Without Lifting A Finger

The denouement is taking forever, but with Tubby "getting there" is the thing: I saw everything through a veil: the streets, the people moving with us or coming toward us. Voices, the noise of carriages I heard as in a dream, and suddenly found myself sitting at a table by the window in the Golden Arms, with Tubby Schaumann sitting down beside me. Huffing and puffing and then taking a deep breath he said with a sigh, "There!" and after a while, "Well, well, well, well, who killed Cock Robin?" * And who is Cock Robin? There are a few possibilities:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_Robin * And what is an English rhyme doing in a German novel? The rhyme isn't in Tubby, just the allusion. Apparently "versions" of the story exist in other countries, including Germany. * The "long version" of the English rhyme: Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin. Who saw him die? I, s...

Apparently Tubby Schaumann is a precursor to the fat detective: think Nero Wolfe, Frank Cannon, or Ironside. [From Fat Boys: A Slim Book by Sander L. Gilman] 

Already a third the way through. The title has been translated (some say badly, because it's not as "shocking" as Stopfkuchen = Cake Stuffer, the cruel nickname Tubby was given by his fellow classmates as a boy) as Tubby Schaumann: A Tale of Murder and the High Seas . Edward, an old school chum of Tubby's, is the narrator. Currently he's sitting with Tubby beneath a linden tree, outside of Tubby's Red Bank Farm. I think Tubby's easing into how he solved a murder; not quite sure. "Yes, yes, Edward," said Schaumann, "go forth of the ark! Some are sent out into the world to found a kingdom or an empire, others to secure an estate at the Cape of Good Hope, and others again just to capture a little country girl, one whose native good spirits have been stifled and who has a poor devil of a papa who himself is tormented almost to madness--to capture her, I say, and to acquaint her with Henriette Davidi's cookbook and with Heinrich Schaum...