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.
The Nursery Crime Division, the Reading Police Department and the Oxford & Berkshire Constabulary in this book are entirely fictitious, and any similarities to authentic police procedures, protocol or forensic techniques are entirely coincidental.
All Nursery Crime books have been designated as Character Exchange Program Safe Havens, and all characters are protected by the Council of Genres Directive GBSD/211950.
Jasper Fforde is the author of the bestselling Thursday Next series: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, and Something Rotten. The Big Over Easy is the first book in the Nursery Crime series. Fforde lives and works in Wales. For more information about both series, visit www.jasperfforde.com