The Trial of Callista Blake

IV

Judge Mann followed Joe Bass to the elevator that clanked them gravely to the relative holiness of the sixth floor, where Mann's chambers occupied a corner with a north view. The windows were dark, under a windy spatter of unexpected rain. Mann glimpsed gold blurs of downtown windows, white hurry of headlights, a flow of them two blocks away at the corner of Main and Court, Winchester going home to suburban bedrooms. "Nasty night," said Joe Bass. The red eye closed, the green eye opened; a file of wet bugs poured up the Court Street hill. "Going home directly, sir?"

"I think so. You were in court, weren't you, Joe?"

"Yes. I ducked out before the end of Mr. Hunter's speech. Did Mr. Warner waive the opening?"

"More or less...." Joe Bass never hovered, or clucked. A sure instinct had told him Judge Mann preferred to light his own cigarettes. But he did not like to be dismissed before the Judge went home, preferring to read or meditate in the anteroom until any hour of the night. He had not much to go home to—a boarding-house bedroom uptown, his wife dead, children married and gone. "I wish Mr. Warner would cut down that belly. Too much work for the heart at sixty-eight."

"Sixty-eight, Judge?—I hadn't realized." Joe chuckled faintly in the shadows. "I'm sixty-seven. Apropos of old age, I took the liberty of browsing through your Thucydides a while ago—have the same paperback edition at home, and very good, I'd say—may I?" He was already drifting to the bookshelves. For Joe, there was always a quotation. It seemed to Judge Mann that this was at least the magpie instinct at its noblest, for Joe did not gather them as random bright beads, but for personal use and to be shared. "It's from a speech of Pericles at the funeral of those who first died in the war—and I wonder sometimes if the Peloponnesian War wasn't as great a disaster as the latest? If the Greece of Pericles could have survived—well.... Here it is: 'As for those of you who are too old to have children, I would ask you to count as gain the greater part of your life, in which you have been happy, and remember that what remains is not long, and let your hearts be lifted up at the thought of the fair fame of the dead. One's sense of honor is the only thing that does not grow old.'"

Judge Mann thought: What of one who dies young?—a child hit by a car? Ann Doherty? What of one who dies young by act of the State, with no fair fame? "I think, Joe, we've become a more complex people."

"Aren't the essentials much the same?"

"Not quite. I think there's even a new humanitarianism, new in the last hundred and fifty years. In the time of, say, Edmund Burke, there was still officially approved slavery even in England, where they got rid of it before we did. Hangings as public entertainments. Cats burnt alive for fun on Guy Fawkes Day. The modern stomach pukes up that sort of thing. Alongside the mushroom cloud, the decade of insanity that was Hitler's bloom, the damned impersonal devices for butchering unseen millions by throwing a switch, you try setting up the way people actually live, or try to live, from day to day: there's a difference. If the difference means as much as I think it does, if we get through another hundred years without blowing up the planet, modern medicine should have a great share of the credit." Joe looked puzzled. "In a time when any bad sickness or injury was probably a death sentence, a general fatalism would be almost unavoidable, don't you think?"

"Mm, yes."

"Cruelty and beastliness got taken for granted. If we value life more now, it's because we know more about maintaining it and reducing its miseries. It doesn't have to be 'nasty, brutish and short.'"

"'One's sense of honor'—I liked that part."

"Other things don't grow old. Knowledge. What you learned as a child is with you at sixty-seven. Some kinds of love remain young, so long as the body can support our curious brains where love is born."

2

It is extraordinary that a system hoary with age, extravagant and wasteful to the highest degree, should not be supplanted by some method of getting at facts directly, and having them passed on by men who understand the controversies that they seek to solve.

CLARENCE DARROW, The Story of My Life

I

The wolves sat on their haunches, or stood, or crouched belly to earth with snouts on forepaws, while others maneuvered in the shadow beyond the tree-border of the clearing. On the other side of that border spread such a blackness as the mind imagines for the sea a mile down, yet here and there it was relieved by the gray of stone; everywhere, also, a coldness. Grayness in the clearing too; no flowers, nothing of the sun, but phallic-bodied toadstools and a ground-vine twisting a serpentine life among scattered rocks. Callista remembered being told that someone had died in there, in the blackness where no one could see it happen. The wolves would have eaten the body.

The wolves were old, possibly several thousand years old. "A geeolawgical malformation," said the child in her lap, speaking with precocious insight.

Callista moved her hand with its dangling bracelet over the fine black hair, tiny ear, bony shoulder, indistinct body. Her intention was a caress; likely the child knew it. She grew interested, not urgently, in learning the child's sex. What was the difficulty?—not a diaper. Apparently the little thing possessed only a negative pink blank between skinny thighs, like the crotch of a plastic doll. "The Merican Ideal," said the brat, rolling china-white eyes. "See?"

"Well, shut up, darlin'," Callista said. The wolves had crept closer during her preoccupation. Such was their habit (she had been told) if you neglected to look them straight in the eye. She watched them in contemplative pain resembling fear, and they continued moving, slowly, a stirring and gliding that seemed aimless until Callista understood one of them was being pursued, a thin bitch wolf, scar-faced, nearly black, with a crooked leg, devil-eyed but in her demoniac way pathetic. Callista was moved to remark: "Hasn't a chance."

And yet, poor beast, her own wickedness was plain. You could see the drip of poisonous saliva from her mouth, and the fetuslike thing impaled on a lower tooth—it couldn't be her own, so she must have stolen it somewhere. No wonder they were after her. Serve her right! (Or if the fetus was her own she ought to have taken better care of it)—therefore one could understand the primitive justice of it as the gray jaw of a pursuer hooked over her narrow rump. His hind legs massively firmed themselves. Callista could observe the sudden scarlet erection, sense the weight of the one lifted gray indifferent paw; but he did not swing about to rear up and clamp her loins, he merely held her in the angle of his jawbone and under that paw while others closed in to slit her throat—she womanly now lying on her back as a clean white fang thrust out of a surgical mask to run deftly down from the throat along the mid-line of the body, opening up the internal apparatus not for eating but for a better clinical view.

"Like a theater Oh-doctor," said the child's intelligent profile in Callista's arms. Someone said: "Gentlemen, this is the pancreas—a remarkably pancreative bitch to be sure, aware of nature and consequences. Notice the inadequate uterus, a primipara yes yes, but evidence of miscarriage early in term—and by the way, Potter's Field is bungfull of that type."

