The Fourth Bear Page 8

  “Let me guess,” said Jack, leaning backward to avoid being struck by a spoon that little Stevie had hurled across the room. “A government cover-up?”

  However bad it got at the NCD and no matter how many times Briggs suspended him, Jack’s home life more than compensated for it. His wife of five years was Madeleine, and they had each brought two children to the home: Jack’s Pandora and Ben, and Madeleine’s Jerome and Megan. To cement the union still further, they’d also had Stevie, who was now eighteen months.

  “This spoon hurling is getting stronger and more accurate,” said Jack, selecting another spoon from the drain board and sitting down at the table. Stevie gave a broad grin, took the new spoon and stared at it thoughtfully for a moment.

  “Yes, indeed,” replied Madeleine, who was in the process of making a pot of tea, “the Olympic Ladle-Flinging Team wants to train him up for the 2020 Olympics.”

  Jack smiled and looked at Megan, who was busy coloring at the other end of the table. “What’s that, princess?”

  “It’s the Blue Baboon.”

  “I never knew the Blue Baboon was green.”

  “Can’t find the right crayon,” she said, and carried on coloring.

  Madeleine and Jack were both on the second time around, marriage-wise. Unlike Jack, who was a widower, Madeleine had an ex-husband, Neville, who just turned out to be something of a dud. He had an eye for the ladies, too—a habit that Madeleine couldn’t overlook during their marriage, much to the surprise of her ex-husband, who thought his roguish charm would have her forgiving anything. It didn’t.

  Jack loved Madeleine dearly, and he suddenly felt guilty that he’d not told her about his PDRness. But he would, this instant—it was the right and proper thing to do.

  He got up, kissed her and said with an emboldened heart, “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s…that…I’m…Punch and Judy have moved in next door,” said Jack, losing his nerve entirely.

  “I know. It should be quite a show,” replied Madeleine. “I’ve had the residents’ committee around already. They’ve opened a complaint book and want us to log every single problem we have with them.”

  “I hope they’ve got a big book and several gallons of ink,” said Jack, giving up on confessions for the foreseeable future and fetching the milk from the fridge, “but I don’t think it will do much good. The pair of them have racked up so many noise-abatement orders they could wallpaper the toilet with them—and, if the rumors are correct, have done so.”

  “What do we do?” asked Madeleine. “You know I can’t stand all that residents’ association curtain-twitching, protect-house-prices-at-all-costs stuff.”

  Jack shrugged. “Nothing, for the moment. Keep an eye out, and if you hear them threatening to throw the baby downstairs again, let me know and we’ll get social services involved. They won’t do anything, but it might just calm them down a bit.”

  “Fair enough. You know they’ve got a pet crocodile in the back garden?”

  “It figures. There’ll be a string of sausages, a beadle, a hangman and a dog named Toby involved somewhere, too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s a Nursery Crime thing. Punch and Judy are…PDRs.”

  “I thought they might be,” replied Madeleine thoughtfully.

  “You did?” asked Jack, suddenly worried. “How? How did you know? What, was it something they said? The way they walked? What?”

  “It was probably,” said Madeleine, giving him a “how dopey do you think I am?” look, “something to do with their heads being made of painted papier-mâché.”

  “Keen sense of observation you have there, pumpkin.”

  “But why the ceaseless violence?”

  “PDRs just can’t help themselves. Ever have a song going around in your head all day and you can’t shake it? Then find yourself humming it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the same with Punch and Judy and any other nursery character, but instead of a song it’s actions. Look at it as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder or a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Punches have toned down their act a lot since the seventeenth century—infanticide, wife beating and multiple murder aren’t generally considered entertainment these days.”

  “Are all forms of compulsive behavior a sign of PDRness?” she asked slowly.

  “No, no, of course not,” replied Jack hurriedly, thinking about his own obsessional hatred for fat. “There have to be several other factors as well.”

