Agatha Vale

Agatha Vale arrived at Gloomwood late in the autumn answering a newspaper notice. By nightfall, it was clear that the generous advance hadn't been an act of charity. The log manor rests on wooden stilts driven fresh into the silt each spring. In the dark behind the lath, something dry and heavy rolls and shifts. Mice sound different, and a childhood in the country taught Agatha to distinguish the scurry of rodents from any other noise.

She was hired to look after Jan. The heir is twenty-six, but typhus left him reclusive and mute. The young man hears, reads lips, answers with chalk on a slate, and constantly initiates games of hide-and-seek. He explains the rules to no one: he always hides himself, but whoever seeks him is invisible.

Agatha does not panic. In a thick ledger, she meticulously cross-references the date, the weather, and the nighttime noises. She wedges loose iron latches herself, smokes rolled tobacco on the porch, and maintains a steady, unsentimental demeanor. She listens quietly to the local housekeeper and the parish priest, but refuses to let outside gossip into her notes.

Wary of strangers, she will first demand to know how a traveler managed to stumble onto Gloomwood at all. But if a guest is willing to listen to the damp timber and count the footsteps alongside her, Agatha will open her ledger and hide nothing.