A/N: Thanks to all readers, likers, favorite-ers, and reviewers, especially: eyeon.

So here's how this fic came to be. There were so many strange things surrounding Mr. Pamuk's death, so many weird clues and scraps of information that pointed to the possibility something else was going on, and I thought about them SO much that… I had to write about my theories. 😉 They're a combination of actual clues from the show and my ideas about what might have been going on behind the scenes. (If you don't want to know anything about the background, please feel free to skip ahead to the cookie from the new fic at the end.)

The first thing that I noticed about the Pamuk mystery was the timing of what happened. It was just so suspicious, because it was right before the vote on the independence of Albania, and as we're repeatedly told in the show, Pamuk's vote was crucial. From everything we knew about Pamuk, he would have been a member of a group that was then called the Young Turks. They deposed the sultan and wanted to make all kinds of reforms, but as Anna and Mr. Bates discussed, they absolutely did not want to cut the colonies loose. They wanted to keep the Ottoman Empire strong and powerful. In this case, there was no way that Pamuk would ever have voted for Albanian independence.

But this independence was 100% in Britain's best interests. They wanted a weak, ineffective Turkey who couldn't challenge them on the world stage. There was a reason why the Ottoman Empire was called the "sick old man of Europe" at the time, and the sicker the better as far as the UK was concerned. The more colonies Turkey lost, the weaker the empire would become. So it makes sense that someone from a higher level of government would have interfered to control or get rid of such an influential vote. Mr. William Melville wiki/William_Melville was a very real person and was actually the head of Scotland Yard's special branch and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau. Men in those positions tended to be connected to the aristocracy in some way, but not a very close way, which is why he's the third son of a fourth son of a baronet here. (Fun historical fact: Melville's codename was M, which was later used in James Bond films for the head of MI6.)

Melville was known for being a ruthless spymaster, and this is the kind of thing he would have handled, but based on how cunning he was, I'm not sure if he would personally have thought it was the best idea. The long-term problems from this assassination would have occurred to him. But he'd have to go along with the orders if they originally came from above. The most likely sources would have been the real H.H. Asquith, who was the prime minister at the time, and Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

Of course, this doesn't settle the question of why someone like Evelyn Napier played such an important role in it all. A clue that intrigued me was the fact that Pamuk was "assigned" to Napier. The exact quote is when Cora said: "Since Turkey's signature is vital Mr Napier's been given the job of keeping him happy until the conference begins." But why was this considered a "job" at all? And why would Napier have been the person to get this important job? There's always been something about Evelyn Napier that's interested me. He describes himself as uninteresting, but I don't think that's actually true. (In Mary's place, I guarantee that I would have chosen him over Pamuk!)

But if we look at how we first heard about Napier (in the conversation between Cora and Mary), he's not exactly introduced as a forceful character. As May says, he's "not particularly" interesting. She neither likes nor dislikes him. She dismisses any visit involving him as "nothing much." Cora is the one who presses Mary to invite him to Downton Abbey for the hunt, but even Cora isn't completely sure of who he is at first. In the very next scene, Robert will mention that his father, Lord Brandsome, is a "dull dog" who never talks about anything but racing. We don't get a bit of information that would lead us to believe that the son has any interests in life beyond horseracing either. (At least with Anthony Strallan, everyone remembers his wife's name and when she died.) Mary is disinterested throughout, even though she knows that she needs to marry someone and she can't afford to neglect an opportunity. We get the definite impression that whether Kemal Pamuk had been attractive or not, Evelyn Napier wouldn't have stood much of a chance.

Yet this supposedly dull, boring, not-particularly-bright young man was given complete charge of a crucial politician during a key point in time. We're never told that Napier might be involved with politics. But he gets a task that might stump the most skilled career politician: how to make sure that Pamuk will vote a certain way? I think that in order for any of this to make any sense, there has to be a lot more to Napier than what we see on the surface.

So the scenario in Curious Case, to me, was a logical answer. Evelyn Napier's dull personality was a cover. He actually was involved with spying, and he was exactly the kind of person William Melville would have wanted to use, the son of a diplomat. It was in Melville's interest to have someone watching Pamuk and even eliminating him if necessary. And the way to get to Pamuk at the house of an aristocrat would be to use another member of the British upper class, who could then direct an inside man like Bates.

This still doesn't really explain why Pamuk ending up being assassinated, but I think we get at least a few clues about this. We're never given any reason to believe that Pamuk's vote is known in advance. If everyone already knew which way Pamuk planned to vote, then nobody would talk about minor problems even having a possibility of changing that vote. When Mary joked about the idea that Pamuk taking a tumble off a horse could endanger world peace," then Evelyn Napier would have gone on to say, "oh, I shouldn't worry about that; of course Mr. Pamuk is (or isn't) in favor of Albanian independence. Everyone knows which way Turkey will vote." But this didn't happen. Instead, Turkey's vote is crucial, and everyone speaks of it as being unsettled. Still, for killing Pamuk to make sense, he had to give some clear clues that he wasn't going to vote in the way Britain wanted the vote to go.

