"'You sure you want me in on this?" John asked, politely but with a definite note of hostility in his voice. "After all, I've got no clearance to be here, and I'm a loose cannon, apparently."

He and Lestrade, who had picked him up directly from the hospital as per Sherlock's request, had just arrived at Tim Bartlett's house in Enfield. The tidy little red-brick place was roped off with police tape, and there were a number of PCs in uniform milling around on the front path.

"Fine, do as you like." Lestrade shrugged and folded his arms. "You've made your point. I've made mine. You can tell Sherlock that…" He trailed off as his phone rang, fishing it out of his jacket pocket. "Lestrade."

Listening down the line, he frowned deeply and wandered away a few paces to speak to whoever it was. John utilised the time to call Molly, who picked up after four rings.

"Hi, it's me," he said. "Just checking everything's okay?"

"It's fine," she responded. John did not note the pause in between those two words. "She's not asleep, but she's sort of… talking to herself."

"Did I wake you?"

"Sort of."

"Sorry. I'll let you get back to it. I should be home in a couple of hours." John didn't mention the housebreaking venture he and Mycroft Holmes had planned for that evening. "Did you want me to bring something home for lunch?"

"Okay."

"Anything in particular?"

"You can choose." She yawned.

"Okay, I'll let you go…" He was poised to end the call with the usual: I love you. Bye. Something stopped him at the last second. "Lolly," he said, "if you were… I mean, if you needed me home to help you and Charlie, you'd tell me straight, right?"

"Yes, of course."

But John had noted the pause before she'd spoken.

"Okay," he said hesitantly. "'Cause I think we both know I'm not all that great at taking the hint sometimes. So I'm… just checking." The word conjured up the cheque for ten thousand pounds that he still held in his wallet. "I'll let you sleep now, but my phone's on. Call me if you want me, okay?"

"Okay. Love you."

"Love you too."

As he hung up the line, Lestrade wandered back, putting his own phone in his pocket. "Before I tell you what that was all about," he said, "are you actually in on this, or did you just come all the way out here to snark at me about what happened with Addie Bartlett?"

John looked compliant and unclenched his hands, but said nothing. Lestrade shrugged.

"Okay. That was Mel. When Addie was told that Tim Bartlett was dead, she had a screaming meltdown and she's had to be sedated."

John blinked. "Sedated?"

"Apparently she started wailing and smashing her head against the floor."

"Non, monsieur!"

Mycroft took a deep breath and gathered up every scrap of self control he possessed in order to not roll his eyes. It was easy to see that Adelaide Bartlett probably got her violent temperament from the man who had raised her since the age of six… if hiring a governess to look after her every need and then packing her off to a boarding school in Provence for nine years could be considered "raising" her.

And perhaps, he reflected, perhaps the Diogenes Club wasn't the right place to have a noisy confrontation with an angry diplomat who was really being anything other than diplomatic. Certainly, he'd managed to guide the elderly Frenchman into one of the few rooms available where speaking was allowed in the Club. But there was a great deal of difference between being allowed to speak in that room, and being allowed to histrionically shout in the way La Tremoille had been doing for the past seven minutes and counting.

"You are, of course, free to make the application to have Mrs. Bartlett extradited to France," he said, slowly and with great care. "I can't stop you, and I'd have no inclination to try even if I were able. I'm merely telling you that the chances of Mrs. Bartlett being deported are extremely slim, considering her permanent residency in the United Kingdom and the fact that she remains a prime suspect in a murder which is becoming more and more high-profile."

"This is outrageous," La Tremoille fumed. "I don't care what the British do. In my country, we help the mentally ill, we don't send them to gaol."

"She's not in gaol," Mycroft countered calmly. "She's in hospital, which has been deemed the most suitable place for someone who is so obviously mentally disturbed. And she did not… allegedly… murder her husband in your country, but mine. In my country, we don't deport murder suspects in such a fashion. Certainly not until justice has been meted out."

"Monsieur, mon-"

"I'm afraid I'm temporarily unable to understand French. Do oblige."

The French Ambassador looked at Mycroft for a few moments with a combination of wonder and frustrated fury. Mycroft, looking back at him and calmly sipping a cognac, reflected that this may have been one of the first times in La Tremoille's life that anyone had ever proven impervious to histrionics designed to get him his own way. Too bad, the older Holmes reflected, too bad he had no idea that he was dealing with an expert in grown men throwing tantrums.

