Part 3: The Appraiser Who Priced a Murder Weapon by Mistake

Rosalind's continued investigation uncovered Constance's old personal diary, preserved among the estate's belongings, its pages revealing a story considerably more complicated than simple hush money or quiet complicity.

"Edwin came to me in a panic that night," one entry read, dated the same week as Serafina's disappearance. "Said there'd been a terrible accident, that Serafina had fallen during an argument, struck her head. He begged me to help him, said if anyone learned the truth, his family's reputation would be destroyed, and I'd lose my position along with any hope of a future. I helped him bury her, God forgive me. I've regretted it every single day since."

"So it wasn't murder exactly," Delphine said, reading over Rosalind's shoulder with her permission. "An accident, followed by a cover-up."

"That doesn't erase Constance's culpability," Rosalind said carefully. "Concealing a *****, helping dispose of remains those are serious crimes regardless of the original circumstances being accidental."

Bettina, present for this latest revelation, looked overwhelmed. "Where are her remains, then? Does the diary say?"

Rosalind continued reading, finding the answer several pages later. "We buried her beneath the old oak at the property's eastern boundary, the one that was struck by lightning the following spring, as though even nature couldn't bear to properly witness what we'd done."

The property, still owned by the Whitmore family's descendants, granted permission for excavation once presented with the diary's evidence. Within days, forensic teams recovered remains consistent with Serafina Loeb, finally providing sixty years of overdue closure to a case that had haunted her family for generations.

"Edwin's long dead," Rosalind said, reviewing the case's final details with Delphine and Bettina. "Died in the eighties, so we can't properly prosecute him. Constance passed only months ago. There's no one left to hold legally accountable, though at least Serafina's family will finally have answers."

Bettina sat with this information heavily. "I never knew my great-aunt carried this. Sixty years of guilt, hidden in a diary and a brooch she apparently couldn't bring herself to properly discard."

"Sometimes people carry burdens their entire lives, unable to properly confess," Delphine said gently. "I think, in her own way, she was trying to leave a trail toward truth, even if she never had courage to reveal it herself while she was alive."

Serafina's remaining family a great-niece herself, coincidentally close to Bettina's own age was located and properly notified, finally receiving answers to a decades-old mystery that had shaped her own family's grief for generations.

to be continued... 💎💛

Part 2: The Appraiser Who Priced a Murder Weapon by Mistake

Detective Rosalind Cade arrived at the shop within the hour, examining the brooch carefully before confirming what Delphine already suspected. "This matches the description from Serafina Loeb's case file almost exactly. If your great-aunt owned this, Ms. Ashford, she was very likely connected to her disappearance somehow."

"My great-aunt's name was Constance Ashford," Bettina said, voice unsteady. "She was in her nineties when she passed. If this happened sixty years ago, she would have been young then — twenties, maybe."

Rosalind pulled up the original case file on her tablet, cross-referencing names. "Serafina Loeb was engaged to a man named Edwin Whitmore at the time of her disappearance. According to the file, Edwin was questioned extensively but never charged, insufficient evidence. He claimed she'd simply left him, run off with someone else."

"Do you have any record of my great-aunt being connected to either of them?" Bettina asked.

Rosalind searched further, her expression sharpening. "Actually yes. Constance Ashford is listed as a witness in the original file. She worked as a housemaid for the Whitmore family at the time. Her statement corroborated Edwin's account that Serafina had left willingly."

"So she lied," Delphine said slowly. "Or knew something she never disclosed."

"The brooch itself might tell us more than any of us currently understand," Rosalind said. "May I take it into evidence? I'd like our forensics team to examine it properly, and I want to pull whatever additional records exist on both Constance and Edwin."

Bettina nodded immediately. "Please. I want to know the truth, whatever it turns out to be."

Over the following days, Rosalind's investigation uncovered considerably more than a simple inconsistency. Bank records recovered from the estate showed Constance had received a substantial, unexplained payment from Edwin Whitmore exactly one week after Serafina's disappearance payment that continued, smaller but steady, for years afterward.

"That looks like hush money," Delphine observed, reviewing the financial records Rosalind had shared with her, given her unusual role in the case's origin.

"It does," Rosalind agreed grimly. "Which suggests Constance knew considerably more about what happened to Serafina than her original statement indicated. The question now is whether she was simply covering for Edwin, or whether she was involved more directly."

to be continued... 💎⚖️

Nigerian comedian Funnybone has spoken about the importance of understanding the different backgrounds and values people bring into marriage.

