The Trial of Callista Blake

"It's true, isn't it, Miss Nolan, that although you're naturally fond of Callista and loyal to her, the fondness and loyalty are based on understanding? I mean, you know your friend's faults and weaknesses too. You have, maybe, something of an older sister's detachment?"

"Yes, I think it's fair to say that. Mr. Warner, if that drawing isn't to be used further, as an exhibit or anything—may I have it?"

"Well ..." The moment was a long one, Cecil Warner turning to look at Callista Blake with something more than inquiry, Edith and Callista gazing at each other directly, unsmiling, yet the Judge wished the moment might be prolonged for the sake of his own understanding. A kind of brilliance and a hush; the courtroom no more present than the ocean is present at some moment of wind and shining sand and sunlight: only the three of them; the three of them, and himself somehow more than a simple observer. Callista smiled: climax of a moment that could have lasted no longer. Warner was saying quickly: "Of course, my dear—" and giving the drawing to Edith, who put it away in her handbag and shut the clasp with care. "Now would you, as an observant friend, say that Callista is moodier than most people? Subject to depressions?"

Hunter bayed: "I suggest Miss Nolan's qualifications as a psychiatrist have not exactly been established."

"My question refers to a simple observation anyone might make."

"Is that a formal objection, Mr. Hunter?"

"No, your Honor. But I hope the testimony isn't going to stray into fields where only a psychiatrist would be competent to speak."

"Let your mind be at rest on that point, Mr. District Attorney. Is Callista Blake subject to periods of depression, Miss Nolan?"

"Yes, decidedly." Judge Mann considered the possibility of exaggeration, not falsehood exactly but close to it. Surely Callista Blake was not what his brother Jack would call a depressive type, if that word was still favored in the jargon. "However, Mr. Warner, I think Callista's depressions are generally related to some external cause. Related to things that happen to her." Yes, Redhead, that helps—some.

"Were you at all acquainted with Mrs. James Doherty?"

"By sight, hardly more. I believe I met her three times in all, when I was visiting Callista's family in Shanesville."

"Have you met Mr. James Doherty any more often than that?"

"I don't think so. Same occasions, and then one or two times since Mrs. Doherty's death, in connection with this case."

"Callista never told you much about the Dohertys, either of them?"

"No, not much, until last July. Then she took me into her confidence about the episode with Doherty, which had ended then, or so she hoped."

"She said that? That she hoped the affair was ended?"

"Just that, as I recall. She showed me that letter from Doherty, the thing that was read in court, and then later—well, next morning in fact, she said: 'I hope it's over. I hope I'm done with the fever and the blindness.'"

It could be despair, that dullness in him like a bodily ache. The Judge found he was again studying faces on the jury. Emmet Hoag bored, half asleep by the look of him. Ancient Emerson Lake neither bored nor hostile, his gaze rigid, vaguely vulturine, apparently hypnotized by the swell of Edith Nolan's breast, under the tweed suit hardly more than hints of fullness and softness, but evidently enough to set an old man dreaming in his rank and lonely antiquity; would he be hearing what she said at all? Young LaSalle seemed indecisively friendly, Mr. Fielding remote behind an unreadable pallid front. The Beales woman studied Edith Nolan's green handbag, possibly wondering if it was a style that would suit herself. Mrs. Grant appeared grumpy; likely her bony frame was uncomfortable in the graceless seat of the jury box. The only faces of the entire jury that showed any positive liking for Edith Nolan were those of Helen Butler and Rachel Kleinman. He saw Dora Lagovski apparently submerged in moist daydream; recalled that when Callista's drawing had reached her he had seen the damp lips form (in merciful silence) the word "cute." Emerson Lake's jaw was now moving slightly, approximately in time with the mild rise and fall of Edith Nolan's breathing—damn the old buzzard. But what about himself, aged forty-seven and for the last few minutes intensely aware of Edith Nolan as a desirable woman? Weren't his own wits wandering?

So far as the Judge could see, Edith Nolan was doing nothing to flaunt her personal attractiveness. Probably to many eyes she would have none. Her make-up was not prominent, the tweed suit practically dowdy, her manner consistently simple and direct. If his wandering middle-aged eye wanted a tickling, why not choose an obvious pin-up type like the juror Dolores Acevedo? He forced himself to glance in that direction once again. The black-haired beauty was showing no more emotion at present than Mr. Fielding. Very lovely indeed; made more so by her position next to the sallow weediness of the schoolteacher Stella Wainwright. Lovely like a conventional painting, Acevedo—and no more disturbing. Her face blurred; the instant's involuntary motion of his eyes transformed it to another, also under black hair: but these were close-set curls, the face altogether different, not beautiful at all by common standards but rather homely, big-nosed, small-chinned, the eyes sea-blue and, not for the first time, frightening. "It wasn't natural how men went crazy for her—not even pretty—any man, garage man, anything in pants...."

That peevish outbreak from Maud Welsh had puzzled the Judge at the time. Now he could sense the quality in Callista that Maud Welsh had meant. Earlier perhaps he had been too intensely preoccupied with other aspects of the case and with his own situation as Judge, the lawyer and judge dominant, the male animal quiescent or at least temporarily locked up in the cellar. Yes, she had it, the quality sensed but not understood because understanding is a verbalizing process and there aren't any words for the electric something-or-other that will make men turn in desire toward one particular woman in a crowd, ignoring others who may be in a dozen ways prettier, more agreeable, more available. Callista had it. Edith Nolan, in her own totally different way, had it, at least for himself, perhaps not for most others. No: Maud Welsh wouldn't have been likely to make that remark about Miss Nolan. Yes, they are wandering.

"Do you recall, Miss Nolan, what day it was that this conversation took place, about Doherty's letter?"

"Yes, it was the evening of Monday, July 6th, the same day Callista had received that letter."

"I'll ask you to tell the circumstances more fully in your own way."

"She telephoned me, that evening, soon after going home from my studio. Asked me to come over to Covent Street. Her voice sounded as it might if she'd been in physical pain. I went at once, and found her—well, dazed, sick, in shock you could call it. She'd been in one of her blue moods all week, I didn't know why. She held out that letter to me. I read the thing. I remember I told her she'd feel better if she could cry, or smash dishes, anything to break the tension that was making her sick. She did cry, the only time I've known her to do so. And told me about it. Everything, I think. Except at that time she didn't know she was pregnant—a few days past the period, not enough to signify. When she was able to talk she was much better, got things in proportion, summed it up quite realistically herself without my saying much. She'd loved him a while, the kind of infatuation any lonely and imaginative girl might experience; then when she most needed him he'd broken it off, and that was that."

"Objection! Irrelevant opinions."

"Objection overruled." Judge Mann reflected dourly on the legal unwisdom of what he was about to add, and added it: "It appears to the Court that the witness is concerned with matters of fact as she saw them, speaking to the best of her knowledge and belief." Old buzzard, pint-size Emerson Lake in a black silk nightie, you wanted that startled blue-eyed glance, the warmth of it and the friendliness, and you knew you'd get it: consider whether that was why you spoke.

