Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCQXZ611935VMD4YF0NT5Z2

The rain had been falling on Ashgrove Manor since midnight, and by dawn the gravel drive resembled a shallow river. Inspector Della Hart parked beside the fountain, killed the engine, and watched water spill from a cracked stone lion's mouth. A young constable waited under the portico, holding an umbrella that had already surrendered to the wind an hour earlier. He looked pale, and Della decided the body inside must be worse than the sergeant's careful telephone call had suggested. The library smelled of woodsmoke, spilled brandy, and something metallic that she recognized long before she saw its actual source. Sir Edmund Voss lay face down across the hearthrug, one arm outstretched toward the fireplace and its cold gray ashes. A brass letter opener stood upright between his shoulder blades, driven deep by someone who had very clearly meant it. Six houseguests sat in the drawing room across the hall, each insisting they had heard nothing at all unusual overnight. Della took out her notebook, wrote the time, and understood that at least one of them was almost certainly lying. Outside, the rain kept falling, patiently washing away whatever evidence the killer had been careless enough to leave out there.