In the small, rainswept town of Dromore, there stood a courthouse known to locals as the Lomp. It was a lopsided building, its roof sagging like a tired mule, its doors never quite square. No one remembered why it was called the Lomp—perhaps because it slumped on its foundation, or because the judge who built it had been named Lompetter. Either way, the Lomp Court was where petty grievances grew into full-blown legends.

And the fifth year, when they sat down on the grass where the fence had been, the stray dog with one ear wandered over, lay down between them, and went to sleep.

“Then the shadow doesn’t exist,” Mr. Hopple’s lawyer—a bulldog of a woman named Mrs. Vex—said sharply. “Case closed.”