Trapped by powerful magic in 221 Baker Street. Lead with Moran possibly not current priority. Please advise. SH

Mycroft shook his head and glanced briefly towards Anthea, who was pretending to be absorbed in her work, but in truth was extremely interested in the whole business. Perhaps she didn't realise how perfectly mad it all was. How improbable.

His demeanour remained unruffled, however, and, though he doubted they could do anything against magic or whatever it was, he sent two of his men out to Sherlock's aid. Then he returned to the page he was scrutinising on his laptop, which concerned Sebastian Moran; the image of the man depicted him with a poster from the last election, reading: Vote Conservative for a Better Future. It was very generic. Mycroft hadn't actually met him, but he knew that by all accounts he was a fairly dull and fairly committed MP. The very fact that his outside image was so dull was the point that roused Mycroft's curiosity, considering his vague but definite connexions with the three murders, and the fact that he had been reported absent from a moderately important debate in the Commons this morning.

He had been, in some way, present at all of them. He'd been the first to raise the alarm over concerns about strange noises coming from the first man's house. His story had thus far held out. He had recently had a bit of an email dispute with the second victim, one of his constituents and a staunch supporter of the opposite side. Though he was a suspect, he didn't seem to have much against him in this case either. And he had been present at the death of the third. A pure spectator, as confirmed by the other witnesses, who had rather heartlessly done nothing to help, but otherwise seemed to have played a harmless role.

It was evident by now that the three murders were intricately connected. Mycroft was convinced he had found a lead in Lord Sebastian Moran, but he needed to do a lot of work before he could even begin to take it seriously. And he wasn't sure he had time for that. He had a country to defend.

He ran his hands down his face, leaned back in his seat and looked over at Anthea again. She was chewing on the end of a pen and looking intrigued.

'Lord Sebastian Moran,' she said, suddenly, looking up from her own laptop, 'was allegedly in two different locations at the same time, this Thursday last.'

'What?'

Anthea shrugged. 'It's a weird case. I was looking for weird things. And this –' She tapped a couple of times on the mousepad. 'This is weird. I'm surprised nobody's noticed it already.' Here she looked at Mycroft almost accusingly.

'He's probably making up for not being here at all today.' Mycroft's dry joke sank like a lead balloon. 'I imagine that he would have been required in Parliament on Thursday?'

'Yes. He was present in Parliament. He was registered as having voted aye on the matter at hand. There are photographs of him leaving the Commons.'

'It was a bill about defence spending, was it not?'

'It wasn't too important. Something to do with current inflation levels...' Anthea scrolled down the page that she was scrutinising. 'The problem is... he was also in a cafeteria in Soho.'

Mycroft stood, and came to look at whatever she was looking at. It was a ream of data from a security camera somewhere; the video was at the top of the page, and depicted a coffee-shop. Mycroft squinted. At a table in the corner, on his phone, was a man whom Mycroft recognised instantly as the one they were currently discussing. He looked at the time-stamp. 11.25. Voting on the bill had occurred just a couple of minutes later. He trusted Anthea to have investigated forgery, or any other things that might have rendered this time-stamp inaccurate.

'How did you find this?'

'He emailed one of his constituents. A reply to an issue... also nothing important: just confirming that he would continue to fight to protect a local park from housing developments. Anyway, the email was sent at a time when he should have been concentrating on whatever was being said in the Commons; I investigated and found it to have been sent not from the Palace of Westminster, but from the Argyll Street Costa. That would seem to have been confirmed by this CCTV image. I can show you the near-contemporaneous picture of him in Parliament.'

'I believe you.' Mycroft furrowed his brow and said nothing for a while. He didn't like to admit that he wasn't sure what was going on. 'So are you suggesting that this is somehow connected – I don't know, with the magic that Merlin claims is behind this whole business?'

Anthea made to reply: but just as she opened her mouth, she was interrupted by a disturbance behind them; they turned, startled, to see by the window a windswept man in a dark coat who could not have come in the door without them noticing. He stepped into the light. They recognised the dull but unmistakeable features of Lord Sebastian Moran.

'You and your secretary are a tour de force, Mycroft Holmes,' he said. 'Just a shame you don't notice what's right in front of you.' And, with a small smile, he pulled a pistol from beneath the cover of his trench-coat.

Mycroft jumped up, reached for his desk drawer and withdrew his own pistol, which he hadn't before needed to use in the confines of his office, for fear of damaging the wallpaper.

'I should tread carefully, Moran,' he said.

'Oh! I do not intend to hurt you.'

And suddenly he was gone: Mycroft blinked, and when he opened his eyes, Lord Sebastian Moran was no longer in front of him. Astounded, he glanced at Anthea, who had not yet broken her composure, but who, catching sight of something in the corner of her eye, turned towards the door.

He was there. Lord Sebastian Moran had vanished from beside the window, and re-appeared at the other side of the room. He was still holding his pistol, but had lowered it a little, and was smirking.

'Caught you by surprise, hmm?' He laughed. 'Well, this is just the beginning. I assure you that I have many more tricks up my sleeve. My dear Mycroft, you who like to think you are powerful... I'd like to see you try to get the better of magic.'