Run: 2026-09-23-01M36R9VBD7KNF02F855G3JG23

At midnight, the lighthouse bell rang once, though its keeper had been dead for three days and buried far inland. Mara Vale heard it from the manor library, where rain tapped the windows like impatient fingers seeking entry after midnight. She looked up from the unsigned will and found the grandfather clock stopped at precisely eleven seventeen that wet evening. Across the room, Inspector Shaw stood beside a corpse none remembered inviting, with white gloves folded neatly across its chest. The dead man wore Mara's father's signet ring, missing since the night her mother vanished without explanation from the house. Shaw noticed her staring, then asked whether she recognized the victim, while thunder swallowed the answer she nearly gave aloud. Before Mara could speak, someone upstairs began playing the dead keeper's hymn on a piano, though every room stood empty. Inspector Shaw reached for his notebook, but Mara recognized the melody and whispered, “That song was played at Father's funeral.”