The Vanishing at Blackwood Manor: A Lockdown Mystery

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The Vanishing at Blackwood Manor Blackwood Manor's front door locked itself with a sound like a schoolmistress snapping a ruler. Evelyn Harrow looked up from the brass key she had just taken out of her pocket and watched the old iron bolts shudder into place one after another. First the front door. Then the side hall. Then, with a distant clack and thunk that carried through the house like gossip in a village shop, the doors to the conservatory and the winter garden. Outside, snow drove sideways across the terrace. "Well," Evelyn said, brushing flakes off the shoulders of her navy coat, "that is one way to keep your dinner guests from straying." Mrs. Mercer, who had run Blackwood Manor since the year Noah launched the ark, did not smile. "The weather turned faster than they promised." "The weather often has better ideas than the forecast." Evelyn set down her leather tool case and glanced up at the high windows. The manor was all mullioned glass, dark wood, and ancestral confidence. It stood on the ridge above the village like a grande dame who had outlived every sensible economy. Evelyn had not crossed its threshold in twenty years, not since the winter her mother died and half…