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  She opened the door wider, and Jack was immediately assailed by a powerful odor that reminded him of a strong Limburger cheese he had once bought by accident and then had to bury in the garden when the dustbinmen refused to remove it. Mrs. Hubbard’s front room was small and dirty, and all the furniture was falling to pieces. A sink piled high with long-unwashed plates was situated beneath yellowed net curtains, and the draining board was home to a large collection of empty dog-food cans. A tomcat with one eye and half an ear glared at him from under an old wardrobe, and four bull terriers with identical markings stared up at him in surprise from a dog basket that was clearly designed to hold only two.

  Mrs. Hubbard herself was a wizened old lady of anything between seventy-five and a hundred five. She had wispy white hair in an untidy bun and walked with a stick that was six inches too short. Her face was grimy and had more wrinkles in it than the most wrinkled prune. She stared at him with dark, mean eyes.

  “If you want some tea, you’ll have to make it yourself, and if you’re going to, you can make one for me while you’re about it.”

  “Thank you, no,” replied Jack as politely as he could. Mrs. Hubbard grunted.

  “Is he dead?” she added, looking at him suspiciously.

  “I’m sorry to say that he is. Did you know him well?”

  She shuffled across the room, her short walking stick making her limp far more than was necessary.

  “Not really,” she replied, settling herself in an old leather armchair that had horsehair stuffing falling out of its seams. “He was only a lodger.” She said it in the sort of way that one might refer to vermin. Jack wondered just how fantastically unlucky you would have to be to have this old crone as a landlady.

  “How long had he a room here?”

  “About a year. He paid in advance. It’s nonreturnable, so I’m keeping it. It’s very hard getting lodgers these days. If I took in aliens, spongers or those damnable statisticians, I could fill the place twice over, but I have standards to maintain.”

  “Of course you do,” muttered Jack under his breath, attempting to breathe through his mouth to avoid the smell.

  At that moment one of the dogs got out of its basket, pushed forth its front legs and stretched. The hamstrings in its hind legs quivered with the effort, and at the climax of the stretch the dog lowered its head, raised its tail and farted so loudly that the other dogs glanced up with a look of astonishment and admiration. The dog then walked over to Mrs. Hubbard, laid its nose on her lap and whined piteously.

  “Duty calls,” said Mrs. Hubbard, placing a wrinkled hand on the dog’s head. She heaved herself to her feet and shuffled over to a small cupboard next to the fridge. Even Jack could see from where he was standing that it contained nothing except an old tin of custard powder and a canned steak-and-kidney pie. She searched the cupboard until satisfied that it was devoid of bones, then turned back to the dog, which had sat patiently behind her, thumping its tail on an area of floor that had been worn through the carpet and underlay to the shiny wood beneath.

  “Sorry, pooch. No bones for you today.”

  The dog strode off and sat among its brethren, apparently comprehending every word. Mrs. Hubbard resumed her seat.

  “Now, young man, where were we?”

  “What sort of person was he?”

  “Nice enough, I suppose,” she said grudgingly, the same way a Luddite on dialysis might react to a kidney machine. “Never any trouble, although I had little to do with him.”

  “And did he often sit on the wall in the yard?”

  “When he wasn’t working. He used to sit up there to—I don’t know—to think or something.”

  “Did you ever see him with anyone?”

  “No. I don’t permit callers. But there was a woman last night. Howling and screaming fit to bring the house down, she was. Really upset and unhappy—I had to threaten to set the dogs on her before she would leave.”

  He showed her the photo of the woman in Vienna. “This woman?”

  Mrs. Hubbard squinted at it for a few moments. “Possibly.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “No.”

  Another dog had risen from the basket and was now whimpering in front of her like the first. She got up and went to the same cupboard and opened it as before, the dog sitting at the same place as the first, its tail thumping the area of shiny wood. Jack sighed.

  “Sorry, dog,” she said, “nothing for you either.”

  The bull terrier returned to its place in front of the fire, and Mrs. Hubbard sat back in her chair, shooing off the tomcat, which had tried to gain ascendancy in her absence. She looked up at Jack with a puzzled air.