This is why I think that the conversation at dinner during the show was so important. Remember that Pamuk talked about wanting "simpler times" except for keeping modern conveniences. Someone who was in favor of modernization but also of the Ottoman empire going back to its former glory would talk in exactly this way. And if Pamuk wants a strong Ottoman empire, then empire means holding onto land—not letting go of countries so that they can have independence. This is exactly how the Young Turks political movement thought. So it's reasonable to believe that a diplomat who wanted a strong empire would not be planning to vote in favor of Albanian independence. (I added a bit of extra dialog where Pamuk actually said that he was in the Young Turks movement, which I think could have happened either before or after the part of the dinner we saw.) This could have tipped the balance in favor of the idea of getting rid of him before he has a chance to cast that crucial vote.

It still doesn't completely make sense that Napier would have taken such a chance (what if somebody caught Bates and got the truth out of him about that poisoning?), so I think the missing factor is his hopeless love for Mary. When he realized what Pamuk was planning to do to her, he went over the edge. The aconite didn't quite work fast enough, though.

I also feel like the idea that somebody used poison on Pamuk was hinted at in the show when Robert said that in order to do it, somebody would have had to get past Mrs. Patmore—and ten minutes before this, she didn't recognize the flour in front of her because she couldn't see it clearly. I couldn't come up with a scenario where it made sense for the poison to be in the food at dinner, though, because of the danger of somebody else eating it. So I thought of the heart tonic. Aconite is given as a homeopathic remedy for heart problems, but it's a deadly poison in larger doses. (If you have monkshood in your garden, don't eat it!)

When I started this story, I actually meant for it to be a non-fiction essay only. But I got more and more interested in how Anna would have reacted to what she saw happening with Mary. While she was good at minding her own business, she would not have allowed Mary to suffer over what had happened with Pamuk if she could do anything about it. Then there was the fascinating question of how Mary and Matthew's interactions would have played out over this very tense week. What would they have said to each other? How could their relationship have developed? And sure enough, CCoMP ended up being a fic.

There were obviously some details in the fic that weren't in the show, but that I think made sense. Anna sleeping in Mary's dressing room is a good example. I've always wondered if there was a little more happening offscreen at some point, some additional clues, to keep Thomas and O'Brien's suspicions up long enough for them to get the truth out of Daisy. If Mary had Anna sleeping in her dressing room for even a couple of days, it would have been enough to get the gossip mill going and to rouse their suspicions.

So that's about it for Curious Case! 😊 Thanks so much for going on this fictional journey with me. Next week, I'll start posting the next fic, We Will Always Live At Downton Abbey. It's part 2 of the Mysteries of Downton Abbey series and is based on clues from key unused material in the original script for Season 2, Episode 6.

In November 1918, a badly wounded officer comes to Downton, claiming to be the lost Patrick Crawley. Edith accepts him. Mary suspects him. But nobody knows the explosive secrets he is hiding.

Here's a cookie from the first chapter!

We Will Always Live At Downton Abbey

Chapter One: The House of Dreams

November 4th, 1918

Downton Abbey, Yorkshire

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It was a beautiful, crisp fall day in North Yorkshire, the sun peeping in and out of the mares' tails clouds that scudded high in the deep blue sky. The air was very warm for early November, still holding a hint of the last days of the harvest, smelling of cedar leaves and damp earth, lavender and tall grass. It was a million miles from the hell of the trenches, the blasted earth and ruined trees of Passchendaele and Ypres, thought Patrick Gordon as he sat in the back seat of the Renault Landaulette, sailing along the drive to Downton Abbey.

"Did Lord Grantham send a car for only myself?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the landscape passing by. He had spoken more than half to himself, but the chauffeur in the front seat answered him.

"The earl always wants to do the best he can for the soldiers," said the chauffeur. "He never likes it when the ambulance leaves anyone behind, so I have a standing order to pick up anyone who needs a ride from the hospital if I'm going near it."

Patrick nodded. He knew better. The car had picked him up from the village hospital where he'd been transferred that morning because it was meant to be, and he knew it. It was only right that he should go up the drive to Downton on his own, rather than with an ambulance full of wounded officers beside him.

"It's an extraordinary place, isn't it? Branson—didn't you say that's what your name is?" he asked, keeping his voice as neutral as possible. "Don't you think so?"

The chauffeur gave him a strange look. "Of course… sir."

"But you don't agree, Branson, do you?" Patrick was not even sure why he was asking. It was beyond imagination to him that anyone shouldn't love this place, this house, these grounds, everything that was Downton Abbey. Perhaps he only wanted to get some sort of understanding into how this lack of love were even possible.

The chauffeur seemed to be considering the question. "I don't think of these houses in the same way. No."

"You're Irish, aren't you?"

Branson gave a slight smile. "That I am. But a heart murmur is the reason why I'm not on the front lines now, in case you were wondering."

