PRINCE SOUGHT AFTER SLAYING

Police were called to Elsinore Castle yesterday to investigate the unnatural death of one of the King’s closest advisers. Married, a father of two, Mr. Polonius was discovered stabbed and his body hidden under the stairs to the lobby, although fibers recovered from his wound match a wall hanging in the Queen’s bedroom. DI Dogberry, fresh from his successful solving of the Desdemona murder, told us, “We are eager to integrate a Prince who was absurd in the area shortly after.” Sources close to the King tell us that Prince Hamlet has been acting erratically ever since the unexpected yet entirely natural and unsuspicious death of his father eight weeks before.

—Extract from the Elsinore Tatler, June 16, 1408

It was raining hard when Jack, Mary and Tibbit pulled up at the perimeter of Palmer Park, a sports field and public amenity site to the east of town. A uniformed officer in a raincoat pointed them towards a white scene-of-crime tent set up behind the grandstand. The rain had discouraged all onlookers, and the only member of the public visible was a lone runner who plodded around the track, seemingly oblivious to the downpour.

“Tibbit, start on some house-to-house, will you? I want to know if anybody saw anything.”

Tibbit took out his notepad and walked over to the row of houses that faced the field.

“How far are we from Grimm’s Road?” asked Mary as they trudged across the wet grass.

“A couple of hundred yards. The other side of that road.”

The immediate area around the crime scene had been taped off. Shenstone was the Scene of Crime Officer, and he had conveniently rigged a narrow “exit and entrance” walkway delineated by white tape so they could all come and go without destroying any potential footprints. Mary started to talk to the officer first on the scene, who was relieved that it was an NCD case; it meant a lot less paperwork.

“Hello, Shenstone,” said Jack. “What have you got?”

Shenstone stood up from where he had been examining the ground.

“Good morning, sir. I thought this one might be under your jurisdiction.” He pointed at the ground. “Some healthy footprints, but nothing exciting—a size-ten Barbour wellie by the look of it. But what seems odd is that the person in the wellies has tried to obliterate some of the evidence. You can see where they’ve made an effort to scour the ground.” He pointed again. “Just there… and again, over there.”

“So two people, one of whom might have had distinctive shoes?”

“Something like that.”

Jack thanked him and stepped into the white tent. Winkie’s body was lying facedown in the mud. His nightgown and nightcap were soaking wet and clung to his pale white flesh. The grass and mud around him were darkly stained with blood, and a candlestick was on the ground next to him. His hands had already been bagged, and Mrs. Singh and her assistants were just about to turn him over.

Jack crouched down next to the pathologist, glad for the protection the tent could offer from the rain.

“Hello, Jack,” said Mrs. Singh cheerfully. “You certainly know how to show a girl a good time. Know him?” She leaned back so he could get a good look at the body.

“His name’s William Winkie. Lived next door to Humpty over at Grimm’s Road. How did he die?”

“We’ll know soon enough.”

She gave a few instructions to her assistants, and they gently rolled the body over. It was not a pretty sight. His eyes were still wide open, an expression of stark terror etched on his features. The cause of death was obvious. Jack looked away, but Mrs. Singh leaned closer. To her this wasn’t just a human body but a riddle in need of a solution.

“One slash, very powerful and very deep, from right collarbone to halfway down the midthorax. They even managed to split his sternum.”

“Ax?”

“I think not. A broadsword or samurai weapon would be more likely. A cut this deep needs to have a lot of momentum behind it. He died from shock and blood loss, probably between three and six A.M. The assailant came from the front and was violently aggressive in the attack, but controlled. One slash and no more. Was Mr. Winkie part of the Humpty investigation?”

“Not really, but it was from his backyard that Humpty’s fatal shot was fired.”

Mrs. Singh raised her eyebrows. “That would make sense of what he’s holding. Take a look.”

Jack looked closely at the dead man’s fist. Held tightly between his finger and thumb were the corners of what looked like pieces of paper.

“Several fifty-pound notes,” she said helpfully.

“Idiot,” muttered Jack.

“He can’t hear you,” replied Mrs. Singh, busying herself with her task as the photographer took some pictures.

“What makes pathologists so facetious, Mrs. Singh?”

She smiled. “Pathologists are just happy people, Jack.”

“Oh, yes? And why’s that?”

“No possibility of malpractice suits for one thing.” She looked closer at Winkie’s mouth and murmured, “What have we here?”

She pushed his mouth open, had a look with a penlight and closed it.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t see that again.”

