Run: 2026-07-01-01KWEA5598D3ZPWVZ1PT7102YP

# The Fourth Guest Rain hammered the windows of Blackwood Manor as the clock struck midnight without any warning. Detective Sarah Chen stepped through the doorway, her coat dripping onto the ancient Persian rug beneath her. The body lay sprawled across the study floor, blood pooling beneath the antique mahogany writing desk nearby. "Nobody leaves this house," she announced, scanning the six guests gathered nervously near the fireplace. Lord Pemberton's throat had been slit with surgical precision, suggesting the killer possessed considerable medical knowledge somehow. The butler wrung his hands anxiously, avoiding eye contact with everyone except the flickering candles above. Sarah noticed the missing letter opener, its absence more telling than any fingerprint left behind. Three of the guests claimed they'd been sleeping, yet none could verify each other's alibis convincingly. The victim's wife stood silently by the window, staring into darkness that mirrored her hollow expression. Something about her composure struck Sarah as rehearsed, like an actress waiting for her cue. Thunder cracked outside as the lights flickered once, casting strange shadows across the crime scene. "This storm isn't leaving anytime soon," muttered the young detective assigned to assist with evidence collection. Sarah knelt beside the body, examining a torn photograph clutched tightly in Pemberton's cold fingers. The image showed four people standing together, though someone had deliberately scratched out one face. She recognized the garden gate behind them, the same one visible through the study window. Whatever happened tonight, Sarah suspected, had roots stretching back through years of buried secrets. The six suspects watched her work, each hiding something behind their carefully constructed masks of grief. One of them was lying, and Sarah intended to discover exactly who before dawn arrived.