The Final Witness Is a Weather Vane

How it begins

Alice Ford knew the wind had been coming from the east because she had spent that morning trying to keep her hat on.

The inquiry preferred the weather vane.

It stood above the factory's former office, black against a pale sky, pointing confidently west. Alice had repaired the roof beneath it twice. The vane had not moved since the first visit.

She raised her hand from the back of the hearing room.

The clerk looked through her as though she were part of the coat stand.

At the front, a witness described a strong westerly wind carrying sparks toward the yard. Every man called before him had described the same wind. Their certainty was so well matched it sounded rehearsed.

During the recess, Isaac Cole approached her beside the water jug.

'You wanted to correct something.'

'It's stuck.'

'The door?'

'The weather vane.'

He put down his glass. As court interpreter, he had spent the morning making other people's confidence understandable in a second language. His own questions were careful and direct.

'How long?'

'At least two years.'

'Did you report it?'

'Twice. They said the ornament was outside my contract.'

Isaac looked toward the witness table. On it lay a diagram showing how the fire must have spread if the wind had behaved as everyone claimed.

'Can you prove it was stuck that morning?'

Alice thought of the old roof photographs. One showed her assistant laughing beside the vane with a scarf tied to its tail. The scarf streamed east. The vane pointed west. She had kept the print because the assistant had since opened her own business.

'Perhaps.'

The bell summoned them back. Isaac moved aside to let her pass, then asked her full name.

It was the first time anyone connected with the inquiry had thought the woman who climbed the roof might know something about the air above it.