  “Had we finished?”

  “No. What happened last night after the woman left?”

  “Mr. Dumpty went to a party.”

  She got up again as another dog had started to whimper, and she looked in the cupboard once more. Considering the hole in the carpet and the area of shiny wood that the dogs’ tails had worn smooth, Jack supposed this little charade happened a lot.

  “When did he get back?” asked Jack when she had returned.

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Dumpty.”

  “At about eleven-thirty, when he arrived in the biggest, blackest car I’ve ever seen. I always stay up to make sure none of my lodgers bring home any guests. I won’t have any sin under this roof, Inspector.”

  “How did he look?”

  “Horribly drunk,” she said with disgust, “but he bade me good evening—he was always polite, despite his dissolute lifestyle—and went upstairs to his room.”

  “Did he always spend the night here?”

  “Sometimes. When he did, he slept on the wall outside. The next time I saw him, he was at peace—or in pieces, to be more precise—in the backyard when I went to dump the rubbish.”

  She had expected Jack to laugh at her little joke, but he didn’t. Instead he sucked the end of his pencil thoughtfully.

  “Do you have any other lodgers?”

  “Only Prometheus upstairs in the front room.”

  “Prometheus?” asked Jack with some surprise. “The Titan Prometheus? The one who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind?”

  “I’ve no concern with what he does in his private life. He pays the rent on time, so he’s okay with me.”

  Jack made several notes, thanked Mrs. Hubbard and beat a grateful retreat as she went to the same cupboard for the fourth time.

  5. Prometheus

  TITAN ESCAPES ROCK, ZEUS, CAUCASUS, EAGLE

  A controversial punishment came to an end yesterday when Prometheus, immortal Titan, creator of mankind and fire-giver, escaped the shackles that bound him to his rock in the Caucasus. Details of the escape are uncertain, but Zeus’ press secretary, Ralph Mercury, was quick to issue a statement declaring that Prometheus’ confinement was purely an “internal god-Titan matter” and that having eagles pick out Prometheus’ liver every day, only to have it grow back at night, was “a reasonable response given the crime.” Joyous supporters of the “Free Prometheus” campaign crowded the dockside at Dover upon the Titan’s arrival, whereupon he was taken into custody pending applications for extradition.

  —From The London Illustrated Mole, June 3, 1814

  Jack walked up the creaky steps to the upstairs landing. He had just raised his hand to knock on the door opposite Humpty’s when a deep male voice, preempting his knock, boomed, “One moment!”

  Jack, puzzled, lowered his hand. There was a sound of movement from within, and presently the door opened six inches. A youthful-looking, darkly tanned man with tightly curled black hair answered the door. He had deep black eyes and a strong Grecian nose that was so straight you could have laid a set-square on it. He looked as though he had just got out of the shower, as he had a grubby towel wrapped around his waist. On his muscular abdomen were so many crisscrossed scars on top of one another that his midriff was a solid mass of scar tissue. He was so cleanly shaven that
Jack wondered whether he had any facial hair at all, and his eyes bored into Jack with the look of a man used to physical hardship.

  “Yes?” he asked in a voice that seemed to rumble on after he had spoken.

  “Mr. Prometheus?”

  “Just Prometheus.”

  “I’m Detective Inspector Spratt, Nursery Crime Division. We’re investigating Mr. Dumpty’s death. I wondered if I might talk to you?”

  Prometheus looked relieved and invited him in, his voice losing its rumble as he no longer took Jack to be a threat.

  The room was similar to Humpty’s in levels of shabbiness, but Prometheus had tried to make it look a little more like home by pinning up holiday posters of the Greek islands. Stuffed in the frame of the mirror was an assortment of postcards from other Titans and minor demigods, wishing him well with his ongoing asylum application. A mattress covered with rumpled sheets lay on the floor, and on the bedside table, next to a copy of Plato’s Republic, was an empty bottle of retsina and a small bowl of olive stones. A copy of Shelley’s account of Prometheus’ escape from the rock in the Caucasus lay open on the only table, and Jack picked it up.

