Lola Vavoom had been one of the greatest British actresses of the seventies and eighties. Discovered in 1969 at the cosmetics counter of Littlewoods, she was cast as Deirdre Furlong in the pilot episode of 65, Walrus Street. Leaving after four years, she made her break to the big screen as maverick cop Julie Hathaway in the highly successful The Streets of Wootton Bassett . A string of hits followed: The Adzuki Bean Murders , My Sister Used to Keep Geese and Fancy Free in Ludlow , for which she won a Milton. By the middle of the eighties she was commanding two million dollars a picture. Then disaster. A string of flops culminating in 1989’s The Eyre Affair and unceasing speculation over the contents of her bathroom cupboard caused her to withdraw completely. Her attendance at the 2004 Spongg Charity Benefit was her first public appearance in fourteen years.

—From Valleyhills Movie Guide

“How many?” asked Jack, who had taken five minutes out to eat a sandwich after his return from a brief trip to St. Cerebellum’s.

“Ninety-seven—and rising,” said Baker. “We don’t have time to take statements; Ashley and Tibbit are taking names and addresses and checking to see if they have any ‘pertinent information.’”

“Do they?”

“Not yet. They just want to help.”

News of Humpty’s death had elicited an unpredictable reaction among his ex-girlfriends, paramours, affairs and liaisons. The arrival of floral tributes outside Grimm’s Road had begun as soon as his death was announced, and they had now spilled into the road. There was talk of a candlelight vigil that night; the long trail of ex-lovers who wanted to help with the investigation had begun a few hours ago and now absorbed all available manpower, which was never that great to begin with. The one girlfriend they did want to speak to, however, had yet to turn up.

“Thanks, Baker. Tell Ashley and Tibbit to come straight to me if they hear anything potentially relevant.”

Baker nodded and picked up his mobile.

“So what did you discover?” Jack asked Mary, who had also grabbed a quick bite to eat.

“Not much,” she replied, looking at her notes. “Winkie’s supervisor at Winsum and Loosum’s was a man named Whelan, who said that Winkie was an excellent worker and much liked. The narcolepsy was a problem, but they worked around it—Winsum’s has a good record of employing people with health issues. I couldn’t fault them. There were several occasions when jokes could have been made at a narcoleptic’s expense, but no one made them.”

“Did he seem to them like the sort of man about to try to blackmail a killer?”

“He had been preoccupied and a bit jumpy—about what, no one could say. Are you still thinking Solomon Grundy might be involved?”

“I don’t think so. He laid all his cards on the table for us, and as you say, he’s got enough money to write off a two-million-pound scam without thinking. And as Briggs pointed out, it was fourteen years ago.”

Jack took a swig of tea. His trip over to St. Cerebellum’s had been equally inconclusive. Winkie’s doctor, a helpful chap named Dr. Murphy, told him that Winkie had been treated for narcolespy as an outpatient for nearly eight years, with sessions twice weekly. Winkie had missed the previous day’s session, so it was possible something was on his mind. Jack had also bumped into Dr. Quatt, who asked him how things were going. She had referred to Humpty as “Hump,” so Jack wondered whether perhaps she might not have a floral tribute for him, too.

Jack finished his sandwich, wiped his hands and mouth on a hankie and thought for a moment. All those women.

“By the way,” said Baker, “Giorgio Porgia said he’d see you tomorrow at nine A.M. sharp. ”

Jack snapped his fingers as he suddenly thought of something. “Of course. Baker, the apartment that Porgia gave to Humpty in return for the money laundering…?”

“What about it?”

“Do we have an address? I know Humpty lived over at the Cheery Egg with Laura for eighteen years, but he might have kept it on. He would have had to take all those girls somewhere. ”

Baker rummaged through paperwork and eventually came up with an address in one of Humpty’s old arrest reports. “Here it is,” he announced: “614, Spongg Villas.”

Humpty Dumpty’s old residence was in a large block of flats that had been built by the Spongg Building Trust in the early part of the century for Reading’s trendiest set. After a period of fashionable existence in the thirties and forties, its popularity had begun to wane. Expensive to maintain, the unprepossessing block had changed hands regularly for ever-decreasing amounts as successive landlords took the rent and never bothered to bring the place up to date or even carry out anything other than essential repairs. It had started out as a good address but was now a shabby wreck, an upmarket version of Grimm’s Road, its paint long since faded and the stucco rounded and softened by the corrosive action of the wind and rain.

