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."

IV

Callista sampled and pushed aside the inoffensive meal. The state of New Essex was feeding her well. Treating her well too—a star prisoner. A room of her own and, now that the trial had begun, meals in private, on a tray no less. No utensils of course except a spoon. She rose and performed the infinite journey of three steps from the barred door to the barred window a few times: shorten stride and you could make it come out to four steps. Best room in the hotel, southwest exposure 'n' everything—gee! She adjusted the blanket on her cot to sharp military precision: it would make Matron Flannery happy. A pity to sit down now and spoil all that wonderful work. Anyway Biddy Flannery would be along in a minute for the tray, with her usual not unfriendly clash of keys; then back to the courtroom for the afternoon.

Callista gazed at the flat-faced wall where smears of old writing had been not quite obliterated—for everything in this building was more than a little tired, peevish, ineffectual. Indifferent mop or washrag took a swipe at the graffiti, to keep busy; the law took a swipe, the best it could manage, at the perennial smears of human confusion, dishonesty, violence. High up—the woman must have been tall—enough remained of a lipstick inscription to indicate a heart symbol enclosing a pair of names: DAVY & ——: the other name had defied Callista's months-long effort to decipher it. She tried again now, bemused, and once more gave it up, although somehow this time she did feel a bit nearer success. It was exasperating as a sore tooth.

She gave up also another effort to interpret the almost destroyed black-pencil picture below the heart, probably someone else's contribution. A thick phallus not quite erect, a baby with the facial features gone, perhaps just a round-petaled flower or geometric design? No use. Call it a Rorschach blot—but even for that, the months of seeing it had made it impossible to see it at all. Callista turned away, glancing with an amusement that held the warmth of gratitude at the third and last writing—off in the corner, tiny and squeezed, it had almost escaped the washrag's faint assault, and still transmitted a cocky, not too cryptic message: WE DID IT IN A SNOBANK ON LINCAN'S BIRTHDAY 1957.

In the death house too they would feed her well and treat her very kindly, within the meaning of the statute. Callista examined this, perplexed, trying to recall what form of the auxiliary verb her thought had used. Did the gray cells say WILL or WOULD?

She journeyed again, to the window that for all its cramped ugliness was a friend, because of its messages of night and day, cloud, sunlight, and the wheeling of doves. And returning, she made a discovery, with the suddenness of sunshine. She could read the red writing up there on the wall, the other name. Amazing that it could have eluded her so long:

DAVY & ME.

Bewildering too the quick starting of tears to her eyes. Why, I never cry. Well—once, when Edith helped me talk.

DAVY & ME.

"This helps too, dear." She must have said that aloud, for the cell was alive with the memory of a private sound. They couldn't take away the Me, could they? Shoplifter, whore, drunk, another murderer maybe? Doesn't matter. Went out of here to die, get drunk, go back to work in a cathouse or pushing dope—I don't care. They couldn't quite do it to you. Down the corridor, keys rattled. They couldn't take away the Me. Ever.

3

Once a trial judge or jury has determined, on conflicting evidence, a question of fact, that determination is final. It is binding upon the appellate courts. If there has been an error of law the defendant has a remedy by appeal. If there has been an erroneous finding of fact the defendant has no remedy. He is forever bound by the finding of the trial judge or of the jury.

Now it should be obvious that trial judges and juries aren't that good.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER, The Court of Last Resort

I

Cecil Warner remembered the night, a corridor of hours, a windy darkness of winter streets, a homecoming to solitude and too much thought and the uncertain consolation of sleep.

After leaving Edith's studio a whim had urged him to walk home instead of calling a taxi. By that time the rain had stopped, the winter pavements were damp and harmless. It would have been pleasant to drive alone out of the city on quiet side roads, perhaps winding up in a suburban bar for an hour's casual amusement. Not so long ago he would have done it, but last year, after a few near-disasters, he had ruled out driving as too great a hazard for aging faculties, and sold his car: from there on the world could wait on him a little, a good enough arrangement so long as you can pay for it.

Walking was good for you, they said—in moderation, of course. Ten blocks, say half a mile and none of it uphill, from Edith's studio to the small old house on Midland Avenue that for the last twenty-five years had grown wrinkled and out of date along with him, dignity and seediness of antiquity together; maybe you couldn't have one without the other. Yes, a nice walk, colored by a grudging admission that there was no great harm in doing what they said was good for you, so long as you did it in moderation. A winter wind has many voices, not all of them edged by grief.

