The Austin Allegro was designed in the mid-seventies to be the successor to the hugely popular Austin 1100. Built around the proven “A” series engine, it turned out to be an ugly duckling at birth with the high transverse engine requiring a slab front that did nothing to enhance its looks. With a bizarre square steering wheel and numerous idiosyncratic features, including a better drag coefficient in reverse, porous alloy wheels on the “sport” model and a rear window that popped out if you jacked up the car too enthusiastically, the Allegro would—some say undeservedly—figurehead the British car-manufacturing industry’s darkest chapter.
—The Rise and Fall of British Leyland, A. Morris
Jack knocked politely on the door. It opened a crack, and a pinched face glared suspiciously at him. He held up his ID card.
“Have you come about the room?” Mrs. Hubbard asked in a croaky voice that reminded Jack of anyone you care to mention doing a bad impersonation of a witch. “If you play the accordion, you can forget about it right now.”
“No, I’m Detective Inspector Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division. I wonder if I could have a word?”
She squinted at the ID, pretended she could read without her glasses and then grimaced. “What’s it about?” she asked.
“What’s it about?” repeated Jack. “Mr. Dumpty, of course!”
“Oh, well,” she replied offhandedly, “I suppose you’d better come in.”
She opened the door wider, and Jack was immediately assailed by a powerful odor that reminded him of a strong Limburger cheese he had once bought by accident and then had to bury in the garden when the dustbinmen refused to remove it. Mrs. Hubbard’s front room was small and dirty, and all the furniture was falling to pieces. A sink piled high with long-unwashed plates was situated beneath yellowed net curtains, and the draining board was home to a large collection of empty dog-food cans. A tomcat with one eye and half an ear glared at him from under an old wardrobe, and four bull terriers with identical markings stared up at him in surprise from a dog basket that was clearly designed to hold only two.
Mrs. Hubbard herself was a wizened old lady of anything between seventy-five and a hundred five. She had wispy white hair in an untidy bun and walked with a stick that was six inches too short. Her face was grimy and had more wrinkles in it than the most wrinkled prune. She stared at him with dark, mean eyes.
“If you want some tea, you’ll have to make it yourself, and if you’re going to, you can make one for me while you’re about it.”
“Thank you, no,” replied Jack as politely as he could. Mrs. Hubbard grunted.
“Is he dead?” she added, looking at him suspiciously.
“I’m sorry to say that he is. Did you know him well?”
She shuffled across the room, her short walking stick making her limp far more than was necessary.
“Not really,” she replied, settling herself in an old leather armchair that had horsehair stuffing falling out of its seams. “He was only a lodger.” She said it in the sort of way that one might refer to vermin. Jack wondered just how fantastically unlucky you would have to be to have this old crone as a landlady.
“How long had he a room here?”
“About a year. He paid in advance. It’s nonreturnable, so I’m keeping it. It’s very hard getting lodgers these days. If I took in aliens, spongers or those damnable statisticians, I could fill the place twice over, but I have standards to maintain.”
“Of course you do,” muttered Jack under his breath, attempting to breathe through his mouth to avoid the smell.
At that moment one of the dogs got out of its basket, pushed forth its front legs and stretched. The hamstrings in its hind legs quivered with the effort, and at the climax of the stretch the dog lowered its head, raised its tail and farted so loudly that the other dogs glanced up with a look of astonishment and admiration. The dog then walked over to Mrs. Hubbard, laid its nose on her lap and whined piteously.
“Duty calls,” said Mrs. Hubbard, placing a wrinkled hand on the dog’s head. She heaved herself to her feet and shuffled over to a small cupboard next to the fridge. Even Jack could see from where he was standing that it contained nothing except an old tin of custard powder and a canned steak-and-kidney pie. She searched the cupboard until satisfied that it was devoid of bones, then turned back to the dog, which had sat patiently behind her, thumping its tail on an area of floor that had been worn through the carpet and underlay to the shiny wood beneath.
“Sorry, pooch. No bones for you today.”
The dog strode off and sat among its brethren, apparently comprehending every word. Mrs. Hubbard resumed her seat.
“Now, young man, where were we?”
“What sort of person was he?”
“Nice enough, I suppose,” she said grudgingly, the same way a Luddite on dialysis might react to a kidney machine. “Never any trouble, although I had little to do with him.”
“And did he often sit on the wall in the yard?”
“When he wasn’t working. He used to sit up there to—I don’t know—to think or something.”
“Did you ever see him with anyone?”
“No. I don’t permit callers. But there was a woman last night. Howling and screaming fit to bring the house down, she was. Really upset and unhappy—I had to threaten to set the dogs on her before she would leave.”
He showed her the photo of the woman in Vienna. “This woman?”
Mrs. Hubbard squinted at it for a few moments. “Possibly.”
“Do you know her name?”
“No.”
Another dog had risen from the basket and was now whimpering in front of her like the first. She got up and went to the same cupboard and opened it as before, the dog sitting at the same place as the first, its tail thumping the area of shiny wood. Jack sighed.
“Sorry, dog,” she said, “nothing for you either.”
The bull terrier returned to its place in front of the fire, and Mrs. Hubbard sat back in her chair, shooing off the tomcat, which had tried to gain ascendancy in her absence. She looked up at Jack with a puzzled air.
“Had we finished?”
“No. What happened last night after the woman left?”
“Mr. Dumpty went to a party.”
She got up again as another dog had started to whimper, and she looked in the cupboard once more. Considering the hole in the carpet and the area of shiny wood that the dogs’ tails had worn smooth, Jack supposed this little charade happened a lot.
“When did he get back?” asked Jack when she had returned.
“Who?”
“Mr. Dumpty.”
“At about eleven-thirty, when he arrived in the biggest, blackest car I’ve ever seen. I always stay up to make sure none of my lodgers bring home any guests. I won’t have any sin under this roof, Inspector.”
“How did he look?”
“Horribly drunk,” she said with disgust, “but he bade me good evening—he was always polite, despite his dissolute lifestyle—and went upstairs to his room.”
“Did he always spend the night here?”
“Sometimes. When he did, he slept on the wall outside. The next time I saw him, he was at peace—or in pieces, to be more precise—in the backyard when I went to dump the rubbish.”
She had expected Jack to laugh at her little joke, but he didn’t. Instead he sucked the end of his pencil thoughtfully.
“Do you have any other lodgers?”
“Only Prometheus upstairs in the front room.”
“Prometheus?” asked Jack with some surprise. “The Titan Prometheus? The one who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind?”
“I’ve no concern with what he does in his private life. He pays the rent on time, so he’s okay with me.”
Jack made several notes, thanked Mrs. Hubbard and beat a grateful retreat as she went to the same cupboard for the fourth time.