"Exception."

"Did Callista say anything to suggest she was thinking of suicide?"

"Two things, Mr. Warner, which I didn't understand at the time as I should have. When she was crying and hysterical, she said: 'I want my father, my father, I can't find out how to live without him.' Well, I knew he'd died away back when she was seven years old. Then later she said, twice I think: 'I wish I was dead.' That—oh, I took it to be simply an unthinking expression of grief and exhaustion. It seems to be a thing people say without considering quite what it means. I took it that way: alarming but not to be understood literally. But I think now, she meant it literally."

"You stayed with her a while, I suppose?"

"Yes, took her back to my place and made her go to bed there, gave her a sleeping pill. I played some hi-fi records, things she liked, until she fell asleep. In the morning she seemed to be in good command of herself, sense of humor restored anyway. That's when she said she hoped she was cured, and for a while I stopped worrying about other things she'd said."

"But only for a while?"

"Only for a while. During the following month, the rest of July, it was clear that things weren't right for her. Not herself. Deep abstractions for instance, when she wouldn't answer because she really didn't hear. Normally with me she's completely courteous, wouldn't dream of ignoring a question if she heard it. In July she was slipping down into the bluest of blue moods, and I couldn't reach her. I wondered about pregnancy because of what she'd told me, and asked her about it, I guess a week after she'd first told me the situation. She said: 'Oh, I'm all right.' Mistakenly, I took that to mean she'd had the delayed period. Either she answered evasively, which isn't like her, or she didn't understand my question. The last, I think. I think she was in such a faraway mood it was hard for her to get hold of what people said."

"Did she say any more, that month, about suicide?"

"Indirectly, yes. One evening we got into a sort of general talk, just kicking ideas around. She said some individuals are deficient in the will to live; living is desiring, she said, and such people don't desire strongly enough for a complete effort to stay alive. Well—something in it if you're speaking of certain pathological cases—catatonics I think the doctors call them—patients who just lie around, won't eat or even move, a kind of death in life. But that's so far from anything in Callista's make-up, I couldn't believe she was talking indirectly about herself. She said not all zombis are in the psychopathic hospitals. Later—this did alarm me—she remarked that she'd have no problems worth mentioning if she could discover any purpose in existence. A depressive remark, certainly. She wouldn't have said it if she hadn't felt she was losing her hold on things, losing her interest in living—and if I understand it correctly, Mr. Warner, that loss of interest is the danger sign. People can talk a lot about killing themselves, and nothing happens. But if the interest in living goes—"

"Objection! This is exactly the sort of thing I was afraid of, your Honor. I don't care what she calls it, Miss Nolan is now lecturing us like a professional psychiatrist, and I object."

"Overruled." I believe I snapped; the rumble on the left is the noise of calf-bound law books revolving in the grave. "The Court has not received the impression that the witness is claiming any professional standing in psychiatry. The remark you object to, Mr. Hunter, was a general one, to be sure; but she was speaking of matters that are either common knowledge or ought to be. I must rule that the defense is within its rights to let her follow this line, to help clarify her testimony on matters of fact." And where in the pluperfect hell do I dig up a precedent on that one?

"Exception."

"Yes. You may complete what you were saying, Miss Nolan."

"If the interest in living is gone—I mean the simple wish to stay alive and see what will happen next—then I think there's real danger of a suicide. And as the Judge said, Mr. Warner, I guess that's pretty much common knowledge. Callista herself was certainly aware of it, from her reading, her general education. Well, that remark about discovering any purpose in existence—I caught Callista up on that, I remember. I reminded her that we make and choose our own purposes—" (Watch it, Red!)—"so far as we know them." She understood the danger, probably, the risk of touching on any questions that, for most of the jury, were settled on Sunday morning and decently ignored the rest of the week. "She—thought about that, I'm sure, and for a while I think she came part way out of her depression. Not all the way."

"Summing up then, Miss Nolan: knowing her as you do, and seeing her, I suppose, every week-day during last July—you're convinced that most of that time she was behaving like one in the grip of a serious depression with the possibility of suicide?"

"I don't have any doubt of it, Mr. Warner—now. I ought not to have been in doubt at the time. If anyone is guilty in this case it's myself, because I ought to have stayed with her just about every minute until she won her way out of that mood. Then there would have been no chance for the horrible accident that makes it possible to charge her with—"

"Objection!"

"Objection sustained." She looked up with understanding and no reproach. The man in private applauded her doubtless intentional violation of rules, while the Judge must condemn. "The witness's answer will have to be stricken." It comes to me, I did not add that the jury is to disregard it. That all right, Red?

"Miss Nolan, I understand you weren't present at a certain picnic in Shanesville last August 7th. Did you know about it at the time?"

"Yes. I closed the studio that afternoon—the weather was impossibly hot. Cal said her mother was having one of her picnics, and thought she might go. Cal didn't ordinarily care for that sort of thing, but I—oh, I guess I just told her to run along and have a good time."

"Did Callista speak later of seeing the Dohertys at that picnic?"

"Yes, Monday. All she said was that they were there, and she hadn't talked with either of them. I asked if she was—cured, and she said: 'Oh, Edith, I can't talk about it yet, I can't.' I had to let it go at that. All that week she was very blue. She was working hard—too hard; volunteered to straighten out some of my records. Afraid to relax, maybe."

"When did you last see Callista before her arrest?"

"Friday, August 14th, when she left the studio after work."

"What did her mood seem to be at that time?"

"Tired, unhappy, withdrawn—but maybe a little more composed. I knew that, left to herself and barring unforeseeable accidents, she'd find good and reasonable answers to her troubles, but—Mr. Warner, it's strangely difficult to help anyone you love."

"Did you talk to her on the phone that week end any time?"

"Yes, late Sunday afternoon, the 16th. My father was in town that day, a flying visit, unexpected. Callista had never met him. I wanted her to. I called her late in the afternoon, past 5:30 I think—to ask if she'd like to come over in the evening. She said she might, but there was something she had engaged to do first. She sounded very much better. Not happy, but—calm anyhow. She didn't say what the engagement was, and didn't make it sound like anything too important. It could have been a reference to Mrs. Doherty's coming to see her—I mean, nothing Callista said was inconsistent with that. She could hardly have talked to me as calmly, almost cheerfully, as she did, if she'd still been overwrought or—or had known she was heading toward something disastrous."

"When she didn't come to meet your father, did you call her?"

"Tried to, a little after nine—that would have been when she was out in Shanesville, according to what she told the District Attorney. I wasn't worried when she didn't show up, just supposed that something had delayed her until too late, and that she'd bring me up to date when I saw her Monday."

"What was her usual time for coming to work in the morning?"