"I resent that," Callista said. Able now to pick up the child and walk away with her through the woods where all light was granite-gray, she did so, seeking her father to show him a long overdue report card on progress in pancreation. The little girl—naturally, a little girl, with that lyre waist and tumbling hair and dainty genital groove—said to her: "I am so sorry, Callista Johnson Blake, I have to stop here and paint a picture. Can I look at that thing?"

"I got my paw stuck in it."

"Irrelevant," said the little girl. "Incompetent Callista."

"All right," Callista said, and walked away from her through the grayness, uncertain whether she could find her father. He sat (she thought) behind a gray screen, by a lighted window. "Daddy, please!—"

Now the bracelet on her wrist had caught, snarled itself in a tangle of black vines, and Callista called: "Daddy, I can't seem to fix it. Can I go now?"

She could not go, because in front of her beyond the vines were the two doors, so very nearly alike, and someone—NOT Daddy, because Daddy NEVER said anything so unkind—someone said: "It's one or the other."

Callista tried then to scream with all her power: "Daddy! My back hurts—" nothing in her throat but a mumble, hardly even that, a scream in silence without breath: "Daddy! Please come—my back hurts—"

Callista sat up drenched in sweat that soaked her pajamas, and shivering. No relief at first, rather a frustrated anger, since in another moment her father might have been able to hear and answer. Comprehension then; reorientation; qualified relief—Is waking any better?

It was, of course. Steadier, anyway. The familiar exchange of selves: What I was in the dream, I am not; what I am, I was and was not in the dream.

The grayness before her eyes yielded the image of a cross, and a second horizontal bar grew visible—there all the time. A window, the same one through which yesterday, by straining on tiptoe to the limit of pain, she had succeeded in watching the wheeling of doves. The same effort now would give her the field of winter sky before dawn. If the rain had stopped, a few stars incorruptible, indifferent.

She did not rise, but pulled her feet under her for warmth and drew closer the scratchy antiseptic-smelling blanket. At this hour the cells were quiet. Another prisoner snored, probably the old woman who had been brought in drunk last night, her high defiant monotone of obscenities temporarily hushed.

A few months ago Callista would have reached for the notebook by her bed to write down what she could recapture of the dream. Edith had wondered if all that intensive reading in psychology wasn't too one-sided, introspective-making. "Maybe, Cal, you ought to be meeting people more and thinking less about their insides." But to meet one person is to meet a thousand selves; and it seemed to Callista that she had remained critical, as Edith probably feared she wouldn't. "Cal, I wish you had more counterbalance, too, for those psychologists in print. I've read them. They don't look out of the windows enough. Why not contrast them with the exact scientists?—who often have the same fault but in a different style?" Something in that.... "There isn't one of those boys, going back to Papa Freud himself, who wouldn't be improved by a refresher course in first-year biology."

And Edith had gone on to urge her, once more, to go to college next year—Callista, inwardly, very nearly ready to agree. She recalled the crystal April afternoon, and Edith standing, her back turned, looking out the studio's north window, the light a clear perfection on her red hair—why must Edith imagine herself homely? "Here—may I say it?—you're not quite far enough away from your Mom."

"A million light years."

"Of course, darling, but not in the flesh. And I keep thinking that right now maybe you ought to be farther from me." Edith shrugged and sighed. "For your sake, that is, certainly not for mine. Right now I could be a little too rich for your blood."

"No. If not for your sake, then not for mine."

Edith had come back to her then, standing with the great cool light at her back, looking down in one of her sudden moods of softness and gravity. "All right, Cal. But think about college for next fall?"

In agreement more than half sincere, Callista said: "I will—I'll think about it. You ought to marry, Edith."

"Narrow pelvis, distaste for an overpopulated world. I don't think it's my dish. I like men. The few that I've thought I'd like for keeps turned out to be guys who didn't want me, or at least not that way...."

But as for the reading in psychology, Edith's opinion remembered was still not quite acceptable. Freud and his successors still seemed to Callista like the best available guides into the nearest and most tormenting section of the jungle. One could rule out those who had fallen into worship of the sofa-pillow god Adjustment, and in doing so lost sight of the individual self or never noticed it. One could also remain critical of any guide, since the self must learn the sound of its own voice and discover its own country.

Yes—but all that was before Ann Doherty drank poison.

Once more laboriously, appearing to herself rather like a high school child hungry for a good mark, Callista attempted to review her knowledge of that night last August. Not only as it would be presented when she took the stand (as she must do whether Cecil thought best or not) but as it would be declared to the court of her own intelligence before that court could grant any acquittal. The face of Judge Mann intruded, however, again and once again, when her toiling revery reached the Blank, the lost moment, the miserable blur of amnesia where the crucial thing, the one answer Callista must have, was surely lying hidden. A quiet face, probably wise and certainly not vain, with the small chronic frown, the sense of cleanness and good health, the gentleness that Callista believed no face could wear if it were functioning as a mask—very well then: admit the face of Judge Terence Mann to this lonely privacy and make use of it.

Let the empty wall beside the barred door dissolve a little. Blur the flat plaster, doubtless reinforced within; it looks like stone and by daylight shows a few sad scribblings of the last tenant, not quite scrubbed away: Why can't they let me read what the wench wrote and criticize her bit of a drawing that might now be either a baby or a phallus?—blur that, and let the high walnut bench stand there. Give him the gown—black, please!—and the pencil, and the look, startled but not unkind, that he wore when the spiteful child said: "Which is the Clerk?" He would be less ghostly if now and then, there in the foggy opening of the wall, he could move his thin hand in the writing—could it possibly be drawing?—up there in the dignified isolation where even Mr. Delehanty, the Clerk-which-is-the-Clerk, couldn't watch it. All right now? Go ahead!

Begin with the talk, the flustered moment when Ann came into the apartment a little fogged up with wondering what it was all about. If she was wondering—hard to be sure, since dewy-eyed confusion was one of Ann's best faces: look-how-cute-I-am-when-I'm-thinking-about-something. Not that a talk with Nancy could ever decide anything except that she would continue certain of her own placid rightness. Your Honor, it had a bearing on my state of mind—and by the way, my cantankerous cattiness and unfairness are duly noted and admitted. I couldn't stand her. I never could stand her, even before—before Jim. I can't stand people who cuddle continually inside one ready-made idea like babies growing old in the crib. Yes—granted—they can't help it.

YOU ARE ADMITTING YOU HATED YOUR LOVER'S WIFE?

