The Bone Garden Inheritance

A letter postmarked the day after its sender's funeral is the first thread in a web that will not let Hugh Pendleton go. The university librarian has spent his life surrounded by orderly archives, but the document in his hand, typed in uneven capitals, naming him as a beneficiary in a will no one knew existed, sends him spiralling into the orbit of the Marsh family and their decaying Salisbury estate. There, the recently buried patriarch has left behind more than debts: an anatomical curiosity known as the Bone Garden, a circle of relatives with secrets piled like headstones, and a set of instructions written for Hugh alone. When human remains are discovered on the grounds, DCI Frank Burrows arrives with questions sharper than Hugh's carefully measured silences. As the Marsh household closes ranks, Greta Bell guarding old loyalties, Margaret Whitcombe nursing old wounds, Sister Bernadette Coyle invoking heaven while hiding something earthbound, every conversation becomes a locked-room puzzle and every inheritance a motive. Hugh came to claim a legacy; he may leave as a suspect, a witness, or a third body for the Bone Garden. The only question is whether he can read the dead man's true intentions before Burrows reads them for him.