John exited the Fiennes household a little over an hour after he'd entered it and in his hand he grasped a list of names, which he trusted would prove exceedingly helpful. The young Mr. Fiennes had written out, in very elegant script, eleven names in total. Though, he did indicate that it was not an exhaustive list since he had trouble remembering everyone he'd scared off. However, those listed, he assured John, were the ones who tried to press their case most fervently.

As John's eye briefly scanned the list, he recognized that all were gentlemen of breeding but none of them were particularly wealthy or powerful. He was also familiar with a few of the names listed there, which he hoped would assist him in his endeavour to solve the mystery of Earnest E. Brodrick's untimely death and prevent the demise of other young gentlemen in the name of one Miss Alice Annette Fiennes.

John slipped the folded letter paper into his pocket and looked about nonchalantly for his right hand man, Detective Inspector Mr. William Pomeroy, whom was to wait for him outside the Fiennes residence while keeping an eye out for any unusual or suspicious behaviour. It took only a moment for John to spot William striding effortlessly toward him on his long lean legs from across the street.

William gave John a nod as he approached and the two greeted each other casually, as if they were friends meeting accidentally. After grasping each other's hands in a firm but brief shake, John asked quietly, so as not to be overheard by passing pedestrians, "How was it?"

William replied, in an equally reticent tone, "Nothing of note occurred, sir."

"Pity," John replied.

Of course, it would make things so much easier for him if the killer had appeared near the Fiennes' household that morning in some distress or agitation, which a keen eye like William's would easily have detected. Still, John consoled himself that he had the list, which he consciously refrained from fingering in his pocket.

"Masterson is waiting for us, sir" William offered as he indicated a southernly direction with a small hand movement.

John gave a nod of comprehension and the two men headed off in the direction of a waiting coach, which was situated several streets from the Fiennes' household. The subterfuge was a necessary precaution in case the killer was watching the house. They did not want to alert him in any way that the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was on the case and had been to the Fiennes' household already that morning. This was half the reason John had gone himself to their home instead of sending a constable in uniform. The uniform would have been a dead give away.

John wanted to be as discreet as possible in the hope that the murderer would continue to walk about boldly and without suspicion for the next several hours or even days until the CID could identify and arrest him. If the killer understood that investigators were already out making a search for him, well, he might get scared and run. Or, if he became agitated, there was also the possibility that he might change his tactics and perhaps do harm to Miss Fiennes. Both outcomes were to be avoided at all costs.

As the nondescript carriage came into view John slid his hand back into his coat pocket and folded his fingers over the list of names. He realized he was anxious to discuss the names with William in the privacy of the coach.

Seeing their approach, Masterson stepped down from the cab, quickly opened the door and released the step for both men. John gave the older man a brief nod of acknowledgement as he stepped up into the dim coach. William followed directly behind him. Masterson pushed the step back into place and closed the door without a word to either man before climbing back up into his seat, releasing the break and moving the cab out into the steady flow of morning traffic.

Before William even need ask, John was handing him the slip of paper. William read the names:

Mr. Mark T. Russell

Mr. Richard Kenworthy

Mr. Paul Cornwall

Mr. Stephen Kirkham

Mr. Anthony Cavendish

Mr. Albert J. Wallace

Mr. Jules Vanneck

Mr. Victor Stanley

Mr. James R. Macdonald

Mr. Robert Blackwood

Mr. Earnest E. Brodrick

After a brief glance William offered, "I know a few of these men. Abigail and Winnifred are good friends with Kirkham's wife and Wallace's sisters."

"I'm also familiar with Blackwood, Cavendish and Russell. Blackwood and Russell are both married men now. Russell for near on 4 years and Blackwood for a year. I believe his anniversary is in November if my memory serves me."

"Is it likely the act of a married man with a family?" William asked.

He realized that if not, well, they could knock a number of names from the list quite easily. And, those same men were unlikely to be at risk of losing their lives either. A married man could hardly be considered an obstacle to Miss Fiennes. At least, William could hope.

"What of Wallace, since you say Kirkham has a wife?" John asked.

"Wallace has been married these last five years," William offered.

John dug in a hidden pocket for his graphite pencil and took back the list of names. As he made some small scribbles beside Wallace, Kirkham, Blackwood and Russell's names indicating that they were all married men. This left six other names for them to investigate. Of course, each man would have to be visited regardless, and their whereabouts on the previous night would have to be established before anyone could be crossed off the list of suspects permanently.

John leaned back in his seat a moment and asked, "You did not mention Wallace's wife when you listed off your sisters' friends. You only mentioned his sisters. Why is that?"

William shrugged a shoulder and replied, "The young Mrs. Albert Wallace is a sickly woman and spends most of her time in the country with her widowed aunt and grandmother I'm told. Neither Abbie or Winnie have ever had much of a chance to make her acquaintance."

