Run: 2026-10-08-01M4DAJMC8YN6PQ8YXCEWRMG76

The rain had fallen across Blackwood Manor since midnight, washing the gravel paths clean of every single footprint before dawn. Detective Inspector Harriet Vane arrived at the estate just after seven, her coat soaked and her temper already frayed badly. Lord Edmund Ashcombe lay face down in his library, a silver letter opener protruding from between his narrow shoulder blades. The constable at the scene, a nervous young man named Pike, insisted that nobody had entered or left since nine. Harriet knelt beside the body, noticing a faint smear of ink on the victim's right cuff that nobody had mentioned. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed eleven times, and every guest in the drawing room fell silent at once. Harriet looked up slowly, and she knew with absolute certainty that one of them was lying to her face tonight.