Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters that I portray here.

When Detective Kate Lockley had told Wesley Wyndham-Price to come down to the Pasteur Building he'd expected something was very amiss. It wasn't usual procedure to contact a Private Investigator, but they needed his skills.

When his foot crossed into the apartment his nostrils were filled with the stench of fresh blood. There was no furniture amiss, it all looked like it had be expertly cleaned by a team of Danish cleaners who'd just won the Cleaning World Cup for cleanliness, he doubted anybody lived here. He saw Lockley walking out of a door opposite to the way in.

The room he was in was large, almost as big as the lobby of the Hotel. The floor was wooden planks polished to perfection with various painting hanging around the outside. To his left was an ornate staircase leading to the upstairs. In front of that was a circular table, he could make out the shapes of plates and glasses even though he was some distance away. He greeted Lockley with a smile, a cheerful smile of professional intrigue.

'Glad you could come here,' said Lockley. 'It's a real mess in there,' she gestured to the room she'd just been in.

'What happened here?' asked Wesley.

'Roger Griffon was found here, late last night. He was sitting in his chair in his study with his throat slit from ear to ear. Went so deep it almost got to the bone.'

'Dear God,' exlaimed Wesley.

'You're telling me. I had to help move the body, there was blood everywhere, but no knife.'

'Can I see the room, please?'

'If you think you can manage it, it's one hell of a mess.'

'I assure you I've seen worse.' The vomiting beetle demon came to mind. She led him across the echoest room and through the door. On the way in Wesley noticed the door had been smashed open from the outside, the single bolt was limply hanging while fragments of wood had splintered from the doorway.

'Oh, that. It was done last night, they had to smash it down.'

The study of Roger Griffon was immaculately organized. His desk had a single typewriter on it with a stash of papers to the left. A Persian rug was in front of it, it's purple and brown shades circling each other. Blood was congealing on the desks surface, and it still dripped onto the floor, where a huge pool some two feet across had formed. The only other pieces of funrniture in the room was a drinks cabinet, old style with embossed writing in Latin, and a bookcase with all the known masterpieces on it. Wesley slid one of the books out by its spine, it was David Copperfield. 'Sorry,' apologised Wesley, 'I forgot about not contaminating the crime scene.'

'Don't worry,' replied Lockley. She was standing over by the desk. 'Forensics have combed every square millimetre of this room, if there was something to find they would have. You could piss all over the desk.'

'Perhaps later.'

Two shafts of light entered through the two tall windows behind and to either side of the desk, they shone their beams onto the floor. Wesley walked past the bookcase and to the window, he tapped on them with his knuckles. 'Secure,' he said.

'Are you kidding,' said Lockley, 'he was safer than Fort Knox in here. Those bars outside are two centimetres thick and mounted to the wall with ten centimetre brackets.'

'Sorry, detective,' said Wesley. 'I fail to see why I'm here.'

'Yeah, forgot that part. The room was locked, right. And the knife was found outside, he was murdered.'

'Ah, the classical locked room mystery. How did a murdered get in and out without leaving the door open behind him?'

'I remembered that Dorien Grey case you handled a few weeks ago and gave you a call. Do you know what else makes this hard to believe?'

'No.'

'He had a gun in his left top drawer. Why would you let someone walk right up to you and cut your throat if you had a gun next to you?'

'Was it loaded?' asked Wesley.

'Six rounds, hollow point. Unusual bullets for a home piece.'

Wesley was so busy looking around her didn't even see the foresic scientist walk in. He was checking the drinks cabinet when she said: 'No- one could hide inside that, Mister Wyndham-Price. But it does have a nice seventy-four Chardonay.'

'I was just thinking, maybe a shard of glass could have done it, Mrs . . .'

'Doctor Melissa Hemmingway, chief forensic officer at the scene.' She had her red hair pulled back in a ponytail that sat under her cap. Her white smocks gave away nothing about her physique, but she was fairly attractive by classical standards if a little small. Wesley guessed she was about five six and in her late twenties. 'I checked the room, there's no way anyone could have hidden in here and pounced. Even so, how would they get out? Wait until the cops come then filter out, too risky.' She walked over to him and shook his hand vigourously.