  “A bit fanciful,” remarked the Titan. “He took a few liberties with the truth. I had only ever met Asia and Panthea once at a party and I certainly was never in love with Asia. As I recall, she was myopic and couldn’t pronounce her r’s. The bit about us having a child was pure invention. I would have sued him for libel, but he died—which was most inconvenient.”

  “Yes,” agreed Jack, knowing that to an immortal such as Prometheus, death really was something that only happened to other people, “it generally is.”

  “I was sorry to hear about Humpty,” said the Titan, thumping the vibrating pipes with a wooden mallet to get the water flowing out of the rusty tap and onto his toothbrush.

  “You knew him well?”

  Prometheus squeezed the remains of a toothpaste tube onto the brush. “Not really, but well enough to know he was a good man, Inspector. Good and evil are subjects I know quite a lot about. He had righteousness in spades, despite his criminal past.”

  Prometheus rinsed his mouth, popped the toothbrush back in its glass, immodestly dispensed with the towel and wrapped himself in a dressing gown that had once belonged to the Majestic Hotel.

  “We chatted quite a lot when we bumped into each other,” continued the Titan. “He was always busy but made the effort.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Last night at about six. He called me over to help him tie his cummerbund.”

  “Cummerbund?”

  “Or cravat. It’s difficult to tell with him. He’d had an argument with his girlfriend. Did Mrs. Hubbard tell you?”

  “She mentioned it. Do you know her name?”

  “Bessie, I think,” replied the Titan.

  “No surname?”

  “I’m sure she has one, but I don’t know it. I don’t think she was a serious girlfriend, but she was the most regular.”

  “There was more than one?”

  “Humpty was probably the least monogamous person I’ve ever met. I couldn’t agree with his lifestyle, but despite it I think he had a good heart. I can’t imagine Grimm’s Road was a great place to bring women, but, knowing him, he enjoyed the sport of sneaking them past Mrs. Hubbard.”

  “What else did you and Humpty talk about last night?”

  “Not a lot, but he seemed upset, or annoyed, or unwell. Put it this way: He looked pretty pasty. When it was time for him to go, he thanked me for my companionship and shook my hand. He didn’t usually do that, and, looking back on it, I suppose he might have been saying…good-bye.”

  “Did he seem depressed or anything recently?”

  The Titan thought for a moment. “Less talkative. Preoccupied, perhaps.”

  “When did you see him again?”

  “I didn’t. I heard him go into his room about ten-thirty, and the next thing I knew, Mrs. Hubbard was banging on my door and asking if I wanted Humpty’s room for an extra fifty quid a week.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything more Jack could learn, at present.

  “Thanks for your help. I can usually find you here?”

  Prometheus sighed. “Humpty was paying half of my rent. I can’t afford this dive any longer. You could always leave me a message at Zorba’s—I wait tables there three times a week.”

  Jack had an idea.

  “We need a lodger. Come around to this address and meet my wife tonight at about seven.”

  Prometheus took the proffered scrap of paper.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I think I might just do that.”

  Mary had been speaking to the neighbors. They were suspicious at first but soon became keen to help when they found out it was Humpty who had died. He had, it seemed, been very generous in the neighborhood.

  “What have you got?”

  “Couple of people thought they heard dustbins, though no one can put a time on it. I got a statement from Mr. Winkie. I think he’s narcoleptic or something; he fell asleep as I was talking to him. SOCO didn’t come up with much. No prints on the shotgun, but some unusual traces on the carpet—and a single human hair.”

  “Brunette? Like the woman in the Vienna photograph?”

  “No, red—and twenty-eight feet long.”

  She passed him an evidence bag with a long piece of auburn hair wrapped carefully around itself like a fishing line.

  “Now, that is unusual. Rings a bell, too. What about Mrs. Dumpty?”

  “Not really the grieving widow. In fact, technically speaking, not a widow at all—they divorced over a year ago. She said to drop in at any time.”

  “Then we’ll do just that. We really need to find the woman in the Viennese picture. She and Humpty had a row last night.”

  “What about?”

  “We’ll ask her when we find her. Her name’s Bessie.”

