently staring at the children gorging themselves and wrapped an arm around his waist.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Deflated,” he replied. “And Friedland got another standing ovation at the press conference.”

“Don’t worry about Friedland,” said Madeleine soothingly. “He only gets the good cases because he’s in the Guild of Detectives.”

“Don’t talk to me about the Guild. Heard the saying ‘If you’re in, you’re made. If you’re out, you’re traffic’?”

“Many times. But you’re not traffic.”

“Check in again a week from now.”

“Did you apply like we discussed, darling?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“No. Listen, I’m not really Guild material. How many people want to read about three disreputable pigs and a dopey wolf with a disposition towards house demolition?”

“If you were in the Guild, maybe lots.”

“Well, I’m not so sure. The Guild won’t want someone like me. The NCD conviction record is … well, shit.”

“That’s because the force doesn’t appreciate what you’re doing. If you were Guild, Briggs and the Crown Prosecution Service would soon change their tune. Aside from that, Ben and Pandora will both be at university in two years, so we could do with the extra cash.”

“That’s true. The cost of mac and cheese, subsidized beer and cannabis these days is simply scandalous — think I can get a cheap deal from the drug squad?”

“I’m serious, Jack.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll apply tomorrow, I promise.”

“You won’t need to. I took the liberty of doing it for you. Here.”

She handed him a sheet of paper.

Jack accepted it with misgivings, unsure of whether to be angry at Madeleine’s intervention or glad that she had taken the burden of responsibility from him.

“It’s a conditional acceptance,” he said, reading the short letter twice to make sure he understood what was going on. “They need a day’s observation in order to calculate my sleuthing quotient — if it’s higher than a six point three, they’ll put my name up to the board.”

He turned the sheet over. “It doesn’t say when this observation day will be.”

“I think it’s done on a random basis in case detectives try to ‘spice things up a bit’ with a head in a bag or something,” observed Madeleine. She was quite correct. Desperate Guild-wannabe detectives had been known to borrow cadavers from medical schools and then dump them in a chest freezer for later “discovery” to impress Guild observers.

“Well,” said Jack, “I’m just amazed that I got even as far as a conditional acceptance.”

“That’s easily explained,” she replied. “I told them you were a chain-smoking vintage-Rolls-Royce-driving divorced alcoholic with an inability to form lasting relationships. And with a love of Puccini, Henry Moore and Magritte. And a big pipe.”

“What about a deerstalker hat?”

“No — do you think I should have?”

“Absolutely not. Why did you tell them all that?”

“I had to write something interesting about you. If your investigations are going to be written up in Amazing Crime Stories, you’re going to have to have a few interesting foibles. I don’t think ‘happily married father of five’ quite cuts the mustard these days.”

He sighed. She was right.

“Well,” he said, giving her an affectionate hug, “if I’m going to be a womanizing, pipe-smoking opera fanatic with a vintage car and a drinking problem, I better practice getting into character. I could make a start chatting up that new assistant of yours — what was her name again?”

“Diane? Sure, you could try that. She said yesterday she thought you were really nice.”

“She did?”

“Reminded her of her dad, she said.”

“Hmm. What sort of pipe did you have in mind for me?”

They laughed. The Guild. What the hell. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

“Bums!” said Madeleine, glancing at the wall clock. “I’m late.”

“Late for what?”

“The Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit. It’s on the calendar.”

Jack walked over to look. It was there in black ballpoint. He didn’t look closely enough at these things and was always being caught out.

“Schmoozing or snapping?”

She slapped him playfully on the shoulder. “Snapping, you dope. Someone has to take pictures of all the dazzling Reading socialites shaking hands with whatever D-class celebrity Lord Spongg has managed to dredge up.”

“Is that an improvement on the Thames Valley Fruit-Growers Ball, where you were merely photographing ‘low-grade celebrity wannabes’?”

“Of course, dear — it’s called upward mobility. By the summer I could be doing portraits of chinless twerps at the Henley Regatta.”

“Well, you’d better dress up a bit, then.”

“All in good time, husband dearest. Can you take Megan to Scouts?

“Sure. When is it again?”

“Seven,” said Megan, and excused herself from the table.

“What did you do at school, Jerome?” asked Jack when Madeleine had gone upstairs to change into something a little smarter. It didn’t do well to turn up at a charity bash dressed scruffy, even if you were only the photographer.

“Nothing much.”

“Then it’s a bit pointless sending you, isn’t it? Why don’t we just cancel school, and you can stay at home and — I don’t know — just eat chocolate and watch TV all day?”

