Cozy mysteryWatercolorDemo · 3 scenes

The Lighthouse Tea Room

Emma inherited a seaside cafe — and a strange note hidden in the guest book

Scene 1

Interior of a small tea room, close foreground composition: steam rising from a kettle on a wooden counter next to an open guest book with a loose paper tucked between pages, a cup of tea beside it. Mid-ground shows large shop windows, and beyond the blurred glass a layer of fog and the distant silhouette of a lighthouse with gulls. Soft morning light, watercolor technique

The coastal rain was fine, almost fog. Emma opened «The Lighthouse Tea Room» at seven in the morning — for the first time on her own, without Aunt Clara who'd left her this place six months ago. The kettle hummed, steam rose, and through the window white gulls wheeled over the pier. The guest book lay on the counter. Emma turned pages absently, cup in hand, and nearly missed it — between the pages of the 28th of July and the 1st of August, a different piece of paper tucked in. Not her aunt's hand. A writer she didn't recognise. «She didn't drown. I saw her at the lighthouse in 1962. Everything you were told is wrong. If you want to know — ask Martha. Or climb up to Helen». Emma read it again. Then a third time. Outside, the rain had stopped, the fog was thinning. It was Sunday, nine in the morning, no one would come into the tea room until lunch. She had time.