Note: Last post, the cat should have been one and a half stone--putting it at eighteen pounds. Talk about too much of a good thing...

P.C. MacPherson's beat was no more than fifteen minutes from Barrett's. He remembered once, when they had rolled the Constable's Wheel to measure down the district, that Barrett's turn was almost five feet longer than his—they had joked that with prestige came responsibility.

One long, silent look at what was going on, and the big man quietly pulled out a small metal flask from his heavy coat and stashed it in a cranny inside the street lamp-post. That done, he ambled his large feet to the stoop where PC Barrett was trying to (badly) offer comfort to the elderly woman still awkwardly clad in her nightclothes and dressing-gown.

"It will be all right, Mrs. Pringle," Barrett was saying awkwardly, just as the woman forgot all propriety and buried her face inside the apron held in her hands. A fresh bout of tears assailed the men. "Would you like us to find someone who can give you a hand, then?" He pleaded over the woman's shoulders at MacPherson.

"I…I should make myself presentable," the poor old woman sputtered at last, and her apron covered her face again.

"Yes, Mrs. Pringle, you go do that, but please try not to touch anything…" Barrett fumbled to a stop, his hands flopping helplessly at his sides. They listened as the woman, who looked like she should be baking cookies for grandchildren, slowly made her way upstairs to her attic-room and shut the door. Locks snapped into place as she ensured her dignity would be safe from them.

"Someone killed Mr. Lucas," Barrett said succinctly. "I sent for the Station."

MacPherson absorbed that politely, and reached inside his coat again. "Have a smoke." He advised.

Short on sleep and even shorter on his last, lamented meal, PC Barrett's hands trembled as they reached for the proffered fag in MacPherson's grip. "Much obliged, Joe. Much obliged."

MacPherson grinned lopsidedly. "Least I can do, Bar. You look like the beat got the better of you tunnite."

Barrett winced as he blew smoke through his nose. "I need to send a note home. My Da will be ripping his beard out with the worry. He knows what can happen out here."

MacPherson nodded. His beat was fifteen minutes from Barrett's, and it had been he who stood as backup while the word went back to the station. "How's about a cup of hot tea?"

Barrett nodded gratefully. MacPherson shambled, bear-like, to the gas-lit lamp post at the street. Tall as he was, it was a minimal effort to reach up to the small tin tucked neatly inside the glass. Satisfied with the warmth of the flask, he pulled it down and shook it slightly, getting the sugar-grains stirred up. "Good black tea, that's what cures you." He announced.

Barrett drank gratefully, the warmth spreading through his belly. He closed his eyes a moment in relief. "Ain't never seen no body look like that," he confessed without shame. "I've seen 'em dead of drink, smothered on their own retchings in a frozen gutter, I've seen 'em top over dead of a fatty heart, and helped fish a headless man out of the Serpentine once."

MacPherson nodded his understanding, as though Barrett wasn't still new and inexperienced to the whole mess. "It's different when they're fresh." He said knowledgeably. "Part of your brain, it says to you that if you'd been a bit quicker, it wouldn't have happened." He accepted the other half of the flask and drank it calmly. "Like as not, the Inspector will let you get home for a bit of shut-eye before the Coroner's Inquest." He chuckled at Barrett's doubtful look. "Wouldn't look good if you fainted over the tables. They're not too hard a lot over here. A lot of 'em are all bluff and bluster."

"Is Inspector Lestrade all bluff and bluster?"

MacPherson nearly dropped his match-box. "Oh…" He said faintly. "Well." He tried not to meet Barrett's eye. "Bluff and Bluster ain't exactly how we'd describe the likes of him." He swallowed dryly. "You ever read those stories Dr. Watson puts out?"

Barrett shrugged. "Sometimes. They cost money like everything else."

"Too right. Well, I don't think he looks like a ferret, as Dr. Watson writes…but he's a lot like one. He'll worry a problem to death just like a ferret would, and he doesn't give up, just like a ferret would be. And believe you me, when someone needs to be taken down a peg, he doesn't take'em down, he bites them down." MacPherson blew out his breath, puffing his cheeks outward in a comical manner. "More often than not, I think people confess to their crimes just to get him off their back One can only be hanged once, you know, but there was that time when he went to the holding-cells every day for two weeks to get a confession out of this toff we knew had shot his mistress...at the end of it, he got his confession and a written letter of complaint that criminals had rights too, that it wasn't decent to be harassed like that."

Barrett tried not to look too nervous. "I think that's him coming now." As one, the constables scurried back inside the house.

MacPherson instantly straightened in a manner to do a Beefeater proud. Surprisingly, it wasn't the dreaded Lestrade who hopped out of the growler first, but the grizzled and lean Dr. Roanoke, pulling his heavy medical bag after him. At MacPherson's leveled finger directing the way, the old man grunted and rolled straight into the crime scene. After that was PC Treasure, who was so young and green even Barrett felt old and hoary when he stood in the room with him. He paused and waited at the doorway, his smooth face already bearing an unhealthy-looking tinge—and finally, Lestrade.

Barrett's first impression of the Inspector was a bit confusing; he was pulling his Derby off his head and pausing to re-sleek his hair back. Barrett caught a glimpse of very dark, burning eyes, and a weary-looking face that didn't look as though it would be very reassuring on a good day. He merely glanced into the Living Room where Dr. Roanoke huddled over the body and tilted his head expectantly at Barrett. Barrett felt his heart develop a thick coat of frost.

"You're PC Barrett?" Lestrade asked briskly. Lack of sleep made him look as though someone had smeared lavender soot under his eyes and then, for good measure, highlighted the hollows in his face.

"Sir, yes I am. John Barrett."

Those dark, bright eyes glittered in the poor light and he tilted his head again. "You're PC George Barrett's son." It was not a question.

Barrett gulped, already imagining thirty years of departmental rivalries, or secretly buried skeletons. "Yes, sir."

"You found the body before midnight."

"A quarter-till, sir. The Abbey Bells had just chimed."

Lestrade nodded. "We'll send you home to get some sleep after we get the basic report. They'll need your deposition and your presence at the Coroner's Inquiry in the morning."

That quickly, the Inspector turned his back and nipped into the Murder Room. Barrett re-connected his jaw in short order and stepped inside after him.

He had a feeling he had just dodged a potential bullet.

"Are you all right?" MacPherson sidled close to whisper in his ear.

"Ah." Barrett gulped hard. "He's…he's a little fellow."

MacPherson chuckled under his chin-strap. "Is he? I never noticed."