Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPP51TSJW5N0FV95GZVE0J

The rain had been falling since midnight, and by dawn the gravel drive outside Thornfield House was a shallow river. Inspector Margaret Voss parked her car beside the fountain, noting that three other vehicles already sat there, engines cold. The front door stood open six inches, which the housekeeper swore she had locked herself at eleven the previous evening. Inside, the marble floor held a single wet footprint pointing toward the library, too small to belong to any man. Voss followed it past the grandfather clock, which had stopped at two-seventeen, its brass pendulum hanging perfectly still and silent. In the library, Sir Alistair Crane sat upright in his leather chair, eyes open, a chess piece clutched in hand. The white queen, carved from ivory, had been pressed so hard into his palm that the skin had broken slightly. No wound was visible anywhere, no blood, no bruising, nothing at all to suggest how the old man had died. Behind Voss, someone cleared their throat, and she turned to find four faces watching her from the doorway, unmoving, waiting. "None of us touched him," said the tallest, a woman in riding boots still caked with mud from the garden. Voss said nothing, because she had already counted the chess board and found that two other pieces were also missing.