"Well," said the Judge crisply, "did Miss Blake become abusive, or scream, cry, talk irrationally or too loud or too fast, anything like that?"
"No, your Honor, none of those things, not at all."
"Did she seem confused, inattentive to what you said or unable to understand it?"
"No, your Honor. Very cool and self-possessed, really. I had—if I might put it this way—I had an impression that she was deliberately talking over my head—that I didn't understand some of the things she said because I wasn't meant to."
"Do you mean her answers were unresponsive, unconnected with the questions you asked?"
"No, not quite that, your Honor. Well, I recall one thing, after she broke the aquarium heater and we exchanged those remarks about—about killing beautiful things. I said to her: 'Look, Miss Blake, if they decide to arrest you, surely you've got some friend who would have looked after that aquarium for you while you're away.' Now it's my recollection that I said that in a perfectly friendly, kindly way—I certainly had no wish to make things hard for her—but Miss Blake said: 'A spring morning can't be warmed up in the oven.' Well, I wouldn't know whether a head—whether a psychiatrist would call that an irrational reply or not. I just didn't think it made much sense."
"I see. Go on, Mr. Hunter."
"Did anything else significant happen before Chief Gage arrived?"
"I think not, sir. Nothing I remember. I didn't think I was getting anywhere trying to talk with her, so for the last five or ten minutes we just sat there waiting for the others to come."
"Yeah," Callista said under her breath, "we just sat there." She leaned a little against Cecil's shoulder, weary, suddenly desiring sleep above all things, yet touched and curiously disturbed by the Old Man's harmless, rather pleasant smell of shaving lotion, soap, tobacco. Drowsily she thought: He's really nothing like my father.
"What happened, in your presence, after Chief Gage and the others arrived at Miss Blake's apartment?"
"Well, Miss Blake was briefly questioned by Chief Gage and yourself. It covered the same things I'd talked about with her. She was asked by Chief Gage about a photograph and a couple of letters that I found in a desk in her bedroom."
"She was not at that time under arrest, was she?"
"No, sir, she was not. I recall that Chief Gage quite formally asked her permission to look around the apartment, and she gave it."
"Please describe those items, the photograph and the letters."
"The photograph was a snapshot of a man in swimming trunks, taken at some beach or other, and the name 'Jimmy' was written on the back—just the name, nothing else. One of the letters, dated July 5, 1959, was signed 'J', and Miss Blake, when shown it, identified it as one written to her by Mr. James Doherty of Shanesville. The other one, bearing no date and not signed—in fact not finished—was identified by Miss Blake as one that she had started to write to Mr. Doherty, but had never mailed."
"Was Miss Blake questioned about those letters, there at her apartment?"
"Not much then, sir. She identified Mr. Doherty as the husband of the Mrs. Doherty who had been found dead in Shanesville. Chief Gage asked her to explain the relation between herself and Mr. Doherty, and she said without any show of emotion—with a shrug, as a matter of fact—she said: 'Oh, he was my sweetheart for a little while, a summertime amusement.'"
She saw T. J. Hunter, relaxed and thoughtful, walk to the prosecution's table and spend a weary time standing there, brooding at the small papers he had taken up. Callista closed her eyes. "If it please the Court, I will offer these two letters and photograph for admission in evidence, but, if they are accepted, I will have the letters read to the jury somewhat later, to make a more orderly presentation. For the present I merely wish to establish their identification by Sergeant Rankin."