"Your brother was supposed to be dealing with this case," La Tremoille said bitterly.

"Yes," Mycroft agreed. "And he is, so much as possible, considering that he's in hospital."

For a few seconds, he enjoyed the look on La Tremoille's face.

"I'm sorry to hear that," the older man finally said, chastened. "I hope it's not serious."

"It is." Mycroft sipped his drink again. "Ruptured appendix. He'll recover, but as you can imagine, solving the murder of Edwin Bartlett may very well not be a priority for him just now." He neglected to mention that it had become more of a priority than ever for the terminally bored Sherlock. "But rest assured, he has delegated authority to the best people available to him in this matter."

Because if La Tremoille knew that he, Mycroft Holmes, was planning on rifling through the crime scene that very night, there was no doubt at all that there'd be hell to pay. Clear conflict of interest; or at least, it would seem so to a man who assumed Mycroft had personal feelings about the cases he occasionally investigated.

"Urgh, God," John groaned, pausing in the kitchen doorway. Before he'd even spotted the body of Tim Bartlett, he was assaulted by the smell – blood, urine, vomit, faeces. It had been a long time since he'd seen a battered corpse in an enclosed room.

The man he'd seen alive and well at Baker Street just days before was now lying face-down on the floor, barefoot and clad in a pair of dark green pyjamas of a light, airy linen weave. His hands were tied behind his back with thick wiring, so tightly that there was dark blood about the wrists, and the wire, makeshift ligature he'd been killed with had sank into the flesh at his throat so deeply that it was almost invisible. His dark hair was matted with blood and stuck out in clumps from the back of his head. Around him, the room was in chaos; there was a broken chair lying nearby and a sugar bowl and two cups were lying smashed on the floor. There were gouges in the countertop and the sink had a deep, bloodstained dent in it. Tim Bartlett had fought hard for his life.

"The neighbour who called 999 told the dispatcher that his throat was cut," Lestrade offered, seeing John's reaction and knowing what it meant. "And I guess it sort of is, but she didn't see the ligature at first."

John glanced over the scene, looking along the floor and walls for the tell-tale arterial blood spray and not finding it. "But it must have sank in after he was dead," he said. "And that must've been, what, at least ten or twelve hours ago? He's as stiff as a board. Can we roll him over?"

Erin Platner was on forensics; she gave approval for the body to be moved, and she and her assistant rolled the dead man onto his back.

"Shit!" John took a step backwards. He'd quite forgotten that someone who'd been violently strangled could be expected to be bleeding profusely from the eyeballs. Lestrade calmly got down on his haunches beside the body, trying not to step in anything that may be considered evidence; after taking a second to recover from his shock, John did the same on the man's other side.

"What do you think?" Lestrade asked him after a few seconds of contemplation.

"They tied him up," John said. "They subdued him… hit him on the head or something… but they didn't just strangle him straight off the bat. They tied him up instead. They wanted to… talk to him, maybe? Nobody heard a struggle? No screaming?"

Lestrade shook his head. "We're doorknocking the neighbours now, but the one who found him said she and her husband were out at the cinema until eleven, and nobody's home on the other side." He looked around at the mess, then stood up.

"Okay," he said. "Stop me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me like Bartlett gets a visitor… someone he knows and trusts well enough to let them into the house after dark and make them a cuppa. How many people would you entertain while wearing pyjamas?"

"Not many," was the terse response.

"Exactly. So he's facing away from his killer, making two cups of tea." He stood at the counter where the kettle was housed. "Visitor clocks him on the back of the head while he's unawares, but it's not hard enough to knock him out completely. Bartlett turns and pitches the sugar and cups at the attacker to defend himself, but probably the first blow was hard enough to disorient him. Our killer grabs him by the hair, slams him face-first into the sink, and either knocks him out or damn near to it. Then they tie his wrists together and throw him on the floor before going through with the ligature. Nasty way to die."

"Yes," John agreed, weighing up the theory. "I suppose that's how you'd do it. If Tim was conscious, it would have been minutes on end of agony, at the very least."

"So we can pretty much agree that whoever killed him probably wanted to make him suffer. Crime of passion, not a hit." Lestrade paused thoughtfully, then looked up at John for a few seconds. "Do you think a woman could have done this?"