'Nice to meet you,' said Wesley.

'I'll let you two knock heads for a minute,' said Lockley as she left. 'I've got to interview the doorman, Doctor Hemmingway can fill you in on all the details, bye.'

'So, mister Wyndham-Price, what's your view?' She was standing less than a foot from Wesley's body, he took the initiative and backed off to the window.

'Wesley, please, call me Wesley.'

'Okay, Wesley, what's your opinion?'

Wesley stood behind the chair, careful not to get his feet on the blood print, he was aware of Dr Hemmingway's wandering eyes. Up and down his body like a fashion reviewer. He wiped it away from thw surface of his mind and put both his hands out straight. 'Mr Griffon was working here-.'

'How can you assume that?' interjected Dr Hemmingway.

'His typewriter, complete with a piece of paper half way through.'

'But the paper's blank.'

'He was about to type. The door was open.'

'Why was it open? Why not bolted shut?'

'Please, let me finish.'

'Sorry, Wesley. We real investigators have to run everything through, check every possibility, see if they match the facts.'

'Which are?'

'The police had to smash the door open,' said the flame-haired scientist. 'Any as far as we know humans can't walk through solid matter.'

Wesley daydreamed, he knew of several demons that could walk through doors like they weren't there, but her kept the information back. He had no idea how a rational doctor would take such leads.

'So we must say,' added Dr Hemmingway, 'that the door was open until the killer locked it behind him. That has to be the version of event. One should never assume, Wesley. Assumation is the fiery bitch of our professions. You start thinking in one dimension, then soon that's all you can think of.'

'Maybe Griffon closed the door himself,' said Wesley, knowing full well he couldn't have. He'd have been much to dead to move. He just wanted to see how she would reason it away from that particular way things happened, to gauge her intellect.

'Griffon closed the door himself? Hah. There's not a drop of blood away from the desk, he died there in less than twenty seconds. Could you even do it without the hindrance of pints of blood coursing over your jacket? Your vision blurred, your lungs filling with fluid, your brain losing the ability to think due to blood loss, your strength sapped?'

'Just a suggestion. As you said, we should cover all possibilities. "When you have eliminated the impossibe, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."'

'Quoting Doyle now,' commented Dr Hemmingway.

'You've read Doyle?' inquired Wesley.

'Of course. The exploits of the worlds greatest detective are legendary, if fictional.'

'But his methods were not.'

'No, they were the basis of modern forensic science,' informed Dr Hemmingway, even though she had an uncanny feeling Wesley knew it all. 'You have a nice accent.'

'I was born and raised in Kent, the Garden of England.'

'Why did you move to America, surely not because of a detective agency?'

'No,' Wesley said. it was odd how they were having a converstaion, not unlike if they were sitting in a bar, in a murder scene, less than ten feet from the fatal spot, as it were. 'I came to America for my job. After a brief sabbatical I met with some of my former friends and joined their Detective Agency. We've built up quite a reputation in certain circles.'

Dr Melissa Hemmingway didn't know what to make of the Englishman. His accent, his knowledge, his smouldering good looks, he seemed to have it all. And she wanted it. It wasn't as though Melissa was needy, she learned at a young age the only person you could rely on was yourself. her father left, her mother commited suicide, she only got out of the whole mess by enroling in the police force where she learned she had a special eye for forensic science. The LAPD payed for her to go through medical school and she came out a fully-qualified doctor. She liked to believe her liking of Sherlock Holmes and other detective stories helped her along, but her mentors said she had natural talent. The natural talent that allowed her to work her way up to her current station in life in less than three years. 'Anyway, why would a murderer bother to lock the door behind him? It makes no sense.'

'The criminal mind often doesn't,' commented Wesley.

'The only reason I can think of is that he wanted to create an impossible mystery. Why would he do that?'

'For someone who doesn't assume a lot, you sure seem set on it being a male.'

'Statistics say that males commit two-thirds of all murders, I'm a realist.'

'Still, we mustn't assume it was a male. In fact, someone who could get so close without being shot, and could put their arms around his neck without him being suspicious, might in fact be a woman. A jealous lover, perhaps?'

