The incident room at Chester CID was a storm of controlled chaos. Whiteboards sprouted like fungal growths, plastered with crime scene photos, timelines, and maps. The rescued woman—identified as Lily Sloane, a 24-year-old music teacher—was in hospital, sedated but stable. Toxicology was racing to identify the compound in her system; preliminary results suggested a potent, old-fashioned botanical derivative, likely administered in a spiked drink.
Elara stood before the central board, a marker in her hand, trying to impose narrative on the madness. Thorne, a butterfly stitch holding the gash on his brow, watched her from a desk, his phone clamped to his ear.
"He knew her routine," Elara said, not to anyone in particular. The team of detectives and analysts half-listened, caught between skepticism and the undeniable, bizarre facts. "Lily Sloane. Sings in the church choir at St. Brigid's. Takes a walk every Tuesday evening. He would have watched her. Chosen her not at random, but because she fit the profile—a young woman connected to the choir of the very priory where the original 'silent sister' died."
She circled a photo of the monk's scapular, now sealed in an evidence bag. "He wore this. Not a full costume this time. A token. A signature. He's becoming more confident. Or more rushed." She tapped the photo of the severed padlock. "He came prepared. Bolt cutters. The axe from the church's own fire kit. He didn't bring a weapon; he used the location's resources. He's adaptable. He works with what the 'site' provides."
A young detective raised a hand. "Why change the method? The first two were posed, intricate. This was supposed to be a crude fall?"
"It wasn't crude," Elara corrected. "A fall from a bell tower after stealing an axe? It would have been a puzzle. A modern woman, dressed simply, in a historical location with a history of a fatal fall. The press would have feasted on the 'curse' or the 'copycat.' It would have taken time to link it to the London murders. He was evolving his presentation. Making it look less like a collection and more like… a natural recurrence. As if history itself was repeating."
Thorne ended his call and stood. The room quieted. "The salt from the mine. Forensics matched its unique mineral signature to residue found in the tread of the boot print and to a trace amount on the scapular. It's the same salt. He's contaminating his scenes with it. Deliberately. A literal calling card."
"A preservative," Elara said. "He's marking them as his. Preserving them in the narrative of his Codex."
"We also have a partial from the axe handle," Thorne continued, a thin thread of triumph in his voice. "Too smudged for a direct ID, but enough for exclusion and for a database search if we get a match. And Lily Sloane's statement, when she's coherent, will be crucial."
Elara's mind, however, was elsewhere. She was back in the choir, the bell's single, shuddering toll still echoing in her bones. You've read the marginalia, Dr. Vance. But have you understood the text?
Marginalia. The notes scribbled in the margins of a manuscript by later readers. Corrections, critiques, embellishments.
She turned to a clean part of the whiteboard. She wrote three lines:
Museum Victim (Female, Poison/Monkshood/Dagger):A statement on pagan death & state power.Finch (Male, Book/Seal/Hawthorn):A statement on persecution & the theft of knowledge.Sloane (Attempted, Fall/Bell/Axe):A statement on silenced voices & corrupted sanctity.
"He's not just repeating crimes," she said, her voice rising with the force of the idea. "He's commenting on them. The marginalia! He's writing his own commentary on historical events. The museum scene was his gloss on a Roman-era poisoning. The murder of Finch was his critique of the witch-hunt. Last night was his… his annotation on the death of Sister Euphemia. He's not a slavish copyist. He's an author."
Thorne frowned. "So the original Codex, if it exists, is just the source text. He's adding his own footnotes. In blood."
"Exactly. And footnotes have a purpose. They clarify, they argue, they point to other sources." She felt a surge of adrenaline. "The objects he takes—the seal from Finch, the… the whatever he took from the museum before we arrived—they aren't just trophies. They're references. They're the physical evidence he cites to support his argument."
Her phone buzzed on the desk. An email notification. The sender was a string of garbled letters. The subject line was empty.