The best part of that walk was the long block past Trinity Church and its tiny cemetery where time had pushed many headstones aslant and long since worn down all grief to a stillness. No large extent of time really: Trinity was built in 1761, said its cornerstone: a mere two centuries, enough to give the more respectable ghosts the privilege of wearing three-cornered hats. In Trinity churchyard they were bound to be respectable and, through no fault of their own, quaint, like George Washington's wooden false teeth. Leaving there, crossing Quire Street, you passed too suddenly into a splash of gaudy twentieth-century glare, the uptown movie house. Cecil had gone by it last night when the theater was about to close, a late crowd spilling away presumably cheered by a long gulp of Bardot bosom and eye and flank. Then two decent residential blocks, other detached houses like his own yet virtually unknown to him, keeping their own counsel in the quiet street. And the three front steps that needed paint, the key, the cantankerous welcome from the squeak of the front door which could have been fixed in a minute by the drop of oil it wasn't going to get.

There was the not quite musty flavor of the little front hall: Cecil didn't like it but would have disliked its absence. At every homecoming there was the confidence, as he stumped into the shabby living-room, that Mrs. Wilks would have left everything just so before retiring to her world upstairs, except that of course she'd never learn not to put match-cards in ash trays. Some time the long sorrow that Mrs. Wilks lived with upstairs—a husband paralyzed for twenty years, unable to walk or feed himself, not quite able to die—would arrive at an end. Like all sorrow. Cecil had not gone up last night for his usual visit and chess game with Tom Wilks. Too late; too tired.

Now in the bleak courtroom remembering the night, relaxing in his chair beside Callista, still feeling thirty cents' worth of virtue for having resisted the siren voice of mince pie for lunch, Cecil Warner remembered—suddenly, like a reward of effort—one of the answers his mind had given him during the hours before he could sleep. Perhaps it was the only answer worth remembering out of many. There had been many, some no better than mumblings of fatigue. That one had come to him by the mind's magic when the night beyond his window was in a moment of supreme clarity and peace, and Trinity's delicate chimes had struck the morning hour of two o'clock, and the wind died: The defense never rests.

The air was still today, pure and sharp, the sky a clean splendor above the smear of the city. Something of it could be felt through the high eastern window behind them. Callista would have looked upward into that strong blue of infinity through the detention cell bars. She liked the brilliant days. They would enrich her artist's vision, he supposed, revealing depth and detail that duller eyes saw without seeing. A pleasant day, a good (light) lunch, and T. J. Hunter at the moment engaged in nothing more harmful than getting a police technician's map of the Shanesville properties admitted in evidence. A fine map, laboriously honest. Nothing required right now except an outward appearance of grumpy indifference suitable to the Old Man.

His gaze passed over the Twelve, the ordinary, respectable, appalling faces, and turned aside. He studied his blunt, unskillful hands, examining the blur of an old scar. A small racing unthinking motion of Terence Mann's fingers up yonder reminded him of the last occasion when he had spent an evening at Terence's apartment. Quite a while ago—July, he thought, anyway some time before Callista's trouble. A hot evening, Terence reviewing some of his Army habits of speech when the old building's air-conditioning unit goofed.

Terence that night had been in a Chopin mood; temporarily fed up with Mozart, he said, the weather too hot for Brahms. In passing Cecil wondered what the little guy would be working on these days. Something certainly; Terence liked to keep two or three compositions currently at concert pitch—no reason, he claimed, except that it satisfied a whim. The reason could lie deeper than that. With only a listener's knowledge, Cecil felt that music might have lost something important when Terence Mann went into the law. Something held back, possibly some old unhappiness or inhibition, when Terence said his keyboard ability—and he would have to call it that, instead of talent or spark or musicianship!—fell far enough short of the top so that it wasn't worth exploiting for more than private enjoyment.

Get with it, Old Man!

Spotless law and order was taking the oath. Sergeant Shields of the State Police would never allow any dust on the sparkle of his shoes; undoubtedly he could dissect his .32 and reassemble it in the dark. Yet he was also young, and human. A sidelong glance gave Warner Callista's face, composed, neutral. As usual, too remote. During the police testimony, the jury might not resent that too much, might vaguely understand her need for self-control. Later on he must make another attempt to persuade her that you can't just brush off the human race—not when it's after you.

"Your full name and occupation, please?"

"Samuel Arthur Shields, Sergeant, New Essex State Police. I have been stationed at Emmetville Barracks for general duty since January of last year."

"How were you employed on Monday morning, August 17th last?"

