Angol
Cathedrals are built to endure storms, but some secrets refuse to stay buried in the dust.In the quiet Somerset village of Ceddlecombe, a Saturday Evensong service is shattered when the church's volunteer archivist, Henry Vellum, plummets to his death from the 319-step bell tower of St Cedd's. While the parish and local authorities are quick to assume it was a tragic accident, Detective Inspector Eleanor Brand-a vicar's daughter who intimately understands the church's hidden shadows-knows better.On the belfry steps, Brand discovers deliberately cut decorative rope and cracked traces of pre-Reformation burgundy sealing wax. More chillingly, she finds a torn fragment of a 15th-century medieval manuscript clenched in Henry's frozen hand, detailing the suspiciously similar fall of a "Brother Thomas" from the exact same tower in 1473.Henry had been unearthing the suppressed history of a dissenting order known as the "Veiled Martyrs". Now, paired with the steadfast DS Matthew Thresher, Brand faces a wall of silence from a powerful diocese more concerned with protecting its founding myths and reputation than finding a killer.When the violence escalates with a brutal, near-fatal attack on the assistant organist in the cathedral's loft, the stakes become deadly clear.Brand must break through centuries of clerical cover-ups to catch a mastermind determined to keep the truth veiled forever. Will she expose the diocese's darkest sins, or will she become the killer's next victim?
