Run: 2026-09-29-01M3P2APXAKQ1H07WDVB7Q5D3E

Rain hammered the windows of Blackwood Manor the night Lord Alistair Finch was found dead in his own locked study. Inspector Mara Quinn arrived after midnight, her boots soaked, her patience thinner than the fog curling across the gravel drive. The butler, a stooped man named Hobbs, met her at the door and whispered that nobody had touched anything, ma'am. Inside the study, Finch slumped over his mahogany desk, one hand outstretched toward a porcelain teacup that had not spilled. The heavy oak door had been bolted from the inside, and the only tall window was painted shut decades ago. Quinn knelt beside the body and noticed a faint, bitter smell of almonds still clinging to the dead man's collar. Behind her, the family gathered in the doorway: a pale widow, a nephew, a physician, and a silent young secretary. Every one of them claimed to have heard nothing, yet somebody had wound the old clock on the mantel backward. Quinn straightened slowly, studied each face in turn, and felt certain that the killer was still standing within arm's reach.