Free mystery stories
Every story on Enigma 45 is free to read, in full. This page lists them from the shortest to the longest, so you can pick one for the time you have.
From the shortest to the longest
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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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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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Nobody Weighs the Way Out
Chronos45 sells trips of exactly forty-five minutes into the past, with a register of entry, a register of exit and a customs desk that weighs everybody on the way back. On Friday nine people went out to the London of October 1934 and eight came… back. Edmund Whitmore, who founded the firm, left the party for twenty minutes and turned up dead in the cellar of an empty house in Fitzrovia. The half hour in which it could have happened is covered minute by minute by seven witnesses, and none of them is lying. Inspector Constance Quayle does not investigate alibis: she weighs what people carry.
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The House Ate the Staircase
The Círculo Mercantil of Sarnia is opening its new dining room, its electric light and a whole house bought from the neighbours, and on the night of the opening sixty members watch a white shape cross the glass screen at a height where there is no… floor. Before the coffee, a doctor is found dead at the bottom of the well of a demolished staircase. The court sends an expert to say whether the man could have fallen on his own. The door was found locked, the key was found hanging on its hook, and in the porter's book there is no line for the return.
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Houses Die of Heat
In December, in Norilsk, the sun does not rise. Block Seventeen has split open from top to bottom, and its tenants know that if the crack is the climate's doing, the block will be declared unsafe and they will finally go to the mainland. A reinsurer… in Zürich sends a Swiss expert who speaks no Russian to say whether the ground gave way or was made to. That night the black purga begins and nobody can go out. Next morning the man who was going to show him something is found frozen in the basement, his arms round a pipe that burns.
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Nobody Counts by Looking
The Charity Clothing Guild of Tornellosa is four women, eleven years of Thursdays and a bedspread of eighty-one crochet rosettes that has just won the Provincial Council's prize. An unsigned letter reaches the court: it says the bedspread was bought… in a workshop and the thousand pesetas were collected by deceit. The court seals the room and sends an expert to rule on who made the work. Nobody is dead, nothing is missing and no door has been forced. But the bedspread has eighty-one rosettes and the room has four pairs of hands.
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Houses Do Not Stretch
Bellabrida is closed off by the fever and the flood has taken the bridge. Doña Casilda Mansilla is dead, and her will reaches the court with a new wafer and one line too many. Aristide Valmont must say whether that line is hers, and he must do it… from the far bank of the river, with whatever crosses on Tuesdays and Fridays in the mail basket. The reader is handed the same papers on the same day he is: a sketch plan, six statements nobody could agree on, and a photograph.
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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.
What “free” means here
That there is nothing to pay and nothing to give in return:
- Actually free: not now, not in chapter three.
- No sign-up: no account to create, no email to leave.
- No subscription: no free trial that turns into a charge.
- No paywall: the whole text is on the page from the moment it opens.
How reading works
In the browser, on your phone or your computer, with nothing to install. Each story is split into chapters and the site remembers where you stopped, so you can leave it halfway and come back later. For reading at night there is a dark theme and a sepia one, and the text size can go up or down.
If you want to know more about the project, it is all in about Enigma 45.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to sign up to read?
No. There are no accounts: you open the story and read it.
Are the stories complete?
Yes. Each story is published in full, with its set-up and its solution. There are no pending instalments and no endings sold separately.
Can I read them on my phone?
Yes. The text adapts to the screen, and the site remembers the chapter you were on, on that same device.
How do I hear about new stories?
Through the RSS feed, or by checking the list of stories. There is no newsletter and nothing to opt into.