The Ashworth Hall Murders
Hazik RashidChapter 1: Arrival at Ashworth Hall
The narrow country road twisted like a serpent through the fog-soaked hills of Wiltshire. Detective Elara Myles drove in silence, her fingers drumming against the steering wheel of her vintage Jaguar. Rain tapped the windshield with relentless rhythm, and in the distance, the silhouette of Ashworth Hall emerged—half-shrouded in mist, its gabled roof and looming towers cutting into the dull sky like jagged teeth.
She had received the invitation in the most curious fashion—a handwritten letter sealed in wax, delivered not by post but by courier. It was signed by Charles Whitmore, an eccentric art historian and the current heir to the Ashworth estate. The letter was vague: “A matter requiring your expertise has arisen. Please come at once. Discretion is vital.”
Elara didn’t normally indulge vague theatrics, but something about the letter intrigued her. And she had just closed a particularly gruesome case in London. A weekend in the countryside—even one wrapped in mystery—seemed like a justifiable escape.
The wrought-iron gates groaned as they opened. Ashworth Hall was magnificent in a decaying sort of way. Ivy strangled its outer walls, and the front steps were slick with moss. A figure stood waiting under the archway, holding a black umbrella.
“Detective Myles,” said the man, extending a hand. “I’m Whitmore. Welcome to Ashworth.”
Elara shook it. His palm was cold and clammy, though his smile tried to be warm. He looked like a man haunted by his own ancestry—sharp cheekbones, thinning blond hair, and the kind of deep-set eyes that knew things.
Inside, the manor was everything she expected: creaking floorboards, oil paintings of stern ancestors, dim chandeliers, and the ever-present scent of damp wood and aged velvet.
“I apologize for the melodrama,” Whitmore said, leading her into the drawing room where a fire crackled half-heartedly. “But something strange is happening here.”
“You’ll need to be more specific,” Elara said, lowering herself into a high-backed chair.
“I believe someone wants me dead.”
He let the words hang in the air like smoke. Before Elara could respond, another guest entered the room.
“Charles, you didn’t tell me you invited a detective,” said a woman with pale skin and raven-black hair. She was holding a wine glass despite the early hour. “I’m Beatrice. Charles’s cousin.”
“Everyone staying here is a cousin or an old friend,” Whitmore said with a nervous chuckle. “But Elara is… a guest of honor, let’s say.”
As the evening unfolded, more characters emerged—an arrogant novelist, a disbarred lawyer, a recently widowed pianist, and a retired colonel with a cane and a suspicious stare. Each with a past. Each with a reason to be at Ashworth Hall. And perhaps, as Elara would later realize, each with something to hide.
Dinner was served on bone china beneath a ceiling painted with angels. Conversations were stilted. Wine flowed freely. And all the while, Elara watched them—their glances, their hands, their subtle flinches.
That night, lightning cracked above the estate. Elara stood at her bedroom window, watching shadows play across the garden maze below. Something was wrong here. Deeply wrong.
And by morning, someone would be dead.
Chapter 2: Whispers in the Walls
The storm had passed, leaving behind a gray, hungover morning. The rain had soaked the grounds, and a heavy mist clung to the trees like spiderwebs. But inside Ashworth Hall, it was not the weather that unsettled the guests—it was the scream that shattered the silence just after dawn.
Elara Myles was already dressed when she heard it. A woman’s scream, high-pitched and raw, echoing down the eastern wing. She grabbed her coat and hurried toward the sound.
It came from the Blue Room.
Beatrice stood in the hallway, trembling, her silk robe stained with blood at the hem. Her eyes were fixed on the door, which hung ajar. Elara stepped inside.
The body lay sprawled across the four-poster bed. It was Graham Ledger, the retired colonel. His cane rested beside him, untouched. A dark stain had bloomed across his chest, soaking through his shirt. The knife still protruded from the wound.
The window was locked from the inside. The door had been bolted until Beatrice claimed to have forced it open. No signs of a struggle. No bloody footprints. No immediate explanation.
“Call no one,” Elara said sharply when Whitmore reached for the phone. “No police. Not yet.”
He blinked. “But—”
“This manor is remote. By the time local authorities arrive, we’ll have lost every trace of what happened here. Give me a few hours.”