John sat forward and frowned.

"How often does Mr. Albert Wallace see his indisposed wife?"

A happily married man was less likely a murder suspect. However, a man estranged from his wife might be. John looked down at the list and his pencil hovered over Wallace's name.

"Oh, he's to see her all the time. He's constantly running back and forth at her beck and call. Winnie says the man is love sick for his wife, even all these years later."

William laughed a little and then caught himself. He straightened up in his seat and spared a quick look at John from the corner of his eye. John was still looking down at the list and did not seem to notice. Usually he frowned disapprovingly when William stepped out of his professional persona. John was, himself, ever the professional and much too serious about his job to ever have a laugh over stories of love-sick husbands and their difficult wives.

John etched in a question mark beside Wallace's marital status and then slipped his pencil back into his inside pocket. Picking up the thread of William's earlier question about whether a married man was likely the killer, John said, "I'm inclined to think that the murderer is an unattached man and his targets are other unattached men; however, it would be unwise to rule out other possibilities. We'll have to question everyone."

William did not bother responding. The coach had come to a stop in front of the station by then and Masterson was at the door again, letting down the stairs. The rest of the morning was spent locating addresses for the men on the list, making arrangements to visit each in the most efficient order, and listening to Constable Harris give an account of the deceased whereabouts the night of his death.

After the young man's body had been identified, which was not difficult given that he kept several of his calling cards in the inside pocket of his evening jacket, Detective Sergent Harris had been sent out to inform the family of the young man's passing and to ascertain from the family the young Mr. Brodrick's general haunts, habits and his closest companions.

It was a very difficult endeavour, Harris reported. The family and many of the servants in the household were nearly incapacitated with grief. Brodrick's mother fainted and the weeping servants had to run for smelling salts to revive her. When revived she took to screaming and collapsed on the floor in a heap of fine silk.

The young man's father fell into the nearest chair and took to weeping until his body was racked with mournful sobs that would have tried the hardest of hearts. There were two teenage children, a girl and a boy, who were elsewhere in the house at the time. Upon hearing the racket in the salon they came to investigate.

The weeping servants tried to prevent them from bursting in the room, but the children would not be put off. Once acquainted with the terrible news, the two adolescents collapsed on their mother's skirts and took to wailing with grief themselves.

If Harris had not been a seasoned murder investigator, he would have been quite undone by the sight of the Brodrick family weeping without restraint in their salon that morning. As it was though, and lucky for them, he'd been at this job for near on ten years.

Though moved by their loss, and sensible that he would get little in the way of helpful information from them, he turned his attention to the servants who appeared to be keeping it together. In the end, Harris had to rely on the intelligence he received from a prudish butler and a nervous footman. Luckily, the information proved to be helpful.

"It's all rather ordinary, Sir" Harris reported to John. "He was at a dinner engagement at a friend's house just a few streets from home." He stopped to hand over a sheet of paper with a list of names there. "I've got the names of his friends and their addresses all there for you, sir."

John looked at the street address. Neither Brodrick or his friend Hamilton, who he'd had the dinner engagement with, lived anywhere near Slip Street, which is where Brodrick's body had been found. He handed the list across his desk to William.

"Go on Harris."

"According to the footman, who attended Mr. Brodrick last evening, he entered the Hamilton household at 8pm and exited with two young gentlemen about 11pm, when the footman was dismissed. He said a cab had been called and he overheard that the young men were going to a gentleman's club for the rest of the night.

"It was the King's Crown on Tupple," Harris continued. "I went straight there afterwards to talk with a Mr. Evans, the proprietor. He confirmed that Brodrick was there with two other gentleman, the young Mr. Hamilton and a cousin named Mr. Lewis. They drank, smoked, played billiards and cards for a while, and then left the establishment a little worse for ware about two in the morning.

"They called for another cab to take them all home. The club uses the same drivers for their patrons and it wasn't hard to find who was working last night. I spoke to the driver, a Mr. Thompson of Church Road. He said he delivered Hamilton and Lewis to Mr. Hamilton's address and then took Brodrick on to his address afterwards where he let him off about half past two in the morning.

"He said the young man was a bit drunk and he watched and waited till someone let him in the door before leaving for the club again. Mr. Evans, the club's proprietor, says the cabbie was back and ready for the next client by about ten to three."

"Who let Mr. Brodrick in that night?" John asked.

"It was the family butler," Harris replied.

"Could he account for when or where Brodrick had gone afterwards?"

"He said that the young man went to the kitchen looking for food, which was his habit when coming home a little drunk. Mr. Clarke, the butler, helped him find something but then was sent to bed. Brodrick told the older man that he'd finish up and see himself to bed.

"Mr. Clarke said this behaviour was entirely normal, very routine, and so he went off to bed without a second thought. That was about three in the morning. Not a soul saw him after that hour. His bed was untouched though. Doesn't look like he made it back to his bedroom at all."

