Jack noticed that the music had become louder, so he slowly followed its source and, rounding a corner, found Ffinkworth playing the violin.

“Hello, sir,” the butler said genially, “have you found his lordship yet?”

“N-no!” stammered Jack, running a shaking hand through his hair, noticing the silver salver with his undrunk Madeira upon a small table close by. “How did you manage that?”

“Sir?”

“The violin. I heard it when I spoke to you in the hall!”

“Ah,” said Ffinkworth, standing up and untensioning his bow. “As sir has probably found out, Castle Spongg is rarely what it seems. The usual physical laws of time and motion appear to have forsaken its twisting corridors. Caligari was indeed a genius, you know, sir.”

He picked up the salver with the Madeira on it and offered it to Jack. “If sir has changed his mind?”

“No thanks, I—”

“If you will excuse me, sir, I have work to do. If you want to know where his lordship is, I should try the dining room. It is down the corridor on your left.”

Jack looked down the corridor. It seemed to go on forever. When he looked back, Ffinkworth was gone, whisked away through some secret passage that the infernal place seemed to be honeycombed with. A sound made him turn, and farther down the corridor, just opposite a billiard table screwed to the wall with a game apparently in the middle of play, were two large double doors. One of them creaked, and Jack stiffened. He walked slowly up and put his head round the door. There was no one inside, so he entered.

It seemed to be a dining room of some sort. The ceiling was elaborately decorated with plaster figures of cherubs at a feast, and the walls were covered with a deep red patterned silk. The room was dominated by a large oak table around which sat twelve matching chairs. On one wall, the wall above the door behind him, there was a painting depicting the Relief of Mafeking. On the other side was a large mirror that perfectly reflected the room, painting, table and everything else. Jack was moving slowly across the room when he noticed something that made his heart turn cold. The mirror reflected the room perfectly—but for one thing. Jack had no reflection. As he stood staring into the mirror and trying to make some kind of logical sense of it, he saw the door open behind him in the reflection. He turned to see Ffinkworth walking in with some silver candelabras that had just been polished. Jack turned back to the mirror. Ffinkworth was clearly reflected holding the candelabras, yet Jack was not. He felt a cold hand grasp his heart, and his throat went dry.

“Can I be of any assistance, sir?”

“My reflection, Ffinkworth—where is it?” he gasped, fear tightening his chest.

“I believe, sir, that it may be found in the mirror.”

Ffinkworth stood next to Jack and lifted his arm. His reflection did the same—but was alone in that huge mirror image of the room.

“Can you not see yourself, sir?” asked Ffinkworth with annoying calm.

“No, damn it,” replied Jack, his temper rising. “What’s going on?”

“I regret, sir, that I have no idea. To my mind the mirror seems to be functioning perfectly.”

Jack took a step closer, his voice dropping to a low snarl. “Listen—”

“I have been instructed to ask for your mobile telephone, sir.”

“What?”

“By his lordship. He has asked me to inform you that he will answer all your questions—and also release Constable Baker—if you will relinquish said instrument.”

Ffinkworth stared passively ahead, and Jack reluctantly handed him Mary’s phone.

“Thank you, Ffinkworth. That will be all.”

Randolph Spongg’s voice was unmistakable, and Jack could see him in the mirror. Spongg was behind him, leaning on the door-frame below the painting of the Relief of Mafeking. Jack turned to where he thought Spongg would be, but Randolph was not in the room with him. Spongg, like Jack, was only on one side of the reflection—the other side. Jack turned back to the mirror as Randolph laughed at his frustration and walked to where Jack’s reflection should have been, giving Jack the unnerving experience of gazing into a reflection that wasn’t his own.

“Hello, Jack,” Spongg said brightly. “Things aren’t going too well for me, are they?”

“What’s going on?”

Spongg laughed. “Things are rarely what they seem at Castle Spongg.” He looked around admiringly. “Caligari was a genius, you know.”

“Where’s Baker?”

“He’s fine. Not in any real danger.”

“Randolph Spongg, you are under arrest for the murder of Humpty Dumpty, William Winkie and Dr. Carbuncle. You do not have to say anything. But it may—”

Spongg laughed again. “You are tenacious, aren’t you, Jack? I had a terrier like you once. A Jack, too, a Jack Russell. It used to grab hold of something and wouldn’t let go. I admire that. You and I could have been good friends.” He picked an apple out of his pocket and bit into it.

Jack said, “The CCDC have declared both the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center and Andersen’s Farm category-A biohazard hot zones. Even without murder charges, you’re still looking at life imprisonment for the intentional spreading of a communicable disease. Why not make it easy for yourself?”

