第1章 Chapter 1: The Invitation

The letter arrived on a Tuesday, which should have been my first warning.

Nothing good ever happens on a Tuesday.

*Dear Dr. Eleanor Voss,*

*You are cordially invited to attend an exclusive weekend gathering at Ashworth Manor, the ancestral home of the late Cornelius Ashworth. As one of six beneficiaries named in Mr. Ashworth's final testament, your presence is required for the reading of his will.*

*Please arrive by 6:00 PM on Friday, November 15th. A car will be waiting at Ravenswick Station.*

*Yours faithfully,*

*J. Whitmore, Solicitor*

I hadn't spoken to Cornelius in seven years. Not since the night at Cambridge when he'd pulled me aside during the faculty dinner and whispered, "I know what you did, Eleanor. And I know why."

I'd spent seven years trying to forget those words.

Now he was dead, and somehow, impossibly, he was summoning me back.

The rational part of my brain—the part that had earned me a professorship in criminal psychology by thirty-two—told me not to go. But curiosity is a disease for which there is no cure, and Cornelius had always known exactly which strings to pull.

I packed my bag on Thursday night.