“Just a severed hand.” He picks up the prop and waves lazily at me with it. “What do you think the story is here? They murdered one of the guests, then cut off his hand out of spite?”

“Or they cut off his hand first and then murdered him,” I say, rifling through the cabinet behind Cyrus, revealing thick cakes of black tea leaves and dried tendrils of brown and green stored inside jars. There are little square notes stuck beneath each jar, all typed out in Chinese. I attempt to read them myself before giving up and turning to Cyrus. “What do these say? Are they clues?”

He sets the hand back down and reads over my shoulder. “Hard to tell—it’s about the tea itself. There are six main types of Chinese tea: green tea, black tea, oolong tea, white tea, pu’er tea, and yellow tea. Then it dives into the history and health benefits of each …”

“Keep reading,” I suggest. “It could be relevant.”

He goes through the notes, translating each one patiently and thoroughly like a scholar showcasing his life’s work, and by the end of it I can’t identify anything that could help us leave the room faster, but I do now know that black tea is apparently super rich in antioxidants, and that according to some legends, Shennong, the second emperor of China, discovered green tea by accident when a leaf fell into his boiling pot of water.

It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t usually pay attention to if I were lectured about it in a classroom, but there’s something compelling about Cyrus’s voice that draws you in and keeps you hooked. I’m almost disappointed when he finishes reading the last note.

“Okay, so maybe we’re still not looking in the right place,” I conclude. I flip open the menu lying on the counter, thumbing the laminated pages, which separate with an unpleasant sticky noise. Bloodied fingerprints have been smeared over the list of cold dishes too. “They really went wild with the blood. It’s on, like, every second page.”

“Hang on.” Cyrus crosses over to my side in a single stride and studies the menu, waiting as the lights plunge us into darkness again before spluttering back on. “I think there’s a pattern here. Look, there’s blood on page two, but page three and four are completely clean. And then there’s blood on page five, but none on page six—if it had been spilt naturally, then at least some of it would have gotten on the next page. These are markers.”

“It’s not just blood though. It’s fingerprints,” I realize. “There are two fingerprints on the fifth page, but four on the first page. That’s not natural either; you wouldn’t be grabbing the menu with just two fingers.”

Cyrus’s eyes light up. “That might be the order of the numbers.”