Let It Rest

Alice Sinclair has a problem. The estate has been in her family for three generations. They are selling it. Someone doesn’t want to sell. Someone else wants to sell urgently. That is usually enough to bring Vantage in.

The drive to Dunvegan is single-track, potholed, lined with oaks and Scots pines that press close on both sides. The trees thin. The light dies. And then the house. Pale stone, not white, not grey, the colour of something that had been both and forgotten which. Three stories, towers at each end, copper roofs oxidized to the green of deep water. The eastern tower is taller.

Nadia Calloway’s first thought is that the house is not welcoming anyone. Her second thought, which arrives a half-beat later, is filed carefully in the part of her mind where first impressions live before they become evidence. This house has been waiting.

Alice has put the kettle on. The Sinclair file is open. The family tree is more complicated than it should be. The will’s terms are clear in the wrong places. And someone in the house is rearranging the version of the past that everyone is supposed to remember. Vantage are not here for the murder. They are here for the inheritance. The murder, when it arrives, is just confirmation.