Jerome perked up at this gold-edged scenario. “Really?”

“No, not really.”

His shoulders slumped. “But school’s sooooooo boring.”

“Agreed. But it’s almost perfect training for a career at Smileyburgers.”

“But I’m not going to work at Smileyburgers.”

“You will if you do nothing much at school.”

“Da-woo!!” yelled Stevie, jumping up and down. In the absence of anything more productive to do, he grasped large handfuls of scrambled egg and squeezed until it oozed between his fingers like yellow toothpaste.

“Yag,” said Jerome, “and you tell me off for picking my nose!”

“It’s not the picking,” explained Jack, who secretly liked a good dig himself and didn’t want to be a hypocrite, “it’s the eating.”

Talk abruptly halted as Ben walked into the kitchen looking very self-conscious in his college orchestra uniform. He was sixteen, gangly and awash in a toxic sea of hormones. He had joined the orchestra less through the love of music than the love of Penelope Liddell, who played the harp.

“It’s those slender fingers plucking on the strings,” he had explained while confessing the object of his adoration to Jack a few days before, “and that concentration! Hell’s teeth! If she looked at me like that, I think I’d explode.”

“Well, mind you don’t,” Jack had replied. “It could be very messy.”

Ben was actually a very competent tuba, but since the tuba player is about as far away as you can get from the harp and the tuba doesn’t exactly ooze macho sexuality — except, perhaps, to another tuba — he had joined the percussion section to bring him closer to the object of his affections. He dragged two heavy cases out from the cupboard under the stairs and put on a parka.

“Do you need a hand with those?” asked Jack.

“Thanks, Dad. My ride will be here soon.”

A car horn sounded outside.

Jack tried to pick up one of the cases, but it was so heavy it felt as though it had taken root.

“What the hell have you got in here?”

“We’re doing Il Trovatore,” Ben explained. “Mr. Moore said we should experiment — so I’m using real anvils and real hammers.”

Between the two of them, they managed to drag the cases across the floor and heave them over the doorstep and down the path to the trunk of the waiting car, which sank alarmingly.

Half an hour later, Madeleine came back down dressed in a strapless red ball gown kept up by nothing but faith. All eyes were on her as she did a twirl for them in the kitchen.

“How do I look?”

“Whoa!” said Pandora who had just walked in. “Maddy’s in girl clothes!”

“Beautiful,” said Megan wistfully, clasping her hands together and holding them at her chin, dreaming of a time when she could dress up in ball gowns, go to parties and be kissed by a handsome prince — although she would accept a knight, if there were problems regarding availability.

“It’s very bright,” was Jerome’s only comment.

“Da-woo,” said Stevie.

“I thought you were the one doing the photographing,” said Jack. “I mean, how do you actually get in your own photographs? Press the shutter and then run around really fast?”

“It is the Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit, darling. While I’ve still the tattered remnants of youth and good looks, I might as well use them to drum up some work. Debs’ parents pay good money for portraits.”

“Well,” said Jack, “just don’t allow yourself to be chatted up by Lord Spongg — you know what a reputation he has.”

“I have every intention of being chatted up by Lord Spongg,” she responded with a smile. “I need all the work he can give me.” She curled a hand around Jack’s chin and neck, brought her lips to his ear and whispered, “These dresses are notoriously tight, and the zips are always faulty. You may have to tear it from my body.”

She kissed him, smiled and withdrew.

“I’ll wait up.”

“Oh, no need for that is there?” she returned playfully.

“Yes.”

She laughed and was suddenly a burst of energy.

“Megan, get your shoes on — NOW! If you can’t find a woggle, use an elastic band. The rest of you behave yourselves with Jack. I’ll be back after your bedtime.”

She kissed them all, grabbed her camera bag, which spoiled the illusion of sophisticated socializing, and was out of the door in a flash.

“Da-woo,” murmured Stevie, clearly impressed.

It was after ten, the younger children were all tucked in, and Jack and Pandora were sitting in the living room. The telly was on, although they weren’t paying it much attention, and Pandora was doing some revising, as several textbooks on theoretical particle physics were strewn around the sofa. Pandora was almost twenty and still at the sort of age where she didn’t really care what her father thought of her life choices and wanted him to know it — which naturally meant she cared a great deal what he thought but wasn’t going to let on. And Jack, for his part, couldn’t help giving her advice that he thought valuable and pertinent but was actually useless — mostly because it had been a long time since he was her age, and he hadn’t been able to figure it out either. But there were small triumphs. For a start, Pandora didn’t have any piercings or tattoos. This was partly due to Jack’s relaxed attitude, something that took the wind out of her semirigged rebellious sails. Sometimes she thought Jack was using reverse psychology on her, which meant that she should double-bluff his double bluff, and she might have done so except that the idea of a tattoo or a piercing made her feel queasy.

