The Big Over Easy

12. St. cerebellum's

The outdated St. Cerebellum’s mental hospital had been constructed in 1831 and was considered modern for its day. With separate wards for unmarried mothers, sufferers of milk allergies, unwanted relatives and the genuinely disturbed, St. Cerebellum’s once boasted a proud record of ill-conceived experimental treatment. With the high level of fee-paying curiosity seekers the litmus test of its success, St. Cerebellum’s even outstripped Bedlam as those requiring lunatic-based entertainment flocked to Reading in droves. But the days when you could pay sixpence to view someone who thought he was Napoleon were long gone, and despite continued and relentless modernization, it was still an anachronistic stain on Reading’s otherwise fine record of psychiatric treatment.

Jack and Mary entered the hospital at the main reception area and, after being issued with passes to avoid any more embarrassing accidental incarcerations, were escorted along the plain whitewashed corridors by a burly nurse with a two-way radio and a bunch of keys on his belt.

“You’ve heard about the plan to rebuild St. Cerebellum’s?” asked the male nurse.

“Sure,” replied Jack. “Fifty million should do it, yes?”

“And none too soon. We are both an outpatient center and a secure hospital for the criminally unhinged — even though the two halves never meet, it would be better for everyone to separate the two.”

“Doubtless,” replied Mary as some weird and maniacal laughter echoed up the corridors.

“Dr. Quatt is a brilliant woman,” said the nurse as they took a clanking lift to the third floor. “The popular view is that she’s as mad as a barrel of skunks, and many people see her as a perverter of all the decent virtues that bind society together, but they said the same about Galileo.”

“I must say I don’t remember the bit where Galileo grafted sheep’s hooves onto amputees,” mused Mary.

“Or subjected toads to Iron Maiden’s ‘Number of the Beast’ so loud they exploded,” added Jack.

“All her work was to alleviate suffering,” retorted the nurse defensively. “When they banned her, a dark veil fell over the medical-research community. We don’t expect outsiders to truly understand her brilliance.”

St. Cerebellum’s seemed like a little world unto itself.

A crackling message came over the nurse’s radio. He unclipped it and waved them to a stop. There was an almost unintelligible rasp of dialogue about a “patient in transit,” and he acknowledged the call before he turned to a nearby room, selected a key and unlocked the door.

“We are moving one of our secure patients,” explained the nurse as he ushered them into what had once been a small cell.

“It’s safer to lock ourselves in while he’s being transported.”

The lock clunked shut, and the nurse spoke briefly on the radio. Up and down the corridor, they could hear doors slamming and locks being thrown.

“Who is it?” asked Jack.

The nurse indicated the small glass porthole in the door. “Take a look.”

Jack peered out cautiously, which seemed daft, considering the door was iron-banded oak. After a few moments, he caught sight of six burly nurses who surrounded a tall figure wrapped in a strait-jacket and bite mask. Each of the six nurses held the patient by means of a long pole that was connected to a collar around his neck. As they drew closer, Jack could see the dark brown cakey texture of the prisoner’s skin, and with a shiver he knew exactly who it was. He had hoped never to see him again but was thankful at least that Cerebellum’s was taking no chances. As they walked past, the patient looked at Jack with his glacé-cherry eyes and his thin licorice lips curled up into a cruel smile of recognition. He winked at Jack, and then they were gone.

Jack stepped away from the window, his palms damp with perspiration. Images of the night he and Wilmot Snaarb had tackled the Gingerbreadman filled his head. He could still see Snaarb’s look of pain and terror as the cakey psychopath playfully pulled his arms out of their sockets.

“Are you okay, sir?” asked Mary.

“Yes, yes, quite well.”

The male nurse laughed and went to the window to check for the all-clear.

“Believe me, you really don’t want to get any closer to Ginger than that,” he said, placing the key in the door and pausing. “He’d kill you as soon as look at you.”

“I know,” replied Jack. “I was the arresting officer.”

“Nah,” said the nurse, “everyone knows that was Friedland Chymes.”

They were led into Dr. Quatt’s office, a light and airy room with a good view of Prospect Park through large floor-to-ceiling windows. There were testimonials and letters of support hanging on the walls, and bottled specimens that contained misshapen creatures covered every work surface. Jack and Mary looked more closely and winced: The carefully bottled specimens looked like some bizarre form of animal “mix and match.”

A few moments later, an elegantly dressed woman of Jack’s age walked brusquely in from an anteroom, removed a pair of surgical gloves and tossed them in a bin. Under her white lab coat, she was dressed in a wool suit and blouse with a ring of pearls high on her neck. Her features were delicately chiseled, she wore only the merest hint of makeup and had her hair swept up in the tightest bun Mary had ever seen. She didn’t look as mad as a barrel of skunks; she looked quite sophisticated.

“Dr. Deborah Quatt?” said Jack. “My name is Detective Inspector Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division, and this is Detective Sergeant Mary Mary.”

“Jack Spratt?” she asked, staring at him quizzically. “Have we met before?”