"Maybe." John didn't look particularly confident about it. "Though that dent in the sink… it's hard to imagine someone smaller than Bartlett being able to launch that kind of an attack, and he's a powerfully built man, so if it was a woman who did it…" he trailed off.

"Elderly man?"

John blinked. "You think La Tremoille…?"

"I've got to look at every angle," Lestrade said. "And you've got to admit he's got a motive. If Addie killed her husband because she wanted to run off with Tim instead, and the old man found out about it, he may have blamed Tim for it and wanted him dead."

John looked over the brittle corpse on the floor again. "I suppose," he said. "An elderly man is more likely than a woman. And anyway, Addie's been remanded for the whole time. She can't have done it." He paused. "Ralph Inglis? You said he was put out by Addie sleeping with Tim."

"Yeah, I think he's got an unrequited love problem, but that was no reason to hold him, so we let him go after our little chat this morning. And it definitely doesn't mean he slammed Tim so hard into the sink that he broke it." Lestrade was still looking around, trying to gather his thoughts. "The forensics will be interesting."

"Sherlock's going to love this," John agreed. "Let's just hope he doesn't go overboard and check himself out over it or something. That's all we need."

"Oh, God." Lestrade put his hand over his eyes for a second. "Forget Sherlock. Mycroft is going to be thrilled."

"So if you've even got a key to the place, exactly what am I doing here?" John shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around nervously as Mycroft fiddled with the door lock of the Bartlett place. It was half-past ten that night; overcast and muggy, without the slightest hint of a breeze.

"I suspect Sherlock wants you to keep an eye on me," Mycroft said grimly.

"Well, let's face it. You haven't really given him a lot of reason to trust you," John commented, folding his arms.

"I've given him more reasons than you'll ever be privy to." Mycroft was still fumbling with the lock; the entire front walk was in heavy shadow. "Either way, let's get this over and done with as quickly and painlessly as possible." He nudged the door open and slipped inside the front hall. John followed, furtively locking the door behind him. Since Mycroft apparently had legitimate access to the crime scene, and any other crime scene he felt like entering, there was no need to sneak around in the dark. But before John could flick the light switch on, he felt Mycroft's cold, hard grip on his wrist.

"Upstairs," he hissed in his ear.

John stopped dead, listening. From the second floor, he could hear hesitant but definite sounds of human life. A rustling, and then what sounded like a drawer being furtively closed.

"Are you armed?" John breathed back.

"No."

"Call Lestrade." John reached for the Browning tucked into the back of his belt, comforted by the familiar grip and knowing it had been fully checked and loaded before he'd started out from home. "Stay here."

Drawing the gun and flicking the safety off, John climbed the staircase with no more sound or disturbance than if he'd been one of the shadows flickering across from the trees close to the hall windows. Once on the landing, there was no doubt at all as to where the disturbance was coming from; there was an open door at the end of the corridor, and amber light was spilling out from what John felt must have been a low-sitting bedside lamp. Shadows flickered across the light source. There was more shuffling; by this time John could also hear muffled, rapid breathing. He padded over to the doorway, pausing for a second before going in, gun raised.

"Dr. Inglis, is it?"

Ralph Inglis was standing by what seemed to be the master bed, an open bedside drawer in front of him. He startled violently at the strange voice and shrank back against the wall, fumbling at his sides with both hands for something to defend himself with. John, holding the gun level, shook his head.

"Don't even think about it," he said, moving around the bed to where he had a clear shot. "Keep your hands where I can see them, and you won't have to worry about me shooting you."

"Who the hell are you?" Inglis demanded. "What are you doing here?"

"I was about to ask you that," John replied. "I've been hoping we could talk. Need a hand looking for something?"

Inglis broke for the door, but John had been anticipating it. He dropped the gun and reached the doorway first, grabbing Inglis and pitching him face-first onto the floor in a hammerhold. Inglis yelped, and John tugged harder at his arm.

"Stay still," he said through gritted teeth. "Or I'll break your arm."

The man on the floor went limp; the only resistance was his breathing, hitched and hesitant.

"Why did you break in?"

Inglis was silent.

"You were looking for something," John persisted, tugging his arm again. "What?"

Again, the only sound that Inglis made was his breathing.

"The police are on their way, and I can keep you on the floor like this for hours if I have to," John told him, hoping that Mycroft didn't expect him to be a one-man law enforcement agency and had indeed called the Met from downstairs. "You can explain to them what you're doing here. I'm making a citizen's arrest for housebreaking."