Jack shook his head and staggered backwards, his hand falling onto the shaft of an ax that was resting in a block of wood. He knew what had to be done. He hobbled into the shed, rummaged under the broken wood and found his father’s old chain saw. He flicked the switch and pulled on the cord. It didn’t even fire. He pulled again and again as he walked around to the side of the beanstalk facing the road. If he felled it onto his mother’s house, he’d never hear the end of it. On the fourth pull, the chain saw burst into life, and the harsh staccato roar filled the quiet night. The chain saw bit easily into the hard stalk, and he had soon cut out a wedge and then swapped sides to make the final cut. He was halfway through and had already felt a few promising cracks and groans when there was a loud concussion, some sparks, and the chain saw stopped dead. Jack didn’t realize what had happened until a voice made him turn.

“I underestimated you,” snarled Dr. Quatt.

She stood facing Jack with a smoking automatic and looked as though she would be only too happy to use it again.

“I get underestimated a lot,” replied Jack with a wince, as the pain from the thousand and one cuts and bruises he had sustained began to kick in, “and by better people than you.”

“Interfering fool!” she spat. “The bastard Jellyman has escaped. Ten long years of planning for nothing. Do you know how long it took me to engineer my little friend up there?”

“You just said. Ten years—”

“Don’t patronize me!” she screeched, her eyes flashing dangerously. “My research was only to save lives!”

“And Humpty? Who saved his life?”

“Humpty was an egg,” she retorted. “What is an egg for—if not to create life?”

“How about an omelette?” suggested Jack with a grimace as a muscle twinged uncomfortably in his back.

“Come here, my child,” called Dr. Quatt to the Humpty-beast, still halfway down the beanstalk, which creaked and groaned under its weight. “One more for you.”

“But Humpty was your patient!”

“And the worthy recipient of my greatest research project,” said Quatt with pride. “I was initially worried that night when the gunman shot him, but he was fine. I just had to help the little darling to hatch.”

Jack shivered. She was nastier and more inhuman than he had thought.

“He survived the fall, didn’t he?”

“Oh, yes. He recognized me, you know, and asked for help, so I picked up a chair leg—”

There was a loud, dull metallic clunk, and Dr. Quatt abruptly stopped talking and pitched heavily forwards onto her face. Mary had struck her a glancing blow on the back of the head with a shovel.

Jack’s legs collapsed from under him, and he sat on the ground against the garden swing. The stalk creaked ominously. Mary kicked away Quatt’s pistol before running up to him.

“Sorry, sir, but I thought we’d heard quite enough. Are you all right?”

“No, Mary, I feel like shit. I’ve just fallen a hundred feet and gone through a potting shed—and you need to get out of here.”

“Not without you.”

She tried to lift him, but he was surprisingly heavy, and weakened. He couldn’t stand.

“Go, Mary, before the—”

It was too late. The creature jumped the remaining fifteen feet and landed on Stevie’s tortoise-shaped sandbox with a crunch. It lashed its tail angrily and hissed menacingly at them both before looking down at the unconscious body of Quatt. It nudged her gently with its nose, made a quiet whining noise and then very tenderly picked her up. The beanstalk creaked and trembled as the stresses of the huge weight bore down on the badly weakened structure.

Mary grabbed the ax to use as a weapon, but Jack stopped her.

“Leave it,” he said shakily. “I think I know how this will all turn out. It’s an NCD thing.”

The beast hissed at them once more and then bounded clear over the garden fence with Quatt in its arms, snapping angrily at the officers who had just arrived. They weren’t armed, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they were.

“Tell them to leave it alone,” said Jack in a quiet voice.

“Step away from the beast!” yelled Mary. “It won’t get far—it’s an NCD thing.”

Jack nodded gratefully as the beanstalk cracked again, shook and gently started to fall, while the beast gathered speed in large strides down the road. It had almost reached the first police car and was about to leap over it to freedom when the beanstalk came crashing down on top of it, crushing the hapless creature and Dr. Quatt and scattering sleeping-bag-size bean pods around the neighborhood. The almighty thump reverberated through the ground, split the asphalt and lifted two drain covers. Four cars were cut virtually in half, and there was a spontaneous cacophony of car alarms.

