Maple and Monkshood

Mud season. Maple sugar. A story that will not hold.

In Hollow Oak, Massachusetts, Maggie Thistlewood keeps a tea-and-book shop, talks to a very old black cat, and has an inconvenient habit of being present when things go wrong.

Sugar season should mean steaming kettles, sticky fingers, and a town coming back to life. Instead, a visiting document expert is found dead on the hillside, and the town settles on a suspect before the evidence is ready.

Maggie has a saucer, a pickle seller's tally, two books of figures, and four accounts of one morning. Her cat has opinions. The chief of police wants something he can prove.

Before the reveal, pause with Maggie and test the evidence yourself: which account cannot be true?