The Sergeant's notebook rested in his hand; Warner guessed he was not likely to need it. "I was operating State Police Car No. 48 on highway patrol between Shanesville and East Walton."

"Is Car 48 equipped with two-way radio?"

"Yes, sir."

"In your own words—I believe you don't need any coaching in the requirements of legal testimony—in your own words, Sergeant, please state what you did and what you observed, in line of duty, at or about 10:30 and subsequently, that Monday morning, August 17th."

"At 10:36 I received a radio call directing me to proceed to the house of Dr. Herbert Chalmers on Walton Road south of the junction with Summer Avenue, in Shanesville township. I was informed that the body of a woman, apparently drowned, had been discovered in a pond near that house. No further particulars were given me by radio. I drove to the site immediately, arriving at the Chalmers house at 10:40. I knocked, received no answer, saw no one until I walked around to the back. There I found Dr. Herbert Chalmers, who is and was then known to me by sight as a member of the Shanesville Presbyterian Church, to which I belong. He was sitting on the top step of the back porch, and appeared to be ill or in shock: white, breathing with difficulty, leaning against the porch rail with his eyes shut. When I spoke to him he roused, recognized me. I learned from him that he had found the body of a woman, whom he named as his neighbor Mrs. James Doherty, in a pond in the woods bordering his land. He pointed out a path into the woods."

"Will you indicate it on this map for the jury, Sergeant?"

"Yes, sir. Here it is." Warner watched him from under the famous lowered brows. A good boy, decently ambitious, standing by the map's tall frame, a brisk young schoolteacher interested in facts. He stayed there erect and impressive as he went on talking: "Dr. Chalmers mentioned a heart condition, saying he didn't feel able to go with me to the pond; afraid of blacking out, or words to that effect. He told me his housekeeper, Miss Maud Welsh, had also seen the body and had gone back to the pond after telephoning my headquarters. I followed the path to this spot here, where you see a short spur path leading to the water. There Miss Welsh saw me, from the pond-side, and called to me. I asked her to stay where she was, since I had noticed footprints and other marks that ought not to be disturbed until examined. These marks were all in this area here, along the spur path; none on the main footpath where the ground was quite hard and dry." He stepped back to the witness chair. And nothing, Warner thought, would ever influence or shake the boy except more facts, the sharp and tangible truths that you can weigh or photograph or look up in a textbook. And yet the continuing actions of the mind, the swift and dark events gone in a moment, misunderstood or "forgotten" or never glimpsed at all: Those are facts too, Sergeant: did you know?

"Go on, please."

"I went to the pond along the undisturbed ground at the side of the spur path. In the pond, submerged, I saw the body of a woman dressed in a light blue skirt and jacket and white blouse. Later in the day I measured the pond and found the maximum depth to be forty-two inches; a high-water line on the banks indicated that when full the greatest depth would be about five feet. On August 17th, however, the inlet was a mere trickle, the outlet practically dry—there's probably some underground drainage. Before stepping into the water I saw that the woman's arms were somewhat extended, and the hands were not clenched as I have seen them in other drowning cases."

"You have seen a number of them, Sergeant?"

"I have, sir. Boating, swimming accidents, a few suicides."

"You stepped into the pond?"

"I did. On lifting the body I found that rigor was complete, and post-mortem lividity noticeable in the face and hands."

"Please explain those terms for the jury, will you?"

"Rigor mortis is the stiffening that takes place, usually from two to six hours after death, and may continue from twelve to forty-eight hours. Post-mortem lividity is a discoloration caused by the settling of the blood to whatever parts of the body are lowest when the heart action ceases."

"Did that trickle into the pond create any current?"

"No, sir, hardly a ripple. Too small."

"Later on did you check the temperature of the water?"

"Yes—evening after dark. The weather that Monday evening was about like the evening before. The pond water at 9 P.M. Monday was at 68 degrees Fahrenheit."

"Was the water clear?"

"Some roiling, before I stepped in. The bottom has a layer of dead leaves and silt. Miss Welsh told me she had gone into the pond—her skirt was wet. I'd also noticed (I forgot to say) that Dr. Chalmers' slacks were quite wet, consistent with what he told me. The body was that of a woman in the early twenties, of slight build, about five feet two. Since there was no question of life remaining, I let it back into the water, to disturb the situation as little as possible before examination by my superiors. The foam on the lips was noticeable, but less than one expects to see in a drowning."

"What is the significance of foam on the lips, in a drowning?"

"Well, sir, a medical expert—"

"Just drawing on your own experience and police training."

