Run: 2026-10-05-01M46BAQBP3ESW15F89HP6G02W

By midnight, the rain had erased every footprint outside Blackthorn House, except the one leading away from its locked chapel. Inspector Vale arrived carrying a broken umbrella and the letter his dead wife had apparently posted only three days earlier. Inside, seven guests waited beneath portraits whose painted eyes seemed fixed upon the silver tray resting beside an empty armchair. The tray held a cracked teacup, a wedding ring, and a brass key still wet with something darker than rain. Nobody mentioned the body until the grandfather clock struck thirteen, and the youngest guest began laughing without lifting her eyes. Sir Edmund lay upstairs with his throat cut neatly, although every knife in the house remained locked inside the kitchen. Vale asked who had discovered him, and seven people answered together, each naming somebody who was not in the room. But when he unfolded his wife's letter, the first line made their answers seem suddenly less impossible than his arrival. “My darling, if Edmund is dead when you read this, please remember that I warned you about the eighth guest.”