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The Ashcombe Manor Affair
The case
Found in his bolted study in the small hours, a letter opener through the heart, the door locked from the inside. Six guests had come to Ashcombe Manor that weekend, and every one of them had reason to wish the old lord gone — a thwarted inheritance, a soured partnership, a buried secret he had threatened to drag into the light. For one hour that night, not a single account of who was where holds together. Six guests. One missing hour. Nobody heard a thing.
The victim
Lord Edmund Ashcombe
Lord Edmund Ashcombe, 61, was the last of his line to hold the manor — heir to a wool-trade fortune three generations old, which he spent his life defending against creditors, modernity and, some said, his own family.
A widower since 1974, he filled the house with people he only half trusted: a niece he raised, a butler older than his marriage, partners and artists passing through on his patronage. Generous in public and exacting in private, he kept the estate's books himself and audited every kindness for its price.
On his last evening he told the dinner table he intended to put his affairs in order — a phrase he was fond of, and one that had a way of making the whole room sit very still.
Autopsy report
Post-mortem examination of Lord Edmund Ashcombe, 61. Cause of death: a single penetrating wound to the chest from a slender, flat blade — consistent with the letter opener recovered at the scene — entering between the fourth and fifth ribs and reaching the heart. Death would have followed within minutes.
Body temperature, lividity and rigor place death between a quarter to eleven and half past midnight. Stomach contents are consistent with the dinner that ended at half past nine; the examiner declines to narrow the window further.
No defensive wounds to the hands or forearms; the blow was struck facing, at close quarters, and nothing under the nails suggests a struggle.
The cast
Evidence locker