"Well, it means a struggle for air. Air and water mix with the secretions of nose and throat."

"So, if a body not breathing enters the water, you won't see foam?"

"That's correct, sir."

"And in this case there was some, but less than normal?"

"Sir, I don't think I'm qualified to say what would be normal."

"Well, again, Sergeant, I just want to draw on your police experience. You said, I think, 'less than one expects to see'—correct?"

"Yes, sir, I can go that far, but it's only a—a layman's opinion. I've been with the state police only three years altogether. In that time I haven't seen any large number of drowning cases."

Warner suppressed a smile. T.J. should have known better than to push this man. His retreat was quick and graceful. "Quite right, Sergeant, and maybe I was a bit out of line. Would you now please describe the elevations of the ground in that area? I notice our map omits that."

The Sergeant looked pleased to be on his feet again; he might have been happier still with a pointer and a blackboard. "Here, where the spur path begins, the main footpath is going over a rise of ground. The spur itself runs level for about half its distance, then there's a ten-foot slope to the pond, rather steep." Hunter seemed bothered, perhaps getting more than he wanted. "That slope is the only one in the area you could call steep. Elsewhere the ground slopes toward the pond more gradually."

Yes, it was steep. Falling there, in the hazy night, sick with a cruel poison, Ann Doherty could easily have rolled down that short slope into the water. In cross-examination, this level-minded fact-lover would willingly say so. Sick—Warner's body involuntarily shuddered. He felt suffocated, and as though he too were falling in a darkness, nothing upholding him but a single thread of belief: Callista had no criminal intent. A belief that could never be demonstrated as a truth; never at least by the sort of demonstration that would be rightly, intelligently demanded by such a man as Sergeant Shields. No criminal intent: how do I know? No answer except the legally unacceptable and meaningless answer of trust, friendship, insight, love: I know because I know.

Sergeant Shields cheerfully continued: "The Chalmers house is on another moderate rise of ground, and going toward Dohertys' on the main footpath from the beginning of the spur, there's a gradual slope as far as the place where the pond's outlet crosses the path—just a little ditch you step over; then another slight rise to the Doherty house. The outlet runs fairly straight through the grove—just barely enough drop of the ground level to carry it into the culvert near the fork."

"Thank you." Much pleasanter for T.J., Warner guessed, to have the blocky sandy-haired athlete sitting down. "After letting the body back in the water, what did you do next, Sergeant?"

"I made a superficial examination of the ground. Then with Miss Welsh I went back to the main path, and requested her to stay there in sight of the pond while I went to report. After doing so, I returned to the edge of the woods and remained with Miss Welsh, in sight of the pond, until others arrived: Lieutenant Kovacs, the photographer Sergeant Peterson, Trooper Walter Curtis who brought equipment for making plaster casts, and Trooper Morris. The coroner's physician Dr. Devens arrived soon, and the undertaker's vehicle from Shanesville. However, Dr. Devens directed that the body be taken to the Winchester City morgue, where I understand there are better facilities. Trooper Morris and I lifted the body from the water, and Dr. Devens made a brief examination at the scene. We then placed the body in the vehicle, Dr. Devens gave his car keys to Trooper Morris, and went himself in the undertaker's vehicle. Trooper Morris followed with the doctor's car."

Smart and careful boy. It might still be necessary for T.J. to soothe down little Dr. Devens if he got snippy about testifying to the same technicality. Common sense says: Who's going to switch bodies on the doctor? The law says: All right, but let's just make sure nobody does. Not for the first time, Warner thought: Granted, the law is an ass; but better listen when it brays. Sometimes it's right.

"Go on, Sergeant."

"Under Lieutenant Kovacs' orders, I examined the pond's banks and the immediate area, with Peterson and Curtis. Eliminating the marks made by Dr. Chalmers, Miss Welsh and myself, only two sets of footprints were found near the pond. Mrs. Doherty's were identifiable by the high-heeled print of one shoe, and the stocking print of the other foot. The second set was size six, low-heeled, blunt-toed, the right shoe showing a slightly different sole-pattern from the left. I assisted Trooper Curtis in making casts of the prints, and initialed them as he did. Mrs. Doherty's footprints ended on the spur path, at the top of that slope I mentioned. Where they ended, a blurred mark on the fairly soft ground suggested that someone had fallen. It was not a very clear mark; all it really indicated was some recent disturbance of the earth. And from my experience of woodcraft and trail-reading—I think I can honestly claim a bit of expert knowledge there, by the way—I would say that all the marks from the beginning of the slope to the edge of the water were quite indefinite; that is, I think they could be interpreted in several different ways, all except one."