'She'd certainly be jealous enough,' said Dr Hemmingway. 'With that young woman being in his house with him.'

'What? I didn't know there was someone with him.'

'Calm down, she's dead too. I thought Lockley would have told you it was a double homicide.'

'No she bloody well didn't!'

'Sorry, Wes. Can I call you Wes?'

'Yes.'

'Well it isn't half as baffling as this one. The murder weapons right besides her. Get this, the same knife killed them both.'

'There goes a spur of the moment murder, a crime of passion. Most people would drop the knife when reality settled in, this person was going to kill again. Maybe they knew there was someone else with him, maybe they just wanted the knife.'

'I know the profiles, Wes,' commented Dr Hemmingway. 'Heck, I wrote some of them. I know normal M.O. I know the statistics like they were sown on the back of my eyelids. And from what I know, jealous women who've just killed tend to be more rational. She may have planned it all. The way I see it is that the man kills him. He hears something in the other room, goes out, sees the girl, kills her. Drops the knife and runs like all.'

'After closing the door behind himself, which may give the woman enough time to scream the house down?'

'Good point. But we do have a witness, in a sense, which can back my version of events up,' said Dr Hemmingway. She reached into her top left pocket and pulled out a notepad.

'A witness?'

'In a sense, Wes. The neighbour heard a man scream at eleven fifteen in the evening. Less than one minute later, probably about forty seconds, they heard another scream, this time it was female.'

'Hmm. Can I see the other scene, please?'

'Of course.' She led him out of the study and through the big room, then through a large archway and into another large room. In roughly the middle of the floor was a bloodstain, that of the second victim. The floor was the same polished wood, and a computer, which was the only technical device in the apartment, sat on a desk near the door. At the far side, flanking the tall window, was a set of bookcases. Besides the large portal behind him, Wesley could see three other doors, two closed and the third, the one to his right, open. The room was empty except for a technician who was gathering up fibres from the floors. A white circle of tape indicated where the weapon had lay.

'The murder weapon, a combat knife, we think, was found two metres from the womans body,' explained Dr Hemmingway. 'Now the body was laying face down, pointing towards the window indicating her assailant attacked her from behind. She managed a scream, but the killer had no trouble with her.'

'Away from the study?' questioned Wesley. 'Didn't she hear the scream of Mr Griffon?'

'She may have been running away.'

'Running to where? The doors in the other direction.'

'Sometimes when you're running for your life, it doesn't matter which direction you choose to go in.'

'But in this case it does. Every direction apart from going straight to the door is pointless. What about the door man, did he see the yong lady enter?'

'Detective Lockley is questioning him as we speak,' informed Dr Hemmingway. 'Even if he didn't doesn't mean she didn't come in the front way, he must need to go to the bathroom, maybe get something to eat.'

'Wait a second,' said Wesley. He had a glazed look in his eyes. 'I think I know how Mr Griffon was killed and locked inside the room. It's so simple, why didn't I see it before.'

'What is it?'

'I think you'd better look at that door, Doctor.'

Dr Hemmingway scratched her head, then got the idea. 'Christ, how could I miss that?' she asked herself.

'Don't bother yourself,' said Wesley thoughtfully. 'I'm sure you would have thought of it.'

'Are you flirting with me, Mr Wyndham-Price?' asked Dr Hemmingway coyly.

'I was just-'

'How about we get something to eat later?'

Wesley took his glasses off and wiped them with the nap of his grey jacket. 'Perhaps we should wait until this case is solved so as not involve ourselves . . . intimately while we still have to work'

He was a gentleman too, thought Melissa Hemmingway. He was the kind of man you could take home and introduce to your parents, if hers were still alive. 'The way I see things, we'll have this case wrapped up in a day or too anyway. So say, eight at my place, we'll go to a little Italian Bistro near where I live. Here, this is my home address.' She handed him a scrap of paper with a hastily written down address on it.

'I would be delighted to accompany you,' declared Wesley.

Oh that accent, she could smother herself in it. 'Lockley's downstairs. I'll have that door checked and then I'll run a few tests on the bodies, shouldn't take long.'

'Well then, see you later.' Wesley waved her goodbye and walked out of the apartment with a huge grin on his face.