Mary stepped into the tent, glanced at the corpse, muttered “Oh my God,” held her hand over her mouth and stepped out.

“See what again?”

“They split his tongue.”

“Porgia,” muttered Jack.

“A classic Porgia MO,” agreed Mrs. Singh. “I should call the dogs’ home if I were you.”

“Mary?”

“Yes?” came Mary’s voice from outside the tent.

“Call the Reading Dog Shelter and tell them to set aside any anonymous offerings of scraps they might receive.”

Mary didn’t quite understand what was going on but flipped open her mobile and called Ops to get the number.

“Porgia?” repeated Jack with incredulity. “Is there anything else?”

“I’ll know more when I get him back to the lab,” said Mrs. Singh, “but while you’re here, I’m having a few problems with the dynamics of Humpty’s shell breakup.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know me—I’m never happy until I have all the answers. Skinner and I have been running a few tests using ostrich eggs. He set them up on the range and fired a .22 bullet through them and then used the data to try to build a usable model for egg disintegration. It’s as much for our own interest as for anything else, but we’re having trouble equating Humpty’s destruction with what we’re seeing on the range. It’s possible that one shot and a fall might not have been enough to destroy him. I’m looking for other evidence of postfall damage, but with one hundred twenty-six pieces, it’s tricky to tell. Mind you, ostrich eggs are like cannonballs, so it might not be a good test. I’ll know more in a day or two.”

“What about the analysis of his albumen?”

“Inconclusive—but then the Ox and Berks forensic labs are not really geared up for eggs. I’ve sent swabs from the inside of his shell to the SunnyDale Poultry Farm for an in-depth oological analysis. Couple of days, I imagine.”

Jack thanked her and stepped out of the tent. It had stopped raining, but the sky was dark and portended more to come.

“What news, Mary?”

“His wife has been informed,” she explained, still looking a little pale. “One of her relatives is going to go around and look after her.”

“Who found Winkie?”

“A man walking his dog. He’d seen the body earlier but thought it was just a bundle of rags. He alerted us at ten-thirteen.”

“Find out what time Winkie came off shift and have a word with his workmates. See if he was boasting of a windfall or something.”

“Connected to Dumpty’s murder?” asked Mary.

“Possibly. Here’s a workable scenario: Mr. Winkie did see something the night that Humpty was killed and tried to blackmail the killer, who then arranged the payoff and a permanent good-night for Wee Willie Winkie.”

“Why the bit about the tongue? Unnecessarily gruesome, isn’t it?”

“A lot of Nursery Crime work is gruesome, Mary—it comes with the turf. Tongue splitting was a Porgia crime family method of dealing with anyone they suspected of speaking to the authorities. ‘Telling tales,’ they called it. They used to cut it up so that all the dogs in the town could have a little bit.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“It’s classic NCD stuff. The thing is, Chymes and I jailed them all twenty years ago. But they were very powerful—perhaps they still are. Call Reading Gaol and get us an interview. I think we’ll have a word with Giorgio Porgia himself. What news, Tibbit?”

“Not much, sir. Nobody seemed to see anything. There was talk of a white van, though.”

“Box van?”

“They couldn’t tell.”

Jack and Mary left Tibbit to do more house-to-house and walked back to the Allegro in silence. Jack leaned on the car roof, deep in thought.

“Did you find anything on Solomon Grundy?”

“Clean as a whistle. Never been investigated for anything, no criminal record—not so much as a speeding fine. A trawl through the Mole archives shows a healthy ruthlessness in his business dealings, but nothing we didn’t know already.”

“Blast. Winkie worked at Winsum and Loosum’s, and Solomon Grundy had a two-million-pound motive to have Humpty killed.”

“It’s small beer to him, sir,” said Mary. “Ninth-wealthiest man in the country. He said he could lose two mil a week for ten years before it would worry him. It’s true—I’ve checked. He’s worth over a billion.”

“He could have been lying. He might actually be a very vindictive man indeed. Trouble is, Briggs says I can’t speak to him until this Jellyman Sacred Gonga thing has come and gone.”

“Then why don’t we speak to his wife? She might let something slip.”

“Are you kidding? I can’t think of a better way to piss off Grundy and Briggs.”

“Not really,” replied Mary. “Grundy told us we could ask his wife about his whereabouts the night Humpty died—and with his blessing.”

Jack smiled. This idea he liked.

“Good thought. I think we’ll do precisely that.”

As they drove away, Mary noticed that the passenger window had let rainwater leak onto her seat.

“Yes,” said Jack when she pointed it out, “it usually does that.”