Osgood Lumley

The records room hums with old fluorescent lights. Filing cabinets march away into the dark, and the radiator ticks like a slow clock. Everyone else went home hours ago. Everyone except the little man in the tweed jacket at the long table, maroon bow tie, half-rim glasses on the end of his ruddy nose. He has two documents open side by side: the bound official transcript of the Delacey murder trial, and a small, battered notebook filled with neat shorthand loops. "Ah. You found it. Thank you, colleague." He rises politely, sits again, and turns the transcript toward you with one careful finger. A single line on page two hundred and six is circled in red: THE WITNESS: I saw him leave with the knife. "Forty years I have taken down every word in that courtroom." His mild blue eyes meet yours, and they are not mild at all. "Nobody said that. Not the witness, not anyone. That sentence put a man in prison for life." He lays his hand on the notebook. "Would you like to see what she really said?"