Speaking about relationships, he said people often carry lessons from their family homes into their marriages, which can sometimes create conflict between couples.

“There is no bad individual in that bad marriage. That man was good, that woman was good, but you’re coming from where you are carrying what you’re carrying from your foundation,” he said.

Funnybone explained that a man who grew up in a home where his father always had the final say could enter marriage expecting his voice to carry the same weight.

He contrasted this with a woman who grew up in a home where her mother was more dominant while her father often withdrew to maintain peace.

According to him, neither person is necessarily bad; they are simply bringing the values they grew up with into the relationship.

“This guy would constantly want his value and his voice to be heard. This girl wants her own value to shine. Now that doesn’t make her a bad person. They are both manifesting their values,” he said.

Funnybone advised couples to find common ground, give each other room to express themselves and have people who can hold them accountable.

He also disagreed with the idea that couples should simply be left alone to resolve their problems.

“I don’t take the popular quote that leave two adults to work it out. What do you know that you’re working out?” he said.

He added that having no one with enough authority to correct or guide a person can be dangerous in relationships, business and family.

Credit: @hayhikersclub

The Snaresbrook Crown Court has adjourned the pre-trial hearing of Nigerian dancer and entertainer Iweh Pascal Odinaka, popularly known as Poco Lee, to February 2027.

The dancer was expected to take his plea today, September 15, but failed to do so due to the unavailability of the charge sheet.

Following this development, the court fixed February 8, 2027, for his plea hearing.

Poco Lee is expected to enter his plea at the hearing, indicating whether he is guilty or not guilty of the charges filed against him.

His trial has also been scheduled for March 8, 2027.

Poco Lee was granted bail on September 11, following his first appearance before the court.

PocoLee is facing five sexu@l offence charges in the UK, including attempted r@pe, two counts of rape, and two counts of ass@ult by penetration. He has since denied the allegations and maintained his innocence.

Nigeria’s headline inflation rate eased marginally to 15.39 percent in August 2026, down from 15.43 percent recorded in July. 

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced the movement in its latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, noting a 0.04 percent decrease compared to the previous month.

On a month-on-month basis, headline inflation stood at 0.71 percent in August, which was 0.86 percent lower than the 1.57 percent recorded in July, indicating that the average price level increased at a slower rate.

The food inflation rate stood at 19.57 percent on a year-on-year basis in August 2026, marking a significant drop from the 25.30 percent recorded in the corresponding period of the previous year. On a month-on-month basis, food inflation fell to 1.02 percent, down by 4.55 percentage points from 5.56 percent in July.

The decline was driven mainly by price moderations across key food staples, including palm oil, carrots, pepper, onions, cassava flour, beef, yam flour, water yam, melon (egusi), fresh ginger, fresh fish, Irish potatoes, wheat grain, frozen chicken, and turkey meat.

On a year-on-year basis, food inflation was highest in Adamawa (38.85 percent), Zamfara (37.96 percent), and Bayelsa (36.20 percent).

FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, has reacted to the recent press conference the APC Governors held in Abuja on Monday, September 14, where they vowed not to entertain or support his ‘’rainbow coalition''

Wike, who is a PDP member but has strong affiliation with the APC, has formed what he described as a ‘’Rainbow Coalition’’ in Rivers State, where members of the coalition would work in the interest of both the APC and PDP in Rivers State for the 2027 general election

After a closed-door meeting in Abuja on Monday, September 14, the APC chairman of the Forum and governor of Imo State, Hope Uzodinma, announced they will not support any political arrangement that is capable of weakening the election of APC candidates across the states.

Responding to their comments, Wike, in an interview with Arise TV this evening, said the APC governors were only being ‘’smart but politically lazy''. He challenged their political relevance and made particular reference to Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodinma, who he said, as a sitting governor, failed to deliver his state to President Tinubu and the APC in the 2023 election. He went further to state that the APC governors began having issues with him when President Tinubu gave him a ministerial position.

Some traders in Lagos have staged a protest against the alleged involvement of Chinese nationals in retail trading, claiming the development is affecting the survival of local businesses.

The protest was held at markets within the Lagos Trade Fair Complex along the Lagos-Badagry Expressway.

Videos circulating on social media showed the traders carrying placards with messages including “Chinese must go” and calling on Chinese nationals to stop selling directly to their customers.

One of the protesters said Chinese nationals initially came to Nigeria for wholesale trading but had expanded into retail, giving them an advantage over local traders because of their access to resources and direct connections to suppliers in China.