The deep voice by her shoulder remarked: "I will ask to see them." Do you have to go over there, Cecil? Then Callista was aware of a small but unaccountable lapse of time, for Cecil was already by the prosecution's table glaring morosely at little scraps of paper, his bushed eyebrows in a clench, while T. J. Hunter stood by politely, hands in his pockets. Had she fallen asleep sitting up? Was it possible for an accused witch to do that in a court of law? Oh, likely had something to attend to, and took off on my broomstick—well, sure, a mission, three times around the Shanesville house casting a spell to curdle Cousin Maud's plum jam, and high time too—it merely slipped my mind—how'd I manage without a cat? She saw the Old Man's shoulder sag and stiffen. It was cut and dried, he had told her: the letters would go in, mostly because he hoped to gain more than lose by them, when there was a chance for the defense to interpret them. This present show of examining them was what he called legal window-dressing. She saw him make some quick sotto voce comment, his face savagely disgusted, an aside that no one but T. J. Hunter could hear. Hunter flushed all the way up his bald forehead; the flush passed, leaving no sign of anger. Then Cecil spoke in his courtroom voice, smoothly, a tone of indifference close to contempt: "The defense will not protest the admission of these documents."
How could I have slept? Cecil was returning. Apparently no one noticed—a minor accomplishment of necromancy—I just toss these things off, you know. Some mumbling and talking over yonder, as she felt the return of Cecil's warmth, and took hold of his hand, though he was really nothing like her father. Yes, Rankin, identifying the silly things. Poor Jim, spelled "relinquish" r-e-l-i-n-q-u-e-s-h. E for effort. "Cecil, what did you say to the rising young lawyer that turned him pink?"
He looked at her doubtfully, not smiling. "I said the prosecution must be running out of keyholes."
"Maybe you touched a childhood trauma."
"His childhood be damned," the Old Man grumbled. "He's still a snotnose pulling the wings off flies, as a profession."
"I decline to be compared to a house-fly."
"Shut up, dear. I've got to listen again."
"Sergeant, after Miss Blake's admission that James Doherty had been her lover, was she questioned any further, there at her apartment?"
"No, sir. Chief Gage informed her that she would be detained for questioning. She made no protest. Accompanied by yourself, Mr. Hunter, I took her in a police car direct to Mr. Lamson's office, in this building."
"Was she questioned there, in your presence?"
"Yes, sir, mainly by Mr. Lamson. My recollection is that the others present were yourself, Chief Gage, Miss Wallingford—that's Mr. Lamson's secretary—who made a stenographic record of the interrogation, and Sergeant Shields of the State Police, who was present only a part of the time, a few minutes."
"Did Miss Blake sign anything during that interview at Mr. Lamson's office, while you were present?"
"She did, sir. The stenographic record of the interrogation was typed by Miss Wallingford. Miss Blake then read it, and signed it—signed the written statement that the answers given by her and recorded in the transcript were true to the best of her knowledge and belief. Her signature was witnessed by Mr. Lamson and yourself, and Mr. Lamson requested me to read and initial the pages of the typescript, which I did."
"If it please the Court—" and Cecil was gone again, looming over yonder, examining the pages, large ones this time, impressive legal size. More window-dressing. But discussion was longer; she grew inattentive in her drowsiness. She heard Hunter remark that the transcript would be read after cross-examination of Sergeant Rankin—if, said the bald polite man with the shovel chin, Mr. Warner elected to cross-examine. Cecil grunted. A side-bar huddle followed that. Some of the time she knew her eyelids had drooped, hiding her in a murmurous partial darkness; some of the time she was watching, with an abstract friendliness and faraway approval, the thoughtful and still puzzled features of Judge Terence Mann. I can't explain it either, Judge. According to my own biased notions, I'm not mad, at least no more than my old buddy Hamlet, who also had a mother. Gets complicated there, because Hamlet was decidedly male, I think, any side up, while I'm every inch a wench. Ask Rankin. You see—
It disturbed her, to reflect how little any of those present would ever know about her. They looked at her; anyway their eyes did. In a few days they would hear her talk from that dizzy isolation of the witness stand; anyway their ears would register certain sounds. Already through the testimony their mental vision (imperfect, cloudy, variously preoccupied) had watched her squeaking grass-blades with the Wayne kids, snapping at poor Cousin Maud on the front porch. They had seen her (through the fogs and excitements of their own scrambled sexual histories) caught in that slow frenzy—(wearing a blouse)—on the divan in Jim's office, under the glazed smirk of an "art"-calendar nude. Who were you then, Callista?—what were you then? They had seen her, guilty or innocent, standing by black water, under hemlocks, under a hazy moon.
