Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

Here lies a thief, Tom Jones by name,
Breaking-and-entering was his game.
Jimmy a window, picklock a door,
Climb up a drain to an upper floor,
Render a burglar alarm quite mute
Before breaking in to gather his loot,
Squirm through a duct, cut through a fence:
Tom’s knowledge of break-ins was truly immense.
He could break his way into a store or a house,
Making no more noise than the quietest mouse.
Inside, he’d quickly collect in his bag
The creme de la creme of available swag—
And no need to wonder what Tom would do next: it
Was merely to make an unnoticed exit,
And fencing his loot (here the conscience recoils!)
Live high on the hog from his ill-gotten spoils.
And so he existed for several years
Without any failures, without any fears,
Until one summer midnight a curious cop
Espied him leaving a jewelry shop
With a small briefcase and a casual air
Of perfectly genuine savoir faire.
The cop thought, Midnight? It doesn’t seem right
That a jeweler is working till so late at night.
And then the detective saw something more:
The broken glass pane in the shop’s front door,
And he realized, at this second look,
That he had encountered a bona-fide crook.
Well, Tom was convicted and sentenced to jail,
Where his mood turned bitter, his life turned stale—
Until he and his cellmate (imprisoned for rape)
Decided to see if they couldn’t escape.
And they made a first-priority point
Of a breakout from their dismal joint.
So they summoned the jailer and gave him a knock
And stole his keys to their cell and the block,
And although their progress was painfully hard
They made it as far as the exercise yard,
Where, alas, a searchlight of blinding power
Revealed their flight to a guard in the tower
And one of the guards called, “Hold it! Freeze!
Or I’ll cut you off above the knees!”
But Tom and his cellmate didn’t obey—
They desperately ran for the yard’s gateway.
The guard’s gun chattered, it belched out lead
Until both the felons fell down dead.
So here lies Tom Jones, R.I.P.,
Whose simple epitaph shall be:
At break-ins and entering he was the best,
But at breakouts and exiting he flunked the test.

Snowball by Reginald Hill