‘You knew Locked Room well?’ asked Spratt.

‘We were both there right at the beginning with Poe's Dupin mysteries,’ she mused. ‘Strange as it may seem now, Inspector, Locked Room was once the brightest star of the genre. He said he was going to make a comeback, but it never happened—it was all a bit sad, to be honest.’

‘And you are?’ asked Jack as the next suspect walked in.

‘Cryptic Final Message,’ replied the man, raising his hat. ‘Locked Room scribbled this note earlier today—I found it in the waste-paper basket.’

Jack took the message and handed it to Mary.

‘Okay, intimate nectar,’ she read. ‘Could be an anagram.’

‘Impossible,’ replied Spratt. ‘The Guild of Detectives have banned all anagram-related clues since 1998—the same time we finally got rid of the ludicrous notion that albinos must always be homicidal lunatics.’

‘Well,’ purred Overlooked Clue, as she entered the room in a silk kimono. ‘Inspector Spratt—dahling—we meet again.’

‘Indeed,’ replied Jack. ‘You knew Locked Room?’

‘Of course,’ she replied, draping herself with a fashionably decadent air upon the chaise longue. ‘We were close, but not intimate. He taught me all I know about misdirection. I always keep his first story close to my heart. Dearly missed, Inspector, dearly missed.’

She sobbed and clasped a small volume of Poe short stories to her breast.

The next interviewee was Least Likely Suspect, a sweet old lady with white hair and clear blue eyes who spent her time gossiping and handing round photographs of her grandchildren. She asked Jack to hold a skein of wool so that she could wind some into a ball.

‘I'm so sorry about Locked Room,’ she said sadly. ‘The finish of the Golden Age hit him badly. He always claimed he would make a dramatic comeback in the Christmas supplement of a leading daily newspaper, but I suppose it's too late for that now.’