The guests gathered in the parlor, faces pale, voices low. The pianist, Margaret Lynn, sipped tea with shaking hands. The novelist, Julian Hart, paced by the hearth, muttering about Gothic clichés. Whitmore tried to appear calm, but the color had drained from his face.
“No one leaves,” Elara announced. “One of you may be a killer.”
Julian scoffed. “How very Agatha Christie of you.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Elara said coolly. “Colonel Ledger was stabbed in a locked room. Either he killed himself with perfect dramatics, or someone here wanted us to believe he did.”
She spent the rest of the morning examining the room. The blade was a hunting knife from the manor’s own display case. No prints. No sign of forced entry. Nothing on the windowsill, not even dust disturbed.
But something odd did catch her eye—a faint trace of ash beneath the fireplace grate. Ledger hadn’t lit a fire, but someone had burned something recently. A letter? A photograph? Evidence?
Back in the parlor, Elara began asking questions.
Beatrice insisted she had found the body while bringing Ledger a scarf he had requested the night before. “I knocked. He didn’t answer. The door was locked. I panicked.”
“Why would he ask you for a scarf in the middle of the night?” Elara asked.
Beatrice faltered.
Whitmore claimed he had retired early. “I didn’t hear anything. I took a sedative.”
“Convenient,” Elara said.
Julian admitted to drinking too much and wandering the hallways. “But I never reached the east wing. Those corridors are like a bloody labyrinth.”
Margaret Lynn said she had been playing piano in the music room. Alone.
Too many alibis. Too many contradictions.
That evening, Elara explored the hall’s dusty library. Among the tomes, she found an old ledger—an account of past residents. And there, scrawled in faded ink, was a familiar name: Graham Ledger. But the date listed was 1912.
It couldn’t be. The colonel was born in 1950, or so he had claimed.
Later, as the fire crackled and the manor settled into uneasy quiet, Elara heard it—a whisper. Faint, like a breath in her ear.
She turned sharply. No one.
But the walls of Ashworth Hall were old. And they had long memories.
Chapter 3: The Ashworth Curse
Elara sat alone in the vast library, the silence pressing in like fog. The ancient ledger lay open before her, the ink nearly faded with time. Graham Ledger — 1912. It wasn’t a mistake. She traced the entry with her finger, her mind churning.
Who was the man murdered in the Blue Room last night if someone of the same name had supposedly lived—and died—over a century ago?
The fire crackled behind her, its warmth offering little comfort. Shadows danced across the tall shelves as the wind whistled past the leaded windows. She turned back to the page and scanned the notes that followed:
“Major Graham Ledger. Temporary resident during recovery from war injury. Reported dead—gunshot wound. Body never recovered. Whispered of unnatural afflictions in the east wing. See Whitmore letters.”
Whitmore. Elara’s eyes narrowed.
Was that simply a coincidence, or had someone been keeping secrets?
She returned the ledger to the shelf and quietly moved through the manor’s creaking corridors toward the study where Whitmore spent his evenings cataloguing the estate’s family history. The door was locked. She picked it in seconds.
The room was neat, obsessively so. Shelves of family archives lined the walls. In a drawer, tucked beneath maps and sketches of the property, she found a set of faded envelopes.
The handwriting was unmistakable—delicate cursive from another age.
My dearest Mary,
He is still here. I hear him in the walls. In the dreams. You said the east wing would protect me, but I fear it does the opposite. The night he died, I heard a scream… and then silence. I buried the knife beneath the hearth. Do not let him return.
— G. Ledger
Elara’s heart thumped.
A buried knife. A scream. A warning from the past.
She remembered the ash in the Blue Room fireplace—the trace of something burned. Could someone have unearthed the knife Ledger wrote about? Was that what had killed the man now lying in that same room?
More importantly, who had burned the letter?
She pocketed the envelopes and left the study as quietly as she had entered.
The next morning, Elara gathered the guests.
“I have something to share,” she said, holding up the letter. “This is from another Graham Ledger. One who lived here in 1912. According to the records, he also died in the manor—stabbed, in the east wing.”
The group exchanged uneasy glances. Beatrice bit her lip. Julian raised a brow. Whitmore went pale.
“I don’t understand,” Margaret said. “You mean he’s... what? A ghost?”