Jack stared blankly at his crossword. It was the 344th consecutive puzzle he had failed to complete. A new personal best.

“Hey,” said Pandora, “tough break on the three-pigs case. I’m a committed holier-than-thou-meat-is-murder-bore-the-pants-off-all-and-sundry vegetarian, and even I thought they should have been served up boiled with new potatoes, peas and parsley sauce.”

“Well,” replied Jack, taking a swig of beer, “we thought we might have got Gerald — that’s Little Pig A — to squeal on his elder brothers for a lesser sentence, but he wouldn’t play ball. How’s school?”

“I’m nearly twenty, Dad. I don’t go to school anymore. It’s called uni-ver-sity, and it’s good. Can you help me with my quantum-particle homework?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Here’s the question: ‘Solve the Schrödinger equation explicitly in the case of a particle of mass m in a constant Newtonian gravitational field: V=mgz.’”

Jack thought for a moment.

“Definitely B.”

“Eh?”

“Box B, unless the previous answer was box B, in which case it’ll be box C. This is multiple choice, yes?”

Pandora laughed. “No, Dad. Particle physics is a little more involved than that.”

“Box A?”

She slapped him playfully on the arm. “Dad! You are so no help at all!”

The local news came on. There was a piece about Chymes and the Peabody case, of course, and more about the Jellyman’s visit on Saturday to dedicate the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center. There was also a bit about the Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit, live from the Déjà Vu Ballrooms. They both craned their necks to catch a glimpse of Madeleine in her red dress and saw her lurking in the back of a shot where Lord Randolph Spongg, the CEO of Spongg Footcare PLC, was doing a piece for the live broadcast.

“…as well as representatives from Winsum and Loosum’s and QuangTech, we’ve seen a galaxy of Reading celebrities tonight,” said the handsome peer cheerfully, “in order to help us raise funds to replace the outdated and woefully inadequate St. Cerebellum’s mental hospital. We are very grateful indeed to Mr. Grundy, Mr. Attery Squash, the Blue Baboon, Mr. Pobble, Lola Vavoom and of course the Dong, who so generously agreed to entertain us with his luminous nose.”

“Ah, yes, Miss Vavoom,” said The Toad reporter as he crossed to the retired star of screen and stage, “so good to see you out in Reading society again. How do you react to the epithet ‘formerly gorgeous’?”

“Like this,” she said, downing the reporter with a straight right to the jaw. There was a cry, a flash going off, and they cut the live broadcast back to a bemused anchorman who hid a smile, told a heartwarming story about the efforts of the fire service to rescue a kitten stuck in a pipe, then introduced Reading’s favorite weather-girl, Bunty McTwinkle.

“Reading will once again experience a cloudy day with little sign of sunshine,” said Bunty without much emotion, “a bit like living inside Tupperware.”

Pandora keyed the remote, and the TV went silent.

“I was hoping I might make the local news this time,” said Jack despondently, “even if it was to be trashed.”

Ben finally drifted in at eleven and made a little too much noise. A light switched on in Mr. and Mrs. Sittkomm’s bedroom, which was always a bad sign. Jack beckoned him in as quickly as he could.

“Have you been drinking?”

“To excess. I had two shandies.”

“Almost an alcoholic. How did it go with the harpist? Did she like your anvils?”

“Oh, her,” he sniffed, taking off his parka and chucking it in the cloakroom. “She’s going out with Brian Eves, who plays the tuba. She says it’s the sexiest instrument in the brass section.”

“Oh, Ben,” said Jack, “I’m so sorry!”

“Shit happens,” he replied, making his way toward the staircase, his room and the welcome oblivion of low-alcohol-induced lovelorn unconsciousness. “Yes indeed, shit happens.”

Jack went to bed at midnight and was awoken in the small hours by Madeleine, who came to bed smelling of champagne, canapés and hard work.

“Guess what!” she whispered, not at all quietly in his ear.

“The house is on fire?”

“No. I snapped Lola Vavoom slugging a journalist. It’ll be on the front page of The Mole and The Toad tomorrow. She packs quite a punch — they had to wire his jaw!”

Despite the feisty and provocative talk earlier about the red dress’s having to be torn from her body, they both fell fast asleep doing nothing about it. Besides, it was rented.