“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 jurisdiction 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.

“Where did you say you were from?”

“Basingstoke.”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed of it.”

“How many years in the force?”

“Eight, four as detective sergeant. I worked with DI Flowwe for four years.”

“As Guild-Approved Official Sidekick?” asked Jack, surprised that Briggs had offloaded a pro on him. “I mean, Hebden was Guild, right?”

“Right. Only one of my stories got printed in Amazing Crime, though.”

“You know I’m not Guild, Mary?” said Jack, just to make sure there wasn’t some sort of embarrassing mistake going on. He didn’t think he’d tell her quite yet that Madeleine had applied on his behalf.

“Yes, sir, I knew that.”

“What was the case you had printed?”

“Fight rigging at the Basingstoke Shakespeare Company.”

“Tell me about it.”

Mary took a deep breath. She didn’t know how much he knew and wondered whether it wasn’t a test of her own humility; she had been commended for her part in the inquiry and was naturally proud of her work. She looked across at Jack, but he was concentrating on his driving.

“We didn’t know there was a fraud going on at all for about a year,” she began. “It all started on the last night of a Home Counties tour of Romeo and Juliet. All went well until the fight between Romeo and Tybalt at the beginning of act three.”

“What happened?”

“Tybalt won.”

Jack frowned. He was no culture vulture, but he could see the difficulties. “So the play ended?”

“There was almost a riot. A fencing referee who happened to be in the audience was called onto the stage, and he declared it a fair fight. The play finished with the company improvising an ending where Paris married Juliet, then was led to his own suicide by his failure to compete successfully with the love that Juliet held for her dead first husband.”

“Quick thinking.”

“You said it.”

“So where’s the crime?”

“At the bookies’. Tybalt, never a strong favorite, had been pegged at sixty to one, and someone pulled in an estimated three hundred grand. We were informed, but it seemed as though the bookies were just complaining that they had to pay out. It wasn’t until a matinee performance of Macbeth three weeks later that the gang struck again. At the final big fight, Macduff was the clear favorite at even money. The bookies, now more vigilant, had placed Macbeth at three to one. It seemed a foregone conclusion; Macduff had fifty-eight pounds and eight years on Macbeth, not to mention some crafty footwork and a literary precedent that stretched back four hundred years.”

“So Macbeth won?” asked Jack.

Mary shook her head. “No. It was smarter than that: Banquo did.”