But they did not know her.
They could not communicate with the inner spectator-participator. It had needed nineteen years to create the Monkshood Girl, a short time, yet to the jurors, the Judge, Cecil, even to Edith, the nineteen years amounted to an infinite complexity never to be explored. They could not watch the golden kitten Bonnie, nor Aunt Cora. They could not learn of the young discoveries: language, music; endless expansion of the visible world as her hand acquired certain powers of dealing with line and color and mass or began to acquire it. They had no vision for the dreams of her sleep, or the waking dreams.
Ann Doherty, inarticulate Jim, mysteries quite as obscure. What do you think you know about Ann, gentlemen? Cute, blonde, and married: isn't that about as far as you go?
We are not what you see, we people who look at you out of clever photographs in the paper at your breakfast tables. When you burn the image you have created you burn the true self also, but you cannot know that self. I am here with you, and captured, and maybe you ought to fear me as you do, but I am not what you suppose.
III
He met the flat patient stare of Sergeant Lloyd Rankin, which indicated a readiness like that of a dog who will not attack unless provoked. Say a Boxer: Rankin was built like that, and would fight in a Boxer's style, with single-minded courage closely akin to stupidity.
He saw T. J. Hunter seated at the prosecution's table and turned partly away from the witness chair, making a show of rereading that transcript of Callista's ordeal. T.J. would be listening to the cross-examination, and sharply; but Cecil Warner had to admit that the show of bored indifference was quite as expert as anything he could have managed himself. This silence had lasted long enough, or too long; he heard fidgeting in the back rows; he could not spend any more time gloomily viewing Rankin's Boxer jaws.
"Sergeant Rankin, when Miss Blake realized she would be under suspicion, you asked her—I think these were your words—you asked her who she thought would believe a story like hers. Correct?—that's your recollection of what you said?"
"Yes, sir, I think I put it that way."
"Meaning, I suppose, that you didn't believe her story yourself?"
"No, sir—I mean no, I didn't believe it."
"Did you suggest that she ought to change her story?"
"Oh, I told her—more than once, I guess—that she ought to tell the truth about it, that she'd get a better break if she did."
"A better break. Those were your words, 'a better break'?"
He noticed a dim flush on Rankin's heavy cheeks, some flicker of doubt or uneasiness in chilly gray eyes. Rankin could have no way of knowing how much Callista might have told. "Yes, I think that was how I put it, Mr. Warner. She seemed to be expecting me to believe it, and—"
"But she replied: 'Who knows what anyone believes?'"
"Yes."
"And asked then if you were going to arrest her?"
"She did, and I told her that would be up to my superiors, not me."
"This conversation took place in the kitchenette, after she had taken you out there and shown you the brandy bottle, and volunteered her account which you preferred not to believe?"
"It wasn't a case of preference, Mr. Warner. I—"
"All right, never mind that. The conversation took place in the kitchenette?"
"Yes."
"And you told her to go back to the living-room, and she did so?"
"Yes."
"She went ahead of you?"
"Ahead of me?"
"My words are plain, aren't they?" Give him no time—Boxer hates to be pushed. "She stepped out of the kitchenette and walked ahead of you down that little hallway toward the living-room, did she not?"
"Really I don't remember. I suppose—"
"Don't remember! In direct examination you showed an excellent memory for details. Let me just check your memory a little. What way does the front of that apartment house face, 21 Covent Street? East?"
"Why—yes, east, or south-east anyway."
"Was it a bright day, August 17th?"
"Yes, bright sunny day."
"Hot?"
"Very hot."
"Sunlight in the living-room windows, was there? Remember?"
"Yes."
"In the hallway?"
"I guess so."
"Good memory. Let me check it just a little more. What was Miss Blake wearing that day?"
"A—oh, just a dress, I don't know what a dressmaker would call it."