  Stevie gurgled at him from his high chair, and Jack, glad of the distraction, leaned over and affectionately tweaked his ear.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Pandora as she walked into the kitchen with her fiancé, the Titan Prometheus. Having a daughter engaged to a four-thousand-year-old myth could be stressful at times, but Jack was determined not to be a flustery old hen of a father—and the union was improving her Greek no end. They were getting married in a month’s time, and there were still a lot of details to be ironed out.

  “Do you think the record of the wedding should be as a video, a tapestry, depictions on a Grecian urn or as a twenty-eight-foot-long marble bas-relief?”

  “I have a friend who can do urns at a discount,” added Prometheus helpfully, as the budget of the wedding had long since spiraled out of control since Bacchus had taken over the reception arrangements.

  “An urn, I guess,” conceded Jack.

  “Oh, goody!” cried Pandora happily. “I always saw my wedding recorded in profile. Now, Dad, remember what you promised about not doing a plot device number fifty-two on the day of my wedding?”

  “There’s only the annual Tortoise v. Hare race on that weekend, and there’s never any trouble at that, sweetpea,” he said, “so there’ll be no conclusion of a case near your wedding that results in an overdramatic dash to the church.”

  “Great!” said Pandora, and she and Prometheus walked out, talking about how they could stop Artemis and Aphrodite from squabbling, as they invariably did.

  “Perhaps we should just let them fight in some mud and pretend it’s part of the entertainments?” suggested Prometheus.

  The large family and the expense of a wedding was a severe drain on Jack’s salary, despite Bacchus’ concession that they could drop Orpheus and go with a Santana tribute band instead. Madeleine had a limited income from her photography but insisted on concentrating on high-end, limited-print-run photographic books. Good food for the soul, but famine for the wallet.

  “How are things at work?” she asked, handing Stevie another spoon.

  “Not…terrific,” replied Jack with a twinge of understatement, stirring some sugar into his tea.

  “I’m surprised you’re back so early, what with Johnny Cake on the loose.”

  “I’m…not on that case—and he’s a cookie.”

  Madeleine stared at him quizzically and said, “Listen, I don’t know poo about police procedures, but even I know that the Gingerbreadman is NCD.”

  Jack helped himself to a gingernut, smelled it, made a face and put it back in the cookie jar.

  “Briggs gave it to…Copperfield.”

  “David?” she echoed in surprise. “He’s a sweet guy, but he couldn’t find an egg in a henhouse.”

  Jack shrugged. “Like it or not, there it is. Briggs thinks I’m overdoing it and that the Riding-Hood incident was beyond what any officer should have to face…. He’s made Mary acting head while I’m on sick leave.”

  “Oh, sweetheart!” she said, giving him an extra-tight hug. “I’m sorry to hear that. But don’t worry—Briggs usually suspends you at least once during any investigation.”

  “And that’s what worries me,” responded Jack, returning her hug and kissing her tenderly on the forehead. “I’m not on an investigation. And I won’t be until I’ve passed some sort of mental review board.”

  “Yikes. Being sane might render you almost useless at the NCD.”

  “I know that. But
you didn’t have to say it.”

  A spoon ricocheted off the back of Jack’s head and hit a plant pot on the windowsill.

  “Was that you, monster?”

  Stevie opened his eyes wide and shrieked with laughter.

  Madeleine smiled, untangled herself from the embrace and stacked the tea things.

  “So aside from losing a prime case that is clearly yours, being knocked from the top job at the division and the prospect of having to convince a complete stranger that you’re not a drooling lunatic, how else was your day?”

  “Peachy. I bought an Allegro Sports Equipe. Do you want to see it?”

  “Maybe later.” She handed him a stack of plates to put in the dishwasher. “Would you have a word with Jerome? I heard his pet sniggering to itself again this morning.”

  Jerome was eight, and he wanted to be a vet. To get into practice, he had taken to bringing strays home with him. First it was fleas with kittens attached, then puppies with fleas attached, then fleas with fleas attached. All of this could be vaguely tolerated, until he brought something home that deftly escaped into the void within the interior walls, and no one had seen it since.