"Any time before ten was all right with me. That Monday, August 17th, she telephoned me at about ten and said she was sick. Her voice was completely changed: flat, dead. I asked of course what was wrong. She said in the same tone, without hesitation: 'I've been pregnant since June and last night I had a miscarriage.' I told her I'd come over as soon as I could get rid of a client who was waiting in the studio. She said then in a very distressed way: 'No no, Edith, please don't!' She insisted she was all right, and then for a moment or two she was almost incoherent, saying she—oh, refused to drag me into her troubles, things like that. I said nonsense, I was her friend and that's what friends are for. Finally I asked if there was anyone with her, and she said no, but there would be presently. I thought she meant her mother or maybe her stepfather or both—she didn't say so, it was just one of those mistaken impressions you get under stress."

"You didn't go over?"

"No, sir. I thought that if Mrs. Chalmers was there I'd likely just be crashing in and doing more harm than good. I called again, later. Busy signals. When I finally got through, about one-thirty, the phone was answered by some policeman who asked me a few dozen questions and was finally willing to tell me that Miss Blake had been detained for questioning on a certain matter, as he called it, and was at the courthouse, at Mr. Lamson's office."

"Who was that policeman, if you recall?"

"Gage or some such name."

One for the Chief of Detectives. The Judge will not smile. There is no reason to smile.

"Did you then go to the District Attorney's office, Miss Nolan?"

"Yes."

"Were you given any information about your friend?"

"No, sir, just a brush-off from some clerk. That's when I started trying to call you, Mr. Warner."

"Yes. I have only one or two more questions, Miss Nolan. Did Callista ever express to you any hostility toward Ann Doherty?"

"Never. I recall that she spoke of her several times, but never with hostility or resentment or anything suggesting jealousy. No exaggerated friendliness either. I got the impression they were—acquaintances."

"Well, for that matter, did you ever hear Callista speak maliciously about anyone?"

"Never."

II

"Your witness, Mr. Hunter."

Edith Nolan thought with an edge of panic: Is that all, Cecil? The Old Man's face was saying a kind of good-bye to her, turning away, not apparently displeased or disappointed—satisfied rather, so far as one could hope to read a face that must also be presenting a front to the gaze of the jury. But there was so much more that ought to have been said! The intimate truths of personality, relation, individual quality, that become no longer small once your vision is clear enough to separate the general from the specific, to see the primary core of self and the universe its matrix at one and the same time, neither too much distorted. It seemed to Edith that she had hardly begun to talk to those twelve, who were certainly not all dull, not all hostile.

Was there, for example, no way at all to explain that Callista had a comic brown mole near her navel, that when she was absorbed in reading her left forefinger twisted a black curl above her ear, always the same curl, the same small motion—and that these facts, alone and of themselves, were reasons as great, valid, finally convincing, as any of the other reasons why she must not be slain?

Still it was not, ultimately, a question of explaining anything, of offering facts to twelve other minds with the assumption that they could view them as you did. They could not. If it isn't in nature for two pairs of eyes ever to observe a simple physical object in quite the same manner, how grotesque to expect twelve minds to agree, or even approximate agreement, in the consideration of an abstract idea! What was needed, she thought, was that twelve minds should learn (here and now and very quickly) a type of humility in the face of the unknown that even the strongest and best schooled intelligences found it hard to achieve with study and leisure and every advantage of the past's accumulated resources. Unknown indeed—these people knew nothing of Callista Blake. They never could, in the nature of things, know much, never acquire more than a brief distorted glimpse of her, and that under conditions so outrageously far from the daily norm that her actual self appeared to them as no more than the flicker of a shadow. The kindly and badly troubled little man up there on the bench knew far more about her than they did, simply because he was trained to observation and the disciplines of independent thought; and he knew only a trifle. How little I know myself, or ever will know!

She controlled her face to the semblance of tranquillity. The long-jawed man had arrived with his athletic grace, a foot raised comfortably on the platform that elevated the witness chair, his charcoal-gray suit just right for the occasion, neat and grave like a uniform. At close range, Edith noticed his expression was not particularly cold or severe. His eyes were thoughtful, his features betrayed no ugly tension. What is cruelty anyway, and how do you read it in another? It seemed to be present like an occasional tic (but might not really be) in the vacuous face of that oaf Hoag in the front row of the jury box. But in T. J. Hunter? At the moment he looked like a solemn salesman about to give her a well-spoken pitch, say on insurance or a middle-priced car.

"You would do virtually anything, would you not, for your friend Callista Blake?"

"The best thing I can do for her is tell the truth about her and about these events, so far as I know it, and that I've done."

"Your answer is not quite responsive, Miss Nolan."

"I think it is, but I'll be more specific if you wish. I would not commit crimes for Callista Blake or any other friend, if only because in the long run you do your friend no service that way—compounding wrong things instead of lessening them. And I would not lie for her on any important matter, because it happens the truth is best for her as well as for me."

"That's quite a pragmatic attitude, isn't it?"

My, the high intellectual plane! "Naturalistic might be a better word, Mr. District Attorney, but pragmatic if you like. If an ethical principle isn't at least theoretically practical in human affairs, I'd rather leave it in the books."

"I see your point." If only you did! "You wouldn't kill in defense of Callista Blake?"

"Why, I might. If it's a clear case of protecting a friend's life, the law generally calls it justifiable homicide, doesn't it?"

"But for you it would have to be a clear case, is that right? I mean, you're referring to something on the level of shooting a burglar to protect the household, something like that?"

"I suppose so. I've never encountered any situation like that, so I really can't predict how I'd behave."

"Let me make sure I understand your position, Miss Nolan. You do not believe in absolute ethical principles?"

"Before I can answer that I must have your personal definition of the word 'absolute'."

"You must be familiar with the term, are you not?"

"Yes, but there would be at least five or six definitions of it in any unabridged dictionary, and I can't know which one you have in mind unless you tell me."

"Well, I had in mind the meaning which I think is generally used in philosophical discussions: self-contained, self-dependent, ultimate, in other words free from the limitations of human error, human perception."

"Thank you." He is a shade tougher than I thought. "In that case the answer would have to be that ethical principles are human achievements, human ways of thinking and acting, and I don't see how a human activity can ever be free from the limitations of human error and human perception."

"Very plausible. I see you've done quite a bit of thinking along these lines. That is what you mean by what you called a—a naturalistic attitude, I think that was your term?"

"In part, yes."

"Oh, there's more?"

"As a well-read man, Mr. Hunter, you must know that the conception of naturalistic ethics is at least as old as Confucius, that libraries have been filled with it, and that we could talk here on the subject until the end of next year with a great deal left unsaid."

"Well, I'm afraid there might be a fatigue factor."

"There might indeed." Was I quick enough to steal some of that applause of witless laughter? "It would take quite a while just to find a little agreement on definitions and first premises."