"Well—color?"
"White."
"Good. A simple white dress. Now look, Sergeant, I think you can remember whether she went ahead of you into the living-room. I'll help you out—you wouldn't have left her alone with that brandy bottle when you'd as good as told her she was under suspicion, would you?"
"Oh—well, that. Yes, if it matters, I remember she went first."
"Did you again tell her she ought to change her story?"
"I may have."
"Sergeant, I point out to you again, your memory under direct examination was excellent. You referred to your notebook, you repeated several remarks verbatim—to some of which the defense might have justifiably objected, if I had seen fit. Now—did you tell her a second time that she would get a better break if she changed this story which you say you didn't believe? Did you, Sergeant?"
"Yes, it's my recollection that I did."
"Did you suggest any other thing she might do that would, in your words, give her a better break?"
"Any other—I don't know what you mean."
"Then let me help your memory again. This conversation, when you repeated that she ought to change her story—did this conversation take place while you were going back to the living-room?"
"I—oh, I guess so."
"I'm asking for testimony, not guesswork. Did it, or not?"
"Yes."
"What did Miss Blake say?"
"It's my recollection that she—I don't think she said anything."
"She didn't? You remember how she looked, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Of course. Simple white dress, you said—correct?"
"Yes."
"Walking down the hall, between you and the sunlight in the living-room. Didn't she say, or rather cry out: 'Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!'—have you forgotten that?"
He heard Hunter jump up, and waited motionless for the angry blast: "Objection! This is outrageous. There has been nothing—"
Judge Terence Mann said: "There has been a good deal." Warner looked up quickly then; if his astonishment showed for a second, probably no one but Terence saw it. There was time to wonder how much of a surprise it was to T.J.—complete, very likely. And Terence Mann himself looked astonished at the swiftness and sharpness of his own words. "If there is any suspicion that a police officer has acted in that manner toward the defendant, the defense is well within its rights to pursue this line of questioning. The objection is overruled." But Terry must know we can't prove it. "Answer the question, Sergeant."
Staring at the Judge, T. J. Hunter said slowly: "Exception."
"Answer the question, Sergeant Rankin."
Rankin too had gone quiet, no visible motion in him except a rhythmic twitch at the corners of his Boxer jaws. "Will you repeat the question, Counselor?"
"I will. I ask whether Callista Blake said to you: 'Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!'"
"She did not."
"I quote to you these words: 'Look, I can give you a lot of breaks if you'll put out.' Did you say that to Callista Blake?"
"Objection."
"Overruled."
"I did not."
"You have no recollection of that?"
"It didn't happen, that's all. I never touched her."
"No? You didn't, a few minutes later, strike her across the face with the flat of your hand?"
"Objection!"
"Overruled."
"I certainly did not. The whole thing is imaginary."
"Did Callista Blake, while you had hold of her, tell you that she was ill, that she had had a miscarriage the night before?"
"Objection!"
"Overruled." So Terry sticks his own neck way out, his own feelings involved, his judgment slipping, and where does that take us?
"Exception."
"She did not tell me that, Counselor. She had no occasion to tell me that. I say again, the whole thing is imaginary. I know my duties, and my position as a police officer. Nothing like that happened, and if the defendant says it did, she is lying." Except for that twitch, and the high tension of his blocky hands gripping the witness chair, nothing in Rankin's solid front suggested he might himself be lying.
"You say the whole thing is imaginary. Really! Is it imaginary, just a bad dream cooked up by the defense—what do you take us for, Sergeant?—is it imaginary that you shoved Callista Blake down on the couch in the living-room, that she then told you she was ill, that in spite of that you went on trying to force her, that you exposed yourself, that she then said a certain thing which frightened you, so that you let her go, after first striking her across the face with the flat of your hand?"
"Objection of course. Whole question improper and fantastic."
"Overruled."
Terry, I don't know—
"Exception."
"Nothing like that happened. I deny it absolutely."
