The Brass Key

Some keys open doors. This one opens the past.

Tommy Ash finds a humming brass key in the river mud, stamped with the initials S.W. It fits the tack locker in the boatyard's old shed, and inside the locker waits a fifty-year-old secret: a ship's log, half a nameplate, and an unsent letter. Hester Bell, tea-shop keeper and reluctant reader of tea leaves, follows the symbols, a hand letting go, a door with no handle, to the truth about Silas Venn, the boatbuilder who left Willowford the week ...