"Maybe." He looked downright friendly, she thought, until you noticed the rigid watchfulness. His smile was comfortable; he probably felt that the rumble of amusement was, on the whole, one for his side. It probably was. She risked a glance toward the jury. Most of them looked puzzled, but none really irritated except little Mr. Anson; Flint-face Fielding seemed coldly interested, but whether in a favorable or hostile way there was no telling. In Helen Butler Edith saw a tiny flicker, surely friendliness, as their eyes met for an instant. It might mean recognition and memory, but if Miss Butler had any thought of disqualifying herself because of a trivial meeting months ago when they had not even exchanged names, she would surely have done it already. Best not look at her again. "I think, Miss Nolan, I'd better go back to my original question. I gave you my definition of 'absolute,' you remember, and you said—which sounded reasonable to me—that human activity can't very well be free from human error. Now, may I take that as a positive no to my earlier question: you do not believe in absolute ethical principles?"

"Not quite, Mr. Hunter. Some ethical principles take on the apparent quality of absolutes, or of universal law, simply because virtually all the members of a society endorse them. In other words we act as if those principles were absolutes, whether we can justify it logically or not. So let me put it this way: I believe in following certain ethical principles as strictly as though they had the nature of universal law, so long as my own conscience, my own intelligence, can agree to it."

"I see. But that means, doesn't it, that your conscience is actually, to you, the supreme judge?"

"In a sense it has to be."

"For example," said Judge Mann suddenly, and Edith turned to him feeling as though he had reached out a hand to aid her in crossing slippery rocks above a torrent—"for example, if an individual accepts the orders or doctrines of an external authority, would you agree, Miss Nolan, that his acceptance is itself an act of his own conscience, or will, or intelligence?"

"Yes, your Honor, that expresses what I had in mind."

The Judge said: "In fact the individual can have no dealings, no contact with ideas or doctrines or even with simple observation of the physical world, unless there is first a positive action of his own intelligence. Is this still in line with your thought, Miss Nolan?"

"Yes, your Honor."

"And—I'll be done in a moment, Mr. Hunter—and finally, would you agree, Miss Nolan, that this decidedly elementary fact is often overlooked in our everyday thinking, perhaps because it's so obvious that we aren't willing to give it a second glance or work out its implications?"

"I believe so. We accept the fact the way animals accept the air they breathe, and with no more thought."

"Yes," said Judge Mann, his gaze leaving her, maybe reluctantly, as he scribbled something on his note-pad, "life was breathing air a good many million years before a fairly advanced science noticed that air was a mixture of different gases, had weight and mass, other properties. Well, go on, Mr. Hunter."

Hunter nodded politely. "I've certainly no wish to press the point. But may I ask—and by the way, I won't urge you to respond to this question either if you'd rather not—may I ask, Miss Nolan, whether you're willing to state the reasons for your refusal to answer?"

"Quite willing. Religion is a topic that too easily stirs up a lot of emotion if there's any serious discussion or conflict of opinion. I assume the members of the jury belong to more than one religious faith. Some of them might share my views, others might be offended by them—I can't tell. But since religion, so far as I can see, has absolutely nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of my friend, I think it would make no sense anyhow for me to get into the subject."

The Old Man over there nodded slightly, maybe a kind of cheering, a way of saying his gal Red could take care of herself. But can I?

"That's reasonable," said T. J. Hunter almost affectionately. "You're right it's a touchy topic, right also that it has no direct bearing on the question of guilt or innocence; and I'm as anxious as you are to avoid stirring up needless emotions or side issues. The only thing I do wish I could get at along this line—my only reason for speaking of it at all—well, Miss Nolan, if you have no unqualified belief in absolute ethical principles, and if a question about belief in God is merely distasteful to you, don't you think that might have some slight bearing on your credibility as a witness in a murder trial?"

The Old Man was standing up, his voice slow in coming, slow-moving when it came as if each word must force its way past an obstacle in his throat: "Mr. Hunter, that is vicious and contemptible."

And before stage anger took control of the handsome mask with the shovel chin, Edith glimpsed the fact that T. J. Hunter was at last genuinely pleased about something. "I must ask you to watch your choice of language, Counselor."

"No more of this," said Judge Mann. "The attention of both counsel, please. Your question, Mr. Hunter, was entirely out of order, because it implied that a person with independent views on religion has a lower regard for the truth than others—an implication with no slightest basis in fact or logic. From her answers, her manner, her educational background, there is every reason to suppose that Miss Nolan has quite as high a regard for the truth as anyone else who has testified in this case. You will withdraw your question. Mr. Warner, your remark to the prosecutor was ill-chosen and unparliamentary. It calls for an apology to him, I think."

Hunter spoke gently: "I withdraw my question."

"Mr. Hunter," said the Old Man wearily, "I was influenced by personal feeling as I should not have been, and my words were ill-chosen. My apology, sir, if you can find it acceptable."

Very gently, Hunter said: "Why, of course, Cecil." And more gently still: "I will ask no further questions of this witness."

She stood up, dizzy. Some passage of words between Cecil and the Judge. Redirect examination—there would be none. She heard the Judge say after an impatient throat-clearing that she was excused, and through a sudden maddening colorless blur she saw or imagined that Cecil was achieving a sort of smile for her. She stepped down carefully, concentrated on preventing her fingers from reaching after a handkerchief or rising toward her face. If she could keep her head turned away from the jury, they might not see. Her seat was over there somewhere, beyond the bald skull of the fattest reporter at the press tables. Cecil was still smiling, more or less.

But I lost. I lost.

Callista, what have I done to you?

III

Callista thought: I am stronger than she is, and never knew it before. Why is she crying, after she was so wonderful?

It was no trick of vision; no mistaking the intrusive brilliant glitter on her cheeks as Edith stepped down and walked rather clumsily—but head high—toward her seat. She would not retire in any sniffling droop: rather, Callista knew, she would be furious at the weakness, and maybe not reach for a handkerchief even when she was clear of the arena but keep her head high and angrily observant, let the sparkle dry on her face and stay there, the hell with it. But I am much stronger. I can hold up too, even better. I won't let hunter-Hunter trick me into saying anything he can use. I'll play the act to the limit. For Cecil. For Edith. For myself. And isn't it time now?

Yes, it was time. Cecil was whispering to her. Watching Edith still, ready with a smile if Edith would only look her way, Callista lost his words and had to ask him to repeat. "I'm putting you on now. Feeling all right, Cal? Steady?"

"I'm fine, Bud. Steady. Let 'em all come." It occurred to her that she really did feel in excellent condition. This was the end of the long affliction of waiting, mute listening, anticipation: now at least she could attempt to do something. Cecil rose and moved away; he was up there near the witness stand, calling her name, smiling a little—Himself, not like my father. It is time. First to Mr.-Delehanty-which-is-the-Clerk.