Jack, Mary and Baker stepped into the musty hall and were greeted warmly by the ripe odor of decay. Out of two hundred apartments, they understood from the ancient doorman, who wore a stained bellhop’s uniform, barely eight were still occupied. The others had been boarded up and the basins, baths and toilets smashed to discourage squatters. The owner was a wealthy financier who was waiting for the last tenants to leave before he flattened the site and built a deluxe car park in its place. The doorman pointed the way up the stairs. The lift, he explained, had been out of order since 1972.

Humpty’s apartment was on the sixth floor, and as Baker led the way up the creaking circular staircase, Jack looked over the banisters and up at the domed skylight, whose myriad leaks he could see had been crudely repaired with waterproof tape. The banisters were rickety, and the dust of dry rot rose when they touched them. Padlocked doors greeted them on every landing.

“Which was his apartment again?” asked Jack.

“Number 614,” whispered Baker. “This way.”

He led them slowly down the hall, through fire doors that were wedged open and past corroded wall lights glowing with bulbs of minuscule wattage. Dust rose from the aged carpet as they approached Humpty’s front door. Jack pulled out his penlight to examine it more closely. They could see that the dirt and fluff had drifted against it; the doorknob had a small spider living on it, and everything was veiled with a thin coat of dust.

“No one’s been in here for rather a long time,” observed Baker.

A low, husky woman’s voice answered from behind them.

“About a year, actually, dahlings.”

They turned to see a woman of perhaps fifty-five standing dramatically in the shaft of light that shone out of her apartment door and pierced the stygian gloom of the corridor. She watched them all with a well-practiced air of laconic indifference, a half smile on her lips. Her hair was up in rollers, and she was smoking an expensive-looking cigarette. She had hastily covered her mouth with crimson lipstick and wore a lacy blouse that was unbuttoned enough to display a large volume of cleavage. Her shoulders were draped with a light tan cashmere sweater, and she wore a knee-length skirt that hugged her well-proportioned frame tightly. She paused for a moment, leaned on the doorframe and regarded them in a manner that might have been described as “smoldering sexuality” had she been twenty years younger.

“Sorry?” stammered Jack, quite taken aback by the curious vision that had appeared in front of them.

“About a year,” she repeated. “I called them about the shower, but they never came. They’re arseholes, you know, dahling.”

She inhaled on her cigarette and blew the smoke upwards. Jack walked over to her.

“I know who you are. You’re Lola Vavoom. You used to be big in movies.”

“I will treat that feed line with the contempt it deserves, dahling. I’d never tread on Norma’s toes. Who might you be?”

“Detective Inspector Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division. These are Detective Sergeant Mary and Constable Baker.”

She nodded in Mary’s direction but didn’t look at her. She put a languid hand out towards Baker, just out of his reach so he had to step forward to shake it.

“Detective Baker,” she cooed.

“Constable Baker,” he corrected with a small smile.

Despite her faded grandeur and worn poise, Lola had a certain grace and bearing that still made her extremely attractive.

“That’s a beautiful name. I had a lover named Baker once. He was hung like a hamster.”

“Is that good?” asked Baker, unsure of her meaning.

“It is if you’re another hamster.”

Jack managed to turn a laugh into a cough. Baker blushed, but Jack quickly took charge of the situation.

“Miss Vavoom—what are you doing here?”

“Here, dahling?” she replied with a smile. “Why, I live here!”

“We thought you’d be in Hollywood… or Caversham Heights at the very least,” added Mary, who remembered seeing Lola performing Anthrax! live when she was a little girl.

“Hah!” Lola spat contemptuously. “Being waited on by an army of cosmetic surgeons? No thanks. What you see is what I am. I’ve not had my boobs done or my arse lifted, no nips, no tucks. No ribs removed, nothing. Those little strumpets we see on the silver screen today are mostly bathroom sealant. They buy their breasts over the counter. ‘What would you like, honey, small, medium or large?’ They give us stick insects and tell us it’s beauty. If someone of their size went for an audition in my day, she’d have been shown a square meal and told to come back when she was a stone heavier. What’s wrong with curves? Anyone over a ten these days is regarded not as an average-sized woman but a marketing opportunity. Cream for this, pills for that, superfluous hair, collagen injection, quick-weight-loss diets. Where’s it going to end? We’re pressured to expend so much money and effort to be the ‘perfect’ shape, when that shape is physically attainable by only one woman in a million. It’s the cold face of capitalism, boys and girls, preying on misguided expectations. Besides, I always found perfection an overrated commodity.”

Her voice had risen as she spoke, topping her tirade on a high C. She paused and collected herself, then continued in a normal voice.

“Sometime I’ll make a comeback, and when I do…”