Jeff Noon - Automated Alice

"But, you must understand, I was in the year 1860 when the Spiderboy was killed!"

"That is not nearly good enough, my little suspect!" Mrs Minus replied, wrapping a strangulation of her thick coils around Alice's body. "Your alibi smells of high wantonness. You have already admitted to the ownership of the murderous jigsaw pieces. I am hereby charging you with Probable Involvement in the crime of murder. Captain Ramshackle is the killer of the Spiderboy and the Catgirl; he wants nothing more than to bring chaos to the world, and you, troublesome Alice, are the Badgerman's helper in this endeavour. You shall be executed for this." Mrs Minus then produced an evil-looking pistol from a pocket in her skin. She pointed it at Alice...

"But I'm innocent!" squealed Alice. ("Innocent... innocent... innocent..." reflected the thousand mirrors, all to no avail: Mrs Minus had every single image of Alice wrapped in her tightening coils.) At which thankful moment Inspector Jack Russell came bursting into the room.

"Has my election campaign mascot arrived, Inspector?" asked the Snakewoman.

"Not yet, Our Lady of Slitherness," replied Inspector Jack, nervously, "but I have to report that there has been an escape from the cells..."

"Who has escaped, Inspector Russell?"

"Captain Ramshackle."

"Captain Ramshackle! You puppified fool!"

Mrs Minus released Alice in order to wrap her slinky knots around Jack Russell's body. A pack of wild police-dogmen came howling by, and Mrs Minus and Inspector Jack Russell swiftly joined them in the search for Captain Ramshackle. Alice peeked out of the cell and looked along the corridor. In the long distance she saw Long Distance Davis escaping (at quite a pace for a snail!). On the other side of the corridor rested another door. This one was marked with the number forty-five and the words Room of Evidence, and it was through this forty-fived door that Alice slipped, to escape from the police.

The Room of Evidence was freezing cold, and Alice was shivering as soon as she closed the door behind her. She hugged her red pinafore around herself (checking her pockets to be sure that the six jigsaw pieces and the feather were still safe) and ventured forth into the coldness.

The Room of Evidence was lined with cabinets wall to wall, and filled up with large tables, all of which were empty except for one, on which lay a white sheet covering a lumpy shape. Alice noticed that a notice attached to the sheet was labelled with a label that read Whiskers MacDuff. Alice slowly lifted up the sheet...

Alice screamed then as she had never screamed before! "Upon my kittens!" was her strangled cry. She backed away from the table in a rush, fell over her own legs, and ended up in a heap of herself on the floor!

The reason for Alice's discomfort was that, upon lifting the sheet, she had uncovered the dead and rearranged body of the Catgirl, Whiskers MacDuff. Alice had never seen anything dead before, and the sight of such a thing made her go all wobbly. "I must be a strong young girl!" she was now saying to herself as she got back to her feet. "I must grow myself up!" Alice forced herself to look at the body. The Catgirl's face was covered in a fine gingery fur from which a pair of startled, human eyes were staring, lifelessly. The head of the Catgirl was melded to the juncture between her furry legs; her whiskers were sprouting from her thighs; her hind paws were growing out of her gingery chest. Her furry ears were planted upon each of her elbows (if cats have elbows, that is; Alice wasn't sure). And clipped with a brass safety pin to the Catgirl's left ear was a small linen bag. Alice, being curious, searched inside the bag and found a piece from a wooden jigsaw. She quite rightly decided to keep the jigsaw piece, which illustrated the golden eye of a wildcat. She added this feline fragment to the collection in her pocket. She had now collected seven pieces of the puzzle. Alice was more than halfway home!

But it was so cold in that freezing room that Alice's tears were forming icicles, and she decided to find a way out. "I certainly can't escape through the door I came in by," she shivered to herself; "those horrible policedogmen might still be lingering there. But there seems to be no other doorway! Whatever shall I do now?" She was still looking all around when the only door opened and a very tired-looking, old bloodhoundman came lolloping in! He was dressed in a crisply clean and spotless white gown and his long face hung down with a hangdog expression, complete with briefcase eyes, a dripping wet nose and a long and lollingly pink tongue. This creature sniffed at the air with a gruff huff, twice times, and then lowly growled, "Who in the iciness are you?"

"I'm icy Alice," replied Alice; "and who are you?"

"My name is Doctor Sniffer," the bloodhound replied sniffingly. "I am the Chief Examiner of Corpses. What are you doing standing so close to my next job of work? And why is the body uncovered?"

"I was only being curious," answered Alice, quite truthfully.

"Curiosity killed the cat," growled Sniffer, stepping forwards to examine the Catgirl's corpse for tampering. "I trust you haven't been too curious?"

"Of course not," replied Alice (not so truthfully). "I was only trying to work out the reason for the Catgirl's... that is to say... the reason why she had to die..."

"That's my job, young girl! And you're hindering my examination!"

Alice stepped back then and watched with trepidation as Doctor Sniffer snipped some locks of ginger fur from the body of Whiskers MacDuff. These locks he then examined under a microscope. (Luckily he never bothered to examine the contents of the small linen bag.) "This is such a mysterious case," Sniffer gruffed after a few moments. "We cannot find out exactly how the victims died, only that their bodies are in some way strangely jigsawed. The prime suspect is one Captain Ramshackle, but he seems to have escaped us. Confound it! But no matter, all I have to do is find some traces of badger fur on the body." Sniffer was twiddling at the knurled knob of his microscope as he said these words.

"I do not believe that Captain Ramshackle is the culprit," stated Alice.

Doctor Sniffer raised up his luggagey eyes from the microscope. "That is for me to decide, young girl! Am I not, after all, the Chief Examiner of Corpses?"

"You most certainly are the Chiefest Examiner of Corpses," replied Alice, before adding; "could you therefore please tell me where the first victim of the Jigsaw Murderer might be?"

"The Spiderboy called Quentin Tarantula has long since passed through my paws, I'm afraid; his body has been buried."

"And what would have happened to any clues found on his body?"

"That now belongs to the Civil Serpents: the big snakes are making their own examination of the clues."

"So the Spiderboy's jigsaw piece must be inside the Town Hall?"

"Exactly so!" answered Doctor Sniffer. "And quite rightly; deep, down below the Town Hall."

"Oh dear," sighed Alice to herself, "I shall have a hard time finding it then."

"And may I ask what you are doing", Sniffer sniffed, "in my Room of Evidence?"

"I'm looking for a way out," replied Alice, calmly.

"There are only two ways out of this room: the first is through the front door." Sniffer pointed with a limp paw towards the door that Alice had entered by.

"And where is the second way out?" asked Alice (rather too eagerly).

"Through this door here, of course," Sniffer answered, tapping with his claws on an iron trapdoor set in the floor of the Room of Evidence: "This is where I shovel the corpses when I've finished my examination." Sniffer lifted up the trapdoor to reveal a gaping hole in the floor. "This is the only other way out of the room," he growled at Alice. This orifice leads directly to the cemetery, but you have to be officially dead to descend that far."