Run: 2026-10-08-01M4DAJQ5D47V2WA9W6A4Q853N

The rain had not stopped for three long days, and Detective Mara Quinn resented every single minute of the downpour. Water streamed down the tall windows of Ashford Manor, blurring the old portraits that watched her from the dim hallway. Lord Edmund Ashford lay dead at the foot of the grand staircase, a silver letter opener jutting from his chest. Quinn knelt beside the body, noting the muddy footprints that led away from the study door toward the servants' kitchen. Nobody in the household had admitted to leaving their rooms after midnight, which made every one of them a suspect. Quinn glanced at the antique clock above the mantel, its brass hands frozen stubbornly at twenty past eleven last night. Someone had carefully wound that clock, or else someone had badly wanted the local constables to believe one convenient lie. Quinn pulled on her gloves, took a breath, and stepped very carefully over the blood toward the waiting chaos below.