4141.266 · September 23, 1821 AD
How to Discredit a Witness
If you wish to silence someone who saw something real, you don't threaten them. You befriend them. You validate their wildest theories. You provide fine furniture and quality paper. You encourage every fantastical interpretation until nobody believes anything they say. Rita Larkin witnessed genuine phenomena the night William vanished—her documentation predates his disappearance. But by the time Madelyn finished cultivating her testimony, the colony knows her only as Granton's most notorious lunatic.
Six weeks since William disappeared. Six weeks of threads multiplying rather than converging. Broadmoor follows one he'd once have dismissed—to a cottage locals call "the witch's house."
Rita Larkin published an account claiming extraordinary lights above Jeffries Manor that night. The colony ridiculed her. But elements of her testimony align disturbingly with what the household described.
She's forty-two, silver-streaked hair wild, eyes burning with intensity found only in the genuinely unhinged. Her cottage exists between natural history museum and fortune-teller's parlour—preserved insects beside crystals, scientific texts sharing shelves with spiritualism and mystical nonsense.
Yet amongst the chaos: items too fine, too new. Silver tea service gleaming. Quality chairs. High-grade paper stacked on a recently acquired desk. All gifts from someone.
"Mrs Jeffries was kind enough to have these delivered," Rita says with pathetic gratitude. "She visits when she can. We share such interesting conversations."
Madelyn visits repeatedly. Brings William's journals. Provides materials. Shapes interpretations. Encourages the most fantastical theories. Each piece of evidence Rita presents bears traces of the widow's guiding hand.
Rita witnessed something real. Her observations predate the disappearance. But wrapped in layers of mystical nonsense, encouraged by someone who benefits from testimony dismissed as madwoman's ravings.
