The Second Witness

A man is found dead in a Custom House coal yard, and the first witness places him alive at ten o'clock, arguing with someone he never named. A week later, a second witness comes forward. A respectable widow, certain she saw him walking, safe and well, near midnight. Two honest accounts. Two hours apart. And a case that should be closing instead splits wide open. Inspector Conrad Bellamy and retired records officer Alistair Wrenford return to the world of The Sealed Study to untangle a death that hinges not on what either witness saw, but on something neither of them thought to question: whether agreement between two honest people is the same thing as the truth. The answer is buried in a ledger nobody thought worth reading twice-a gate log, a lamp's burning hours, and the quiet, devastating difference between a memory and a memory someone else has reshaped. For readers of classic English detective fiction who want their puzzles built from paperwork rather than chases, and their villains undone by their own careful records.