"So?" Roman said, keeping the bite back from his tone. "The body? What was it like?"

Logan narrowed his eyes, picking up on the harsh tone. "First, care to tell me why your behaving so defensively or why you were seeming to get oddly chummy with Mr Blacksky?"

Roman scowled, a gentle blush in his cheeks. "I was not getting 'chummy' with him." He replied. "I wanted to see if I could become viewed as a friend. If we get Mr Blacksky on our side in this house, we'll start to know everything and we can solve the case faster. I'm getting defensive because he's really, really hot."

At first, Logan was going to answer back to Roman's' plan rudely until he realised it might actually work. So, instead, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's our biggest suspect you're calling 'hot', Roman."

"It's not my fault, that's just how his body's made and I'm gonna appreciate it, especially when he's standing less than a metre away from me in a small stable."

Logan dragged his forefinger and thumb under the bags of his eyes, before pulling his hand down his face. "Fine, okay, you have a reasonably relative argument."

Roman grinned in playful triumphant. "I'm not as stupid as you think I look." And then he frowned, trying to figure out whether he had insulted himself or not.

Logan quickly took charge of the conversation. "The body was one of the most gruesome I've seen. Whoever did this must've really hated him."

"What was it like?" Roman asked.

"First, I assumed he had been strangled until he died," Logan said. "It turns out his skull had been caved in and his brains had been beaten."

Roman winced. "Yeowch."

"I know," Logan replied with a simple nod. "The pictures will be arriving, maybe, tomorrow. For now, we need to look back at the crime scene."

Roman smiled faintly, shaking his head slightly. "Your procedures are so odd, Croft. No one else does investigations like this."

Logan smirked back. "So why do you think no one else has been as good as me?"

His partner blinked confused. "Huh?"

"You were happy to get pulled into this, Roman, now," The smirk turned confident, like an echo of the smiles you might've found eight months ago in the papers. "Let me show you how real detectives investigate."

~'^'~

Ali Blacksky had been killed in a room on one of the upper floors, at least two below the master bedroom. The room was large but basically a labyrinth, filled with shelves. There were books, ornaments and CDs lining these shelves, heavy, empty candlesticks perched along the sides and large mirrors.

Roman narrowed his eyes as he snapped plastic gloves on. "All this stuff looks expensive."

"It is," Agreed Logan. "It must've been a room designed to flaunt their money. Down there, behind those shelves, is a small metal table with a few chairs. Maybe Ali would invite people from the village for lunch and serve it in this room."

The other nodded, peering past the shelves Logan gestured to. "Seems like something he'd do, with the gist we've gotten of 'im. God, I want to kill him and he's already dead."

"Roman," Logan quickly fired, spinning around on his heel.

"Joke!" He replied swiftly.

Logan glared and then turned his attention back to a chalked silhouette. He pursed his lips. "The body was pushed to the ground," He deduced quickly.

"And how'd ya figure that one out, Sherlock?" Roman asked with a cheerful drawl but an element of questioning.

In answer, Logan pointed up to one of the shelves the chalk silhouette lay before. "The dust has been disturbed a lot up there, but the corpse is marked a little too far away for this spot to have been where he'd died."

Roman nodded slowly, crouching down. "This whole place is covered in dust. It seems like people rarely went down here, unless to host some big dinner."

Logan hummed in agreement. "If people rarely went down here, it would be an ideal place for a murder. We can assume this was possibly planned. But this raises a question."

"What?"

The detective rotated his head back until his eyes locked onto Roman's', in a steely fashion. "What were Patton and Janus coming here for?"

"Preparing a lunch?" Roman suggested, his face quickly mimicking Logan's' in thought.

"We're going back to the village."

Roman nodded and then the door opened again, Patton standing in the doorway. He paled when both of the other men turned to look at him coldly. "I, uh..." His whitened face turned red shyly. "I was sent to escort you to dinner. The Master's' orders."

Logan raised an eyebrow. "The Master wants us to eat with him?"

"No," Patton replied, a smile appearing briefly on his face before he swallowed it down nervously. "The Master would like you to join he and his family for dinner."

Roman looked to Logan and began slowly, "We'll be there in a moment, could you please wait further down the corridor for us?"

Patton bowed his head, as if out of reflex. "Yes, sirs." And he escorted himself out.

Logan turned, almost confused and pondering, to Roman. "You heard it too?"

"Virgil eats with the servants, instead of alone, like most rich lords in this kind of house," Roman confirmed, receiving an approving nod. "And it looks like Patton was quoting Mr Blacksky when he said all that stuff about family."

"I agree," Hummed Logan. "Stay sharp at dinner, Roman. I believe we'll be able to see a lot of useful things if we keep an open eye."