"In that view of it, I won't question you further about this, or anything else, I think, since the only thing of service to my client is the truth. I dare say, in redirect examination, you'll have opportunity to repeat your virtuous denials—"
"That's outrageous."
Warner swung around. "Something else is outrageous—"
"Mr. Warner!" But that was Terry, and he must listen. "We cannot have this. Please control yourself."
"I am sorry, your Honor. My apologies to the Court, and to Mr. Hunter—who, I am sure, knew nothing about any improper conduct on the part of his witness. That's all."
Warner sat down, with a sudden breaking out of sweat on his face, a dizziness and blurring of vision. Callista's hand slipped over his, easing his fingers out of their involuntary clench. She was repeating his name softly: "Cecil—Cecil—are you all right?"
"Yes." He covered his mouth to speak to her. "I couldn't break him. I thought I could break the bastard."
"Never mind. Relax. You bent him, but good."
"Not enough. You'll have to take the stand, maybe."
"But I must anyway. Relax."
Concerned for me. He noticed the courtroom was quiet, Hunter delaying. Judge Mann's gaze was on him too, worried and speculative. Do they think I'm going to fold like Judd? Judd—I said to that man Judd: 'If you do not understand that question—' He wiped his forehead. Maybe Callista had helped him get that handkerchief out of his pocket. He would not fold. Let them take their eyes off him. Let them get on with it.
Hunter was getting on with it—neutrally it seemed. "Sergeant Rankin, I'll merely ask you: is there any foundation in fact, anything at all, to support this suggestion of misconduct on your part with the defendant Callista Blake?"
"None whatever, sir. None whatever."
Hunter was pausing another long time. Warner now helplessly understood that he was giving Rankin time to think, time for the man's rather slow wits to come up with the obvious countercharge. Hunter said at last: "In summary, then, you simply questioned Miss Blake about the story she had told you, you took charge of the brandy bottle and so on, you called Chief Gage, and then there was this episode of the fish-tank—when Miss Blake, you say, was composed, sort of philosophical and all that, hardly the way a girl would act, I guess, if she'd just been threatened and pushed around. That's a correct summary?"
"Yes, sir, I think that about sums it up. Well—" It was comic enough, to observe the slow grimace as Rankin caught on to what Hunter would like him to say.
Hunter asked mildly: "Something you wish to add?"
"Well—I guess not. Of course I'm very much surprised that the defense should see fit to make a charge like that against me, but there seems to be no way of proving anything—Miss Blake's word against mine—and if I say anything about—about her own conduct in that respect, it's the same situation, so I would rather ignore it, let it go."
Warner sickened inwardly with self-blame. I underestimated the brains in the son of a bitch—no, hardly even that, for a cub lawyer should have seen it coming, the obvious countercharge by innuendo. Rankin had done it cleverly, though; he could hardly have said anything better calculated to make Callista seem a whore. I should sell apples on a streetcorner.
A sober workman driving in finishing nails, T. J. Hunter said: "I understand your reluctance, Sergeant, and I think we might as well leave it at that. Recross, Mr. Warner?"
Cecil Warner remembered how, long ago, on childhood occasions when he had been goaded into fighting, he had often been struck by a crying spell in the midst of battle. It had become a sort of distinction: "Cecil's all right till he goes to bawling—then watch out!" It would not happen now. But he knew his voice was shouting, too loudly, and cracking absurdly in the shout: "Are you being humorous, Mr. District Attorney? I am concerned with establishing the truth, and questioning that man will not serve any such purpose."
Judge Mann started to speak but checked himself, watching Sergeant Rankin step down and stride away. Terry will not look at me. Take my hand, Callista. Hardly wondering at the coincidence, he felt the cool pressure of her fingers renewed. I shall not survive the conclusion, win or lose, but that hardly matters, Old Man—
"If it please the Court, the prosecution is ready to read the transcript of the interrogation of Callista Blake on August 17th, which has been admitted in evidence and which I have here."
Judge Mann said drily: "It will be read by the clerk of court."