“What do you know?” said Mary with admiration. “It got them!”

“That’s the beauty of Nursery Crime work,” said Jack, closing his eyes and smiling. “Things generally turn out the way you expect them to, even if the manner in which they do is a bit unpredictable.”

“Like who killed Humpty Dumpty?”

“Of course. Mrs. Dumpty thought she had shot him; Bessie thought she’d poisoned him. Grundy thought his hit man had got him, and Spongg wired his car. But none of them killed him, not even that lunatic Quatt. The giant beast that Humpty had become was killed by a man named Jack… when he chopped down a beanstalk.”

An ambulance picked its way through the outsized beans lying on the road and pulled up alongside the garden.

“You’re going to be okay, sir,” said Mary, yelling over her shoulder for a medic and placing her hand against a bad wound in his side.

“Call me Jack,” he whispered. “We’ve been through enough.”

“You’re going to be okay, Jack.”

“I’ll be honest, Mary—”

“You should call me by my first name too, Jack.”

“Sorry. I’ll be honest, Mary—”

“That’s better.”

“I thought you weren’t going to last the course.”

“Closer than you think. Y’know, I don’t know why, but I just feel that I belong here. Does that sound weird to you?”

“Nah,” said Jack. “I think Briggs, for all his faults, knew that when he sent you to me.”

“How do you think he knew?”

“I don’t know,” he replied with an almost imperceptible shrug as grateful unconsciousness, heavy and black, swept towards him. “Sometimes the name just fits.”

Humpty Dumpty was buried that June. Thirty thousand people turned up to see his ovoid coffin being borne through the town. Hundreds of those whom he had helped in the past paid floral tributes, and noted among the guests were the Jellyman’s personal aide-de-camp, Mary Mary and Jack Spratt.

Jack Spratt made a full recovery and returned to work at Reading Central. He was promoted to detective chief inspector and presented with the Jellyman’s Award for Outstanding Courage in the Face of Something Nasty. Despite numerous pleas from the Guild of Detectives, he has yet to join.

Mary Mary still works with DCI Spratt. The investigation that became known as “The Big Over Easy” was serialized in Amazing Crime Stories and is soon to be made into a TV series. She has still not yet managed to dump Arnold.

Lola Vavoom and Randolph Spongg were listed as “missing, presumed drowned.” Reports of sightings from Alice Springs to Chicago have been dismissed as “unsubstantiated.”

Sophie Muffet-Dumpty was written out of an early draft of this novel and does not appear.

Friedland Chymes ’s infamous “tactical withdrawal” from the attack on the Jellyman led to his retirement from the Oxford & Berkshire Constabulary. He is now president of the Most Worshipful Guild of Detectives.

The Goose was spirited away to a top-secret government research station. It contained only what you’d usually expect to find inside a goose and died on the operating table.

The Stubbs was real after all. Mr. Foozle is helping the police with their inquiries.

Mr. and Mrs. Grundy now live in Eastern Splotvia, which conveniently—and coincidentally, claim the couple—has no extradition treaty with Britain. They are doing well, and Mrs. Grundy is expecting their first child.

Otto Tibbit never worked with Jack again. He left the force and became a goose breeder, gold dealer and president of a charitable trust. He is currently writing a palindromic book entitled, predictably enough, D’neeht.

The Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center was opened to the public after prolonged decontamination. It attracted half a million visitors in the first six months and remains Reading’s number-one tourist attraction.

Prometheus and Pandora were married six months later. Prometheus gained British citizenship and permanent political asylum. A bolt of lightning hit the church during the ceremony, setting fire to the congregation and badly burning eight people. The event was described as “an act of God,” although no specific gods were mentioned.

Castle Spongg was given to the National Trust. It is open six days a week, ten until four, excluding Tuesdays and Christmas Day. Wheelchairs welcome; visitors to the revolving room please bring soft shoes.

The Nursery Crime Division was not disbanded and is still active to this day.