“Spratt!” boomed Lord Spooncurdle, bored with talking to writers and agents and not recognizing anyone else.
“Hello, sir,” said Jack brightly. “You remember my wife, Madeleine?”
“Of course, of course,” he replied genially, offering his hand to Madeleine. “Your husband did a splendid job on that Humpty lark. Never did trust Spongg, y’know—eyes too close together. Reminded me of a governess who ran off with the handsome young silver and half the family’s boot boy.”
Madeleine excused herself with a whispered entreaty for Jack not to talk about his NCD work, as it usually had a confusing effect on people, and went off to mingle.
“Been here before, Spratt?” asked Spooncurdle, waving a hand at the inside of the Déjà Vu. “I’m sure I’ve seen that headwaiter, but I’m damned if I know where. I say, old stick, do us a favor and ask him if he has a lion tattooed on his left buttock.”
“He hasn’t,” replied Jack, humoring him. “I asked earlier.”
“Did you, by George? Must have been someone else. I must say, I never knew you were a member of the Most Worshipful Company of Cheese Makers.”
“I’m not, sir. This is the Armitage Shanks Literary Awards.”
“A literary award for cheese making? That doesn’t sound very likely.”
“There’s no cheese making here, sir—I think you’re confusing the event.”
“Nonsense, old boy,” said Spooncurdle amiably, having never knowingly been mistaken once in all of his sixty-seven years. “I say,” he added, changing the subject completely and leaning closer, “sorry to hear about that Riding-Hood debacle. Don’t let it get you down, eh? We all drop a serious clanger sooner or later.”
“You’re too kind,” replied Jack, wondering if this was a good time to point out that Spooncurdle had himself “dropped a clanger” on numerous occasions—and that shooting a grouse beater was illegal, despite the good Lord’s insistence that it wasn’t, or shouldn’t be.
Behind them the footman boomed out, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Admiral Robert Shaftoe. Never lost a ship, a man or in retreat, a second.”
“Bobby a cheese maker?” said Spooncurdle suddenly. “How extraordinary. I must go and speak to him. You will excuse me?”
“Of course.”
Spooncurdle left Jack standing on his own near the bar. He ordered a drink but was not alone for long.
“Hello, Jack.”
A small man in his late forties and dressed in a black collarless shirt had appeared next to him. He was accompanied by a thin, gawky woman dressed in flamboyant mix-and-match clothes, a necklace of large orange beads and a huge pair of spectacles with matching frames.
“Hello, Neville,” said Jack coldly. He never felt easy speaking to Madeleine’s first husband. He was, after all, supporting this man’s children and loved them as he did his own, and Neville’s continuing efforts to ingratiate himself with Madeleine and the children would have been acceptable—if he didn’t try to do it at Jack’s expense.
“This is Virginia Kreeper,” said Neville, introducing the thin woman to Jack. She nodded and stared at Jack with ill-disguised malevolence, as though Neville had said some disparaging things about him prior to their meeting.
“Hello, Virginia,” Jack replied pleasantly, and made a point of starting a conversation with her rather than Neville. “What do you do?”
“I’m a counselor,” she replied in a thin, nasal voice.
“Really?” returned Jack. “Reading council?”
“No, counselor. I offer help to people who are suffering stress.”
“What sort of stress?” asked Jack suspiciously.
She stared him straight in the eye. “Anything from police harassment to… being swallowed alive by a wolf.”
Jack felt himself stiffen defensively. “You’ve been busy recently, then.”
“No thanks to you,” she replied sarcastically. “Every time the NCD breaks a case, I end up picking up the pieces. First the three pigs that you shamelessly pursued with the slenderest evidence imaginable, now the Riding-Hood disaster—it could take years of counseling before she and her grandmother can even speak, let alone dress themselves or have any sort of useful life skills.”
Neville was looking at Jack with obvious delight. He despised Jack with the lingering hatred of an idle underachiever who had lost everything by his own stupidity and was now looking for someone to blame. Virginia was not a girlfriend; he had simply brought her along to try to humiliate Jack, something he seemed to treat a bit like a hobby. Jack sighed. He hadn’t expected he’d have to defend his actions to anyone, least of all to some dopey friend of Neville’s, but he wasn’t going to take this sitting down.
“Ever been face-to-face with a serial wife killer?” he asked her.
“No.”
“How about being chased by a deranged genetic experiment with murder on its mind?”
Kreeper sighed. “No.”
“Staked out a grandmother’s cottage for three weeks solid because you had a gut instinct something might happen?”
“No.”
“Walked unarmed into an illegal porridge buy?”
“No!”
“You run a relatively risk-free life, in fact. I don’t. I put my ass on the line every time I go out there. Don’t think that ‘Nursery’ in the title of my division makes it cozy kittens, fluffy toys and shades of pink—it’s a violent and dangerous world, full of murder, theft and cannibalism. When did you last make a life-or-death decision?”
Kreeper was unrepentant. “That doesn’t condone harassment of the three pigs or the reckless disregard with which you failed to protect Riding-Hood and her grandmother.”
Jack stared at her coldly. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said after a pause, his voice rising. “In the world of nursery crime, some things just happen, despite my best endeavors. Humpty takes a nose dive, the pigs boil the wolf—and Riding-Hood and her gran get eaten. In my world, the world of the vaguely predestined, you have to work five times as hard to involve yourself in the unfolding of the case and ten times harder still to change the outcome. I couldn’t stop the wolf eating them—but I did my best.”
“Your best?” said Kreeper with a contemptuous laugh. “How can you have the cold arrogance to stand there and tell me you did everything in your power to stop them from being eaten?”
“Because,” said Jack slowly, “the wolf ate me, too.”
Virginia’s mouth dropped open. She didn’t know about this; not many people did. Being swallowed whole wasn’t something he’d like to repeat, as it had ruined a perfectly good suit, but once past the esophagus it hadn’t been so bad. Strangely, it wasn’t as dark as he had suspected—but certainly cramped, with Red and her granny in there, too. But Briggs had been right: Without the woodsman’s timely intervention, they’d all be wolf shit by now, and Kreeper would be talking to a column of air.
Fed up, Jack pounced. “They didn’t tell you that? Didn’t tell you I went in alone and unarmed to face a murderous wolf as soon as I realized it wasn’t Gran in bed?”
She shook her head.
“Did they tell you I grabbed Riding-Hood’s ankles as she disappeared down his gullet? That I had my feet pressed against the wolf’s jaws to stop her from going down? That I couldn’t save her and was gobbled up, too?”
His voice rose. He’d been vilified in the press about this, and he’d had enough. “But get this,” he continued, “I could have just legged it and called the regulars. But I didn’t. I faced down the wolf and was devoured for my trouble. The first time, in fact, that a serving police officer in the British Isles has been eaten alive in the line of duty. Did Josh Hatchett write any of that?”
Jack stopped talking and looked around. Every occupant of the Déjà Vu ballroom was staring at him, hanging on his every word. Neville had a look like thunder. He had hoped Virginia would decimate his ex-wife’s husband, but he had underestimated Jack. Again.