Something accomplished anyway, in that side-bar huddle before Rankin's cross-examination: the transcript would not be read with baritone sound effects. Hunter passed the pages to Mr. Delehanty with good enough grace, having no choice. To the hearers, Warner knew, much of it would be dull, a repetition of what had already been said. A welcome dullness, allowing time to rest. Mr. Delehanty would begin smartly, then fall to droning as the question-and-answer rhythm caught hold of him. The duller the better. Keep my hand, Callista.
Cecil Warner drifted into bewilderment, a sense that at some point there had been an illogical reversal of roles. Must he draw on the strength of this girl who in a few months might be butchered by the State, as if there remained in him no power at all, not even the power of wisdom? As if it were natural, and right, that in her danger and misery, in her green youth too, it should be Callista who possessed a power to heal and save? The defense never rests, but—
Can anyone save another? Maybe, with good fortune.
Or help another? The heart says yes. Keep my hand, Callista.
He came alert with a frightened start. Mr. Delehanty's voice had already sagged into a singsong monotony, and might have been burbling on a long time.
QUESTION (by Mr. Lamson): Can anyone support your statement that you were experiencing what you call a suicidal depression for a month or more, from early July to the middle of August?
ANSWER: No, I never spoke of it to anyone.
Why not to me? I might have—
Near his eyes, Callista's face took on a momentary immensity, like a great image on a softly brilliant screen. She must have had her teeth clamped a while on her underlip. It looked swollen as though from a bout of love.
QUESTION: Was anyone aware of your taking those monkshood roots?
ANSWER: No one.
QUESTION: Not even James Doherty?
ANSWER: I have had no communication with James Doherty since receiving that letter of his you took from my desk. In that time I've seen him only once—at the picnic when I got the monkshood. I didn't talk with him then, he did not talk with me, he knew nothing of what I was doing.
"You'll come to see me tonight, Cecil?"
"Yes."
"Something I must tell you."
"What, dear?"
"Not now. Tonight."
QUESTION: You had these roots, this poison, a week ago Friday. What about the suicidal depression?—change your mind?
ANSWER: I don't know how the mind works.
QUESTION: Now, Miss Blake! Anybody knows if he's changed his mind.
ANSWER: Does he?
QUESTION: All right. I can assume you gave up the notion of suicide?
ANSWER: Not a notion. An uncompleted decision, perhaps. Which did lose its importance after a while.
QUESTION: Did you, or you and James Doherty acting together, intend that poison for Mrs. Doherty?
ANSWER: Must I answer that again? James Doherty knew nothing about any poison, or my possession of it. I intended it only for myself.
QUESTION: But kept it there more than a week, where I suppose anyone might have stumbled on it?
ANSWER: Not exactly. Back of a shelf. Nobody visiting me was likely to go get a drink from a back shelf without invitation.
QUESTION: But you say that's just what Mrs. Doherty did.
ANSWER: Why, I think her idea was to get the drink for me. Then I guess she understood I'd locked myself into the bedroom. With the drink in her hand, and upset by what I'd been saying, I suppose she just tossed it off, maybe not even knowing she did. It would be natural.
QUESTION: Didn't she knock? Call to you? Try the door?
ANSWER: I don't know, Mr. Lamson.
QUESTION: Don't know. I can't accept that.
ANSWER: It's the truth, and all I can say. Partial amnesia.
QUESTION: Do you have any idea how many professional criminals try that amnesia thing? Everything went black—yeah. You're not a professional criminal, you're a very intelligent girl. How do you think that amnesia stuff is going to sound in court?
ANSWER: Bad.
QUESTION: Well? Don't you care?
ANSWER: I can't invent for you. I don't know. I can't remember.
QUESTION: All right. Mrs. Doherty was upset by what you'd been saying. What had you been saying?
ANSWER: I told her about my affair with her husband.
QUESTION: Just like that?
