There was a knife in the room too, but it had not been used to stab the dead man. Instead, it was stuck to his face with packing tape. Specifically, it was stuck to his closed mouth, completely covering it. The tape—of which there was plenty—also completely covered the lower part of the murder victim’s face, including his nose, causing him to suffocate to death. The knife’s blade, flat against the dead man’s mouth, was sharp. Forensics found evidence that it had been sharpened in the room, and detectives suspect that this happened after the victim was bound to the chair and unconscious.

Above the fireplace, on the wall between two bookshelf-filled alcoves, someone had written in big red capital letters “HE IS NO LESS DEAD.” I imagine that the first police to arrive at the scene took one look at that and leaped to a mistaken conclusion: that the red words had been written in the victim’s blood. Then, seconds later, they might have noticed a can of paint and a red-tipped brush on the floor and made a more informed guess that turned out to be correct: the words on the wall were written in paint. Dulux’s Ruby Fountain 2, for anyone who is interested in the details and doesn’t already know them.

Detectives examined the dead man’s laptop, I assume. They would have found this surprisingly easy because the killer had red-painted “Riddy111111” on a blank sheet of white 8½" x 11" paper that was lying on the desk. This was the well-known man’s password and would have led police straight to his email inbox. There they’d have found a new, unopened message from a correspondent by the name of No Less Dead, with an email address to match. There were no words in the message, only a photograph of someone standing in the room beside the unconscious, not-yet-deceased victim, wearing what looked like a protective suit from a Hollywood film about biological outbreaks—the sort that covers the head and body of the person wearing it. The killer’s eyes would presumably have been visible if he or she hadn’t taken care to turn away from the camera; as it was, the picture showed a completely unidentifiable person with one outstretched arm (for the taking of the photo), holding aloft a knife in his or her other hand, above the unconscious man’s chest, in a way designed to suggest that a stabbing was imminent. The knife in the photograph was the same one (or identical to the one) that ended up taped to the murder victim’s face, suffocating him rather than spilling his blood.

And now the question is coming up, so pay attention, ladies! (Actually, it’s questions, plural.)