'Oh no,' croaked Jack, taking several sharp steps'back-aways. 'He's going to blow. Take cover, everyone.'

Whistling sounds came from Tommy, rising and rising in volume and pitch. Buttons popped from his triple-breasted suit, strange lumps bulged from his forehead and his shoulders began to expand. The laughter and applause in the audience died away. Horror and panic refilled the momentary void.

As Jack fell back from the stage the horde of rude crew pigs fell upon Jack. 'We'll teach you some manners,' snorted the one that Jack had recently sent packing.

And oh so quickly, as it always does, chaos reigned supreme.

The audience arose from their uncomfortable seats and made the traditional mad dash for the exits. The controller bawled instructions to the lighting pedallers, but the lighting pedallers were now dismounting and abseiling down ropes, eager to make their escape. Miss Muffett was being rapidly escorted from the stage by burly men in dark suits and mirrored sunglasses who all sported tiny earphones with mouth mic attachments. And as Jack vanished beneath a maelstrom of trotters, Little Tommy Tucker exploded.

On prime time TV.

Before a large viewing audience.

Although reruns of this particular show would top the ratings charts for many months to come, the only direct eyewitness to Little Tommy's spectacular demise was one Eddie Bear, Toy City private eye.

Knowing better than to risk being flattened by the stampeding audience and being incapable of assisting Jack in his travails against the rude crew pigs, Eddie had remained where he was, cowering in his seat. He had to put his paws right over his ears, though, as Tommy's high-pressure whistlings reached an ultrasonic level, which set toy dogs in the street outside howling. But Eddie had a ringside seat to watch the explosion.

It is another fact well known to those who know it well, and those who know it well do so through personal experience, that when you are involved in something truly dreadful and life-threatening, such as a car crash, the truly dreadful and life-threatening something appears to occur in slow motion. Many explanations have been offered for this: a sudden rush of adrenalin, precipitating a rapid muscle response, affording the individual the opportunity (however small) to take evasive action; an alteration in the individual's perception of time, which is something akin to a near-death experience, in which the individual's psyche, id, consciousness, or soul stuff, depending upon the chosen theological viewpoint, momentarily detaches itself from the individual in question, allowing the individual to experience the event in a different timeframe. Or the far more obvious, trans-perambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter, precipitating a flexi-tangential spatial interflux within the symbiotic parameters of existential functionalism.

But whether or not any of these actually apply to brains comprised entirely of sawdust is somewhat open to debate.

If asked whether he had watched the exploding of Little Tommy Tucker in what seemed to be slow motion, Eddie Bear would, however, answer, 'Yes, and it was not at all nice.'

Eddie watched the ghastly swellings, the vile expansions, the distortions of limbs and facial featurings, and then he saw the rending of flesh and shirt and blue silk Oh Boy! suit. And he saw the fragments of the gas-filled clockwork grenade that roared out of Tommy's shredded body. And whether it was adrenalous rush, or detached id, or pseudo-cosmic existential functionalism, Eddie managed to duck aside as metal shards and Tucker guts flew in his direction.

Not so, however, the wildly trottering rude crew pigs, who caught much shrapnel in their rubber rear ends.

As the crew pigs ran squealing and Jack, who had gone down fighting, came up prepared to do some more, Eddie raised his ducked head and saw something else.

And Eddie pointed with a paw and Jack looked up and saw it too.

Down through the hole in the ceiling it drifted, a tiny white and brown thing. The white of it was a parachute, the brown was a hollow chocolate bunny.

Now the mayhem hadn't lessened, because but a few short seconds had passed. The explosion had done nothing whatever to lessen the chaos; on the contrary, it had done everything to considerably increase it.

The fire alarm was ringing and the sprinkler system went into action. Water showered down upon the audience-turned-mob. The audience-turned-mob turned upon itself, and much of itself turned to other than itself; indeed, turned upon the rude crew pigs who were scrambling also to flee.

It was now a full-blown riot situation.

'This way.' Jack hauled Eddie after him and took off at a rush for the rear of the stage, leaping over spattered remains of the ex-supper singer. 'The killer's upstairs somewhere; we have to get after them.'

'Whoa!' went Eddie as Jack passed the painted sky backdrop and entered a backstage corridor. 'Slow down, Jack, think about this.'

'We have to get after the killer.'

'We don't have any weapons.'

'We'll improvise.'

'Have you gone completely insane?'

Jack dashed along the corridor. 'Let go of me,' cried Eddie. 'Put me down.'

Jack ceased his dashings and put Eddie down. 'The murderer may still be in the building,' he said. 'We have to find out; we have to do something.'

'No, Jack,' said Eddie. 'I can't.'

'You can't? Why?'

‘Jack, I just saw a man get blown to pieces. I think I'm going to be sick.'

'Then wait here,' said Jack. Til go alone.'

'No, don't do it, please.'

'But I might be able to catch them unawares.'

'Or you might walk straight into a trap. Let it go, Jack.'

'Are you sure?'

'You're very brave, but look at the state of you.'

'I'm fine,' said Jack.

'You're not, you're all beaten about.'

'Get away, they hardly laid a trotter on me.'

'Carry me back to the office, Jack.'

'Carry you? In broad daylight? What about your dignity?'

Til have to swallow that, I'm afraid.'

And then Eddie fainted.

Jack carried Eddie back to Bill Winkie's office. To spare his dignity, he hid the little bear beneath his trenchcoat.

In the office Jack splashed water on Eddie and slowly Eddie revived.

'That was most upsetting,' said Eddie. 'I didn't like that at all.'

'Are you feeling all right now?’ Jack asked.

'Yes, I'll be fine. Thanks for looking after me.'

'No problem,' said Jack. 'As long as you're okay.'

'It was a bit of a shock.'

'But let's look on the bright side,' said Jack.

'The bright side? What bright side?'

'Little Tommy Tucker went the way he would probably have wanted: live on stage before a cheering audience. Out on a high note and in a blaze of glory.'

'Are you trying to be funny?'

'Rather desperately so, yes.'

'Then please don't.' Eddie shook his head. 'I can't believe it. The killer did it, right in front of us. Right in front of the viewing public. How audacious can you get?'

'This killer is making a very big statement.' Jack settled down in Bill Winkie's chair. 'There's a very big ego involved here.'

'And we're always one step behind.'

'Well, we're bound to be. We don't know who this loony is going to butcher next. We don't have his hit list.'

'Hit list, a celebrity hit list,' said Eddie, thoughtfully. 'You might have something there.'

Eddie climbed onto the wreckage of Bill Winkie's desk. 'Right,' he said. 'Let's see what we have. We have Murder Most Foul: to whit, Mr Dumpty, Boy Blue, Madame Goose, Wibbly, Jack Spratt and now Tommy Tucker. I think we can exclude Madame Goose and Wibbly; they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's the others that matter. The old rich of Toy City. What is the common link?'