“We were in the same year at Caversham Park Junior School,” replied Jack, astounded that she remembered.

“Of course we were. You always insisted on being the pencil monitor — a policeman at heart, clearly.”

She said it with a slight derogatory air that he didn’t like.

“And you were expelled for sewing the school cat to the janitor.”

“The joyous experimentation of children,” she declared, laughing fondly at the memory. “What fun that was! Did you come all this way for a reunion?”

“Not at all. We wanted to talk to you about one of your patients — a Mr. Dumpty.”

Dr. Quatt shook her head slowly. “I never discuss patients’ records, Inspector. It is a flagrant breach of doctor-patient confidentiality. However, I could stretch a point given some form of fiscal reparation. Shall we say fifty pounds?”

“Doctor, you do know that he’s dead?”

“I was nowhere near him,” declared Dr. Quatt haughtily. “If you want to try me for malpractice, you’ll have to mount a good case. I’ve plenty of experience defending them, believe you me.” She stared at Jack for a moment. “Mr. Dumpty? Dead? What a pity. A very, very great pity.”

“His death was tragic, I agree,” admitted Jack.

“Death comes to us all, Inspector. No, it’s a pity the patient-confidentiality clause is null and void — I could have done with fifty pounds. The price of lab equipment these days is simply scandalous.”

She looked around, lowered her voice and leaned forwards. “Did you know that I have successfully grafted a kitten’s head onto a haddock?”

“Should you be telling me this?” asked Jack, also in a quiet voice.

She leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not against the law — I just can’t get any funding to do proper research because of that damnable Jellyman and his outdated moral principles. In the world of cutting-edge genetic research, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”

“Which brings us back to Mr. Dumpty,” said Jack. “How long had you been his doctor?”

“For five years,” she said as she sat behind her large desk and indicated for them to be seated, “ever since I arrived in this dump. I was a psychiatrist before I moved into genetic research. What do you want to know?”

“His state of mind.”

“Ah!” she said, getting up to rifle through a rusty filing cabinet. “You are considering suicide, Inspector?”

“It is possible.”

“Indeed it is,” replied Dr. Quatt, looking at the files carefully.

“Physically, he was in a pretty ropy state. He was a lifelong salmonella sufferer, with frequent recurrences; when he had a bad bout, it was most debilitating. He drank more than was good for him, frequently overate and didn’t get much exercise — he never could walk far on those short legs.”

“And mentally?”

“Not good — but functional. He suffered from a sense of extreme low worth that manifested itself in frequent and self-destructive binges of drinking and womanizing. He also had depressive fits that sometimes lasted for days; all he could do was sit on his wall. Aside from that, he sometimes had problems differentiating reality from fantasy. He was particularly fearful that a giant mongoose was after him, was phobic about soufflé, meringue, and egg whisks, and had a recurring nightmare of being boiled alive for exactly three minutes.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Six days ago. Easter was a bad time for him, as you can imagine, with all those chocolate eggs being eaten and real ones dyed — he was a virtual prisoner in his own home. We had two sessions last week, and I think we really made some headway.”

“Did he talk about his work?”

She shook her head. “Never. It was all purely domestic.”

“But could he have been suicidal?”

Dr. Quatt thought for a moment. “I’m sorry to say that I can’t rule it out, despite my best attentions.”

Jack nodded slowly. It was what he had been expecting to hear.

“One more thing: How long had he been coming to St. Cerebellum’s?”

“For forty years, Inspector. It was almost his second home.”

Jack got up. “Thank you, Dr. Quatt; you’ve been most helpful. Tell me — and this is just personal curiosity — were you serious when you said you’d grafted a kitten’s head onto a haddock?”

Dr. Quatt’s eyes lit up, and she looked at them in turn, her youthful enthusiasm boiling to the surface. “Do you want to see?”

“That was pretty gross, wasn’t it?” announced Mary as they drove away from St. Cerebellum’s a few minutes later.

“Yes, but fascinating in a prurient, icky, dissecting-frogs, brains-in-jars kind of way. I thought keeping the collar and bell was an inspired touch, and it was kind of cute watching it try to play with that soggy ball of wool inside the tank.”

“Sir!”

“Just kidding. Yes, it was gross, and Dr. Quatt is definitely as mad as a barrel of skunks. And listen, I never insisted on being a pencil monitor at school. Where can I drop you?”

He left her outside the front of Reading Central Police Station. They bade each other good night, and she walked into the car park to retrieve her BMW, thinking that perhaps, given the direction of her new career, she should simply drive straight to Basingstoke and give Flowwe another whack with the onyx ashtray — just to be even-steven.

But when she got to her car, there was something unexpected waiting for her: an envelope carefully tucked under her windshield wiper. She thought it might be from Arnold, but it wasn’t. She read the note again, then a third time. She thought for a moment and then trotted into the station’s changing rooms to check herself in the mirror. If you are invited to the Reading branch of the Guild of Detectives by DCI Chymes himself, you should always look your best.