Margin — The safelight scratch. Six fragments, the shape: plate 17 of L. Orser shows a right-edge mark which Mabel Reed insists, in her unsent note signed M.R., was already there in the wash before the red glass was drawn — *it keeps the same shape when the plate is held against the north window.* Hester Vane enters it as fogged-and-destroyed; Lionel Orser pays Pell a private retainer (8 s + extra 2 s *no studio question*) to reduce it; the sleeve remains in drawer B though the ledger says destroyed. Mabel will not copy the false fogged line into the day book unless H.V. puts her own initials…
New compact root cut: a darkroom plate register, a glass sleeve, and a studio waste ledger. The texture is photographic handling rather than a visible photograph: which record treats the same plate as work, damage, evidence, or rubbish. The interesting part is how a technical note can become a story about what did not need to be looked at again.