The Royal Archive building had the quality that serious old buildings have when they're taken seriously—the stonework maintained without being prettified, the steps worn smooth by actual use, the interior smelling of paper and cold stone and lamp oil in a ratio that communicated real work rather than performance.
She left Lucy in the waiting area with strict instructions to be charming but not informative, which was a task Lucy was naturally suited to, and followed the porter to McMillan's working room.
He was already there. He had the look of scholars who had started as outdoorsy young men and been gradually absorbed by libraries—tall, still physically capable-looking, with the kind of tan that had been earned rather than acquired and then slowly fading in the indoor light. He stood when she came in.
"Ella Finch," he said, and then he looked at her—really looked, with the attention of a man whose professional life was built on examining things closely—and something in his expression shifted. Not suspicion. Something more like the expression of a man who has learned to trust his instincts and is experiencing something his instincts can't quite account for.
"You've changed," he said.
She had been nineteen when they met. She was nineteen now. That should have been simple. It was not. "Ten years," she said, and let him make of that what he would.
"Yes," he said, slowly. "Yes, of course." He let it go—scholars, she had found, were often good at setting aside the thing that didn't fit and returning to the thing they could work with. "Sit down. Tell me what you need."
She told him. She laid it out as clearly as she had laid it out for Brown: the document, the batch, the timing, the discrepancies. She told him about Brown's intake inventory and Evans's willingness to testify. She told him what she needed from him specifically—not a conclusion, not a declaration, just an archivist's account of what the record showed about the document's entry into the system.
He listened without writing anything down, which told her he was the kind of listener who processed first and recorded second. When she finished, he sat with it for a moment.
"The people involved," he said. "This isn't a small matter."
"No."
"If I produce a document for this, and it's used in a formal proceeding—"
"The Archive's independence is its protection," she said. "No minister controls your institutional output. That's the entire reason I came to you."
He looked at her for a long time. She held his gaze steadily, which she had always found was the appropriate response to people deciding whether to trust you.
"A week," he said. "I need to pull the relevant intake records—there'll be a copy of the original transfer manifest somewhere in the secondary archive, if I know the date range." He paused. "If the manifest confirms what your inventory suggests, I can produce a factual statement of what the record shows." Another pause. "Not a verdict. Archival fact."
"That's exactly what I'm asking for," she said.
"Then come back in a week," he said. "Or send word where to reach you."
She stood. Extended her hand. He shook it—the grip of a man who had spent a long time handling things that required careful holding.
"Thank you," she said.
"Don't thank me yet," he said. "I may find the manifest contradicts you entirely."
"You won't," she said, with the calm certainty of someone who has checked her arithmetic three times.
He almost smiled. "I'd forgotten," he said, "what you were like."
She left before he could finish the thought—before she had to consider what he remembered, and from when, and which Ella Finch he thought he was remembering.