The Big Over Easy

“So they fire from here three times, hear the person slump in the shower and shoot twice more?”

Mrs. Singh stood up. “I’d say that’s about the tune of it. Get Skinner to have a look. I’ll leave the corpse there until he’s done.” She stared down at the body. “Seems hard to believe that a shower could be run for a year. Didn’t anyone complain?”

“Next-door neighbor. Lola Vavoom—”

“The actress?”

“The same. She complained, but they ignored her. No one lives below. It’s a mess down there, too. The damp has got into everything.”

Mrs. Singh was deep in thought, but not, as Jack found out, about the corpse.

“Lola Vavoom, eh?” she said excitedly. “I was about the only person who liked My Sister Used to Keep Geese, and my husband and I saw Fancy Free in Ludlow eight times. I must get her autograph.”

She hurried off, leaving them both staring at the shower curtain.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Jack.

“Mrs. Dumpty?”

“Bingo. First three shots at abdomen level. Humpty was about four foot six. If she thought he was in the shower, that’s where she would have aimed.”

“What did Mrs. Dumpty say in her suicide note?” mused Mary.

“‘I went to his home and prayed for God to forgive me as I pulled the trigger.’”

“Only when we came around to interview her,” continued Mary,

“she didn’t know we were investigating something that had happened that morning—she must have thought we’d just discovered the body.”

“It explains why Dumpty had been lying low,” added Jack. “He obviously didn’t want her to have a second go at him.”

He stared at the skeleton in the shower basin.

“I reckon he’d only just discovered Tom Thomm’s body when Lola saw him.”

“Why didn’t he report it?” asked Mary.

“Because,” said Jack simply, “he was up to no good—and up to no good big time. But it still doesn’t tell us where Humpty had been living this past year.”

“So… are we any closer to who killed Humpty?”

“We know they used a .44-caliber handgun, that it’s probable Winkie saw them do it and—” He thought for a moment. “And that’s about it.”

The rain had stopped by the time they stepped out of the building. The sky had darkened even though it was barely midafternoon, and cautious motorists had switched on their headlights, causing the wet road to glisten. The doorman, inspired by all the activity, had put his pillbox hat on at a jaunty angle and saluted as they walked past.

“Briggs called,” said Baker as he saw them to the Allegro.

“Let me guess. Press conference?”

“In one.”

30. Another Press Conference

CRIME BOSS JAILED

Notorious racketeer and underworld crime boss Giorgio Porgia was found guilty yesterday on 208 counts of “undertaking home improvements with menaces.” The court heard that Porgia and his gang would routinely use threats, violence and intimidation to sell unwanted home improvements to frightened residents. Loft conversions were carried out where no loft had been; double glazing was replaced up to seven times on the same property, and houses were unnecessarily rewired using string. Porgia was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison, having already pleaded guilty to token charges of wanton lack of taste, poor color harmony and badly aligned wallpapering. He was also banned for life from owning a conservatory.

—From The Toad,

March 2, 1984

“…but what was actually said at that fateful tea party, it was impossible to ascertain,” continued Chymes while the pressroom stared at him, hanging on his every word, “until I devised a forensic technique which I call ‘cake-crumb scatter-pattern identification.’ This works on the principle that if someone eats cake while talking, the crumbs are ejected from the mouth at different rates according to the syllables of the words spoken. By analyzing the pattern of crumbs on the tablecloth, I was able to deduce that the conversation was not about the weather, as Mrs. Pitkins claimed, but the subject of the misdiagnosis of botulism poisoning, a line of questioning that we were able to bring to our suspect, who soon confessed everything in a tearful scene that made a fitting end to the whole painful inquiry.”