This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

The letter arrived on a Tuesday morning, carried by a postal worker who seemed unusually eager to be rid of it. Eleanor Whitmore examined the envelope with its archaic wax seal and spidery handwriting, her name inscribed in fading ink that seemed to shimmer in the pale autumn light filtering through her London flat's windows. She had been expecting word from the solicitor's office regarding her great-aunt's estate, but something about this particular correspondence filled her with an inexplicable sense of foreboding.

Breaking the seal, she unfolded the parchment and read the contents with growing bewilderment. The letter, written in the same ornate script as the envelope, was not from any legal office she recognized. Instead, it bore the signature of one Cornelius Ashworth, claiming to be the keeper of Ravenshollow Manor, a property that Eleanor had apparently inherited from her recently deceased great-aunt Millicent.

The strange thing was, Eleanor had never heard of Ravenshollow Manor, nor could she recall her great-aunt ever mentioning such a place. Millicent Whitmore had been an eccentric woman, given to long disappearances and cryptic letters from distant places, but she had always maintained a small cottage in the Cotswolds where Eleanor had visited her as a child. There had been no mention of any grand estate, certainly nothing that would warrant a live-in keeper.

As Eleanor read on, the letter grew stranger still. Ashworth's prose was formal to the point of being archaic, filled with references to "ancient obligations" and "duties that must not be shirked." He urged her to come to Ravenshollow at her earliest convenience, stating that there were matters of great importance that required her immediate attention. The letter concluded with detailed directions to the manor, located in a remote corner of Yorkshire that Eleanor was certain she had never heard of before.