Chapter 2: The silent witness The body didn’t lie. Thomas Blackwood was very much dead, though even in death his angular features seemed to sneer at the world. His hand was clenched tightly against his chest, as if he had been holding on to something until his final breath. Detective Lila Hart knelt beside him, careful not to disturb the spreading pool of blood. A faint scent of iron hung in the air, laced with smoke from the dying fire. Her fingers pried open his stiff hand—and there it was. A crumpled scrap of paper, the ink smeared but legible: “Trust no one.” Her pulse quickened. Not exactly comforting words when she was standing alone in a locked room with a corpse. The butler was the first to arrive, summoned by her sharp call down the hallway. His lined face blanched at the sight of Thomas’s body, but Lila had seen enough performances to know fear could be faked. “Where were you, Mr. Ashcroft?” she asked coolly. “In the dining hall, polishing the silver, Detective,” he answered without meeting her eyes. Minutes later, the maid shuffled in, wringing her hands. She insisted she had been in the kitchen, though her apron bore no trace of flour or dust. The gardener, tall and broad, swore he had been outside tending the hedges despite the midnight fog and bitter cold. Their alibis were paper-thin. Lila knew it. And worse—they overlapped in odd, jagged ways that didn’t quite fit together. Someone was lying. Maybe all of them were. As she pieced together their words, a flicker of movement caught her eye. Through the tall library windows, a dark silhouette slipped across the grounds. A figure—cloaked, deliberate. Lila darted outside into the night, her boots crunching over gravel. The fog was a beast tonight, swallowing her whole as she pursued the shadow down the winding path. But no matter how quickly she moved, the figure always remained just out of reach, dissolving into the mist until there was nothing left but silence. Breathing hard, she returned to the manor. A thought nagged at her—Thomas’s study. She hadn’t checked it yet. If he had left a clue, it would be there. The study was chaos. Papers spilled from drawers, and the smell of old tobacco lingered in the air. On the desk sat a leather-bound journal, its pages crowded with cramped handwriting. Lila flipped to the final entry, her eyes scanning the words, each one tightening the noose of dread around her chest: “I know what they’re planning. If anything happens to me… find Eleanor.” A sound made her freeze. A sharp creak from the floorboard behind her. She spun— —but there was no one. Or so it seemed. Because from the corner of the study, hidden in the shadow of the curtains, two eyes gleamed. Watching her.