No, I'm not. I said I couldn't stand her. It's not the same thing. Wasn't that correct? A difficult point, but not too difficult for Judge Mann—he with his calm face, his busy pencil: without the black robe, in ordinary clothes, what would you take him for? Doctor? Scientist? Teacher? Besides, your Honor, on that night he was no longer my lover. That was the night of the 16th of August, with a hazy moon. He had been my lover from the first of May to the sixth day of July.

DO YOU WISH TO TESTIFY ABOUT THAT?

I think I should like to have the hazy moon admitted in evidence.

CALLISTA, WILL YOU NEVER UNDERSTAND THAT MOST HUMAN CREATURES ARE AFRAID OF LAUGHTER? GET TO THE POINT.

All right.

She could skim over the first half-hour of that talk. It had been mere sparring, Ann vaguely friendly on the surface, chattery, perhaps sensing just enough of trouble to want to hold it away. Then Callista had made a stumbling approach of blurted hints, Ann gradually comprehending because she had to, gradually perching nearer the edge of her chair, hands not in their usual flutter but folded and tightening in her lap, her lovely face abnormally attentive; listening—she had to, that once!—watchful and still. Not openly resentful or hating, never entirely distorted out of beauty. Incredible, but it must be that Ann had never guessed, and Jim had been a better actor than Callista dreamed. Ann had not even been hurt, really; not inside. Too secure. And then—"Poor Callie!"

Your Honor, I then said: "Oh, for Christ's sake!" and was sick to my stomach.

She lived again (nearly forgetting the ghostly, not unkindly seated figure in the blurred wall) her blundering rush for the bathroom with a handkerchief at her mouth. Ann had followed, of course. Callista had not quite slammed the door. Ann was out there, bleating, and then inside. "Callie, you mustn't feel so bad! Don't you see? God will forgive you. If you'll only take the right attitude!"

Yes, your Honor, I retract the word "bleating." "Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman"—Lear, Act Five, last scene, I forget the number of the scene, do you mind? She also put her arm around me while I was heaving, and—

"Let me alone!"

"Poor Callie! It's all right. Let me get you something."

"God damn it, Ann, go away!"

Ann had not gone away, not then. Callista remembered running from her again, into the bedroom, slamming that door and locking it, dropping on the bed unable for a while to move or cry out. The beginning of the blank, probably. A mental door slammed, but surely not locked. But mind is continuing action: it doesn't have doors, levels, thresholds. I know, your Honor, I know; I'm tired out, therefore thinking in stupid terms, because I wish I could go back to sleep. The blanket stinks, but I do wish—

WHY DID YOU ASK HER TO COME AT ALL, MISS BLAKE?

I believe I thought we might be able to talk of it like adults, but I never even got as far as telling her I was pregnant. When half the truth was out I saw it was no good. I'd forgotten her God had a blueprint for all these little difficulties. I goofed.... This business about doors: admittedly Freudian slanguage is treacherously pictorial, deceptively so, as Edith pointed out once, only, damn it, it FEELS like a slammed door. Not quite locked. Now may I—please—

Once upon a time there was an orange-gold-brindle kitten named Bonnie who lived (happily ever afterward) at Aunt Cora Winwood's flat in Greenwich Village, and she was sentimentally tame, small enough to curl up in two human palms. Which Aunt Cora liked to demonstrate, transferring the sleepy morsel to Callista's hands. They had called it "pouring the kitten." After Papa died, reason after reason why she mustn't go visit the Winwoods. Only three subway stops away, and Papa's own sister. "Tom Winwood drinks, dear, and is not reliable. I do not intend to have My Little Girl exposed to Anything Like That. Nor do I wish to be reminded, Callista, that your father approved of your going there. His judgment was not always—entirely—sound. Mr. Winwood was in fact largely responsible for certain aspects of your father's Condition. Now I think I need say no more." Yes, Mother, and No, Mother. Yes, Mother, now and forever you need say no more.

Eyes closed, cheek wincing at the blanket—but twitching over to the left side would be no better—Callista resolved not to remember nor count the days since she had last drawn down her lover's face to her, seen gaunt cheekbones grown large beyond vision above her, accepted the pressure of his desire and her own. And therefore, inevitably, remembered and counted the days. Sometimes his hands sweated and were cold.

Not the first time, that May-Day afternoon in the woods—why, then (at first) Jim had been almost pagan, natural, free, coming on her suddenly in the damp green hollow where spring growth was riotous. Startled and—yes, temporarily set free. He must have been, or he could not have acted with such quick certainty, tenderness and aggression blended for once in a most invincible rightness. In the very first moment, when he pushed aside the hemlock branch and saw her, his face had been comically legible as his mind abruptly discovered a woman in place of Homely-Blake-Girl-Who-Used-to-Live-Next-Door. To the best of her memory, Callista had not smiled; only sat waiting where spring sunlight lay scattered, random gold; waiting and looking up, needing words no more than a grown-up Bonnie would have needed them at the first cruel-kind approach of a yellow-eyed lover across a back fence. Still she had used words, a few, standing up, leaning back against the rough gray body of an oak, something foolish: "Oh—I'm afraid you've started up a dryad." He might not even have heard that, his hands pressing the tree on either side of her face, his growing need as obvious as the sunlight. I think he never so desired Ann. Such hungers (I know he thought this) are not for good women.

His first kiss had fallen in the thin hollow of her shoulder. He had carried her to a softness of hemlock needles. I think I helped him a little with my shorts. Pain of course, the wrench of the torn hymen a required crash of dissonance in the symphonic flow. I suppose I screamed—had my teeth in his shoulder for a minute—he understood that. Drowsy exhaustion afterward deeper than his—

Soles occidere et redire possunt:
Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda....

"What, Cal? What did you say? Was that Italian?"

"Latin. Thing—happened to remember."

"Oh."

She had come wide awake then: no Kotex of course, tiresome clinical necessity of a handkerchief for the unimportant bleeding—and had presently given him some sort of English translation that stumbled along on two left feet: "Suns may set and rise, but when our brief light is gone, the night is an eternal sleep." Jim hadn't liked any of that, much. The Latin, or the bleeding. That must have been the first time that the worry-wart crinkle appeared between his thick black eyebrows, the first time the poor guy had said: "Cal, darling, what the devil are we going to do?" I think I laughed at him, a bit. Not inside me of course.

SHOULDN'T WE (MY DEAR) GET BACK TO THE PEOPLE VS. BLAKE?

Very well, Your Honor, but I don't admit that the episode of adultery (terminology by T. J. Hunter) is irrelevant.

NOT IRRELEVANT (MY DEAR)—BUT WEREN'T WE DISCUSSING THE DEATH BY VIOLENCE OF ANN PIERCE DOHERTY?