Spongg smiled. “I can hardly give myself up, Inspector. I don’t think prison would be terribly pleasant for me. I wouldn’t be allowed to take Ffinkworth, and the idea of twenty-five years in the clink without the benefit of pâté or grouse or champagne or any of the hundred and one luxuries that make our dreadful lives bearable seems positively depressing. Prison is for small people, Jack. I have no intention of going.”

“Why did you do it, Spongg?”

“Well,” began Randolph with a curious smile on his lips, “it all began when Tom Thomm appropriated the goose. He brought the goose to Humpty—Thomm worshipped him—and Humpty devised the scam with Dr. Carbuncle and myself. Without the cash to buy the shares, it would never have worked, but the potential profits were so large that Humpty just couldn’t resist it. He was never happy about the murders in Andersen’s Wood, but he was desperate to rebuild St. Cerebellum’s. No surprise: The old place had kept him sane for almost forty years. I don’t suppose any of us realize what it’s like to be a very large egg. Frightful, I imagine.”

He thought about this for a moment, smiled and continued. “Humpty got cold feet when he found out how potent Hercules had become. He was essentially a good man, and his heart wasn’t in it. I’d been planning to get rid of him for over a month.”

“And Dr. Carbuncle?”

“He supported Spongg’s and hated Winsum and Loosum, but murder wasn’t in his game plan. As soon as you started to investigate, he made a few assumptions and wanted to blow the whistle. Very regrettable. He was a brilliant research chiropodist.”

“And you, Spongg? Everything good that Spongg’s stood for. Why risk all that?”

Spongg’s eyes flashed angrily as he thumped his fist on the table.

“Don’t you understand? I did this to protect all that was great about Spongg’s. My factory, my workers, Castle Spongg, the Foot Museum, the two hundred charities I give money to every year. Winsum and Loosum would have taken all that and sold everything piece by piece. They had plans to turn this house into a theme park. A theme park! I did all this to stop the encroachment of damaging and selfish twenty-first-century business practices. Tell me honestly, Jack, which company did you prefer?”

“Yours.”

“Said without hesitation,” said Randolph triumphantly. “So you agree.”

“Not if murder is involved.”

Randolph threw his hands up in the air. “Murder?” he said in exasperation. “If I have to murder a few people, then that’s the price we have to pay. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, Mr. Spratt. You work in criminal law; you know the full meaning of that. To run the criminal-justice system, innocent people must, however regrettably, be occasionally sent to prison. It’s unfair, but it’s for the good of the many. To be efficient, the system can’t be fair; to be fair, it can’t be efficient. Business is the same. To make profits and benefit the community, then some people, however regrettably, will have to die. My Spongg charity homes look after thousands of retired people and offer better lives than they might enjoy under the government. How many lives do you think I’ve saved? Ten? One hundred? One thousand? When Spongg folds and the people I look after are cast out, a lot more people will die. You should look at the big picture.”

He swept his arms around, indicating the house, the grounds, everything. “All this, Mr. Spratt. How could I afford to let it go?” Spongg stared at him with a manic expression.

“That doesn’t explain how you’d get hold of Dumpty’s shares.”

As if on cue, the door opened behind Spongg. Lola Vavoom entered dressed in a sixties style catsuit. Jack looked around him, but he was still alone in the room; Randolph and Lola existed only in the reflection.

“Hello, Inspector dahling,” she cooed, threading an arm round Spongg’s waist. “I never liked the idea of a comeback, but for you I’d be willing to make an exception.”

She laughed as Jack looked at her in disbelief.

“You two…?”

“Yes, Inspector,” replied Lola. “Humpty and I were married; it wasn’t hard to persuade him—he adored me. I was to own thirty-eight percent of Spongg’s following my husband’s untimely death in the Zephyr, everyone catches verrucas with help from the Sacred Gonga, and before you can say Hallux valgus, Spongg’s is back on top!”

“Just through verrucas?”

“At first,” said Spongg. “Dr. Carbuncle was working on a corn serum to contaminate Britain’s water supply. Athlete’s-foot spore was to be introduced into the initial stages of sock manufacture. In under a year, Mr. Spratt, I could have bought out those sniveling dogs at Winsum and Loosum. Sold their company piecemeal as they were going to do to us and then fired all the executives after promising to take them on at increased salary—and then Lola and I could be married again!”

“Again?”

“Indeed,” Lola replied slowly, “it will be for the fifth time. Randolph was my third, seventh, tenth, fifteenth and soon my eighteenth husband. It’s an on-off sort of romance.”

They kissed aggressively on the lips.

“What about Willie Winkie? He saw you at Grimm’s Road?”