ANSWER: Yes. I think I was very stupid. I hoped to persuade her to allow a separation. I knew her church doesn't allow divorce, but I thought she might permit us that much. I wanted my baby to have a father, married or not. It's bad, trying to grow up without a father. Mine died when I was seven. I wanted mine to have a father.
QUESTION: Yes, that was in the letter you wrote him.
ANSWER: Wrote but never mailed. I should have destroyed it.
QUESTION: Why didn't you mail it?
ANSWER: I'm not sure I can explain that. An obsession is a strange thing, and so is suicidal depression—and so's pregnancy. You don't just sit quiet and work out the mathematics. Your mind shifts and struggles like a thing in a web, tries to decide what matters most. The answers don't always stay the same. The day after I started that letter, I didn't go on with it because then I didn't even want Jimmy to know I was pregnant. I saw it wouldn't work out even if he were entirely free. Too different. We couldn't possibly have lived together. Then later I was trying again to think it might work—and so on.
QUESTION: Go on, please.
ANSWER: How? Mr. Lamson, I know ten million more things about myself than you ever could, but you're asking me to explain things that even I don't know. How can I? Well, the night before Ann came to see me, Saturday, I had a time when everything looked possible. I wanted to have the baby, I was almost happy, I wasn't thinking of suicide—I even forgot about that poison. Next day, Sunday, I was imagining again that Ann might permit a separation so that he could be with me. Crazy, but that's how I had it lined up that day, that's why I telephoned her, that's how it looked right up until I began to talk with her. Then—card-house fell down.
QUESTION: You told her you were pregnant?
ANSWER: No, I didn't even get that far. I saw it was no use, waste of time. We had not enough words in common.
QUESTION: Not enough words?
ANSWER: Oh—oh—whatever I said meant something else in her mind, the way everything I say now means something else to you, heaven knows what. No such thing as a common language. We all talk in the dark. If a bit of light breaks we're frightened and try to blot it out.
QUESTION: I don't follow you.
ANSWER: Don't try. I'm not going your way.
QUESTION: This isn't an occasion for humor, is it?
ANSWER: People will tell you I laugh at the damnedest things.
QUESTION: If you didn't say you were pregnant, how much did you say?
ANSWER: All she understood was that we'd had an affair.
QUESTION: Did you quarrel?
ANSWER: No.
QUESTION: She wasn't angry?
ANSWER: No, very forgiving. That's when I was sick to my stomach.
QUESTION: Really, Miss Blake! Are you saying—
ANSWER: I don't know what I'm saying any more.
QUESTION: Yes, I realize you're having a bad time. I'm not intentionally cruel, it's merely my job to enforce the laws of this community. Naturally your pregnancy entitles you to every consideration, but—
ANSWER: Mr. Lamson, didn't I say I was pregnant? I had a miscarriage last night.
QUESTION: Oh. I'm sorry, I don't think you did tell us that. When did it happen?
ANSWER: Out there, after I'd found her in the pond.
QUESTION: A result of shock, or—exertion?
ANSWER: Shock maybe. Is this the fourth time I've told you I didn't push her in the water? I found her, I knew she was dead, I came away.
QUESTION: The miscarriage—I'm sorry, but I must ask—
ANSWER: Why, frankly, Mr. Lamson, it hurts.
QUESTION: You know very well that's not what I meant. Where exactly were you when it happened?
ANSWER: First pain, there by the pond. I went back to my car because I thought I might be able to drive home somehow—
QUESTION: You mean to your mother's house?
ANSWER: I do not, I mean my apartment. But it was getting worse, and at the junction I did turn that way on Walton, because I remembered the woods across the road. I left the car by the pines, and got over there, into the woods. It was over pretty soon.
QUESTION: You must have a good deal of courage, Miss Blake.
ANSWER: Enough, I hope.
QUESTION: I hope so too. By the way, Miss Blake, you might glance at this folder, if you will.
"That's where he flashed the morgue pictures at you, Cal?"
"Uh-huh. I was a—what's the term?—a cool customer. Oh yes—he's reading my intelligent comments now. Not bad for a beginner, don't you think? Like Lizzie Borden."
