Don Ernesto had seen them present.

The chorus of their coordinated lie, three voices against my one, had just met something it could not shout down: a witness who owed them nothing and had seen the truth with his own eyes.

I have thought a great deal about why Don Ernesto’s testimony mattered so much, beyond the simple fact of what he saw, and I have come to believe it is because he was the one person in the entire affair with no stake in it at all.

Everyone else who might have spoken had a reason to shade the truth.