"I don't resent you for it," said Patrick, perhaps unnecessarily. "Nobody should ever have had to fight in that sort of war. But a place like this estate is so extraordinary."

"I acknowledge that Downton is beautiful. But I look at a house like this one, and I see something different," said the chauffeur.

Perhaps everyone saw something different, thought Patrick. But then they rounded the curve, and the road straightened out and faced the manor fully.

The sight struck him like a beautiful blow, a collection of memories almost painful in the most exquisite way possible. The great foursquare three-story mansion, a massive block in honey-colored stone, solidly seated in the green park landscape of rolling lawns and huge cedar trees. The turrets, the towers, the gables, the dozens of windows. A fortress outlined against the red of the late autumn rising sun, a flag fluttering from the top turret. It awaited him as if it had indeed been waiting for him, suspended in time, lost in a dream that he had found once again. And he knew, as he had always known, that it would be his.

He closed his eyes and saw all of the Abbey, more clearly than if it had actually been laid out before him. Not only the house, but the lakes, the follies, the sloping land; the walks, the woods, the landscape stretching out with the enchanted peace of a dream. In the hell of the trenches, the reality of Downton Abbey, the tangible memory, was all he had been able to hold onto. And oh, how he had held to it. Downton was everything, worth all he would need to do in order to make it his. He wanted it more surely than he had ever wanted anything—money, success, a position in life. Certainly more than his fleeting desires for any woman.

As if in answer, Edith Crawley's face rose before him again, her huge hazel eyes and long nose, her trembling lips and pink cheeks and bunched hair, anxiety turning her unusual features plain, long arms and slim legs gawky in an unflattering white dress that hid her lush curves. She was a beauty in disguise, and she had haunted his dreams for years now. As he knew he ought never have allowed her to do. As he knew she must not continue to do.

"Sir?" The chaffeur's voice broke into his reverie. Patrick realized that the man had stolen a curious, quick glance back at him. He had been staring in the distance for too long, he supposed, and he had no idea what the other man might have said. If I need any further proof that I can't let Edith Crawley distract me, that was it, he thought.

"Downton is like a place from a dream, for me," Patrick said evasively. "But I still remember it all."

Branson's eyebrows went up. "Oh?"

Patrick thought for a moment about revealing something related to his real purpose, just a hint or a clue. Perhaps he should begin to lay the foundation…

No. It didn't make sense to do it now. He needed to pick his moment. This odd chauffeur did have a way of putting one at one's ease, too much so, really.

"Mmm," said Patrick in the most noncommittal voice possible. He wondered if the other man would press the question, but the chauffeur seemed content to leave it at that.

The far-off church bell in the village was tolling now, in real time, the present time, Patrick realized. Seven o'clock.

Branson stopped in front of the house and hopped out to open the door for Patrick. Then he swiftly climbed back into the driver's seat.

"One of the footmen should meet you at the door, sir," he said. He rounded the drive with a bit more speed that seemed strictly necessary. To take the car back into the garages, Patrick supposed. This Branson-the-chauffeur seemed strangely eager for something, as if headed for an assignation of some sort. Well, perhaps he was, although it was all one to Patrick. This knowledge would only be useful to him if it somehow had a bearing on his quest for Downton, and as far as he knew, it did not—although it never hurt to file away information of possible interest.

He walked the rest of the way up the drive and stood on the front doorstep, before the central doorway carved with Tudor roses and set in a massive Doric frame. He took a deep breath. Time to focus. Not the pinpoint focus required during the worst moments of the war, when he stood with his men in a sapper's tunnel, listening for every German word above their head, knowing that at any moment, a shell might explode and bury them all in a smothering tomb of earth. No, he must forget the front lines now. He was playing a long game, and he must focus on the long term.

From this moment on, Patrick vowed, he simply would not think of certain things in his past. He would not allow himself to go over certain events. He would block all the details that he could not allow into his mind if his plans were to come to fruition. The look on his mother's face when she saw this house when he was seven years old; the bluff, red features of James Crawley, pinched with cold as he stood in the back yard; the hoarse cry of a man's voice from icy waters as the Titanic began its plunge to the depths of the North Atlantic; the smell of the heather on the moors where he wandered as a child on frosty winter days. These memories would all be too distracting, disabling, really, if he allowed them to become so. Therefore, by simply logic, he would not allow it. His memory would become rigid, large blocks of people and events submerged, shoved beneath the surface like the bulk of the icebergs in the North Sea when the Titanic pushed its prow through the icy waters.

But…

An unwelcome thought flitted through his head. The hidden portions of the iceberg were much larger than the visible peaks. The Titanic had ripped its side open on that invisible bulk lurking beneath the surface.

Well, he wouldn't allow himself to founder. That was all.

Patrick brought himself back to the moment and pressed the doorbell again, realizing that it had been much too long since his last attempt for it not to be answered. After a few more silent moments, he put his hand on the brass handle and pushed the doors open. His eyes widened.

TBC next Saturday….

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