  Jack walked into the living room and bent down to listen at the baseboard. There was a sound a bit like someone blowing a raspberry, and he frowned, got up and walked into the hall. He opened the door to the closet under the stairs and heard a faint rustling. He quietly turned on the light and peered into the musty gloom.

  “He doesn’t mean any harm,” said a voice behind him. It was Jerome, his face a picture of angelic innocence.

  “You know your mother wants it out, my lad.”

  “I asked him to go into the garden shed, but he said his rheumatism was troubling him again.”

  “It can speak English?”

  “And Italian, but his German is a bit rusty.”

  Jack looked around the small closet and chanced upon a little pile of glittery objects.

  “What are my spare keys doing in here?” he asked, sorting through the heap of shiny items. He also found a pair of cuff links that had been missing for a couple of days, a brooch, a couple of coins and the Waterman pen that he’d thought he’d lost at work.

  Jerome winced. “He likes to collect shiny things. I try to get them back before you notice. He must have been around the house last night.”

  Jack started to rummage some more. There was a rustle, and something small and misshapen popped its head out of a cardboard box, stared at Jack for a moment and then vanished through a hole that had been gnawed in the plasterboard. Jack backed out of the cupboard as fast as he could.

  “Did you see it?” asked Jerome after Jack had not spoken for some moments.

  “Ye-e-es,” said Jack slowly, unsure of what he had seen but not liking it one bit. The creature was an ugly little monkeylike brute with hair that looked like that of a black pig with psoriasis. What was worse was that it had a chillingly humanoid face, and it had given Jack an impish grin and a wink before vanishing.

  “Jerome?”

  “Yes, Jack?”

  “What was that?”

  “His name’s Caliban, and he’s my friend.”

  “Well, you can tell him from me he’s got to live somewhere else.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. He’s got to go.”

  Jack left Jerome in the closet and rejoined Madeleine.

  “The brooch you thought you’d lost,” he said, placing the jewelry on the table.

  “Where was it?”

  “Jerome’s pet is something of a magpie. Have you seen it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a bit…odd. If anything else goes missing, you’ll probably find it in the closet under the stairs.” He thought for a moment. “Do we have to go out tonight? I’m a bit pooped.”

  “I’d like you to accompany me,” she replied with a smile, “but I can go on my own and flirt outrageously and in a totally undignified manner with young single men of a morally casual demeanor.”

  “You know, I don’t feel quite so pooped anymore.”

  “Good. We should be out the door by seven-thirty.”

  9. The Déjà Vu

  Most unreadable modern author: Of all the pseudointellectual rubbish that hits the literary world every year, few authors can hope to compete in terms of quasi-highbrow unreadability than the accepted master in the field, Otis ChufftY. With unread copies of his books gracing every bookshelf in the fashionable areas of London, ChufftY’s prodigious output in terms of pointless, long-winded claptrap has few equals and brings forth gasps of admiration from his competitors. Even after several million in book sales and frequent appearances on late-night artsy-fartsy chat shows, ChufftY’s work remains as fashionably unreadable as ever. “It’s the bipolarity of human sufferance,” Mr. ChufftY explained when asked the secret of his success, “and the forbearance of wisdom in the light of the ultimate ignorance of nothing.”

  —The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

  “Remind me what we’re doing here,” asked Jack. “You’re a photographer, not an author.”

  “The Armitage Shanks Literary Awards are sponsored by both the Quangle-Wangle and my publishers, the Crumpetty Tree Press,” she replied as they lined up outside the Déjà Vu Hotel with an assortment of other guests, “and I’m married to DCI Jack Spratt, who quite apart from being tall and ruggedly handsome also happens to be the officer who cracked the Humpty case.”

  They shuffled forward a few steps. “I get it,” said Jack, sliding his hand around her waist, “I’m your trophy husband and you’re showing me off.”

  “In one,” replied Madeleine, pushing his hand lower so it met the smooth curve of her bottom, “and Crumpetty Tree looks on me favorably when I drag you along, as it makes the event seem vaguely important and not a collection of pseudointellectual farts patting one another on the back.”