All right. I lay frozen in my bedroom wishing the good little bitch would go away, and I DO NOT KNOW whether or not I heard what she was up to in the kitchenette. You're not helping, Judge. You're not helping me remember.

Eyes wide, she saw the dull wall had grown a little brighter with dawn, and wished that the man on the bench might appear as a genuine visual hallucination: it would be interesting. But he lived in the brain only; her outer eyes would not create him. I did hear her knock on my bedroom door, call my name, say something else stupid, go away with a tap of little high heels. Get it, Judge? This is the Blank, this is the thing you're not helping me remember:

If I did hear her take that brandy bottle out, if I wasn't too hysterical to remember what was in it and why, then—

(Spot of soup on Cecil's coat sleeve. Old, half-sick, drinking too much, his wife dead long ago and nobody to look after him—when he's dead who'll even remember what he was, the courage and the kindness? Cesspool known as the world—people are already forgetting Darrow, aren't they? and every other who's tried to clean it out, dig channels to drain away the filth of human stupidity?)

If I heard her and remembered what was in the bottle, then I murdered her. If I didn't, then as a potential but incompetent suicide I was merely maintaining a public nuisance. As a good man well known to you would say, it's that simple. But that is the Blank, Judge, and you're not helping me.

I therefore address my closing remarks to other gentlemen of Winchester County, specifically District Attorney Lamson and his subordinate Talbot Jesus-wept Hunter. I wish to apologize to them for laughing, being convinced that the noise just heard in my apartment was laughter and not rats. I have no wish to laugh and hurt your feelings, but it IS funny. Honest, isn't it funny how the judge and jury inside me (with some inconsequential imaginary help from that rather nice joe Judge Mann) can make me squirm and whimper like a gut-shot rabbit, while YOU CAN'T?

II

Edith Nolan watched the cherries wobbling on Maud Welsh's hat as the woman perched in the witness chair, a sparrow ready for flight. T. J. Hunter purred and soothed. "Your occupation, Miss Welsh?"

"Guess you could say housekeeper." The voice was dry, brittle as the woman's skin. Merciless morning light played on Maud's wrinkles; bad judgment had tricked her into using dabs of make-up.

On her two visits to the Shanesville house, Edith had been aware of Maud as not much more than a background flutter and squeak; Callista had filled Edith in on the family history that explained her. Long ago, long before Herb Chalmers and Callista's mother were married and while Herb's father Malachi Chalmers was still alive, Cousin Maud had been asked to come and keep house. She stayed. Father Malachi had been a Full Professor, also a sort of fin de siècle Great Man who wrote a book (or something) and whose memory, Edith gathered, served as a squashy but invincible paperweight holding down the remainder of Herb's polite life. Maud Welsh had evidently done much to keep that memory functional. By the power of the meek, and because she was useful and a cousin, she just stayed, a small household tyrant given to vigorous church attendance and good works, enlarging on the time when the Professor was alive as a golden age to keep his degenerate son in line, dusting and sweeping intensely at unseasonable hours, putting up interminable preserves, and carrying on a picayune war with Victoria Chalmers, a war of sniffles and grievances which (Callista said) both of them enjoyed so much that there was never any serious question of sending Maud on her way. In the cellar, said Callista, there were five six-foot shelves of plum jam alone—Maud's atomic reserve. Anyhow, she raised quiet Presbyterian hell if any of it was used. And Callista in the studio had drawn a pen-and-ink of Maud lurking all alone underground in a desolated world, grown obese (in garments meant for a thin woman) on a thick diet of plum jam. Edith had said: "Oh, damn it, Cal, after all!" and kept the sketch.

"Where are you employed at present, Miss Welsh?"

"Well, see, I'm kin to—"

T. J. Hunter showed half-amused worry wrinkles. "Just my question, please. You know, limit your answers to the question."

"Oh, you did tell me that, didn't you? Well, I live in with the Chalmerses, I mean Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Chalmers of Shanesville."

"Doctor—that's an academic degree, isn't it?"

"Uh—oh yes. A Ph. D." Her voice made it an ailment.

Hunter's morning sleekness annoyed Edith, who felt dowdy and unkempt after a bad night. Aspirin, insomnia, a dripping faucet in the bathroom, meaningless noises in the studio—probably mice.

"Is there a street number on the Chalmers house?"

"No, just Walton Road. Same's when The Professor was alive and we lived in Winchester, all you had to say—"

"Yes, I understand. Just limit your answers, please."

"I'm sorry. I'll try."

Judge Mann also was dark under the eyes, as if his sleep had been poor. He was not busy with his pencil. His ignoring of Hunter's wry glance was perhaps a way of saying: She's your chicken. Callista, drooping and still-faced, was again partly hidden by Cecil Warner, who looked a little better this morning with a fresh shave. The flowers last night, the rather elaborate too-expensive dining out, the antique gallantry—very sweet of him, Edith thought, and in his idiom not at all strange. He had wanted of course to talk about Callista, but at dinner and later, after toiling upstairs to the studio for drinks and quiet, he had hardly been able to, seeming happier when Edith carried the conversation away to more impersonal regions.

Edith twisted in her seat, winning a timid nod from Herb Chalmers, a calm glare from Victoria. Back of them was Jim Doherty, again with Father Bland. Jim did not acknowledge her glance either, but probably because he didn't see it, a man alone on an island and hurt, trying to interpret contradictory voices in the wind. Edith twitched her skirt back into place and settled herself to endure the first day of testimony.

"Are your duties as housekeeper fairly general, Miss Welsh?"

"Might say so. I do everything but heavy cleaning, we have a woman on Tuesdays for that. I cook, see to things."

"You go away on vacations?"

"Visit my sister in Maine two weeks every summer, two in the fall."

"You did so this year?"

"In June, not the fall. Because of the trouble, I thought I should stay, couldn't do less."

"Were you in Shanesville on Friday, August 7th of this year?"

"The 7th—oh, the picnic. Yes, I was."

"No, limit your answers, please. I just want to verify your presence on certain dates. Were you at Shanesville all day Sunday and Monday, August 16th and 17th?"

Arthritic claws clenched on her handbag. "Yes, I was."

"At about 10:30 Monday morning, August 17th, who beside yourself was present, to your knowledge, at the Chalmers house or on the grounds?"

"Just Herb, I mean Dr. Chalmers. I think Mrs. Chalmers'd gone to the supermarket in Shanesville, anyhow she wasn't home at 10:30."

"Where exactly were you at that time?"

"On the back porch fixing snap beans for lunch."