John pulled some writing paper from a desk drawer and dipped his quill in the ink pot. He made a crude map linking Brodrick's home to Hamilton's, the club and then Slip Street. Slip street was a twenty minute cab ride from Brodrick's family home. He tapped the drying quill tip on the corner of the paper and examined the map a long moment.

"Why was Mr. Brodrick found dead on Slip Street three hours after he'd been dropped off safely at home?" he asked aloud.

"Did he have a lover?" William asked Harris.

"I don't know, sir. He does have a young woman he is, well, was courting, a Miss Lilith Watson. But she lives," here he paused a minute to flip through some notes he'd scribbled down during his investigation, "On Bowlin, which is well north of Slip Street."

"No lover and no reason to be so far from home," John said quietly. "Did the killer then lure him out of the house on some pretense, kill him and cart him off to Slip Street?"

The room was silent as the three men contemplated the information at hand.

Finally, John looked up at Harris and said, "You'll have to go back to the Brodrick household and question the servants. The servant quarters are likely near the kitchen and someone might have heard something. A caller at three in the morning is likely to have woken someone. Even if he was smart enough to come round to the servants' door."

"Yes, sir," Harris replied immediately.

"Your dismissed," John said to the man before giving him a quick nod.

The Detective Sergent nodded at William before exiting the room. William got up from his seat by the window so that he could look over John's rudimentary map and the list of names and addresses that Harris had supplied.

"John, could one man alone kill a man at Amberley Place and get his body all the way to Slip Street without being noticed? Is there any chance we are looking at a two-man job here?"

John said nothing for a while, which compelled William to think out loud.

"He's at home. He's a little drunk. There's a knocking at the servants' door. The young man gets up to answer the door not wanting to wake the household at such a late hour. Does he meet a friend or a foe? Is he dragged out of the house or asked to step outside?"

"If he were drug outside he would have put up a fight, which someone in the household would have heard," John offered. "It is likelier that he knew his assailant and was tempted outside by something. Whether it was the promise of something or some urgent appeal made upon him I cannot say."

"Well then," William continued as he paced back and forth in John's office, "he gets him outside and then what? Is there a struggle in the yard? The coroner said there was evidence that Mr. Brodrick had put up quite a fight."

"A struggle in the yard would have aroused someone's attention," John pointed out. "It's more likely that the struggle took place in another location or even in a coach."

William stopped pacing and returned to the window seat where he made himself comfortable again while his mind was going over and over the few details they knew from this case and the typical sort of behaviour associated with other killers they had investigated in the past. He could not shake the feeling that this was a two-person job.

"So, does the coach have a driver? Is the driver in on the killer's plan? Is he an accomplice or some poor soul that's been drug into these events unwillingly?" William folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed in an effort to absorb some warmth from the sun and relax a little. He knew he didn't think well when he was tense.

"It is possible," John said in his typical noncommittal way. "It is also possible that he drove the coach himself."

"If there even is a coach," William said despondently.

"Oh no, there was most certainly a coach," John answered back with confidence.

"Because ..." William prompted his boss (and friend) to elaborate.

"Constable Green said that there was no evidence of a struggle where he found the body. It was left sitting on the stairs of the mission like a present. There was no blood spatter, no scuffs along the sidewalk and no clumps of hair or torn pieces of garments strewn about from a life and death struggle. However, Constable Green did note signs of fresh carriage tracks and hoof prints in the slightly muddied road.

"The roads around Slip Street are neither paved or cobbled and though usually packed down hard, there had been a rain the previous evening that had caused puddles and muddy places to form along the road. Constable Green noted in his initial report that it appeared someone had come by and stopped in front of the mission in the wee hours of the morning, before the general traffic.

"He was quite clear that no one comes to the mission, not patrons or tradesmen, at such an ungodly hour. So, our killer most definitely had access to a coach of some kind," John concluded.

"And discreetly transferred the body to that particular destination as a gift for Miss Fiennes, who works a few afternoons a week at the mission," William concluded. "But why drop the body there and not at Miss Fiennes' family home?"

"To avoid bringing a scandal right to her front door, I presume," John offered. "He might be a murderer but he doesn't want to grieve Miss Fiennes. At least, not yet."

"How noble of him," William said dryly.

John gave his partner a wry smile as he pushed his chair back and stood to his feet. "Come William, lets make haste since the clock is ticking."

William got up straight away, fetched his hat and coat and followed John out of the office and back onto the street. They had a long day ahead of them and William felt the heavy weight of the tasks to come. Someone they saw that day could very easily be the killer and he wanted to be as sharp as a tack so that he didn't miss a thing. He knew all to well from past investigations that it was more often the little things that gave a murder, a clever one, away. He hoped the killer wasn't half as shrewd as John or himself for everyone's sake.