The Fourth Bear полностью

Jack was right: The evening editions of The Mole, The Toad and The Owl covered little else but the Gingerbreadman’s dramatic escape, along with lurid accounts of what he had got up to the last time he was free. The scaremongering that had begun on the radio was thus reinforced, and by nightfall panic buying had occasioned the systematic emptying of every food store and gas station in town, causing several shopkeepers to comment in private that they wished a dangerous homicidal maniac would escape every week.

Jack pulled up outside his house in the north of the town and locked the Allegro. His neighbor Mrs. Sittkomm was staring inquisitively over the fence as she pretended to take in the washing. But she wasn’t looking at Jack—she was looking beyond him to the house attached to Jack’s on the other side.

“There goes the neighborhood,” she muttered with barely concealed venom.

Jack followed her look to where a moving van was disgorging a procession of carefully taped cardboard boxes. “Ah!” said Jack. “Our new neighbors. Any idea who they are?”

Mrs. Sittkomm stared at him and then ran through the gamut of severe English disapproval. She started with a slow shake of the head, went on to raised eyebrows and a glare, then ended with an audible tut. She beckoned him closer and hissed under her breath, “Nurseries!”

“Which ones?” asked Jack, more through professional interest than anything else.

“You’ll see,” said Mrs. Sittkomm scornfully. “They’ve no right to be living with decent real people. They’ll bring house prices down, you see if they don’t.”

“Bears?” asked Jack curiously.

“Mercifully not,” replied Mrs. Sittkomm with a snort. “I had a bear as a lodger once; took six months to get the smell of porridge out of the spare room—and the honey in the carpet…”

She didn’t finish her sentence and just signaled that her contempt was total by rolling her eyes, shrugging and looking to heaven all at once, a curious maneuver that reminded Jack of a stage contortionist he had once seen.

Jack left Mrs. Sittkomm to her twisted moral dilemma, walked along the street to his new neighbors’ house and rang the doorbell.

A florid-looking woman in a flower-patterned dress answered the door. She had large, exaggerated features, unblinking eyes and a shiny, almost varnished complexion. She also had several bruises on her face and one arm in a sling.

“Mrs. Punch…?” said Jack, recognizing her immediately. She and her husband were well known to him and the NCD. Although their constant fights were no one’s business but their own, Jack was always concerned that they might throw the baby downstairs, something they had been threatening for over thirty years but fortunately had not yet done.

“Inspector!” screeched Judy, staring at Jack as though he were something you might tread on in the local park. “What the bloody hell do you want?”

“I’m not here on business, Mrs. Punch. I live next door—and keep your voice down. I’m only a yard away.”