“No,” Elara said sharply. “I mean someone is using the manor’s history to their advantage. There’s a pattern repeating itself, and our victim may not have been who he claimed to be.”
Julian sneered. “Are you suggesting the colonel faked his identity to match a ghost story?”
“Perhaps not faked,” Elara said. “Perhaps... adopted.”
She paused.
“I also know someone here has been in that study—and burned part of the truth.”
Beatrice stepped back. “You think it was me?”
“I think,” Elara said, “everyone here is lying about something. And one of you killed him.”
That night, sleep eluded her. The manor groaned with wind and age. Somewhere, a clock ticked solemnly. She stared at the ceiling, waiting.
Just before dawn, a creak in the hallway.
She rose silently, pulled her coat over her nightclothes, and followed the sound. A figure, cloaked and slim, slipped into the library with a candle.
Elara moved closer. The figure lifted something from the shelf—a second ledger. As they turned to flee, she stepped into the light.
“Drop it.”
The figure froze.
Beatrice.
Chapter 4: Secrets Buried Beneath the Floorboards
Beatrice's eyes flared wide, the candle trembling in her grasp. The old ledger under her arm slipped slightly as she tightened her hold.
“I—I didn’t mean—” she began.
“Didn’t mean to what?” Elara’s voice was cold. “Steal family records in the middle of the night? Or sneak into the one place I told you all to stay out of?”
Beatrice faltered, then sighed, defeated. “I wasn’t trying to interfere. I just... I had to know if it was true.”
“If what was true?”
Beatrice hesitated, then handed over the ledger. Elara opened it. This volume, unlike the others, had been tampered with. Pages were cut out, others replaced. But one name was still visible—Beatrice Ellingsworth.
“You’re not just a guest,” Elara said, flipping to the family tree at the back.
“No,” Beatrice admitted, “I’m not. I’m Whitmore’s niece. My mother grew up in this manor before she eloped. The family cut ties with her. Whitmore never mentioned me because he was ashamed.”
“So why return now?”
Beatrice swallowed. “My mother used to whisper about a knife hidden in the floors of the east wing. About a man who screamed at night. I thought it was just childhood fantasy. But when I heard about the house being reopened, I had to come see it. I thought maybe it would explain why she always looked over her shoulder. Why she... drowned herself last year.”
Elara’s tone softened, but only slightly. “What did you find?”
Beatrice wiped her eyes. “Just stories. Ghosts. This place eats its past. But I think someone else knew the truth before we got here.”
The east wing had been closed for decades. Dust clouded the air as Elara forced the rusted door open. The corridor beyond was narrow, claustrophobic, lined with peeling wallpaper and rotted wainscoting.
Beatrice followed closely, flashlight beam quivering across the warped floorboards. At the end of the hallway, they came to a room marked with a rusted brass plate: Ledger Suite.
Elara bent down near the fireplace, feeling along the hearth.
There—a groove. A hidden panel. It took force, but it gave way with a groan.
Inside, wrapped in oilskin, was a long, thin object.
The knife.
Stained brown with age, the blade bore etchings—names carved into the handle. The most recent: G. Ledger. But the earliest?
W. Ashworth. 1782.
Elara stood, stunned.
“That’s the name of the first owner of the manor,” Beatrice whispered. “You think this knife was passed down? Used for... what? Ritual?”
“I think this manor has seen more than just one murder,” Elara said grimly. “And someone is continuing the tradition.”
Back in the library, Elara laid the knife on a velvet cloth and examined it under her magnifier. The dried blood told a story. Some of it was ancient. But near the hilt—there was a fleck still moist.
Fresh.
That night’s death.
It confirmed it: the knife had recently been used. And now she knew what it looked like. What to watch for.
She returned to her room just as the storm outside cracked the sky open with thunder.
But before she could close the door, a shadow moved behind her.
She spun around, heart pounding.
Whitmore.
He was watching her, face unreadable. “You’ve found it, haven’t you?”
Elara stepped aside, letting the door close between them without a word.
The next morning, Whitmore was gone.
Vanished.
Only his coat remained, hanging by the door like a ghost left behind.
Chapter 5: A Second Disappearance
The morning fog clung to the manor like a funeral shroud. Damp and silent, the air inside felt colder than it should. Elara stood at the grand staircase, staring at the coat rack.