  “I always suspected that. Are you going to raffle me at the end of the evening?”

  She laughed. “Only if I can buy all the tickets. Now, listen: Try not to be rude to the writers this year.”

  “As if I would!”

  The previous year’s event had not been without incident. Jack didn’t much care for what he called “the Modern Novel” and had told the previous year’s winner precisely that. It hadn’t gone down very well.

  The Déjà Vu Hotel was a popular venue in Reading for awards ceremonies. It was big enough to service a good-size crowd, had excellent catering facilities and coupled a congenial atmosphere with a fine opportunity for a few daft jokes.

  “Have you ever been to the Déjà Vu before?” asked Madeleine as they entered the main doors.

  Jack looked around the entrance lobby. “I don’t think so,” he answered, “but it does look sort of familiar.”

  They joined the line at the entrance to the ballroom. A liveried footman was reading the invitations and announcing the guests in a loud voice.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Lord Spooncurdle!” he boomed, giving an overobsequious bow to Reading’s most visible nobleman, who walked solemnly down the stairs, took a glass of champagne from a waiter and shook hands with someone he thought he knew but didn’t.

  The line shuffled forward.

  “James Wheat-Reed Esq. and his niece Roberta—he says.”

  James and his “niece” smiled and descended the stairs. The footman continued, introducing the guests in a respectful tone of voice.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Croft and their fat daughter, Erica.”

  “The Dong—with his celebrated luminous nose.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Boore—by name, by nature.”

  Finally it was Jack and Madeleine’s turn. The footman read their invitation, looked them up and down in a critical manner, sighed and said:

  “Inspector and Mrs. Jack Spratt.”

  They walked down the staircase to the ballroom as the band struck up a tune that they thought they should recognize but couldn’t quite place. A vaguely familiar waiter gave them a g
lass of champagne each, and Madeleine looked around for anyone she knew. Jack followed her closely. He didn’t really enjoy this sort of function, but anything that made people remember Madeleine, he thought, had to be good for her exhibitions. Besides, there weren’t many people he didn’t know in Reading society. He had interviewed most of them at one time or another and arrested at least a half dozen.

  “Hello, Marcus!”

  “Madeleine, dahling!”

  “Jack, this is Marcus Sphincter. He’s one of the writers short-listed for the prize this year.”

  “Congratulations,” said Jack, extending a hand.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you—most kind.”

  “So what’s the title of this book you’ve written?”

  “The terms ‘title,’ ‘book’ and ‘written’ are so passé and 2004,” announced Marcus airily, using his fingers in that annoying way that people do to signify quotation marks.

  “It is 2004,” pointed out Jack.

  “So early 2004,” said Marcus, hastily correcting himself. “Anyone can ‘write’ a ‘book.’ To raise my chosen art form to a higher plane, I prefer to use the terms ‘designation,’ ‘codex’ and ‘composed.’”

  “Okay,” said Jack, “what’s the appellative of the tome you’ve created?”

  “The what?”

  “Hadn’t you heard?” asked Jack, hiding a smile and using that annoying finger-quotes thing back at Marcus, “‘Codex,’ ‘composed’ and ‘designation’ are out already; they were just too, too early evening.”

  “They were?” asked Marcus, genuinely concerned.

  “Your book, Marcus,” interrupted Madeleine as she playfully pinched Jack on the bum. “What’s it called?”

  “I call it…The Realms of the Leviathan.”

  “Ah,” murmured Jack, “what’s it about, a herd of elephants?”

  Marcus laughed loudly, Jack joined him, and so did Madeleine, who wasn’t going to be a bad sport.

  “Elephants? Good Lord, no!” replied Marcus, adjusting his glasses. “The leviathan in my novel is the colossal and destructive force of human ambition and its ability to destroy those it loves in its futile quest for fulfillment. Seen through the eyes of a woman in London in the mid-eighties as her husband loses control of himself to own and want more, it asks the fundamental question ‘to be or to want’—something I consider to be the ‘materialistic’ Hamlet’s soliloquy. Ha-ha-ha.”