"Hush, dear."
"Well, Lizzie was a beginner too. What's more she had to operate on a breakfast of mutton broth."
Cecil Warner could wonder then whether it had been Callista's wry and thorny humor that saved her during the moments last August—there must have been such moments—when she had drawn that dark bottle forward on the shelf and perhaps set out a single glass.
IV
As Joe Bass emptied the ash tray and made gentle needless motions with a dustrag at the bookshelves, Judge Terence Mann glanced at the handful of doodle scraps he had taken out of their temporary shelter in the minute book at the close of the day. None of them pleased him now, except possibly his sketch of the fingerprint technician Sergeant Zane scratching the lens he wore in place of a head. Drawing the toxicologist Dr. Ginsberg with his smooth face modified into a chemical retort had not turned out well. There was no comedy in solemn Dr. Ginsberg, unless it might be in his very self-conscious aloofness, his volunteered declaration on the stand that he never listened to anything about a criminal case except the facts immediately pertinent to his specialty. He had said in effect: "That for your emotional involvements!"—but it was a valid attitude if you happened to be Dr. Ginsberg, and not very funny.
"Did you stick it out, Joe?"
"No, I wanted to tidy up in here, so I slipped out after Mr. Delehanty finished reading that statement. Did I miss anything important?"
"Not much. Fingerprints. Mrs. Doherty's and Callista Blake's on the brandy bottle. It should even help the defense slightly, showing that Mrs. Doherty handled the bottle and that no attempt was made to wipe it or dispose of it. Callista Blake had all night and next morning to get rid of anything incriminating, if she'd been so minded. Then we had Dr. Ginsberg. Nothing new, he just made it official. Four milligrams of aconitine in the organs he studied, and they say one milligram is enough to kill. Wound up the day with Mr. Lamson; he testified to receiving those three other letters of Miss Blake's, direct from James Doherty. It seems Doherty simply walked in and dumped them on Lamson's desk, following the advice of his priest. I hadn't known it was quite like that. Lamson seemed to imply it was an example of civic virtue. No comment, Joe. I'm unhappy. Well, Lamson identified the letters, and they went in without protest, but won't be read till tomorrow, which will wind up for the State, I guess. Defense ought to open tomorrow afternoon, or sooner. Oh—you would have liked this. When Mr. Hunter asked if Mr. Warner wanted to cross-examine Lamson, the Old Man said: 'I believe I will decline the privilege.' But nobody laughed."
"Do you think Mr. Hunter will put James Doherty on the stand?"
"No. Not needed, and too likely to blow up in his face. Doherty couldn't testify to anything but the affair, so far as I know, and that's been proved and admitted."
"I was watching Mr. Doherty a little this afternoon, Judge. One of his knuckles is bloody, from biting it."
"Another casualty of the case. Nobody will be the same after it, not even you and I."
"I, Judge? I'm too old to change much. I already knew the world's full of sadness according to where you stand."
"I suppose I knew it too," said Judge Mann, and watched Joe's small crinkled hands spread out on the other side of the desk resting on the fingertips, and felt not only uncertain but immature. Bring out the inner voices.
I should have taken another road, Mr. Brooks—other roads. I should have married, maybe.
Where does anyone find the vanity to become a judge? No, that's not it. I have vanity enough, or too much. But in me, I suppose other forces balance the native vanity, cancel it out. There was never anything in Judge Cleever to make him doubt he's God's own right hand man.
Exercising a privilege of age and kindness, Joe said softly: "Relax, boy."
"Yes, when it's over, I must do that. Do we ever know where we're going?"
"Not to say know, maybe. Just the present road, and good or bad guesswork."
"And crossroads?"
"Same thing, Judge. You try to make the right guess, with whatever good judgment you've got at the time. I've always been alone at my crossroads—I guess everyone is. Or if there was a crowd, I didn't see how they could know where I was going. I was better off trying to puzzle out the signposts myself."