‘Perhaps not,’ murmured Jack, leaning gently against the fourth wall. ‘I take it that you are still gainfully employed in the mystery thriller industry?’

‘Me?’ giggled the old lady, ‘What possible harm could a little old—’

She had stopped talking because a pearl-handled revolver had slipped from her purse and fallen to the floor with a clatter.

‘I have a licence for that,’ she said quickly.

The next to be interviewed was Flashback the butler, who after taking them on an interesting but irrelevant excursion around a trivial incident in his childhood, gave no new information—except to say that Locked Room entered the library alone, and he heard the key being turned behind him.

‘Tell me,’ said Jack slowly. ‘Was he carrying a small volume of short stories with him?’

‘Why yes!’ replied Flashback, ‘it's … it's all coming back to me now.’

‘I was initially baffled by the lack of a murder weapon within the locked room,’ intoned Spratt when all the suspects were conveniently arranged in the drawing room a few minutes later, ‘but after due consideration, it makes sense. All of you had reason to kill him. Red Herring was blackmailing him, Unshakeable Alibi was nervous that she might be eclipsed by his planned comeback, Overlooked Clue was still in love with him and Least Likely Suspect wanted to stay employed for ever.’

They all looked nervously at one another as a log settled in the grate and sent a shower of sparks up the chimney.

‘That's right,’ said Jack, ‘the killer was …’

Answer: It had to be a suicide. Locked Room, unable to come to terms with the loss of his literary stardom, wanted to re-establish the tired contrivance to full prominence in a final, totally unsolvable locked room mystery that would be discussed on a million bulletin boards for all eternity. Sadly, unable to come up with a decent description of his own mutilated body, he borrowed it word for word from Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, his first and keynote appearance.