"What part of the grounds could you see from that spot?"

"Well, part of the lawn runs around the north side of the house, between it and the grove, and there's the vegetable garden in back."

"Is there a path through the grove?"

"Yes, from our house to Dohertys' place."

"Will you describe that path, please?"

"Just a footpath, tramped ground, pine needles." Maud Welsh swallowed. "Goes near a pond that's right about on the Dohertys' line."

"From the back porch could you see the opening of that path?"

"Yes."

"Did you see Dr. Chalmers at 10:30 or thereabouts?"

"Yes, he came out on the porch and we talked some. Weather mostly I guess. It was a scorcher, and real humid."

"What did he do after your conversation?"

"Went to look at the vegetable garden, then into the grove—not by that path though: he went into it at a place beyond the garden, where our brook goes under the trees. We were watching that brook on account of the drouth."

"When did you next see him?"

"A few minutes later. He came out of the woods, by the path that time, stumbled, shouted to me. I dropped the beans and went to him. I saw his clothes were wringin' wet, and he looked awful white. I helped him into the shade on the back porch. He talked kind of—"

"Just the substance of the conversation, please. That is, if he explained what had happened to upset him—did he?"

"Not—not to say explain, exactly. He said—"

"I think we'll just omit the conversation and go on to what you did next. Just what you did, you understand. After helping him into the shade, what did you yourself do?"

Clearly the biddy was already giving T. J. Hunter a case of jitters. Cecil Warner's crooked half-smile underlined the fact for Edith. Would he now be able to bring out poor Herb's first addled words, whatever they were, in cross examination? Would they help, if he did? And if he testified for the defense, what would Herb himself do about them? Last night Cecil had said, into the bright depth of his second Martini: "First law of the courtroom: never count on a jury's respecting logic."

"Well, sir, I went to the pond. His clothes wet, I knew it—"

"Just what you did, not what you thought. You went to the pond—wait a minute. We'll go back a little at this point, Miss Welsh. You were well acquainted with Ann Doherty—Mrs. James Doherty?"

"Well, I sh'd hope—I'm sorry, sir. Yes, I was."

"When did you first meet her?"

"In 1956. They moved in that year. Good neighbors, her anyway."

Edith saw the Old Man rising, and steady too, monumental. "May it please the Court, the defense is not concerned with the character of James Doherty, but I object in principle to that kind of innuendo."

"Sustained." The Judge's voice was cool. "The witness's last remark beginning with the words 'good neighbors' will be stricken."

Edith relaxed, aware of the primitive quality of her gratification: one for our side. Not that Jim belonged to the defense—Jim was lost, or trapped. All the same, the defense had spoken. She also recalled unhappily other words Cecil had spoken to that Martini: "Why did I order that thing? I was going to make it wine. Will you slap my fat wrist if I do it again?" He had made it wine, at the studio, and gone home sober. After, of all things, kissing her hand.

"Miss Welsh, was your relation to Mrs. Doherty one of close acquaintance? Casual? Just what was it?"

"Kind of close. We'd—oh, visit back and forth."

"When was the last time you saw Mrs. Doherty alive?"

"Two days before—I mean Saturday, August 15th. She came over for some bacon. She'd forgot it in shopping."

"Did you, for instance, call each other by your first names?"

"Ayah, did, matter of fact. I'm a mite old-fashioned, but we did."

"All right. Now back to the Monday morning. You went to the pond. What if anything did you find there?"

"She—in the water—I couldn't reach—"

"Miss Welsh, try to be impersonal, won't you? Remember the jury never knew these people. Now: when you came to the pond, just describing things impersonally, what did you see?"

"I saw—the body of a woman in the water."

"How was she dressed?"

"White blouse. Powder-blue skirt, blue jacket to match."

"Any head covering?"

"No. I saw her hair, that real pretty reddy-gold—auburn—"

"Could you reach the body from the bank?"

"No. I went in a few steps. A mud bottom—I—"

"Do you feel all right?"

"I'm all right. I touched her, the whole body turned—"

"We can spare you those details, I think. You turned the body until you could see the face, right? And knew positively that it was—?"

"It was Ann—Mrs. Doherty. I couldn't lift her out, anyway she was—cold. I went and called the state police, thought I should—"

"Did you talk again with Dr. Chalmers?"

"Yes, he was still on the back porch. I just said I'd called the police, said I'd go back to the pond, way they told me. So I did."

Maud Welsh, Edith thought, might have loved Ann in whatever flustered way she was capable of loving. For Edith the memory of Ann, met only three or four times, hung suspended in the past like an antique picture: something by Fragonard, say, in a frame of fussy gilt. Dainty, a bit undernourished—Ann pestered herself with diets now and then—and insipid. You couldn't quite imagine the angelic face distorted or transfigured by extremes of passion, or wrinkled by thought. With no overtone of spite, Callista had said once: "Ann isn't vain. I think she likes to share her prettiness in a nice way, the way you'd share a box of candy. She feels it was very pleasant of God to make her so pretty, and so going to Mass and keeping confession up to date like a good bank account, that's a matter of genuine gratitude as well as a sort of spiritual hygiene."

"While you waited for the police you didn't move or change anything?"

"No, sir, I just sat there and prayed for her."

Most of the jurors looked vaguely gratified. The faces of Terence Mann and Cecil Warner were politely blank as a church door on Monday morning. Edith could not see Callista, for Warner leaning forward at that moment shut her away. And T. J. Hunter at the prosecution's table was fumbling at a plastic bag.

"Miss Welsh, do you identify these garments as those that Ann Doherty was wearing when you found her body in the pond at Shanesville?"

"Yes, I—let me see the blouse again—yes, sir, I do."

"These stockings: can you identify them as the ones Mrs. Doherty was wearing?"

"Well, I suppose—I mean, that type, they look so alike."

"I'm putting my hand in this one, the right. Here's the heel. Now as near as I can manage it, my wrist is about where an anklebone would come—does that help you?"

"Oh, the hole! Yes, it's the same."

"When you lifted the body part-way from the water, you saw a hole like this one in the right stocking, correct?"

"Yes, I did."

"As a housekeeper, you know dressmaking and such things?"

"You could say so."

"Does anything about this hole strike you as unusual, peculiar?"

"It's not where you'd get a run. I can't see how you'd get it unless you bumped or scraped your ankle across something."

"When you found the body, was this hole visible above the line of a shoe, do you recall?"

"Oh—the right shoe was missing."

"Only the right one, you're sure?"

"Yes, she was wearing the left."

"This blue left slipper I'm now holding. Do you identify it?"