The trader said the protesters were not calling for violence or destruction of Chinese-owned businesses, warehouses or shops, but wanted the nationals to stop competing with local traders in retail.

He alleged that Chinese vendors often copy customers’ details from waybills and offer goods at lower prices after importing directly from China, making it difficult for local traders to compete.

The Appraiser Who Priced a Murder Weapon by Mistake

Delphine had appraised estate jewelry for twelve years, and the emerald brooch brought in by a nervous young woman named Bettina seemed ordinary enough Victorian setting, decent stones, modest but respectable value. It was only when Delphine turned it over to examine the clasp that she noticed something engraved on the reverse, nearly worn smooth: a date, a set of initials, and beneath them, scratched in considerably rougher lettering, as though added later and in haste: forgive me.

"Where did you get this?" Delphine asked carefully.

"My great-aunt's estate," Bettina said. "She passed a few months ago. I'm just trying to figure out what everything's worth before the estate sale."

Delphine turned the brooch over again, an uncomfortable feeling settling in her stomach. The date matched, almost exactly, the disappearance of a woman named Serafina Loeb a case Delphine remembered vaguely from a true-crime podcast, unsolved for nearly sixty years, notable mainly because Serafina's engagement brooch, described in period photographs, had never been recovered.

She pulled up an old photograph on her phone, comparing it carefully against the piece in her hands. The setting matched. The stones matched. Even the slightly asymmetrical clasp, a manufacturing quirk mentioned in old newspaper coverage, matched precisely.

"I need to ask you something, and I want you to know I'm not accusing you of anything," Delphine said slowly. "Do you know how your great-aunt came to own this?"

Bettina's expression shifted to genuine confusion. "No idea, honestly. She never really talked about her past. Why? Is it valuable?"

"I think," Delphine said carefully, "it might be considerably more than valuable. I think it might be evidence in a sixty-year-old missing person's case."

Bettina went pale. "You're serious."

"I need to bring this to the police," Delphine said. "I'm sorry. I know this isn't what you were hoping to hear about your inheritance."

Bettina nodded slowly, still processing the shock. "If my great-aunt had something to do with... whatever happened to this woman, I want to know. Properly. Even if it's difficult."

to be continued... 💎🔍

Part 4 (Final): The Man Who Learned Her Language Wrong on Purpose

A year after Elias's confession in the community center parking lot six months of pretend beginner lessons followed by six more of properly falling in love he invited Nadia back to the very classroom where they'd first met, now empty for the evening, chairs stacked neatly against the wall.

"This feels oddly sentimental," Nadia said, glancing around the familiar space. "Are we here for nostalgia, or did you actually forget your notebook again?"

"Neither," Elias said, smiling nervously. "I wanted to do this here specifically. Where it started."

He pulled a small, worn envelope from his jacket the final letter from his grandmother's collection, the one they'd saved for last, translated together just days earlier.

"I want to read you the last line properly," he said. "In Farsi, this time. No mistakes, no fake beginner mispronunciation."

He read it slowly, carefully, his grandmother's decades-old words finally spoken aloud exactly as she'd intended: "May you find someone who makes learning feel like coming home."

Nadia felt tears gathering, understanding immediately why he'd chosen this particular moment, this particular room.

"I think she already knew," Elias said softly, "long before I did, exactly what I needed. I found that, Nadia. With you. Not just someone who taught me grammar I already knew, but someone who helped me finally, properly grieve and honor everything I was afraid of losing."

He knelt carefully, retrieving a small ring from his pocket.

"Nadia, will you marry me? I know it started as a rather elaborate, slightly deranged deception. But everything since has been completely, genuinely real. I love you, and I don't want to spend a single Tuesday without you, for the rest of my life."

"Yes," Nadia said immediately, laughing and crying simultaneously as she pulled him up into her arms. "Though I maintain you owe me for six wasted months of lesson planning."

"I'll pay it back in Tuesdays," Elias said, grinning as he slipped the ring onto her finger. "Every single one, for as long as you'll have me."

They married the following spring, exchanging vows partly in English, partly in Farsi Elias's grandmother's letters framed and displayed at the reception, her words finally, properly witnessed by the family she'd always hoped to see flourish.

As they danced their first dance in that same familiar community center, now decorated for their wedding rather than evening classes, Nadia rested her head against Elias's shoulder, thinking about six months of gentle, ridiculous deception that had somehow led to the truest, most ordinary kind of love chosen deliberately, Tuesday after Tuesday, for the rest of their lives.

THE END ☕💍💛✨