With a feeling of dread, she opened it.
The body of the email contained no words. Only a high-resolution scan of a page from an ancient, handwritten manuscript. The Latin was dense, abbreviated, but she could make out the heading: De Interitu Sine Voce – "On the Silent Death."
It described a method: the use of a specific sedative derived from henbane (close to what Lily had been given) to induce a state of compliant wakefulness, followed by a staged fall from a height to mimic despair or accident. The historical example cited in the margin was… Sanctimonialis Euphemia, 1522.
Beneath the scanned page, a single line of text had been added in a clean, modern digital font:
Your annotation was passable. But you missed the primary source. The bell must ring thrice. - K.
"He's emailing me," Elara said, her voice hollow. She turned the laptop so Thorne could see.
"K," Thorne breathed. "The Labyrinth Keeper."
"He's grading my paper." The absurd, horrific reality of it washed over her. "He's telling me I was close, but wrong. The bell… it was supposed to toll three times. For the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The full death knell. You interrupted it after one. The scene was incomplete. Unpublished."
Thorne slammed a hand on the desk. "We can trace this."
"He'll have bounced it through a hundred servers," Elara said, but she felt a flicker of something else. Not just fear. A fierce, academic anger. He was engaging her in debate. "He's given us something else. A clue he wants us to have. 'The primary source.' He doesn't mean the medieval text. He means the original inspiration. The thing that inspired the Codex's entry on silent deaths."
She went back to the board, to the photo of the objects from the salt mine. Her eyes fixed on one: the stained leather pouch of dried peas.
"The choir, the silence, the fall…" she muttered, pacing. "It's not just about a nun. It's about a specific kind of silencing." She grabbed her own laptop, her fingers flying. She searched historical records, combining terms: choir, accident, mute, punishment.
The results filtered. And there it was. Not a monastic record, but a municipal one from Frankfurt, 1564. A court case.
"Got it," she whispered.
The team gathered around.
"It's not a nun. It's a chorister. A boy. In a Lutheran church in Germany. He was caught stealing from the collection plate. His punishment, according to local custom, was to have dried peas placed in his boots and to be forced to walk a circuit of the high choir balcony until he collapsed from the pain—a form of torture called 'peas'.' He fell from the balcony. His death was ruled a divine accident. A 'silencing' of a thief." She looked up, her eyes blazing. "That's the primary source. The Codex entry was based on that. The nun story is a variation, a later copy. He wasn't annotating Sister Euphemia's story. He was annotating the original chorister's story, using St. Brigid's as a convenient stage."
Thorne stared at her, then at the email on the screen. The killer was leading them deeper into a bibliographical nightmare. "So he's pointing us to Germany?"
"No," Elara said, the final piece clicking. She pointed to the pouch in the evidence photo. "He's pointing us to his next source. He has the original peas. Or a replica. That pouch in the mine. It's not just an exhibit. It's a promise. He's telling us his next 'annotation' will be on the theme of… of judicial torture and theft. A modern 'chorister' who steals." Her mind raced through modern equivalents. "A banker? A corrupt official? A shoplifter?"
The incident room was silent, the sheer intellectual scale of the hunt now clear. They weren't chasing a maniac. They were chasing a deadly, brilliant editor through the footnotes of history.
Thorne's phone rang again. He listened, and the blood drained from his face. He looked at Elara, his expression granite.
"The partial print from the axe. It got a hit in the database. Not a criminal record. A military one. Army Intelligence. Psychological discharge five years ago.
Name: Leo Sandys."
He turned his phone around. On the screen was a service photo of a man in his late twenties. Sharp, intelligent face, light eyes that held a disturbing, direct calm. The file noted his expertise: historical psychology, and field interrogation.
"He was a specialist in breaking narratives," Thorne said. "Now it seems he's building his own."
Elara stared at the face of Leo Sandys. The Labyrinth Keeper had a name. And a face. And he was no longer a ghost in the margins. He was in the text.