"And that one?"

"A heel-print belonging to the second set, the low-heeled set, superimposed on the blurred mark where someone had apparently fallen. And this mark told nothing except that whoever made it set her heel—that is, the heel of a low shoe, size six—on top of the other mark."

"Only one heel-mark?"

"Only one. The sole, and the other foot, must have rested on the hemlock needles and other loose stuff. The ground was only partly bare."

"Could you tell whether the person was standing or squatting?"

"Not for certain. I'd say standing, but I could be wrong."

"Where else were the footprints of that second set?"

"On the left bank of the pond—that is, left as you approached by the spur path. Two fairly clear imprints, left and right, pointed toward the water. The ground was somewhat moist there. We found a few other, partial prints of the size six shoes in that area, all partly obliterated by other footsteps. That left bank is the place where access to the water is easiest. That's where Miss Welsh had stepped in and out, and Dr. Chalmers had stumbled out on the left bank, slipping once by the way, although he had approached the pond from the other side."

"You say the marks on the slope of the spur path were indefinite. But would you describe them a little more, Sergeant?"

"They just weren't readable, Mr. Hunter. Mere disturbances of the earth. Let me put it this way, sir: simply on the basis of the trailmarks, Mrs. Doherty might have fallen and rolled into the water—it's just about steep enough for that; or she might have been pushed after she had fallen; or she might even have crawled or dragged herself into the pond. At the bottom of that slope, by the water's edge, the top of a wide flat boulder is exposed. Most of it's under water, but the top is bare, a shelf of rock that would show no marks if a person slipped over the edge into the water. And the water there is almost as deep as in the middle of the pond."

"Did you extend your search beyond the pond area?"

"Yes, sir, with Sergeant Peterson. We went to the Doherty house, examining the footpath. In the brush by the path, we found two marks of falling; at one of these places, evidence of vomiting. At the ditch where the pond's outlet intersects the path, I found a blue shoe, a right, matching the left one on the body. The footpath ends at a gravel turning circle in front of the Doherty house. There we found a blue and white four-door Pontiac sedan, later identified as belonging to Mr. James Doherty. The front bumper was almost in contact with a pillar of the porch. Tire gouges on the gravel indicated the brakes had been slammed on at the last minute. The front door on the driver's side was open. The ignition had been turned off and the key removed; because of the open door, the inside light was still burning."

"Does the gravel drive extend to Summer Avenue?"

"Yes, sir. We examined it for signs of another car, but found none. That drive would take no mark when dry except the kind the Pontiac made."

"Did you find anything else by the house?"

"A key ring, on the porch by the door. After the leather case of the key-holder had been checked for fingerprints, I tried the keys. They fitted the Pontiac and the outside doors of the Doherty house—those doors were all locked at that time, when Sergeant Peterson and I arrived there. On the driveway, near the opening of the path into the woods, I found a woman's blue handbag, monogrammed A.P.D. Its catch was open, and a lipstick pencil and compact had tumbled out."

"Did you check the other contents of the handbag?"

"Yes, sir." Sergeant Shields at last opened his notebook. "Lipstick pencil of a light shade, gold compact monogrammed A.P.D., one handkerchief unused, three Kleenex folded, engagement book of red imitation leather, mechanical pencil with chromium finish, single stub from motion picture theater, fifteen dollars in bills, one dollar and fourteen cents in coin in change purse, page torn from a memorandum pad with date August 15, 1959 and with writing evidently a grocery list, four bobby pins, a scrap of green rayon possibly a dressgoods sample, identification card belonging with handbag but not filled out, a—a paper clip."

Warner watched the histrionic tenderness of T. J. Hunter's hands. They moved over the already identified garments, not quite touching but with the sense of a caress. Corn, of course, but how marvelously served up! Gently the hands lifted a plastic bag.

"Sergeant, this bag has a tag with your initials—is this your identifying mark?"

"Yes, sir."

"And do you identify what I show you here, a woman's blue slipper, size five?"

"That is the slipper I found on the path in the woods, between the pond and the Doherty house, the morning of last August 17th."

Sit still, Old Man! No protest possible that the jury would not resent. How can you make legal protest against the gentleness of a pair of hands? Against a voice that by its very restraint compels the subject to cry aloud? Ann's garments, her poor fallen possessions, needed no advocate: four bobby pins, a paper clip. Best to sit still, the face a little hidden, as Callista was still, and hidden.