At close range Mr. Delehanty's eyes appeared curiously vacant. She found a moment's fantastic pleasure in proposing to herself that the poor guy might actually have died long ago, leaving a fruity voice, a magnificent suit of clothes, and some structure (partly plastic?) designed to hold the two together world without end. The arm mechanism must be especially clever, to carry on that Bible routine. She held her hands at her sides, and before the melodious rumble (a concealed recording?) could start, she spoke quickly as she had rehearsed herself last night while Matron Kowalski was playing the usual games with that light bulb in the corridor: "I affirm that I will tell the truth, the whole truth so far as I know it, and nothing but the truth."

At the corner of her eye she glimpsed Cecil's stricken look, and thought: Oh yes yes, I should have warned him. Her thought continued with an irritation which love somehow magnified instead of diminishing: What's the matter anyhow? Must we be so timid? They're not going to condemn me for such a thing as that. Are they?

Mr. Delehanty made an indeterminate fogbound noise.

Judge Mann said evenly: "The oath is binding in that form—should there be a question in anyone's mind. The witness is exercising a constitutional privilege which ought to be familiar to everyone." She felt he would have liked to speak to her directly, humanly. Instead he turned to the still faintly resonating Delehanty and remarked in a casual undertone too low for the jury's hearing but not for hers: "You might be interested to know, Mr. Delehanty, that I chose to affirm when I took the oath as a justice." You were not actually speaking to that-which-is-the-Clerk—I heard and I'm grateful. "You may take the stand now, Miss Blake."

They were trying to help her. Cecil, Edith, now Judge Mann who, as Cecil said, had tried all along to give her every break—tried too much for his own good, maybe, and hers too. She understood that he not only desired to help her: he saw her.

Her mind grew dizzy, shifted, retreated, sought to steady itself, reason and unreason quarreling within. Were they, the three of them, treating her as they might treat a difficult child? She fought down the illogical resentment, despising it, conquering it—almost. She was seated, the ungainly witness chair still warm from Edith's body. How different the courtroom looked from up here! A whole new orientation. Just look, for instance, at that big slob in the back row smuggling a candy bar up to the pink slot in his shiny face. Had that operation been going on since Monday morning? Look, Daddy! Is he s'posed to eat in here, Daddy, is he s'posed to, huh, Daddy?

The jury too. (Where's Jimmy?) The jury was closer, much closer. She could smell them. One of the females gave off a powerful tuberose reek, variable as drafts in the large room stirred it about. (Where's Jimmy, if it matters?) Callista decided the smell was generated by the Lagovski, probably in heat. Any minute now—well, Emerson Lake was the biggest, but pretty old; maybe one of the more vigorous younger males—

"Callista—" Please stand near me always!—"you're a resident of Winchester, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir. 21 Covent Street."

"You've kept that apartment?"

"Oh yes. Edith Nolan is taking care of it for me."

"Ought to be back there in a few days." How do you do it, Cecil, that casualness? You're hurting inside worse than I am. I feel fine. "You were attentive to all of Miss Nolan's testimony, weren't you?"

"Yes, I was, Mr. Warner."

"Before we go on to other things, is there anything in that testimony that you want to comment on, or add to, maybe?"

You told me, give them modesty. "Every one of them knows, Cal, that you're in their power. Think what that does to twelve human egos, and show them the respect they believe they deserve. In fact don't just show it: try to make yourself feel it." I will give them modesty, Cecil. "I think she overrated me as an artist, Mr. Warner. It's her honest view, I know, but I'm not that good." Who knows for sure? Maybe I am.

"Well, as you know, I set a very high value on your work myself." His quick relaxed smile was including the jury somehow. Wish I could do that. Or some of the jury: his glance had been directed, she thought, toward the crinkle-faced middle-aged lady. Name?—Butler, Miss Helen Butler. Callista ventured to meet the woman's eyes, did so, and was frightened to realize that for the instant's duration she was not certain what her own facial muscles were doing. What did I actually do?—make a face? Surely there had been a gleam like friendliness in Helen Butler; just as surely, the woman was now looking down at her hands, and away across the room, troubled but otherwise communicating nothing at all. "However, Callista, I was thinking chiefly of other things Miss Nolan said—for instance her belief that you might have been experiencing a serious depression, perhaps suicidal, last July and part of August. Was she right, Callista? Were you at that time, or any part of that time, actually contemplating doing away with yourself?"

"Yes, I—yes, I was."

"It was a definite intention, my dear?"

"For a while, yes. It wasn't so until I happened to see those plants in my mother's garden. Maybe not too definite even then. I only thought: this would be one way. Then I was thinking, why not take a few, have them on hand if things got worse? Then I was actually taking them, breaking off the tops and shoving them away in the tall grass, keeping the roots."

"But I presume you must have been working up to that state of mind for quite a while?"

"Yes, I had been. It was like a progressive illness—well, I suppose that's what it really is. Each day a little emptier than the one before, a little harder to care about anything."

"You made that infusion of the roots in brandy?"

"Yes, the next day."

"Do you recall the circumstances—what part of the day it was, say?"

"It was evening, after I'd stopped trying to write that letter—the one I didn't finish, didn't mail."

"You gave up entirely on that letter, didn't you?—I mean, you decided it couldn't do any good?"

"Oh, that's true. I was imagining communication when—when in the nature of things there just couldn't be any. Jimmy—Jim Doherty and I never really—never saw each other, never heard—"

"Callista, I'm not sure the jury—it's a difficult thing to express."

"I know, Mr. Warner, and I'm doing it badly. Well—sometimes a person can get rid of the self-preoccupation long enough to really know someone else, without illusion or pretense. It's like that with Edith Nolan and me. We—communicate. But with Jimmy—with Jim Doherty and me it was all illusion. On both sides. And I gave up on that letter because I realized rather suddenly that I was—talking to someone who wasn't there." (And he isn't here in the courtroom—he is—it doesn't matter.) "You asked something else—oh, about the monkshood. Yes, I made the infusion that night, and then pushed it away to the back of the shelf. I don't know how to tell this either, Mr. Warner. There's a fascination about an ugly and foolish thing like that. I don't understand it: it takes hold of you in spite of yourself. I remember I almost poured out a drink from it, that night, simply from a sort of curiosity, and then I thought—this is going to sound idiotic—"

"Never mind, just tell it as it comes to you."

"Well, I thought: Look, Callista, if you can be interested and curious about a miserable thing like this, maybe you could be interested in better things. After a while if not now. So don't drink it. And I didn't of course—I just pushed it to the back of the shelf and—oh, I read that evening, I think. Some book or other. It didn't hold me, I wasn't quite alive, but it was something to do. That Saturday evening after the picnic was probably the time I came nearest to actually drinking the stuff."

"I see. A week later, Callista—I mean Sunday, August 16th—did you telephone to Ann Doherty?"

"Yes, early in the afternoon."

"You wanted to reach her and not Jim, is that right?"

"Yes. If Jimmy had answered the phone, I don't know—I suppose everything would be different, wouldn't it? I wasn't prepared to talk to him then. Maybe I'd've hung up without speaking. Anyway Ann did answer, and I—asked her over."