Whitmore’s overcoat still hung there.
The same coat he had worn when he confronted her outside her room.
But Whitmore himself? Gone.
Not in the study. Not in the breakfast room. Not in his bedroom. His bed had been slept in, but the sheets were tossed, the mattress half-hanging. The fireplace had long since gone cold.
And the windows—locked from the inside.
“No footprints in the garden,” Elara muttered as she studied the frost-dusted path from the rear patio. “No tire tracks. No one’s left this house.”
And yet Whitmore was missing.
She gathered the guests—tense and shivering—in the drawing room.
Beatrice was pale but composed. Harold, the solicitor, twitched every time someone spoke. Francesca, the sculptor from Italy, sat with her knees drawn up, staring at the embers in the hearth.
“Are you saying he just vanished?” Harold asked, voice high-pitched with disbelief.
“No,” Elara replied. “I’m saying one of you knows where he is.”
The silence that followed was thick and dangerous.
She continued. “Whitmore and I spoke last night. He knew more than he let on. And he was afraid. Of what, I’m not sure—yet. But this morning, he’s gone, and the door to the east wing has been forced shut from the inside.”
Beatrice stirred. “You think someone dragged him into that wing?”
“I think he went into that wing,” Elara corrected, “and didn’t come out.”
They found the signs quickly. Drag marks near the baseboard. A smear of something dark on the edge of the bannister. Not blood—too thick.
Resin?
It trailed down the stairs, disappearing behind the bookshelf in the library. The same one Elara had seen ajar when she first arrived.
She moved it aside fully now.
A narrow staircase, chiseled crudely into stone, descended into darkness.
The cellar.
The air was dense with mildew and the unmistakable scent of damp earth. Their flashlights flickered—something about the underground seemed to eat light. Beatrice gagged and gripped Elara’s shoulder tightly.
“What is that smell?” she whispered.
Elara didn’t answer. She already knew.
They reached the bottom. At first glance, the cellar was unremarkable—rows of wine casks, a few crates of silver and family heirlooms—but then they saw it.
A wall. Brickwork different from the rest. Newer. Cruder.
Elara stepped forward, flashlight trembling slightly in her hand.
She pressed a palm to the bricks.
Warm.
“Help me,” she said.
Beatrice and Harold helped pry the loose bricks. The dust that poured from behind was dry and bone-colored.
They pulled three bricks before the stench hit them.
A body.
Half-wrapped in tarpaulin. Face down. Whitmore.
He’d been strangled—Elara could see the ligature bruising even through the grime. But something else caught her eye.
Carved into his back. A single word:
"Repent."
They brought the others down, one by one. Francesca sobbed into a handkerchief. Harold went ghost-white and nearly collapsed.
No one claimed to know what it meant.
But Elara’s instincts screamed otherwise.
“It’s the same handwriting,” she murmured to herself, thinking back to the first crime. The same word had been etched into the wall behind the first body: Repent.
A ritual?
A revenge?
Or just a sick pattern?
That night, Elara sat alone in the study, listening to the storm build again outside. Her fingers brushed the hilt of the knife she’d found in the floorboards.
Two murders.
Both pointing to a punishment.
Someone wasn’t just killing.
They were judging.
And she knew now: whoever the killer was, they were inside the manor.
Watching.
Listening.
Waiting to kill again.
Chapter 6: The Lights Go Out
The darkness inside Blackwood Manor was absolute. The power hadn’t just flickered—it had failed entirely. The hum of electricity, the faint glow of bulbs behind sconces, the warmth of modernity—it was all gone. What remained was an ancient silence, pierced only by the groaning of wood and the occasional sigh of wind pressing against the stone walls.
Elara’s breath quickened as she reached for her torch. The weak beam barely pushed back the void. Somewhere upstairs, a door slammed.
She wasn’t alone.
Not anymore.
The Gathering
Within the hour, she’d rounded up everyone still alive.
Beatrice. Dr. Haskins. Francesca, the sculptor. And Lady Farnsworth, who appeared in a robe and fur-lined slippers, as if the darkness were a minor inconvenience.
“Are you quite finished playing detective, Miss Northwood?” she asked with a polite but icy tone.
