###Wind rattles the shutters. A fire burns low. MAUD stirs two sugars into a cup of tea and sets it in front of QUILL.
MAUD Two sugars. Everyone gets two sugars on my island.
QUILL I take mine plain.
MAUD (smiling) Nobody does, until they try mine.
The door bangs open. HUGH BARROW stumbles in, soaked, pale.
HUGH It's Cordelia Finch. She's at the bottom of the lighthouse stairs. She's dead.Wind rattles the shutters. A fire burns low. MAUD stirs two sugars into a cup of tea and sets it in front of QUILL.
MAUD Two sugars. Everyone gets two sugars on my island.
QUILL I take mine plain.
MAUD (smiling) Nobody does, until they try mine.
The door bangs open. HUGH BARROW stumbles in, soaked, pale.
HUGH It's Cordelia Finch. She's at the bottom of the lighthouse stairs. She's dead.
Rain slants through lantern light. CORDELIA lies crumpled beneath the spiral stairs. DR. PRYCE kneels beside her. QUILL studies the scene.
DR. PRYCE A fall. Neck broken. Dead since about nine, I'd say.
QUILL The lamp was lit at nine. Maud swears she saw it from the inn.
TOBIAS (arriving, breathless) Aunt Cordelia? She was supposed to meet me at eight. She never showed.
Quill crouches. Cordelia's glasses are folded in her coat pocket.
QUILL (quietly) She climbed a hundred steps in the dark without her glasses? Unlikely.
QUILL (CONT'D) Nobody leaves the island tonight. Nobody could anyway. Let's start with where everyone was.
Quill flips through a damp logbook. HUGH watches, jaw tight.
QUILL You docked at 8:40 and say you went straight to bed. Yet you were soaked when you came to the inn.
HUGH I went to check the moorings.
QUILL There's a note in your drawer. You owe Cordelia four thousand pounds.
HUGH That's not a reason to kill her!
QUILL It's a reason to lie to me.
Quill searches Tobias's bag. His boots are bone dry. She holds them up.
QUILL A man who spent the evening waiting for his aunt in a storm, and his boots are dry?
TOBIAS I waited in the inn! I was with Maud the whole time. Ask her.
Maud pours more tea, hands trembling slightly.
MAUD Tobias never left the common room. And Hugh, poor soul, he's a fool, not a murderer.
QUILL You saw the lighthouse lamp at nine from this kitchen window? 0MAUD Clear as day.
Quill nods slowly and stares out the window at the rain.
QUILL (to herself) I see.
Quill finds a teacup on the sill. Cold tea. She sniffs it, then tastes it. Sweet. Very sweet.
QUILL (low) Cordelia took her tea black. Everyone said so tonight.
Grey light. Everyone is gathered. Quill stands by the fire.
QUILL Cordelia Finch did not die at nine. Dr. Pryce's estimate rested on one thing: the lamp, lit at nine, which Maud saw. Someone wanted us to believe Cordelia was alive then.
DR. PRYCE My examination points to earlier. Closer to seven.
QUILL Thank you, doctor. At seven, Hugh was still on the water and Tobias was in the common room, with Maud.
MAUD Then you've cleared them both. Well done.
QUILL The kitchen window faces east, Maud. The lighthouse stands to the west. You could not have seen that lamp. You only needed me to think you had.
Silence. The fire pops.
##QUILL (CONT'D) Cordelia came to appraise the inn's "heirloom" collection. The same collection you've been selling to tourists as genuine antiques. She found the fakes, and told you she'd go to the police.
MAUD (quietly) She wouldn't listen. Forty years of this inn, and she'd have burned it all down over a few chipped vases.
QUILL You took her tea in the lighthouse. Two sugars, as always. A woman who drinks it black, drinking yours. Then the stairs. Then the lamp, to buy yourself an alibi.
Maud looks down at her hands. She reaches for the teapot out of habit, then stops.
MAUD Will you have a cup, Inspector? Before they take me?
QUILL (a long beat) Plain. No sugar.
Maud almost smiles. Outside, the storm breaks. A small boat appears at the dock, the first of the morning.
###Smith 3. (2026). The Last Mystery Fall. Unpublished mystery script.