After Keppler and the other CSIs had shaken hands - evne though he and Grissom were technically Las Vegas colleagues too, they'd not yet met there due to Grissom's current sabbatical - Merlin led them over to a large chest. Treguard lifted the lid, revealing what was, to intents and purposes -

"Is that what it looks like?" asked Mac.

- a TV monitor.

"This is the Chest of Current Team Viewing," specified Merlin. With an unsuppressed chuckle, he added, "or CCTV for short!"

"A rose by any other name," murmured Grissom.

"Impressive," opined Horatio. "How will it help us?"

"Being a chest, it stores things," Treguard explained, "and until a new team takes on the Dungeon, the adventures of the most recent team are stored within. Including an encounter with Bumptious at what is now the crime scene."

"It should provide valuable clues," declared Merlin. Then he turned to the Dungeon Master. "Oh, by the way, Treguard, I haven't forgotten your request for a wall-mounted flat-screen quest monitor. I do hope you can hold on until Christmas!" Treguard looked distinctly embarrassed.

With a flourish of his wand and a spatter of verbal commands, with either the former or the latter quite possibly just for effect, Merlin initiated the 'CCTV playback'. The CSIs watched as a dungeoneer named Karen dropped into the mining pit, landing on a plunger and flooring Bumptious with an explosion. A maid named Gretel helped to revive him with a damp cloth, but the CSIs speculated about head trauma as a possible cause of death. Following a "tribunal" in which Bumptious questioned Kaen and found her innocent, the dungeoner left the scene, while Bumptious and Gretel departed for a cup of tea, marking the end of the encounter. As the screen went blank, Keppler turned to Grissom.

"You look puzzled. Is it because tea drinking didn't start in Europe until the 17th century?"

"1657," Mac specified. He thought of his girlfriend Peyton in New York, a Londonian ex-pat who had armed herself with such facts in her forlorn refusal to surrender to coffee.

"This may not be Europe," replied Grissom. "I was wincing at that maid."

"Don't worry, Gil." Horatio had donned the sunglasses of inscrutability. "I'll interview her."

Dabbing her eyes with a white handkerchief, Gretel looked up at the nice man with the auburn hair. Tilting his head in a sympathetic gesture, he told her to take her time. She cried some more.

"Oh, did Merlin tell you my name? I'm Gretel, but sometimes I get called Vesta."

"Mac was in the room too. "Roman goddess of hearth and home," came the verbal footnote. "You must be a good maid."

"Oh, I am!"

Horatio moved a little closer to where Gretel was sitting. "Miss, are you ready to tell us what happened when you and Bumptious went for tea?"

"Oh yes. We went to see the Tea Man. That's what I call him. He's very old, but he makes the most yummy tea! Usually we get the tea and go off, but thistime Bumptious and the Tea Man said they needed to talk about something, and could I leave them alone for a little while? So I took my tea and Bumptious' tea back to the mine and waited." The CSIs had indeed found two drinking vessels at the crime scene. "But I got bored andwent off to see Mildread. If only I'd waited for longer!" She started crying again.

"It wasn't your fault," emphasised Horatio. Unless Gretel was the killer, in which case it was. Naive as she seemed, the evidence would have to rule her out, and prove that her grief wasn't the mask that Horatio had seen so many times before on the manicured, malevolent madams of Miami.

"Poor Bumptious," sniffed the distressed damsel. "I hope you find the horrible meany who killed him and put him in prison for a long long time!"

"We will catch the killer." Horatio was adamant. "And the killer will be punished." Whatever universe he was in, crime was crime, and he would fight it.

"We'll need to speak to the Tea Man," Mac told Gretel. "Can you tell us where to find him?"

"Yes, certainly, Mr. Taylor. And do you want to know the Tea Man's proper name? It's the Infuser. Harris the Infuser."