"Yes," said Maud Welsh, and fumbled at her face with a sodden handkerchief, while Edith's gaze swung in futile desperation to study the jury. Mrs. Kleinman was crying and, rather surprisingly, the cool black-haired beauty Dolores Acevedo. So could I. Instead, Edith looked down. She held away the irrelevant pathos of those garments on the State's table, the mud-spotted frilly blouse, crumpled blue skirt and jacket, the single water-streaked shoe, by contemplating the dark green tweed suit that she herself was wearing. Less than perfect. Needed pressing. A small spot, maybe watercolor paint, near the bottom of the skirt (well, hell!)—but having thought of it this morning, she could wear no other costume, for once last winter at the studio, in March or February, Callista had glanced up and remarked apropos of nothing: "Fact, I love that thing on you. Makes your thatch a sort of bonfire off in the green woods." And seeing it when she entered the courtroom, Callista had smiled.

"Miss Welsh, we'll go back to the evening of Sunday, August 16th, about nine o'clock. Where were you then and what were you doing?"

"Setting out on the front porch. It was dark enough so I'd put my sewing things aside some time before. I'd gone out there about eight, I guess, when the light was still good. Usually do."

"Did you see or hear anything you particularly remember?"

"Didn't see anything special. Heard a car stop, on Walton Road, out of sight of me behind the pines."

"Did you notice any glow from its headlights?"

"I don't think I did."

"Anything distinctive about the sound of that car?"

"Well, a buzzy thing, and of course I—"

"Was the motor shut off?"

"Not right away—oh, I remember something. A rattle, while the motor was running, loose metal, like a license-plate or something."

Edith saw Callista lean to Warner for a quick whispered conference; Cal seemed unexcited, but the Old Man was pleased. His back turned, Hunter would have missed it.

"Motor not shut off right away—how long did it run?"

"A minute, maybe, before the car door opened and shut."

"Can you establish the time you heard that car stop?"

"Yes; ten minutes past nine. Looked at my watch. You see, I wondered if the Chalmerses were expecting anyone, didn't think they were. Anyhow, all the talk you hear about juvenile delinquents in parked cars, naturally I—" her voice dwindled and came alive again briskly: "My watch runs good."

"Did you hear any other sounds beyond the pines, or maybe in the grove, after you heard that car door close?"

"No, not for half an hour."

"Is there an outside light on the Chalmers' front porch?"

"Yes, shines right down the driveway."

"Was it turned on that evening, and if so, when?"

"It was, about 9:40."

"Half an hour after the car stopped. Did you turn it on?"

"No. Herb, I mean Dr. Chalmers, came out on the porch about half past nine. He was the one turned it on—not right away though."

"Well—the car door closed at 9:10, then no sounds from that direction for half an hour. You did hear something then? If so, what?"

"Car door again, motor started, same buzzy noise, and then the car came into the driveway—it had just the dimmer lights on, I remember—and that's when Herb turned on the porch light. It was that little German car of hers, and she—"

"A moment. You're positive of the car? You read the license plate, or something like that?"

"No, sir, I never memorized her license number, but I knew the car, the shape, and the maroon color. Anyhow C'lista herself was driving it, I could see her face in the porch light, just as plain. Alone, she was."

"Did she call to you, or wave?"

"No, sir, just backed for the turn and scooted off again, direction of Winchester."

"Was Dr. Chalmers standing in the porch light?"

"We were both in plain sight, Mr. Hunter. That porch light, it's real bright, lights up everything."

"When had you last seen Callista Blake before that appearance in the driveway Sunday evening?"

"Evening before. Saturday. She came out to the house, about 8:30."

"An ordinary visit?"

"You never knew what was ordinary for Callista."

"Your Honor, I must object—the patience of the defense is not everlasting." Warner had risen; Edith could see the heavy tremor of his thick hand on the back of his chair. "This kind of spiteful side-remark—inexcusable."

"The witness's entire last remark will be stricken. Mr. Hunter?"

"Miss Welsh, just state briefly the circumstances of Callista Blake's visit to Shanesville Saturday evening."

"Well, I was on the porch same as the other time. Mrs. Doherty'd come over for some bacon—guess I said that. I wrapped some for her, then I remembered I wanted to show her an embroidery piece I was doing. I'd already taken my things out to the porch before she came. We went out there, were setting there when C'lista drove up to the house alone, walked right by us, not a word except to ask kind of sharp where her mother was. Ann had spoken—you know, 'Hello, Callie!' or something like that, but I don't believe C'lista answered her. Anyhow I told her, I said I thought her mother was upstairs somewhere, and she went on in. Slamming the door."

The defense can't object, Edith thought, because those are facts. That was Callista, no use denying it: the often needlessly cruel abruptness, indifference to social necessities, inability to suffer a fool with patience. On that black evening Maud Welsh and Ann had not even been fools, just harmless little people acting as usual at a time when Callista was burning, a tigress with an arrow festering in her side. And today, in smouldering cherished resentment, Maud Welsh was not harmless.

"Did you see Callista Blake again that evening?"

"No, went to my room before she left. I did hear her, talking to her mother upstairs in a wild sort of way."

"Wild? Do you mean quarreling? Loud?"

"No, sir, I give C'lista credit, she was never one to raise her voice, anyhow I wasn't eavesdropping, only Mrs. Chalmers' bedroom happens to be right over the porch where I was. Ann had gone home then and I couldn't help but hear her crying, Mrs. Chalmers I mean, and the stuff C'lista was saying about forgive me this my virtue."

"Miss Welsh—"

"Which didn't make any sense, besides being no sort of way to talk to her mother, only I wasn't eavesdropping."

Edith winced at the courtroom laughter. At any rate the nervous uproar, quickly subdued by Judge Mann's gavel, was probably directed more at Maud Welsh than Callista.

"Miss Welsh, we established that you were at the Chalmers house on August 7th, ten days before Mrs. Doherty's death. Does any particular event fix that date in your memory?"

"Picnic. The Chalmerses gave a picnic that afternoon."

"Informal?"

"Ayah. We do it three-four times every summer. Mostly friends of Herb's from the college, but that one was more for Shanesville folks. Hot dogs, hamburgers and like that. Croquet, pitching horse-shoes, badminton. Real informal."

"Do you recall who was present, August 7th?"

"Yes. Mrs. Phelps Jason—she's our nearest neighbor except the Dohertys. Mr. and Mrs. Wayne of Shanesville and their two kids Billy and Doris. Billy's nine, Doris going-on-twelve. Mr. and Mrs. Doherty of course. Mr. Judd drove out from Winchester. And C'lista did too."

