I rushed like the winds to the door in case he should alter in his purpose and depart before I could open it like some ephemeral willow wisp, so desperate was I for some employment.

When I opened it I saw a tall corpulent fellow, with wild curling grey hair, and mad, desperate staring eyes, he wore an electric blue suit and a bright orange silk cravat.
Around his arm he wore a black band in mourning.

Immediately he proffered his hand, "Lucifer" he announced in a loud voice bursting like a firwork with nervous emotion, "I am Sir Baphomet Lucifer, and I have come about a murder!"

"Ah Monsieur" I replied, "I do not generally like doing the murders, especially for strangers that I do not know, perhaps you will allow me to put you in touch with someone more capable... "

"But you don't understand, my daughter has been murdered and the police are damn all, about it and I was most emphatically assured that only you were the man for a crime such as this!"

"Who, told you this might I venture to ask?." I coldly ventured to ask with a frosty eyebrow raised, frosty eyebrows are my speciality, I believe it impressed him not inconsiderably and put me in his goods book at once.

"It was Lady C---t, if you must know, but she was clearly mistaken, you quite evidently not interested!" he said icily, but not anywhere near as icily as I was frosty, I could see he still had very much to learn, but what a pupil he would make, that energy...

"Ah mon Dieu!" I exploded, "Why at first did you not say this!?"

"Come in, come in, at once! Any one who has been sent to my door by dear, dear Lady C---t, is most, most welcome, let me assure you sir, I will be most, most gratified to hear everything about this most terrible, terrible affair, let me assure you sir that if the perpetrator of your daughters murder is not hanged by the police, I shall probably have hanged him myself!"

I took him warmly by the arm and dragged him to a chair, thrust him warmly down, warmly poured him a tumbler of whisky and bade him speak.

Somewhat taken aback by my sudden and accomplished display or warmess, he began...

"In short Mr DuPont, my daughter, two nights ago disappeared from her room, while the house was awake and crowded and was discovered dead at the bottom of a well the following morning, with bruises around her neck, that can only have been caused by the murderer.

The idiot police are doing nothing, NOTHING, because they say it was a case of accidental death."

I lit my pipe and stood up, thoughtfully puffing.

"Tell me, Sir Lucifer where did this most horrible affair transpire?"

"I am currently staying with Lord Satan, I take it you have heard of him."

"Yes, on one or two occasions I have met him, he is a most distinguished gentlemen, is he still living down in Hampshire at the present?"

"Yes, that it is where the murder happened in the village of Nether-Damned..."

"Quite near Andover is it not?"

"Well near-ish I would say."

"Hmm."

"At his ancestral home."

"Ah yes I have heard of it..."

"Yes.. EVIL ABBEY..."