“LOCKED ROOM” MYSTERY HONORED

The entire crime-writing fraternity yesterday bade a tearful farewell to the last “locked room” mystery at a large banquet held in its honor. The much-loved conceptual chestnut of mystery fiction for over a century had been unwell for many years and was finally discovered dead at 3:15 A.M. last Tuesday. In a glowing tribute, the editor of Amazing Crime declared, “From humble beginnings to towering preeminence in the world of mystery, the ‘locked room’ plot contrivance will always remain in our hearts.” DCI Chymes then gave a glowing eulogy before being interrupted by the shocking news that the ‘locked room’ concept had been murdered —and in a locked room. The banquet was canceled, and police are investigating.

—Editorial in Amazing Crime, February 23, 2001

Jack got to the station canteen for breakfast. He sat at an empty table and stared absently out the window at the traffic on the Inner Distribution Road. The IDR, as it was known, had been built to alleviate traffic but had exacted a price that the town could ill afford. Several fine streets had been demolished to build it, the heart ripped out of the old town. The whole scheme had rendered itself almost redundant when the M4 took most of the through traffic from the A4, a route that was, despite the huge road-building program, still bottlenecked.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Baker. How are you?”

It was definitely the wrong sort of question to ask a hypochondriac, but it was too late.

“Not so bad, sir,” he replied, taking a plastic carton out of his knapsack and depositing a bewildering array of pills of all shapes, colors and sizes in a saucer. Jack could have sworn most of them were either Smarties, Skittles or Tic-Tacs, but he didn’t say so.

“The thing is,” continued Baker after swallowing several blue pills and knocking them back with a purple, “I woke up this morning with a runny nose and was, to tell the truth, rather worried.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Yes. I thought for a moment it might be TB, leprosy or tertiary syphilis.”

Jack humored him, for this was a common source of conversation with Baker. “I thought they checked you for leprosy last year?”

“They did, so it couldn’t be that. TB was out of the question, because I didn’t have a cough, and syphilis wasn’t likely, because I’m rather too young to have it end-stage without the bit in the middle.”

“So it was just a cold, then?”

“It certainly looked like it, but then I thought that maybe it wasn’t mucus coming out of my nose at all.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“No, it could be cerebrospinal fluid. I played football on Sunday and had a hefty tackle. It’s possible that I might have a fractured skull.”

“Is that really likely?”

Baker looked down and took a few more pills. “No, not really.”

He looked up again. “Sir, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but Gretel, Ashley and myself would be more than happy to put in a bit of overtime if it meant having another crack at the three pigs.

I know they got off the murder rap and double jeopardy and all that, but if there is a chance of getting them with ‘intentional wounding’ or ‘boiling a large pot without due care and attention,’ then we’re up for it.”

“You know what Briggs says about NCD overtime.”

“We weren’t thinking of getting paid, sir.”

Jack looked at Baker, who was staring at him earnestly. He had even forgotten to sniffle, and the collection of pills and vitamin supplements he was making his way through was, for the moment, untouched.

“I appreciate that, Baker, but I think we’re going to have to just walk away from the porkers. We lost.”

A voice made them both turn.

“I suppose you think this is clever?”

It was Briggs, and he didn’t look very happy.

“Sir?”

Briggs slapped a copy of The Owl on the table in front of him.

“Page eight, Jack,” said Briggs testily. “Page eight, column four.”

Jack turned to the page Briggs had indicated. “‘Splotvian Minister of Antiquities Demands Return of Sacred Gonga’?”

“Below that.”

“‘Nursery Favorite Dies in Wall-Death Drama. Police Ask: Was He Pushed?’”

“It’s a good job it’s only on page eight,” said Briggs angrily. “If you’re trying to whip up some public interest to keep your precious division, I won’t be pleased. And I don’t think the budgetary committee will take to it very well either.”

“I didn’t breathe a word, sir.”

“Then who is asking if he was pushed?”

“No one. Media speculation. He killed himself. Very depressed around Easter—we spoke to his doctor and ex-wife, who confirmed it.”

“When do I see some paperwork?”

“As soon as I get a pathologist’s report from Mrs. Singh. There’s no story, so I think this article will be the first and last.”

Briggs seemed to accept this and nodded sagely. “Very well. Good work, Spratt—and not a dead giant in sight.”

“That’s not funny, sir.”

“Isn’t it? One other thing: Someone’s been spreading a practical joke around the station that you’ve applied to join the Guild of Detectives. Any idea who’s behind it?”

