Run: 2026-10-08-01M4DADQ8CVVVQ9635A7T32KEF

The rain fell hard on Ashford Manor that stormy night. Inspector Harold Vance arrived just after midnight, soaked and irritable. Lord Edmund Ashford lay motionless beside the cold stone fireplace. A single brass candlestick rested near his outstretched left hand. Across the room, the housekeeper sobbed into a trembling handkerchief. Nobody had seen the victim alive since the dinner party. Vance knelt beside the body and studied the wound carefully. Something about the arrangement felt deeply wrong to him tonight. The hall clock had stopped at a quarter to eleven. Someone, Vance suspected, had wanted that clock to lie convincingly. Downstairs, in the shadowed corridor, a door creaked open quietly.