Saye had written the answer on the back of a receipt and left it beside the watch gears.
Imogen arrived before noon. He was fitting a spring into a pocket watch, his loupe tucked against one eye. The receipt had been folded twice. He finished with the spring before he looked up.
“You asked whether the impression would keep the stones’ position,” he said. “I remembered the question better after I stopped trying to remember it.”
He nudged the receipt toward her. “That’s what I can give you.”
The handwriting was small and neat. Saye had recorded Quill asking whether a ring pressed into warm black wax would leave an impression clear enough to show the arrangement of the stones, and whether a person looking at it could tell which stone had faced the fingertips. Saye’s answer, as he recalled it, was that a straight press would leave the setting’s outline and the stones’ positions visible, though the impression would be reversed. Rocking the ring would blur the edges.
Imogen read it once, then again. “You’re sure he asked about the direction?”
“I’m sure he asked whether the impression would show which stone faced the fingertips.” Saye set down his watchmaker’s screwdriver. “I may have said ‘which way it was worn.’ He was particular about the question.”
“Did he say why he wanted to know?”
“No.”
“Did he ask whether it could be used to make a copy?”
“No.” Saye’s mouth tightened at the suggestion. “He asked about an impression. That’s all.”
The words narrowed the question without answering it. Quill had not asked only whether the ring could mark wax. He had asked what the mark would tell someone. The examiner’s smooth compression now had a purpose-shaped edge, but no name attached to it.
“Can you sign a statement saying this is your recollection, not the exact words?”
“I can sign that.”
He read the statement Imogen drafted at the counter, changing “would show” to “could show” and adding that he could not recall Quill’s reason. He initialed the corrections and signed beneath them. His signature leaned slightly uphill.
“Don’t write that I recognized the ring in the wax,” he said. “I’ve never seen the impression.”
“I won’t.”
“And don’t write that I know who pressed it there.”
“I won’t write that either.”
Saye gave her a look that suggested he had heard those assurances before from people who later needed a stronger sentence. Then he put the watch back under his loupe.
Next
At the hearing, Sera will have to repeat her description of the ring while the prosecutor tries to make it sound like an identification.
At the station, Imogen attached the signed statement to the examiner’s report and marked the distinction in the covering note. The ring might have been pressed against softened wax deliberately. Saye’s recollection made that possibility more specific; it did not establish that the wax beneath the setting was an impression, or that the ring had been used to make one. It did not date the contact or identify the hand.
She had barely finished when Ferro came to her desk with the prosecutor’s draft in his hand.
“He wants this in the evidence summary,” he said.
“It belongs in the file.”
“He says it gives context to the wax.”
“It gives context to what Quill asked Saye. It doesn’t tell us what happened to the ring.”
Ferro lowered the draft. “The distinction is understood.”
“Then it should be in the summary.”
He read the page. “The prosecutor’s argument is that the ring was deliberately marked, and Sera had knowledge of its orientation.”
“She described the stones on the hand at the back door. She didn’t identify the ring or the wearer.”
“Those words are already in the record.”
“Not in the paragraph he’s written.”
Ferro put the draft on her desk. The proposed summary said Saye had confirmed that a clear impression could preserve the ring’s stone arrangement, and that Sera had later described that arrangement in the same orientation. It called the two accounts “mutually reinforcing.”
Imogen drew a line through the phrase. “They aren’t independent proof of anything. Saye didn’t see the ring in wax. Sera didn’t see an impression.”
“They describe the same feature.”
“One describes what a jeweler told Quill. The other describes what Sera says she saw.”
Ferro rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I know what you’re saying.”
“Then don’t let this say more.”
His gaze stayed on the draft. “If I send it back again, the prosecutor will say you’re making the file unreadable.”
“It isn’t my job to make it easy to misread.”
That came out sharper than she intended. Ferro took the page and went to the small conference room. Through the glass, she watched him make a call. He listened longer than he spoke. When he returned, he had kept the amended paragraph and crossed out “mutually reinforcing.”
“He’ll use it,” he said. “He’ll also use your qualification.”
“I expect he will.”
“He wants Sera to answer questions about the ring at the hearing.”
Imogen looked at the revised paragraph. The prose was clean now. It said Saye had told Quill an impression could preserve the stones’ positions, and Sera had described stones in a similar arrangement on the back-door hand. The caution about no identification followed two lines later, far enough away to be missed by anyone in a hurry.
“Has Sera’s solicitor seen this?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll take it over.”
Ferro held the draft a moment. “Calloway, you can’t put every possible interpretation beside every fact.”
“No. But I can keep the fact from borrowing certainty it doesn’t have.”
He let go of the paper. “Get it there before the prosecutor does.”
The holding wing smelled of boiled cabbage and damp wool. Sera was sitting at the table with her solicitor’s closed case file in front of her. She looked first at the paper in Imogen’s hand, then at Imogen’s face.
“What is it now?”
“Saye signed his exact recollection of what Quill asked about the wax.”
Sera’s shoulders shifted. “And what did he ask?”
“Whether a ring pressed into warm wax would leave an impression clear enough to show where the stones sat. He asked which stone would face the fingertips.”
Sera did not reach for the page. “Why?”
“Saye doesn’t know.”
“Does the wax under the ring show that?”
“It’s consistent with the ring having been pressed into softened wax. The examination can’t say when, or who did it, or what the wax was for.”
“You keep having to say that.”
“Yes.”
“Does the prosecutor?”
Imogen put the draft on the table. “Not in the first version.”
Sera read the paragraph, lips moving once over the words “similar arrangement.” She pushed the page away. “I told you what I saw.”
“I know.”
“You wrote it down.”
“I did.”
“And now he wants me to say it again where he can ask it different.”
Imogen had no answer that would make the hearing less dangerous. “Your solicitor will prepare you for the questions.”
Sera stared at the amended paragraph. “If I say it the same way, that sounds like I recognized it. If I change one word, it sounds like I’m lying.”
“That’s why I wanted you to see the wording before it went over.”
“Did you change it?”
“I got ‘mutually reinforcing’ removed.”
“And the rest?”
“It stays, with the limits.”
“Somewhere else.”
The solicitor glanced at Imogen but did not interrupt. Sera folded the draft along its existing crease and handed it back.
“Don’t make me grateful for a line you had to fight to keep.”
“I’m not asking you to be.”
Sera’s chin lifted slightly. “Good.”
Back at her desk, Imogen placed Saye’s signed statement behind the wax report. The pages lined up at their edges. One described a smooth compression beneath a setting. The other described a question about what a mark might preserve. In the file, they would look like pieces of the same answer. She could not honestly say they were.
The prosecutor had asked for Sera’s testimony at the hearing. Imogen wrote the request into her notes and drew a line beneath the word testimony. Sera had given them the direction of the stones. Now the state wanted her to say it again, under oath, where the direction could be made to point at her.