Detective Eleanor Bennett stood in the dimly lit study, the weight of time pressing heavily upon her shoulders. The old case file, yellowed and brittle with age, lay open before her, its contents whispering secrets long buried by dust and neglect. Twenty years had passed since Victor Caldwell, a historian of great renown, had been found dead in this very room, a single bullet piercing his heart. The mystery of his death had consumed her mentor, Detective Arthur Willis, who had spent the last years of his life chasing a truth that always seemed just out of reach. And now, the case had fallen to Eleanor, a legacy she neither sought nor desired but felt compelled to resolve. The study itself was a relic of another era, a room frozen in time. Mahogany shelves, lined with ancient tomes, towered above her, their spines cracked and faded. The scent of aged paper and leather filled the air, mingling with the faint odor of pipe tobacco, a ghostly remnant of Caldwell's presence. A large oak desk dominated the center of the room, its surface cluttered with papers, quills, and an ink blotter that had not been disturbed in two decades. And there, in the middle of it all, lay the single clue that had baffled investigators for years—a small,...