THE BIG OVER EASY
Jasper Fforde
Briggs waved a hand in the direction of the corpse. “It looks like he died from injuries sustained falling from a wall.”
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
For my brother Mathew, whose love of the absurd — and the profound — enlightened my childhood
1.Mary Mary
If Queen Anne hadn’t suffered so badly from gout and dropsy, Reading might never have developed at all. In 1702 the unhealthy Queen Anne, looking for a place to ease her royal infirmities, chanced upon Bath; and where royalty goes, so too does society. In consequence, Reading, up until that time a small town on a smaller tributary of the Thames, became a busy staging post on the Bath road, later to become the A4, and ultimately the M4. The town was enriched by the wool trade and later played host to several large firms that were to become household names. By the time Huntley & Palmers biscuits began here in 1822, Simonds brewery was already well established; and when Suttons Seeds began in 1835 and Spongg’s footcare in 1853, the town’s prosperity was assured.
It was the week following Easter in Reading, and no one could remember the last sunny day. Gray clouds swept across the sky, borne on a chill wind that cut like a knife. It seemed that spring had forsaken the town. The drab winter weather had clung to the town like a heavy smog, refusing to relinquish the season. Even the early bloomers were in denial. Only the bravest crocuses had graced the municipal park, and the daffodils, usually a welcome splash of color after a winter of grayness, had taken one sniff at the cold, damp air and postponed blooming for another year.