“No,” Elara said flatly. “Because people are still dying. And now someone’s turned off the power.”
Lady Farnsworth sipped brandy. “This house is old. These things happen.”
“No, Lady Farnsworth. They don’t.”
The Secret Room
Elara waited until the others had gone back to their rooms. Then, torch in hand, she slipped once more into the cellar. The wall where she’d found Whitmore’s body remained disturbed, but this time she pressed against the opposite side—the area that had looked, oddly, too symmetrical.
The bricks gave way. A hidden door.
Inside: a study. Dusty, candlelit, lined with books bound in leather and parchment. Pages on old rituals, Latin inscriptions, family trees inked with red and gold.
And at the center of the room: a desk.
On it sat a single object.
A locket.
Elara picked it up and opened it. Two portraits. One was unmistakably Lady Farnsworth—but younger. The other? The vanished girl from the newspaper article.
Whitmore’s sister.
They were twins.
She turned the locket over.
Etched on the back: "Blood remembers. Blood returns."
The Confrontation
Elara stormed upstairs, straight to Lady Farnsworth’s chamber.
“You knew the girl who disappeared. She was your sister.”
Lady Farnsworth raised an eyebrow. “I’ve had no sister.”
“No? Then how do you explain the locket in the study behind the bricked wall?”
Something flickered in the old woman’s expression. Not guilt. Not fear.
Recognition.
“You really are your mother’s daughter,” she said quietly.
“What did you say?”
“I warned her too. But she didn’t listen either.”
The words landed like thunder in Elara’s chest.
Her mother had died in a fire. Or so they told her.
But now…
“You knew her?”
“She was the first to come asking questions. Like you. Too clever for her own good.”
Elara’s hand drifted to the knife she kept holstered under her coat. Not for attack. For defense. Always defense.
Lady Farnsworth stepped forward.
“She wanted to break the cycle,” the old woman whispered. “But the cycle doesn’t break. It only resets.”
A Chase in the Dark
The scream tore through the hall.
Francesca.
Elara ran, boots pounding against the carpeted floor. Francesca’s door was open. Inside: chaos.
Drawers overturned. Mirror shattered. A message on the wall scrawled in what looked like paint—but smelled like something darker.
“You didn’t listen.”
Francesca was gone.
Elara spun, suddenly aware of movement down the corridor. A shadow disappearing behind a curtain. She tore after it.
Through the corridor. Down the servant’s passage. Into the dining hall where moonlight spilled in through tall, arched windows.
There, silhouetted against the glass:
Dr. Haskins.
Holding a bloodied handkerchief.
A Trap Set, A Truth Revealed
Elara drew her revolver.
“Don’t move.”
Haskins froze.
“It wasn’t me,” he said, trembling. “I—I found her like that. I swear.”
“You were the one who catalogued the manor’s archives. You had access to everything.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, but I never read the real journals. She—Lady Farnsworth—she told me not to.”
Elara advanced. “Where is Francesca?”
“She took her. Into the east wing.”
That wing had been sealed for decades.
The final piece fell into place.
Elara moved fast now, past dust and cobwebs, through the unused wing until she reached a door covered in runes. Carved. Old. Primal.
The door was locked.
But the key hung from a chain around Elara’s neck.
Her mother’s old necklace.
It fit.
Inside: a ritual chamber.
Circular. Symbols painted on the stone floor. A pentagram faded with time. Candles, long burned out.
And in the center, Francesca.
Bound. Gagged.
Above her, Lady Farnsworth held a curved blade.
“Stop!” Elara shouted, gun raised.
The old woman didn’t flinch.
“She carries the blood,” Lady Farnsworth whispered. “The curse must be fed.”
“The curse is you,” Elara snapped. “And it ends now.”
She fired.
The sound echoed like thunder. Lady Farnsworth fell.
Francesca screamed.
Chapter 7: The Bloodline Secret
Silence reigned in the east wing once the echo of the gunshot faded. The smoke from Elara’s revolver curled into the stale air, mingling with the scent of dust, wax, and something older—something that had waited far too long to be disturbed.
Lady Farnsworth’s body lay still, her outstretched hand inches from the blade. Elara moved quickly, cutting Francesca’s bonds. Her friend’s eyes were wide, blood on her cheek from a shallow cut.
