He looked at her.
"How do you know they were researching something," he said.
"Because the cleaned records correspond to the same three weeks that the fourth consort's research diary has torn pages," she said. "And because two separate people found the edge of the same thing and stopped."
He was very still.
"The fourth consort," he said. "Her diary."
"Yes," she said.
"I have the diary," he said.
She looked at him.
"The original," he said. "Including the torn pages." He paused. "I found them separately. Filed under the miscategorized subfolders in the secondary archive." He paused again. "The torn pages were the ones someone removed before filing the diary. They were filed separately, in a subfolder marked *seasonal weather reports.*"
She looked at the table.
Dimitri's voice in her head: *the miscategorizations aren't random. They cluster by time period.*
"What do the torn pages say," she said.
He stood.
Went to the cabinet in the corner.
Came back with a folder.