"Did you say why you wanted to see her?"

"No, I—hadn't quite braced myself up to telling her the situation. I kept it to small talk, on the phone. She sounded very friendly—well, she always did. She happened to mention that Jimmy had gone to New York for overnight, and that's when I asked if she'd come over—said I wanted to talk to her about something. I don't suppose I made it sound important—as I say, I hadn't fully made up my mind about telling her anything."

"Were you in a different mood that day, Callista?"

"Very different. Some other things—nothing to do with Jimmy, or with Ann—had been sort of cleaned up for me, the night before." As she spoke, Callista was meeting her mother's gaze across the courtroom for the first time that day. Her words had no visible effect on the fixed pose of sad quiet, the dignity of the rejected Mother deeply wronged. Callista deduced that the Face of The Mother was saying: "You see how it is: I her Mother am not even allowed to testify." "I'm not sure, Mr. Warner, if it's what you call relevant."

"Well, Callista, your mood, your state of mind at that time, is certainly relevant in the ordinary sense. Legally, the question of relevance gets difficult when we're dealing with subjective matters. If I correctly understand the rulings during previous testimony, the Court is taking a generous and realistic attitude on this question. The nature of the case demands it, since, as I said in my opening words, we are not contesting most of the circumstantial evidence. Subject to correction by the Court, Callista, I'll leave it to you whether you think that a mention of what happened the night before would help the jury understand your situation. If you feel it would, go ahead and tell it, and we can check you if it seems to be going too far afield."

"I think it might help to explain things. But I'll leave out the details—they don't matter." By the way, Mrs. Chalmers, I'm your daughter—remember? They tell me I'm on trial for murder. "It had to do with my relation to my mother, Mr. Warner. There had been some—tensions between us for quite a while, and that Saturday evening—it was the 15th, wasn't it?—yes—we sort of cleared it up. In a way." Mrs. Chalmers, Mrs. Herbert Chalmers, I am about to smile at you, toward you anyway. Will it make any difference? "You remember, sir—Miss Welsh testified about my going out to Shanesville that Saturday evening, and how bad-mannered I was—and I don't doubt I was too, I can be pretty stupid—call it a one-track mind. Though it's a fact I just didn't know Ann Doherty was there on the porch, until Miss Welsh testified to it. She must have been back in the shadows, I suppose, and I was thinking so hard about what I wanted to talk over with my mother that I didn't hear her speak." Callista felt her lips curve. It was surely a smile; she meant it for a smile. "I guess I was in a fog." Yes, fog—as inexorably as deepening fog, the realization came over Callista that Mrs. Victoria Johnson Blake Chalmers was quite simply not listening. Present in the courtroom, knowing at least as well as most of the other spectators the general story of what was going on down here in the arena; but not listening. Mrs. Chalmers was maintaining a Face; a very necessary thing to do. She would have been perfectly willing to smile back, Callista guessed, if she could have divided her attention, listened just enough to understand that it might be appropriate, right now, for the Face to smile. "So I went indoors to—see my mother, and we—talked." Fog—words pushed into fog move sluggishly, as if through pain.

"Miss Welsh also testified to overhearing a few things. Was that testimony accurate, Callista?"

"Oh, reasonably, so far as Miss Welsh knew, I'm sure. Mother was crying a little at one time, and I guess I did quote something or other from Shakespeare. I was sort of making a fool of myself." Ten minutes from now, Mother, will it dawn on you what I said? You see, I haven't a notion what I'll be saying ten minutes from now. By the way, Mama, I don't see Cousin Maud. Is she home with the Plum Jam? "What Miss Welsh didn't hear, couldn't very well know, Mr. Warner, was that at the end we did get things sort of cleared up." All right, stranger—no smile, just sad maternal forgiveness. One of Callie's little emotional upsets, you know—children are SO difficult! "And—here's why I thought it might not be out of place to mention it—that evening, that's when the suicidal depression left me. I wanted to live again. After I'd—said good-night to Mother." Mama darling, why don't you lean over the rail, ask that fat guy at the press table, the bald one who looks intelligent—I think he'll tell you this is a murder trial. They're trying the funny-looking broad with the gimp leg.

"It left you suddenly, Callista, the depression? Like the end of a sickness?"

"Yes." Cecil, I love you. "Yes, it was very much like that, Mr. Warner. Like coming out of a fever, or pain all at once ending. There was—too much upswing also, I guess you might call it. I was back with some of my illusions. I mean the illusions about Jimmy. I'd once more talked myself into imagining there might be—you know, a separation, what I'd been trying to write Jimmy about in that letter I never mailed. Most of the day, and even while I was talking with Ann on the phone, I was able to fool myself with that. Self-deception, it's like walking a tightrope, I guess: so long as you don't look down at the fact of the ground a long way below, you can truly believe there's no danger, you're just walking. I think that all that day, until Ann came, I was—living inside of that illusion. Wanting something so much I couldn't see how ridiculous it was to expect it." Look, Mother: I know I hurt you plenty of times. I was always nasty and hellishly difficult until I escaped from Shanesville and from you—but I never hurt you THAT much.

"I think now, Callista, you might go ahead and tell, in your own way, everything that happened that Sunday evening and night. I realize you'll be mostly repeating what you told Mr. Lamson last August, but I believe the jury wants to hear it direct from you, so—so just go ahead, my dear—take your time, try to remember everything important."

Don't be scared, Cecil. Yes, I know: this is it. "Ann came to my apartment about quarter to eight, Mr. Warner. I can't bring back the early part of the conversation too well, except I know it was nothing important. Just usual comments on the weather, I guess—it was a very hot evening, sticky hot. Her suit—the powder-blue—it was summer weight of course, but I remember it looked sort of warm, I think I asked something silly about how could she stand wearing even the jacket in such weather, and—Mr. Warner, do I understand it right, that I shouldn't repeat any of the things she said? It seems reasonable that I shouldn't—after all, Ann's not here to set me right if I misquoted her."

"That's how it is, Callista. I'm sure you understand it. Just tell your own side of it—what you did, what you observed, what happened."

"Yes, I'll try. There was that small talk for ten minutes or so, and then I was going ahead, very clumsily I guess, telling her about—Jimmy and me. Oh, wait, one thing—I remember that at the start, when she'd just arrived, I was going to offer her a drink, and I didn't because I had a sort of half-memory that she didn't take alcohol. A mistaken memory—likely had her tastes confused with someone else's—but I know that was in my mind, that's why I didn't offer her one." Cecil, I just invented this: is it any damn good?

Apparently he was not displeased. "You didn't offer her a drink then or any time, is that right?"

"That's right. You see, I—Ann Doherty and I were never really very well acquainted. I knew the Dohertys as neighbors of course, from the time they moved in there, but my mother and stepfather saw much more of them than I ever did. I can't say I really knew Jimmy, either, I—" (Cecil, please give me a lift with this one)—"well, I said something like that before, didn't I?"