"What time was the picnic?"

"From two in the afternoon to about five, five-thirty."

"Do you know when Callista Blake arrived?"

"Early, near two I think."

"When did she leave?"

"Didn't see her go. Noticed her car was gone at four-thirty."

"How was she dressed, if you recall?"

"Green blouse, brown skirt I think. Anyway I'm sure of the green blouse, she was partial to it for some reason."

"Any special accessories that you recall?"

"Big shoulder-strap bag. I remember thinking how those things are sort of out of style, but C'lista liked that one because it was roomy, she could carry her field glasses in it. Partial to Nature and stuff like that—bird watching."

"Did she have her field glasses that day?"

"Didn't see them, Mr. Hunter. Just the bag."

"Are there bushes, scrubs, likely places for birds or nests, near the part of the grounds where you had that picnic?"

"Yes. Back of the lawn there's a flower garden, and beyond that a sort of half-wild area. Things planted there that more or less take care of themselves—ground-cover, perennials. Pair of catbirds nested there last summer, likely others."

"Are you familiar with the perennials in that wild spot?"

"With some of them." Maud Welsh cleared her throat and swallowed. "Day-lilies, myrtle—monkshood."

"You have seen monkshood growing there, with your own eyes?"

"Yes. Mrs. Chalmers pointed it out to me once, wondering if she ought to keep it, spite of the pretty flower it has. Yes, it grows there—I mean it did last August. Of course the police—"

"Yes, never mind that. On the afternoon of August 7th, did you see Callista go into that wild garden?"

"I did."

"Was she then wearing that shoulder-strap bag?"

"She was."

"Was she alone?"

"Yes."

"How long did she remain there?"

"I don't know for certain. Half an hour later Mrs. Chalmers wanted her to lend a hand with the grill. I called her. When she came—which she didn't right away—it was from there."

"Was she still alone?"

Edith thought: She is always alone, Mr. Hunter. Clinging to that fool Jim Doherty, she was alone. The one time when she cried in my arms, she was alone.

"She was alone."

"Your witness, Mr. Warner."

III

Judge Mann watched Cecil Warner approach the witness chair like an old bull: heavy step, flaring nostrils, lowered head, eyes communicating nothing but a brooding truculence. He halted ponderously, an old bull arriving at the dubious barrier of a fence, and—just stood there. Judge Mann's pencil drifted across the scratch pad in a rapid script not much like his normal writing:

Forgive me this my virtue;
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

He grew fully aware of the writing with a partly pleased astonishment: almost a true dissociation. His brother Jack might be interested; he would save the page. It must have been three years since he had last read Hamlet.

He understood also, waiting out the darkness of Warner's silence, how his own self might become a battleground. Why fool himself? It had already become one. The deeper occasions of the battle, the relative wrong and right, his true position within it, not clear. More light! He had been assuming two nights ago, and less certainly last night, a mental clarity he had not yet won. Then look at it this way: the assumption had been a folly and a vanity and a failure in self-appraisal; therefore dismiss it. Accept for the moment simply the fact of inner conflict; and then what? His pencil hand stirred and advanced:

Sit you down,
And let me wring your heart: for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff....

The conflict itself was no illusion. He could oblige his mind to draw somewhat apart and provide illusive imagery for what was no illusion; an imagery, sharp enough, from happenings fourteen years ago that had been (in their time) no illusion. Northern Luzon, 1945: all they'd done that night was drop a few daisy-cutters. Why should he remember that night and not some of the livelier ones? Perhaps because his mind had been rather detached then too, his body not much scared, not much concerned. A darkened earth, flares, smoky glimpses more deceiving than dark, thunder of .75's and mad red flight of tracers; long drone overhead of the angry bug evading crossed searchlight swords, or trying to—too high for flak; we hadn't got the poor bastard. And a sudden sense in Sergeant Terence Mann of the medics, who shortly before had been annoyed mostly at the interruption of a poker game with himself three bucks ahead, of the humanly vast forces involved, the courage and hate and fear and death and love with which the stars are not concerned at all. Trying for the supply dump near Dagupan, all Joe had got was the backside of a church and two buffalos. Above, behind, including all, a sense of the flow of time that renders every victory and every defeat a part of eternity. And every moment of compromise ...

"Miss Welsh, were you with the Chalmers family in 1951 when Dr. Herbert Chalmers married Victoria Johnson Blake?"

"Yes."

"Did you attend the wedding?"

"I did." She was biting her words now, not chattering.

"In what month were they married?"

"July."

"When did you first meet the defendant, Callista Blake?"

"Guess it was August that year, 1951." Warner studied his shoes. "Well, I know it was, because C'lista was away in girls' camp while they went on a honeymoon, me with the house on my hands—" she clamped her mouth shut, glaring. Mann found it possible to be sorry for the woman. Warner's massive pauses were tough on any witness.

Warner said at last, mildly: "Thank you." The back row idiot briefly giggled. "Callista was not present at her mother's wedding?"

"Certainly wasn't."

"Why 'certainly,' Miss Welsh? She was eleven that year."

"Because you never knew when she'd throw a tantrum."

"You consider that unhappy children should not have tantrums?"

Hunter declared: "Improper question, if I ever heard one."

Mann thought: Sorry, Bud! "The Court will rule it admissible in cross-examination. Answer the question, Miss Welsh."

"Well, I don't know what she had to be unhappy about, with—"

"Miss Welsh, may I have a responsive answer to my question?"

"Haven't a notion what the question was all about."

"It may be too difficult. I withdraw it. You have known Miss Blake, by sight that is, for eight years. During that time, has your relation with her ever been cordial?"

"Naturally I tried to put up with—"

"I will repeat the question. During the eight years since 1951, has your relation with Callista Blake ever been cordial?"

On the doodle-pad a freshly drawn bull contemplated a tiny spinster—angular long skirt, hat with cherries, defensive umbrella. No fence between her and the beast. Mann drew one, post-and-rail, the top rail fallen. He felt rather proud of the bull: a fine solidity in the foreshortened barrel body; grandeur and melancholy. He sketched in grass and bending daisies to answer the curves of huge elongated scrotum and ponderous sheath. In the right foreground he added a miniature rabbit bundled up in a black gown. Cecil might enjoy the damned thing, on some relaxed evening far in time from the present hour.

"I don't—I don't understand the question."

"Very well—I withdraw it. Is that wrist watch the one you were wearing on the evening of last August 16th?"

"Yes."

"Does it have a luminous dial?"

