The lift stopped at the sixth floor, where Jack’s least favorite person at Reading Central walked in: Friedland Chymes. They had once been partners together at the NCD until Friedland thought it was beneath him and jumped into the fast lane of the Guild of Detectives on the back of two cases that were more to do with Spratt. It had been Jack and Wilmot Snaarb who caught the Gingerbreadman that night, not Friedland, as he liked to claim. So it was no surprise that they didn’t even look at each other. Friedland pressed the first-floor button and then stared at the indicator lights above the door. After a twenty-year enmity, the best either of them could manage was a single-word greeting.

“Jack.”

“Friedland.”

But, Friedland being Friedland, he couldn’t resist a small dig.

“I knew the pigs would walk, old sport,” he said loftily. “I didn’t think the premeditation argument solid enough.”

“It was solid,” retorted Jack. “The defense had the jury loaded with other pigs. I wanted a wolf in the box, but you know how busy they are.”

“You can’t play the speciesist card every time you lose a case, Jack.”

They were silent for a moment as the lift passed the fourth floor.

“I understand you’ve applied to join the Guild,” remarked Chymes with a small and patronizing chuckle.

“Any officer can apply, Friedland.”

“No need to get defensive, old boy.”

“I’m not getting defensive.”

“What will be your figurehead case? Finding sheep for Bo-peep? A failed conviction of three pigs?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Of course you will. I hear Humpty took a nosedive. Suicide?”

“It’s early days,” replied Jack quickly, not wanting to relinquish any details, no matter how trivial.

“Humpty… wall… suicide… murder,” muttered Chymes thoughtfully. “Sounds like it could be a corker. Want me to take over?”

“No.”

“I’ll swap it for a strangling over in Arborfield.”

“I said no, Friedland.”

“Okay, the strangling in Arborfield plus a botulism poisoning by a vicar—with potential sexual intrigue thrown in. Proper stuff, Jack. None of your dozy nurseries.”

“The answer’s still no. You couldn’t wait to get out of the NCD. Where were the offers of help when Mr. Punch was beating his wife? What about Bluebeard? I could have done with some assistance then.”

“Listen,” said Chymes as the friendly horse-trading banter vanished abruptly, “let’s cut the crap. I want this investigation—and I will have it.”

“Which part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”

“Is that your final word?”

“You don’t want to hear my final word.”

“Well,” said Chymes with a condescending smile, “I hope you won’t regret your decision.”

The lift stopped at the first floor. Friedland walked out, turned to Jack and said, “Just a spot of advice from an old soldier—don’t build the case up. Word in the station says they should have left some room in Mr. Wolff’s coffin for the NCD.”

He started to walk away, but Jack wasn’t done.

“I found the woodcutter’s shotgun,” he said in a low voice. “I want to check to see if it was the murder weapon in the woodcutter case.”

Friedland halted abruptly, pressed the “door-hold” button and stared at Jack.

“I don’t think that’s very likely. Haven’t you read the write-up in Amazing Crime? It was the Kiev mafia trying to muscle in on the Reading drug trade via Cleethorpes with the help of several all-powerful and unfeasibly ancient secret societies. It’s a done deal, Jack—Max Zotkin is doing time as we speak.”

Jack was unfazed. “Even so, I’d like to check. Do you have the cartridges from the murder scene? Skinner can check them against the gun we found.”

Chymes stared at him for a moment, then appeared to soften. “I’ll have them sent down. Good-bye, Jack.”

The doors slid shut. Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Suddenly, he remembered why he had never really wanted to be in the Guild.

Mary looked up as Jack entered the room, but Tibbit actually stood, which seemed to her pointlessly correct protocol.

“Any luck with the shotgun?”

“You could say that. Remember the Andersen’s Wood murder?”

“Of course,” replied Mary. “It was titled ‘From Russia with Gloves’ and appeared in Amazing Crime, issue 12, volume 101, reprinted in Friedland Chymes Casebook XVII. It was an extraordinarily complex case. He—”

She stopped as she saw Jack glaring at her.

“I suppose you know the page number, too?” he asked.

“Sorry, wasn’t thinking. Seriously, I thought Chymes had found the weapon that killed the woodcutters. After all, it was the discovery of the engraved Holland and Holland that led him on an unnecessarily complex jaunt around Europe before he solved it.”

“It was never proved it was the weapon. He’s sending the cartridges down so we can check.”

“But if Humpty’s shotgun was the murder weapon used to kill the woodcutters…”

“Yes,” replied Jack, “Chymes would be wrong. Unthinkable, isn’t it?”

Mary thought about agreeing with him wholeheartedly but said instead, “A few things for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Mrs. Singh rang with some figures. They can’t be certain, as so much of Humpty’s albumen was washed away by the rain, but indications show he was twenty-six times the legal limit for driving. Even so, she reckons he would still have been conscious—it’s something to do with his coefficient of volume.”

“That’s one seriously pickled egg,” murmured Jack. “What else?”

“I’ve been collating the highlights from police databanks along with some background details Baker gleaned from a contact at the the Reading Mercury.”

“Go on.”

She looked at her foolscap notepad, cleared her throat and began: “Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloysius Stuyvesant van Dumpty was born on the sixth June, 1939,” she read. “His father was Gaylord Llewelyn Stuyvesant van Dumpty, a minor baronet and lecturer in classical Greek at Oxford. There seems to be some doubt over his mother. Schooled at Llanabba Castle, then Christ Church College reading mathematics and children’s literature. He played rugby for Oxford and just missed being chosen to play for England owing to a knee injury.”

“He’d make a pretty unstoppable player,” said Jack, thinking it would be like trying to tackle a cannonball.

“As long as he didn’t have to run, on those short legs,” added Mary. “Anyway, he married Lucinda Muffet in 1962, and we don’t hear anything about him until he is asked to leave a lecture post at Balliol in 1964 after being charged with a crooked property deal. Released through lack of evidence, he was not so lucky in 1969, when he was jailed for five years on a charge of money laundering for the Porgia family crime syndicate. He was questioned closely by the Serious Crime Squad about his connections but didn’t talk and, when he was released three years later, was given an apartment, reputedly a gift from Giorgio Porgia himself. His first wife died in a car accident while he was in prison, in 1970. He spent the next few years living and working in Ogapôga and was heard of next in 1978, when he requested asylum at the British consulate in Pôga City. The Ogapôgian government had charged him with smuggling gems, and, following some swift diplomatic dealing, he was deported. He returned to England in 1979 and in 1980 moved to Reading to lecture at the university. Questioned by NCD officers over spinning-wheel profiteering in 1981, then fired from the university in the same year over allegations of embezzlements. In 1984 he married Laura Garibaldi. In 1989 he shifted his interests to world development and raised forty million pounds on a limited-share issue to buy a monopoly on mineral rights in the Splotvian Republic. Six months later a coup there lost him everything when the incoming administration nationalized the land. Investigations followed complaints by the shareholders, but again he was never charged. Made a fortune in zinc between 1985 and 1991, then lost it all in 1993 when he tried to corner the market in talcum powder on the Hong Kong commodities exchange. Questioned about insider trading on the Tokyo stock exchange in 1999 but again, never charged.”