Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPW5NJP5JDNH60ZDCY0MC8

The rain had not stopped falling since Tuesday last week. Inspector Halloway stepped carefully around the puddle near the gate. Behind him, the constable held an umbrella at wrong angles. Water ran down the inspector's collar and soaked his shirt. The house ahead was tall, narrow, and painted a pale gray. Every window on the ground floor had been shuttered from inside. A woman waited at the door, hands folded, face perfectly still. "You are late," she said, though nobody had named a time. Halloway removed his hat and shook the rain onto the step. "Show me the room where you found him," he replied evenly. She turned without answering and walked into the dim front hall. The floorboards complained beneath her feet but stayed silent under his. Somewhere above them, a clock struck once for the half hour. The dead man lay beside the piano with his eyes open. Someone had folded his hands across his chest quite deliberately, neatly. Halloway crouched and looked for a long while at nothing much. "Who arranged him this way?" he asked the woman behind him. "He was like that when I came down," she said quietly. Halloway noted that she had not once looked at the body. Outside, the rain kept on falling as if paid handsomely for it.