"The episode with him was—really no more than that, an episode?"

"Midsummer madness. I must have been ready to go overboard for someone. It was chance we happened to meet, that May-day." Handkerchief back in the sleeve, girl—let the palms stay wet, wouldn't look good to be wiping them. "And things got out of control. So far as the affair is concerned, Mr. Warner, if there's any question of blame or responsibility, I'll take it. Nothing could have started if I hadn't allowed it. And Jimmy—well, I can't speak for him, but I know he didn't realize until much later how terribly important I'd let it become to me, for a while. He just slipped, but I went all the way over, head over heels, for a while, and nobody to blame but myself." (Give me that look, won't you?—the Cecil Warner special. Tell me I'm doing all right.) "Then later when he did understand how I was making such a thing of it—well, poor Jimmy, he's not an unkind person and never would be, he was in a spot, I think. He couldn't bear to hurt Ann or me either, and couldn't do anything at all without hurting one of us. I don't know what he could possibly have done except what he did—break off the relation and let time take care of it." (Did the jury see him go? I didn't. Here at the start of the day, that I know.) "Do I need to say any more about this, Mr. Warner?"

"I don't think so. You're free to of course, if anything else occurs to you later. Do you want to get back to the Sunday evening now?"

"Yes." Mother's gone too, behind the Face—but that happened a long time ago. And Cousin Maud with the Plum Jam, I hope. What's the matter, you nice people—isn't the Monkshood Girl putting on a good show? Herb—shall I project the voice at you, Herb? "Where was I?"

"You'd spoken of starting to tell Ann Doherty about it."

"Yes. I tried to do it reasonably, but I think all I did was blurt one hint after another until she—understood. She did, I know—that is, she understood what had been happening. As I think I told Mr. Lamson, I didn't get as far as telling her I was pregnant. I got the other facts said, somehow or other, and she—said something that showed she understood, and then I was suddenly sick to my stomach."

"She didn't appear angry?"

"No, Mr. Warner. I believe—I believe what I said could have been taken to mean that the thing was completely ended. Of course I've no way of knowing if that's what she thought. She wasn't angry. And then my sickness, coming like that, confused everything else. I ran for the bathroom. I know Ann was sorry for me, trying to help. I was—call it hysterical. I yelled at her, couldn't stand the idea of her touching me while I was sick, only wanted her to go away. But she wouldn't, so I ran from her again, into my bedroom, and I locked the door." (Help me now!) "Yes, I know I locked the door."

"That part is a perfectly clear memory, Callista? The physical act of turning the key or throwing the latch or whatever it was?"

"Yes. Old-fashioned key—why, I probably never had used it before, no occasion to. But I did then. I threw myself down on the bed. My throat was still raw and sour from vomiting, I remember that."

"Now you told Mr. Lamson that there's a stretch of a few minutes, in the bedroom, that won't quite come back. I take it for granted that since then you've been trying to fill in that gap in memory. Suppose I put it this way, Callista: is it possible now for you to add anything to what you told Mr. Lamson that day in his office?"

Not quite a direct lie required—thanks, friend. Not that it matters, direct or indirect. The letter killeth—inner Puritan, drop dead, drop dead! "No, Mr. Warner—as you say, I've tried ever since to clear up that part in my mind, but—I can't add anything now." I don't dare look toward a certain flinty intelligent face—the name is Francis Fielding—and yet I'll do it.

He was very quiet, Mr. Fielding, alert, interested; no change or wavering in his smart bird-like eyes as she met their probing and tried briefly, unavailingly, to win a glimpse of the self behind them. Once I watched a heron in my famous field glasses, motionless at the edge of a stream. Motionless, hunting motionless. That had been only the summer before last, a trip alone in the Volks to the hill country. More of the day came back, a good day and the summer hush. Eighteen. The heron had remained a somber painted image until the frog returned to the bank; then he got his meal: too large a frog to swallow whole, so he knocked it to pieces against a rock and resumed his stillness. But Cecil was speaking.

"I'll make a suggestion, Callista—a sort of hypothetical question, though I won't try to phrase it in precisely that form. Before you broke away and went into your bedroom you'd been, as you say, hysterical, sick, nauseated: too early for ordinary morning sickness I suppose, but the pregnancy must have had at least some influence on your condition. And you had undergone, were still undergoing, an intense emotional strain: the anticipation, the build-up to your interview with Mrs. Doherty, then sudden realization that it was wasted effort. Now I suggest that all those things coming together at once might have produced a plain old-fashioned fainting spell, a blackout from exhaustion. And I'll ask: is everything you remember about those moments consistent with that? It makes sense to you, that this could be what happened?"

Again the aid and comfort to the idiot Puritan: don't know why it should help to avoid the phrasing of a direct lie—superstition—somehow it does though and he knows it—my love is wiser than other men—"Yes, it could have been like that, Mr. Warner." A half-seen glimpse of something kind in black-haired Dolores Acevedo might mean feminine sympathy, fellow-feeling—or something else, or nothing at all. The experts say, Callista remembered, that a person with an obsessive notion never actually performs the fantastic act he imagines performing—like for instance leaning forward in this chair and saying: "Dolly, I bet you know how it feels to go nuts for a good lay."

"After going into the bedroom, what is the next thing that you remember positively?"

"The next thing—the next thing I am really certain about is hearing Ann walk across the living-room—her high heels—to the front door. I heard the door close, heard her car start up and drive away. It somehow—released me—I can't think of a better word. I unlocked the bedroom, came out, got myself a drink of water. I went into the kitchenette to get that instead of to the bathroom. Then—not right away but very soon—I saw the brandy bottle had been pulled forward on the shelf, and there was a glass with a few drops in the bottom, and I knew what must have happened. It brought me out of my fog anyway. I knew I had to get to her at once if I could, and I wasn't able to think beyond that. What I ought to have done—I know it now—was call the police and tell them the emergency. They might have got to her in time and done something for her. But I was shocked silly, I couldn't think of anything except going after her myself, and that's what I did—tried to do."

"Well, you didn't lose any time, I'm sure."

"No, just grabbed my handbag off the living-room table and ran down to the garage. It's back of the apartment—overhead door always sticks, I remember I had to struggle with it as usual but it didn't hold me up long." Nice old Em Lake, you had such a time yearning after my friend's mammaries—how will these do? Not big, but I bet anything you've seen worse. Drool, old boy, drool all you like if it makes a difference. Will I twitch my jacket back a little? Better, huh? Besides, away up there, sixty-five or whatever it is, doesn't it seem too bad to die at nineteen?

"Can you judge about what time elapsed, from hearing Ann's car start to getting your own out on the road?"

"It could have been as much as ten minutes. Until I saw that brandy bottle I was just dazed and stupid, not hurrying about anything. I don't know how long I was, coming out of the bedroom, getting that drink of water. I didn't look at the clock or anything, no reason to."

