There was no kedgeree that morning, or sausages, or any poached eggs not smothered in vulcanized hollandaise sauce, not even toast and marmalade. Obviously the culinary experimentation had so exhausted Molly that the rest of breakfast was off the menu. The coffee was still good, though, and when you’re going over your case files that’s the important thing.

Murder investigations start with the victim because usually in the first instance that’s all you’ve got. The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with an ology tacked on the end. To make sure that you make a proper fist of this, the police have developed the world’s most useless mnemonic: 5 x WH & H. Otherwise known as Who? What? Where? When? Why? & How? Next time you watch a real murder investigation on the TV and you see a group of serious-looking detectives standing around talking, remember that what they’re actually doing is trying to work out what sodding order the mnemonic is supposed to go in. Once they’ve sorted that out the exhausted officers will retire to the nearest watering hole for a drink and a bit of a breather.

Fortunately for us on the first question—Who is the victim?—Stephanopoulis and the Murder Team had done most of the heavy lifting. Jason Dunlop had been a successful freelance journalist, hence his membership in the Groucho Club. His late father had been a senior civil servant and had sent the young Jason to a second-tier independent school in Harrogate. He’d read English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was an undistinguished student before graduating with a matching undistinguished second. Despite this poor academic performance he walked straight into a job at the BBC, where he was first a researcher and then a producer on Panorama. After a stint working for, of all things, Westminster Council in the 1980s, he moved back into journalism writing articles for the Times, the Mail, and the Independent. I leafed through some of the clippings; lots of articles of the you-send-me-on-holiday-I’ll-write-you-a-good-review variety. Family holidays with wife Mariana, a PR executive, and their two golden-haired kids. As Stephanopoulis had told me, the marriage had recently collapsed, lawyers had already been engaged, and custody of the children was an issue.

“It would be nice to talk to the wife,” said Nightingale. “See if she knows anything about his hobbies.”

I checked the transcripts of the interview with the wife but there was nothing about an unwholesome interest in the occult or supernatural. I made a note to add this to the wife’s nominal file on HOLMES and suggest she be reinterviewed on that subject. I flagged it for Stephanopoulis, but she wasn’t going to let us talk to the wife unless we came up with something serious.