"No, I don't want radium and things in my system."

"But last August 16th, in the deep twilight after nine o'clock, you could easily read it?"

She smirked, recovering. "Lights were on in the living-room."

Judge Mann watched Hunter's faint smile appear and fade.

"Thank you for remembering that now, Miss Welsh. Is it your custom to look at your watch when anything captures your interest?"

"I explained why I did that when I heard the car."

"Yes, you were concerned about juvenile delinquency."

"I didn't say that!"

"Why, I thought I heard a reference to the menace of juvenile delinquents in parked cars."

"Oh, that—dare say I was thinking out loud."

"I see. Thank you. Had you other reasons to check the time?"

"Well, I wondered if the family was expecting C'lista, so I—"

"Miss Welsh, in direct testimony you said you wondered if the family was expecting anyone, no names mentioned. Then you admitted this deep concern about juvenile delinquents in parked cars. Now we learn the family might have been expecting Callista. All three statements true?"

"Oh, what's all the fuss? I knew it was her car."

"But preferred not to say so in direct testimony. All right—how did you know it was her car?"

"I explained that. Loose license plate, and that buzzy noise."

"You did testify to hearing something like a loose license plate. You didn't say Miss Blake's car had one."

"Well, it did, and I heard it."

"Miss Welsh, a hypothetical question. If, when the defense opens, you learn that Miss Blake's Volkswagen had a garage check-up on Friday, August 14th, and that the license-plate holder was repaired at that time, would you, if recalled under oath, still claim you heard that plate rattling on Sunday evening, August 16th?"

The passion of resentment simmering behind the woman's blinking eyes was a kind of sickness. Once or twice she opened her lips without sound; then: "All I got to say, it wasn't natural how men went crazy for her—not even pretty—any man, garage man, anything in pants—"

Mann thought sharply: Okay, that's torn it. He saw Warner turn slowly, facing the bench. "Your Honor, I respectfully request that this witness be held in contempt of court."

Mann flipped the doodle-pad face down. He said: "There will be a ten-minute recess. Counsel in chambers, please. The jury will remain." Entering the dingy retreat off the courtroom, he was aware of T. J. Hunter standing aside to let Warner precede him. "You don't want to toil up to the sixth floor, do you? I suppose I could locate a nip of something."

Warner said: "No, Judge, I'm too fat to ride that thing you call an elevator. It busts, I'm liable for have-his-carcass."

"All right—shouldn't anyway. We'll settle for a smoke."

Warner sat down, an old man and weary, impersonally accepting the impersonal courtesy when Hunter snapped a lighter for his cigarette. His fat hand waved aside the curling fantasy of smoke between him and his enemy. "Okay, T. J., I think you asked for it. Why couldn't you establish corpus delecti with Herb Chalmers? Could've, no sweat."

"Grab off a natural defense witness when I don't have to?"

"What makes you think I want Herb?"

Hunter chuckled and strolled to the window. "Just fishing."

Mann asked: "What's your view, T. J.?"

The back of Hunter's neck was calm. "Just among us girls, Welsh certainly goofed. Honest, I sweated blood trying to give her the rudiments of courtroom behavior. Seems it was mostly hooting down a rain-barrel."

Warner said: "They goofed the same way over Joan of Arc."

Hunter swung around and exclaimed: "After all, Cecil!"

"No comparison between the principals," Warner said, "except age and sex. You admire Joan? I don't, much. But there's an obvious parallel between twentieth- and fifteenth-century attitudes toward the accused maverick. Takes more than five hundred years for the human race to learn anything important." His slow voice was acquiring a snarl. "You know, T. J.—you know what the newspapers have been doing. Far as Welsh is concerned, I don't care a fractionated brass-bound tinker's fart whether she's held in contempt or not. I do care about keeping this thing from turning into a witchcraft trial. I'm not sitting peaceful on my fat ass, understand, while they turn my girl into a succubus."

Hunter said stiffly: "I think you could trust me to prevent any nonsense of that kind." Warner studied him, dark eyes searching and sad in their slightly yellowed and bloodshot fields of white. Hunter went on: "Your hypothetical was a dilly, by the way. The defense introduces testimony at this point? You want the State to pack up and go home?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Fine! You going to claim the Volkswagen wasn't there?"

Warner shook his head indifferently.

Mann said: "T. J., I still want your view, on Welsh. I'd be half minded to throw the book, only I'm not sure Welsh is that important."

"Well, I don't think she is, Judge. But I'm sort of indifferent. The facts of her testimony will remain with the jury, and that's all that concerns me. The contempt thing—important to the Court, and to me as a lawyer, but not so important to People vs. Blake."

"For a prosecutor," said Warner, "you're curiously frank, T. J. Now that she's squeezed in her 'anything-in-pants' remark, you're content, you can go fishing—that's what you're saying."

"Look here—"

Judge Mann struck the desk lightly with the flat of his hand. "Cecil, do you have many more questions for her?"

"Not many, Judge. Ought to be done in a few minutes, before one o'clock anyhow."

"Hope so—I'm unjudicially hungry and I'll be glad to see the last of her. I'm not holding her in contempt, Cecil, unless she pulls another one. It's not quite justified, I'm not even too sure of the ground, and—" he rubbed out his cigarette, glancing at the somewhat frozen face of T. J. Hunter—"I particularly don't want to make a martyr out of her. Let's get back on the job."

Maud Welsh's rigid face told him the ten minutes of anticipation might have been punishment enough. He had not intended that: merely a courtroom happen-so. "Miss Welsh, contempt of court is a serious thing. It must be, to preserve respect for law. For willfully disregarding the instructions given you about limiting your answers and avoiding prejudicial comments, you could, if this court so ordered, be severely punished." There she goes sniffling, and to some of the jury she'll have the face of Mom. "It is not the present intention of the Court to hold you in contempt. You are being let off with a warning, for the last time. Consider yourself fortunate. Mr. Warner?"

"Can you be certain it wasn't her daughter you heard?"

"Yes. Their voices are mighty different."

"You had heard Mrs. Chalmers cry before?"

"Yes, sir, now and then."

"And Callista?"

"She never cried."

"Not even as a child, having tantrums?"

"No, she'd just go white and—walk away, or—is it all right to say this?"

"Go ahead."

"Walk away, or sort of run away sometimes, I mean off into the woods or like that, and practically have to be dragged home. I thought it was—can I say this?—I don't want to say anything wrong, I—"

"Go ahead, Miss Welsh."

"Well, just—I thought it was real unnatural, that I never heard Callista cry."

"No further questions."