"To be sure. Well—you drove on out to Shanesville?"

"Yes, fast as I could. Wasn't delayed on the road. I pulled into the Dohertys' driveway, alongside the Pontiac—it was just as Sergeant Shields described it. The house was dark. My headlights picked up her handbag lying in the path, so I knew at once she must have gone that way."

"Did you take the flashlight from your car?"

"No, didn't think of it till I'd started down the path. The moon was hazed over, but still pretty strong light." The Monkshood Girl will now look at the Foreman of the Jury. "I supposed she must have gone to my mother's house, but when I came to that spur path I—thought—" Peter Anson would not look at her; she was certain he had been doing so, and intently, the instant before her own eyes shifted.

"Take your time, Callista—by the way, would you like a sip of water?"

"Yes, please. Thank you." Thank you for more than that. The water was cool and perfect; she held and turned the crystal of the glass until it gave her the excellent diminished star of the ceiling chandelier. Had it been burning all day? She couldn't remember. Probably; a gray series of hours, this Thursday, with a whimpering of December wind. I'm sorry, Cecil, I know I'm stumbling, not doing very well—keep thinking about twenty-to-life—it wouldn't let me come to you. "When I came to the spur path it was—oh, just a sort of sick feeling that I ought to look at the pond and make sure she hadn't—it was only a few steps, the light fairly good through the trees. I saw something in the water. It was white, some part of her white blouse."

"You went down that steep path to your left, Callista? Stood on the path first and then over on the left side of the pond?"

"Yes. I could see—enough to know. Then the pains began. I knew she was dead, and I knew what was happening to me. I guess I said, didn't I, that I'd wanted the baby, I wanted to bear it? Did I say that?"

"Yes, my dear, you told Mr. Lamson that—I believe it's not been mentioned here until now. You really did want it, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"You needn't say any more about that now unless you wish."

"All right. I ... well, I don't quite remember getting back to my car. I did it though, and when I reached the junction I remembered that thick second-growth woods across the road from my mother's house. So I parked by the pines, got over there—" Don't do it, Mrs. Kleinman: Mr. Fielding wouldn't like it, anyway crying is just the glands going into an uproar. I'm not crying—see? Of course, if it means you don't want to burn me—

"About that also, Callista, you needn't say any more than you want to. The fact of the miscarriage is enough, and I haven't heard the prosecution contesting it. Did you happen to have your wrist watch on, by the way?"

"No, the sticky hot weather, it was chafing my wrist—I'd taken it off at my apartment. Well, when it was over I got back to my car, made the turn in my mother's driveway—" Sorry, Herb, manner of speaking: she's a very important lady, you know how 'tis—"and I guess that was the way Miss Welsh described it."

"Do you recall seeing Dr. Chalmers on the porch, turning on the light?"

"I think so. I was clumsy with the gears, backing and turning. Then I held up all right till I got home."

"And then?"

"I found I'd left the apartment door open. I remember closing it and leaning back against it. Then I was on my knees—I don't mean I fainted, I don't think I did. I think—does this sound possible?—I think I just fell asleep. Remember being on my knees, dropping forward on my hands, thinking how soft the rug would be if I could hitch over to it, and I must have done so, because when I came out of—it seemed like a sleep—I was there on the rug with my handbag for a pillow. After I got up I couldn't stop shaking for a long while. I wanted a shower, but couldn't make my fingers take hold of my clothes. The shoes were the worst. Did finally, had the shower too I think, and dozed off again. I didn't see the sun come up—it was in my eyes when I woke. By ten o'clock I'd pulled myself together somehow, got dressed. I called Edith. I knew I'd have to call the police."

"You hadn't done anything with the brandy bottle after you first saw it had been moved?"

"No, I hadn't, and I did nothing with it that morning—just left everything as it was. I supposed that was the right thing to do. But I didn't get up my courage to call the police until after my stepfather had telephoned me, and told me about finding Ann's body. I think it was about eleven o'clock that he called."

"And when you did call the police, what you got was Sergeant Rankin."

"Yes." When we get this one over with we're done, aren't we, Cecil? Except for—except for—"He turned up about twelve o'clock."

"You recall his testimony on the stand?"

"Yes. It was accurate except for what it left out, and his denials to you in cross-examination."

"Before we go into that, do you want to tell your side of that thing about the aquarium, Callista?"

"I might as well. It was a foolish impulse. I loved the things, and I had a picture of them going hungry and dying off with the apartment closed. If I'd stopped to think, I'd have known of course that Edith would take care of them for me." I can't look across the room at you right now, Edith; I don't dare. "After all she gave them to me herself. It was an impulse of—despair, I think. You see, until Sergeant Rankin made it plain to me, I actually hadn't understood how things were going to look for me. I wasn't thinking clearly at all until then. What he said—and did—showed me how it would be, that I'd be accused of murder and there'd be nothing to disprove it except my word—no tangible evidence in my favor, no one else with any first-hand knowledge of what happened. Naturally as a police officer, Rankin saw that aspect of it right away. Well, the aquarium—I wanted the little tropicals to die quick and easy, that was all."

"I see. You said Rankin's testimony was accurate except for what it left out, and those denials. Will you fill in that blank? Just tell what Rankin did, to the best of your recollection."

"When we were going back to the living-room after I had shown him the brandy bottle, he grabbed hold of me from behind. I was still feeling sick and confused, and startled by what he'd said a minute before—something to the effect that no one would believe my story. I wasn't expecting any physical approach like that. I guess I was aware that he'd started to get excited, but I supposed that being a policeman, he'd at least control himself. I said: 'Take your hands off me!'—something like that—or stronger, I guess—'Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!' He didn't let go. He said he could 'give me a lot of breaks,' as he put it, if I would—'put out.' I tried to break free of him, but couldn't. A sort of stupid wrestling match across the living-room. I couldn't get my wrist free. He forced me down on the couch. I tried to tell him then that I was ill, but it's possible he really didn't hear that. He was in a state of violent excitement—had opened his trousers and was trying to swing my legs up on the couch without letting go my wrist. I told him the Police Department would smash him for it and he'd wind up in jail no matter what happened to me. He managed to say: 'The hell with that—who's going to take your word against mine?' I said that anyhow I could testify he was circumcised, and since he wasn't Jewish that ought to give my word a little weight. It got through to him, and scared him. He gave me an open-handed slap across the face—just a nervous explosion, I guess, hardly knew what he was doing—and let go my wrist, stepped away from me across the room, got himself under control. When he turned back to me he was well behaved. He apologized, said there was something about me that made him lose his head. I think he spoke of having a wife and children, and then something more about it's being my word against his. I don't believe I was able to say anything except that I'd make him no promises about telling or not telling of it. He made his call to headquarters, and the aquarium thing was after that, I guess—yes, it was. What he testified about just sitting there till the others came—that was true. I don't think he looked at me once after that remark I made—something about a spring morning warmed up in the oven."