This ‘BB’ in truth goes by the name Benjamin Barker. By all appearances he is a quiet and reserved man, a hard worker, very keen to do his fair sure in services around the coop, particularly the garden and library. He has almost no record with the coop; by their account he has no family listed. He does not talk about his past; by reputation he rarely speaks of anything at all, but he seemed to have been warming up to his fellow residents more recently.

Yet in going to the coop, meeting with him, from what I have heard of him, from the details he has given me, it seems clear that his placement here in this time and place is as my own – a mysterious lifting from our own times to some alternate universe. Therefore what he told the psychoanalyst is true; he is, in truth, a serial murderer. However he committed them in his own time, refashioning himself in his malice as Sweeney Todd, in retaliation for his wife who was abused quite harshly in his absence and therefore attempted suicide. I say attempt, though he insisted that she actually committed suicide, but from the full description of his story I had my doubts about it. There were many inconsistencies that he neglected to address but he was angered at my suggestion; he left me in great distress over the notion that his wife could still be alive – or, let us more appropriately say, is alive in the time that he came from.

I will speak with the psychoanalyst shortly, thought I do not know what I will say. I have not decided what case to take on yet, but I am packing my bags.

Hercule Poirot