The Seam in the Coat

The replacement ring was still missing when Imogen reached the evidence room. The prosecutor had asked for a description by noon, and Ferro had told her the request was not optional. She had one morning to find the object before its absence became another argument that Sera had taken it.

The coat waited in a brown evidence sack on the examination table. It had already been logged, photographed, and searched for the weapon and key ring. Imogen asked the clerk to bring the original report. She wanted to know what the first examination had been designed to find.

“Pockets, seams, visible damage,” the clerk said, reading from the form. “Sand, blood, metal traces. The usual.”

“Was the lining removed?”

“No.”

Imogen looked at the sack. The coat had been folded with its lining turned outward when it was found in the coal shed. The key ring had been tucked beneath the fold. Its hem held shore sand; the lining had salt rubbed into it. The examination had followed the coat’s journey and its contents. No one had been looking for a ring sewn out of sight.

She signed for the sack and called the examiner. While she waited, she read the prior report again. There was no note of a damaged seam or a missing button. The coat’s inner cuff had been recorded as stained with verdigris. That was all.

The examiner, a narrow man named Pell, arrived with gloves and a magnifier. “You think there’s something in it?”

“I think it’s worth checking the part we didn’t check.”

They laid the coat flat beneath the examination lamp. The cuff stain was still visible, a dull green smear near the edge. Imogen asked Pell to photograph it before they moved the fabric. He set a scale beside the stain and took three pictures.

The lining had been turned inside out along one sleeve. At the cuff, the thread looked darker than the original stitching. Imogen leaned close. The new line was careful, but it did not match the old work; the stitches were tighter and smaller.

“Could be a repair,” Pell said.

“Could be.”

He used a blunt probe to lift the edge of the lining. The seam gave way after an inch. A small, hard shape rested inside the fold, wrapped in a square of thin paper. Imogen kept her hands back while Pell photographed it in place, then lifted the paper with forceps.

The ring lay on the white evidence cloth. The garnet and moonstone caught the lamp, dark and pale, both set low against the band. A smear of black wax clung to the underside of the setting. Imogen looked at the tiny stitches again. The ring had been hidden in a seam that was not part of the coat’s original construction.