  “I’ll get the office onto it,” said Mary. “Was that Prometheus upstairs?”

  “Yes. Creator of mankind to Mrs. Hubbard’s lodger. Make’s Humpty’s fall look like a stumble, doesn’t it?”

  Jack unlocked the car and pushed some papers off the passenger seat so that Mary could get in. She looked at the baby seat in the back.

  “You have children, sir?”

  “Lots of people do. I have five.”

  “Five?”

  “Yup. Strictly speaking, only two are mine. Two more belong to my second wife, and we share the other. You married?”

  “Me? No. I collect ex-boyfriends—and more than five, at the last count.”

  Jack laughed, started the engine and selected first gear. There was an ominous growling from deep within the gearbox, and they pulled out into the road to head off to the Caversham Heights district and Mrs. Dumpty.

  “So what do you reckon?” asked Mary, still not having come to terms with her new job. She thought she wouldn’t tell her friends back at Basingstoke about this quite yet—if at all.

  Jack thought for a moment. “How about this: ‘Big egg gets a shellful, throws himself off wall in fit of drunken depression.’ Or this: ‘Humpty goes to party, gets completely smashed, comes home and…gets completely smashed.’”

  Mary’s mobile rang. She looked at the Caller ID before answering. Arnold again.

  “I can’t speak right now,” she said before Arnold had a chance to say anything. “I’m at work. I’ll call you back tonight. Promise. Bye.”

  She pressed the “end-call” button angrily, and Jack raised an eyebrow.

  “I have a mother like that,” he observed.

  “It wasn’t my mother,” replied Mary sullenly. “It was an ex-friend who doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase ‘I never want to see you again.’”

  There was a pause as they negotiated a roundabout, and Jack decided it was time to embark on his usual induction speech.

  “I know that the Nursery Crime Division isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but you should know the basics. The NCD’s jur
isdiction covers all nursery characters, stories, situations and directly related consequences of same. If a civilian is involved, then the regular CID can take over, but they generally don’t. I answer to Briggs, but otherwise I’m independent. Because we cover well-established situations, patterns do begin to emerge. You can never quite tell how something is going to turn out, but you can sometimes second-guess the investigation.”

  “Such as?”

  “Aside from people like Mrs. Hubbard? Well, there’s usually a rule of three somewhere. Either quantitative, as in bears, billy goats, blind mice, little pigs, fiddlers, bags of wool or what-have-you, or qualitative, such as small, medium, large, stupid, stupider, stupidest. If you come across any stepmothers, they’re usually evil, woodcutters always come into fame and fortune, orphans are ten a penny, and pigs, cats, bears and wolves frequently anthropomorphize.”

  “I wondered why Reading had talking animals,” mused Mary, having never really thought about it before.

  “The Billy Goats Gruff are a blast,” said Jack. “I’ll introduce you one day.”

  “No troll?”

  “In the clink. Eight-to-ten-year stretch for threatening behavior.”

  “Do they know?”

  “Do they know what?”

  “Do they know they’re nursery characters?”

  “I think sometimes they suspect, but for the most part they have no idea at all. To the Billy Goats, Jack and Jill and the Gingerbreadman, it’s all business as normal. Don’t worry—you’ll get into the swing of it.”

  Mary went silent thinking about how nursery characters could possibly not know what they were when Jack, suddenly remembering something, picked out his mobile and pressed auto-redial 1.

  “Hiya, Mads. It’s me. Tell me, did you get any pictures of Humpty Dumpty at the Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit?…No, Humpty Dumpty…. Sort of, well, like a large egg but about four foot six…. Yeah, but with arms and legs. I’d appreciate it. See ya.”

  He pressed the “end-call” button.

  “As chance would have it, my wife was photographing the Spongg Charity Benefit last night. She may have some snaps.”

  They drove on for a moment without talking. Mary thought she should grasp the bull by the horns and explain that she really wasn’t suited for the NCD; perhaps Jack could have a quiet word with Briggs and she could get out without being seen as something of a quitter. She bit her lip and tried to think of how to frame it, but luckily Jack broke the silence and saved her from the opportunity of making a fool of herself.