Page 23 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

She stepped back, frowning. Four digits, multiple possible combinations. She could stand here all night trying permutations, or⁠—

She looked at the door frame. The steel plate was new, bolted to the door with heavy screws. But the frame itself was original—two-hundred-year-old oak, dried and cracked by centuries of weather.

The strength of a chain is its weakest link.

Vera reached into her knitting bag and retrieved the brass door knocker—a pound and a half of Victorian hardware that had outlived its original door by at least a century. If anyone asked, it was a flea market find she kept forgetting to take out of her bag. In reality, it made an excellent bludgeon. Tonight, it would make an excellent battering ram.

She didn’t hit the keypad. She hit the wooden frame, right where the bolt mechanism would slot into the wood.

Crack.

The old oak splintered. Dry rot and woodworm had done half the work for her.

She hit it again. Crack.

The bolt tore free from the crumbling wood, and the door swung inward with a groan of rusty hinges.

Vera slipped inside.

The interior of the mill had been transformed.

The ground floor was still derelict—rusted machinery, rotting beams, the smell of damp and decay. But a path had been cleared through the debris, marked by fresh scuff marks on the dusty floor. The path led to a staircase at the rear of the building, and the staircase led up.

Vera climbed carefully, testing each step before committing her weight. The wood creaked but held.

The first floor was different. Someone had gutted the old storage rooms and installed a modern workspace: white walls, halogen strip lights, industrial carpet tiles. The contrast with the derelict exterior was jarring, like finding a corporate office inside a medieval castle.

And on the walls—maps.

Vera moved closer, her breath catching.

It was Lark’s End. But not the Lark’s End she knew.

The village had been marked up with colored codes. Red crosses covered most of the buildings: The Crumbly Crust. The vicarage. The schoolhouse. The Jolly Miller. Even The Rookery—her own cottage—had a small red X beside it.

And in the centre of the village green, drawn in bold black ink, was a massive industrial structure. A pit head. Mining equipment. Access roads cutting through what was currently the cricket pitch.

Project Lithium: Extraction Phase 1

The header was printed in neat corporate lettering at the top of the largest map.

Vera felt cold. She had known OmniCorp wanted the village. She had known they were willing to kill for it. But seeing it laid out like this—the casual erasure of an entire community, reduced to colored crosses and engineering diagrams—made it viscerally real.

They weren’t just going to buy the properties. They were going to demolish everything. Every cottage, every shop, every garden that generations of families had tended. Lark’s End would cease to exist, replaced by an open-pit mine and a fleet of heavy machinery.

She moved to the desk in the centre of the room. It was covered in files and documents, arranged with military precision.

The Gable File. A thick folder containing photographs, financial records, copies of the fraudulent deed from 1943.

The Barnaby File. Thinner, stamped with a red TERMINATED across the cover.

The Thomas File. The Vicar. Photographs of him with Mrs. Gable—at the folly, at her cottage, walking hand in hand through the churchyard.

And there, at the bottom of the stack: The Calloway File.

Vera picked it up. It was thicker than the others—much thicker.

She opened it.