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Short mystery stories and novellas. Open reading, no sign-up and no paywall.
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Nobody Is Wrong in Formation
On the night of the fair ball, seven pieces of silver vanish from a case locked with two keys, and by the next day the sergeant has fourteen statements that contradict one another without anybody lying. Duarte Cabral de Meneses was hired only to be seen in the ballroom. He stays because in a whole village that has the time wrong there is one thing that is never wrong: the mail train.
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Nobody Is Wrong in Formation
On the night of the fair ball, seven pieces of silver vanish from a case locked with two keys, and by the next day the sergeant has fourteen statements that contradict one another without anybody lying. Duarte Cabral de Meneses was hired only to be seen in the ballroom. He stays because in a whole village that has the time wrong there is one thing that is never wrong: the mail train.
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What Is Said Without Fear
A photographer writes to Duarte Cabral de Meneses to tell him something, then asks him to wait until the next day. That morning he is found dead in a cubicle at the spa, in the bath his own ticket called for. Duarte stays on for the eight days he has been paid in advance, talking nonsense with twelve guests, because nobody lies in the trimmings.
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First the Lamp Goes Down
At the press house there is an October rule that nobody explains: first the lamp goes down and then the man, and never alone. On the night Mercedes comes back after twenty-three years, she goes down alone. Aristide Valmont had arrived the day before to value the property, and he stays because the cellar does not tell the same story as the family.
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Three Things Put Straight
A landslip cuts off a house on a mountain pass with seven people inside it and twelve degrees of frost. In the morning the mistress of the house is found dead in the conservatory, sitting in her chair, and nobody has come in or gone out all night. Aristide Valmont, a court-appointed expert whom the snow has turned off his road, stands looking at three things somebody put straight that did not need putting straight at all.
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