“It’s not a practical joke, sir.”

Briggs looked nonplussed for a moment, then said, “Does Friedland know?”

“What’s it got to do with him?”

“Everything. He’s on the Guild of Detectives’ selection committee for Southern England and probably won’t take very well to someone else at Reading attempting to steal his headlines. Still, he’s a fine and upstanding man. I expect he’ll view your application with all due impartiality.”

“I’m sure he will, sir.”

Briggs missed the sarcasm, stared at Baker and his pills, shook his head and then left, dictating a note to himself about using the offices vacated by the NCD as a possible trophy room for Chymes.

“What was that all about?” asked Mary as she walked up.

Jack shrugged and pointed at the newspaper.

“‘Mad Scientists Distill Pure Wag from Dog’?” she read.

“Above that.”

“Ah! ‘Nursery Favorite Dies in Wall-Death Drama.’”

“Read on.”

She cleared her throat and began: “‘Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery character and large egg, was found shattered to death beneath his favorite wall in the east of town. His generous donations to charity had made him a much-loved figure in Reading, and his death will be greatly mourned. Four-time giant killer Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, former assistant to the great Friedland Chymes until demoted for incompetence and more recently noted for his misguided attempt to convict the three pigs of murder, is in charge—”

“I get the picture,” interrupted Jack. “Sounds like Chymes is trying to make life difficult for me already.”

Mary was silent. Jack was doubtless correct. Chymes would have every reason to keep the story current and trash him if he was planning on wrestling the case from him. She swallowed hard and wondered if Jack was at all suspicious that she was, for all intents and purposes, working for Friedland. She looked across at him, but he was occupying himself by trimming all the fat from his bacon.

“Don’t like fat?”

“Hate it. My first wife loved it. It made us the perfect couple. All that was left of the joint was a bone.”

“Loved fat?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes. Never ate anything else.”

“Isn’t that very unhealthy?”

“Very. She died.”

Mary covered her mouth in embarrassment and went a deep shade of crimson.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay. It was ten years, seven months and three days ago. I’m completely over it—” He stopped talking as his mobile rang. It was Mrs. Singh. He listened intently for a moment and glanced at Mary and Baker in turn, then told her they’d be over straightaway.

Mary looked uneasy.

“Got a problem with morgues, Mary?”

“No, sir,” she answered truthfully. “I have no problems with morgues. It’s the dead people in them that I’m not too keen on.”

“Good,” said Jack cheerfully. “Finish up your deviled kidneys and we’ll go and view some corpses.”

The smell of formaldehyde reached them long before they had moved past the security desk of the small Victorian building two streets away, and the odor rose to a pungent crescendo as they pushed open the glass-paneled swinging doors. The pathology lab was set out open plan and was lit by a multitude of strip lights that filled the room with a harsh, unnatural glare. In the center of the lab were four large, white-glazed dissecting tables with a stainless-steel trolley next to each laden with saws, scalpels and other instruments the use of which Mary didn’t really want to try to guess. A microphone dangled from the ceiling above each table, along with an angled theater lamp. It had been a quiet week; none of the tables had anyone on them—except Humpty. As they drew closer, they could see that Mrs. Singh and her assistant had both been busy reassembling Humpty’s shattered shell with surgical tape, the way one might hold a broken vase together while glue was drying.

Mrs. Singh looked up and smiled.

“So you’ve managed to do what all the king’s men couldn’t,” observed Jack in admiration.

An ordinary pathologist would have given Humpty the most cursory of glances, but Mrs. Singh was different. Nursery Crime Division work was all hers, and she wasn’t going to let any possibility of criminal activity slip through her fingers.

“Quite a puzzle,” breathed Mary.

“With one hundred and twenty-six pieces,” replied Mrs. Singh proudly. “They say dead men can’t talk, but this one has spoken volumes. Take a look.”

Humpty was lying on his side with his face away from them. She pointed with a forefinger at the area of his lower back, just next to a little lion tattoo. There was a patchwork of much smaller fragments with the cracks radiating out in different directions.

Jack raised his eyebrows. “This is where he landed?”

She said nothing but beckoned him around to the front and pointed to a more random pattern of breakage just above Humpty’s left eye, this time with no defined center. A myriad of small pieces made up what seemed to be a second small impact area.

“So he bounced, right?”

“No. Your turn, Mary.”

Mrs. Singh looked at Mary, who was taken aback; she wasn’t expecting this to be a quiz.