“You’re alright,” Elara whispered, helping her sit. “It’s over.”
But even as the words escaped her lips, Elara felt the untruth in them.
This wasn’t over.
Not even close.
The Hidden Ledger
Hours later, with the east wing sealed and Francesca safe under Beatrice’s watch, Elara returned to the study behind the bricked cellar wall. She took the locket, the clippings, and the journals. There was still more to understand—especially about her mother.
The journal with the Ledger family crest had more than one author. Elara flipped to the final entry, dated the year before her birth.
“I’ve found the girl. She’s bright. Strong. But she doesn't yet believe in curses. I don’t know if she’ll ever understand. If anything happens to me, let this serve as warning: the cycle is real, and my child must never return to this place.”
—A. Northwood
Her mother. Amelia Northwood. The investigator who’d disappeared before Elara was born.
And she had returned.
Elara sat back, breath gone. Her mother had tried to stop it—and died trying. But why hadn’t anyone told her?
She knew why.
Because someone had wanted Elara to find her way back to the manor.
To inherit the curse.
A Quiet Interrogation
Beatrice knocked on the door. “Francesca’s resting. I thought you should know—Dr. Haskins is gone.”
Elara stiffened. “Gone?”
“His things are missing. He must’ve slipped out while we were in the east wing.”
Elara stood. “We need to find him. Now.”
The Lakehouse
Dr. Haskins hadn’t gone far. The groundskeeper’s shack by the lake still smelled of oil and tobacco—his habits were hard to shake. Elara and Beatrice found him there, half-packed, sweating, a pistol in his lap.
“I didn’t kill them,” he said immediately. “I swear to God, I didn’t.”
“You lied about the journals,” Elara said coolly. “And you covered for Farnsworth.”
“She said she’d protect me,” he whispered. “Said I was chosen to help guide the next heir. I didn’t know what that meant until it was too late.”
“You knew she was planning a ritual,” Elara accused. “You let Whitmore die.”
“I didn’t! I—I didn’t know she’d kill him! I only knew… that you were her final target. You, Elara.”
Beatrice gasped.
“She said the cycle had to start again. That someone had to replace her.”
The Legacy
Back at the manor, Elara stood in the library, fingers pressed against the cold stone of the hearth. Her mother’s journal burned in her mind. Her entire life had been leading to this cursed house.
Was it coincidence?
Or design?
The family tree in the study was incomplete, but the name Northwood had been added near the bottom—next to Ledger.Someone had joined the two lines, knowingly or not.
Her birth wasn’t accidental.
It was bred into the cycle.
She was the key to continuing it—or ending it.
A Choice in the Dark
Elara called everyone back to the great hall. Francesca, Beatrice, even Haskins, wrists bound.
“This place is a mausoleum,” she said. “It was never meant to survive beyond its rot. The legacy, the curse, the lies—it all ends tonight.”
She produced a small vial from her coat.
Accelerant.
Then a second.
Matches.
Beatrice’s eyes widened. “You’re burning the manor?”
“It’s the only way.”
“No!” Haskins shrieked. “You don’t understand—if you destroy the house, the binding breaks! The souls don’t rest—they roam!”
Elara looked at him with a grim smile. “Then they can haunt me. But they won’t take another life.”
She struck the match.
And let it fall.
Ashes and Dawn
The flames rose fast. Dry wood, aged cloth, secret passages lined with dust—they fed the fire like a banquet. Smoke towered into the night. The once-majestic Blackwood Manor lit the sky like a pyre.
From a hilltop, Elara watched as the last vestiges of the past crumbled.
The curse had been built on secrets and blood.
But she had chosen truth.
And freedom.
Epilogue: A Letter Never Sent
Six months later, in a small London flat, Elara opened a letter she’d written but never mailed.
Dear Mother,
I found the place. I found the truth. And I found pieces of you, hidden in the walls of that house. I hope you can rest now.
I can never be who you were. But I’ll carry what you left me—not the curse, but the courage to break it.
Love, Elara.
She sealed it.
And tossed it into the fireplace.
Some things didn’t need to be mailed.
They just needed to be released.
Subscribe to my newsletter
Read articles from Hazik Rashid directly inside your inbox. Subscribe to the newsletter, and don't miss out.
Written by