And to wait, because the defense never rests.

"Your witness, Mr. Warner."

He wondered whether it was worth the trouble of rising. Maybe. As a fact-lover, the Sergeant understood the existence of grays between black and white. One dim blur of gray across the clarity of Shields' testimony might stir a slight wonder in a few jurors. "Sergeant, when you found Dr. Chalmers on the back porch, did you speak first?"

"Yes, sir." Quite as polite as he had been to the prosecution.

"He roused at once and answered you?"

"He did, sir." Yes, polite, and well aware of what was coming.

Mildness and indifference were needed here: "What did he say?"

Then the expected noise: "Objection! This conversation wasn't introduced in direct examination."

Mildness, indifference? "Your Honor, I submit that the substance of the conversation was introduced."

"Yes—admissible in cross examination. Objection overruled."

T. J. Hunter shrugged and let it go. A masterly shrug.

"Well, Sergeant, what did Dr. Chalmers say?"

Sergeant Shields also was mild. Not indifferent; on the contrary, the level fact-loving eyes were kind. A contemplative kindness that could do the defense no service even if the jury were able to glimpse it and grope at the meaning of it.

"Dr. Chalmers said to me: 'Sam? My God, Sam, I can't believe it.' I said: 'I just got here. What's happened?' And he said: 'Ann—Ann Doherty—she's killed herself.'"

II

Weariness had grown like an external pressure, the encroachment of a rising tide, the waters of darkness. Callista had supposed that when Cecil walked over there to cross-examine the tide might recede, even release her entirely. It had not, not entirely, but it might be no longer rising; maybe this was the turn. She had heard Cecil speak, and had listened. Listening, she had felt within the weariness that hint of inarticulate continuing surprise which is an element in any manifestation of love. It did not seem to her that she had actually understood what he said, or what the Sergeant said. "Ann Doherty—killed herself." What? Oh—he was repeating what poor Herb had said to him. Herb could always be trusted to say something idiotic.

Important as testimony?—nobody thinks she killed herself. But the tide might very well be turning. Her eyes were no longer blurred. She could discover the thousand crow's-foot wrinkles in Cecil's face over yonder. Callista understood that she would not faint, nor collapse, nor die for some little time to come.

Threescore and ten is also a short time. Long enough to wear down a rugged boy's splendor to a burden of exhausted flesh—Cecil must have been a magnificent youth. Hardly long enough (Edith suggested once) to comprehend the pattern of a May-fly's wing, since for that you'd have to comprehend the protein molecule. When we can do that, Edith said, we shall still be ignorant, learning all new things with reluctance, initial rejection, stubborn retention of obsolete notions, superstitions, cruelties. Maybe, Edith said, the sickly bromide "at the last analysis" is the most arrogant verbalism human beings ever slung together.

What? Cecil's voice had spoken something more. With effort and a little panic, Callista recaptured it out of the counterpoint of thought. It was very simple. He said: "No further questions."

Edith had gone on to wonder how the coming centuries would handle their heretics. Burn and hang them like the seventeenth and earlier centuries? Listen to them a little, unwillingly, like the nineteenth, until revolution stiffened into respectability, congealed in half-truths? Wall them off, like the twentieth, with the soft barrier of democratic smugness or a steel barrier such as Marxian demonology? Maybe, Edith grumbled, the twenty-first century would return to punishing dissenters with open savagery: they'd be locked in delightful rooms with plastic food dispensers, ingenious mechanical attention to all the body's other needs (sure, all of 'em) and not a God-damned thing to do except watch television.

Cecil was coming back to her.

Cecil would agree with Edith; and in agreeing would not remind her how much farther his own life had ranged within the threescore and ten, how much of wonder and experience, speculation, pleasure, suffering had burgeoned in him during the half-century that spread between his age and her own: for he was kind.

Surely if now she cautiously turned her eyes toward the wall clock, the hands would have struggled a little nearer to five. The Old Man was sitting down by her, covering her hand briefly, his own heavy and hot. The clock hands had pushed a small weary way beyond two. "Are you all right, Cal? You don't look good."

"I'm all right. What's happening now?"

"Looks as if T.J. was going to try a bit of redirect. Sore too. Nothing makes a prosecutor madder than an impartial policeman."

To Callista the suave gentleman in the gray suit didn't look mad. "Sergeant, when you first saw Dr. Chalmers he was in a state of shock?"

"He appeared so. Color and breathing bad. Spoke brokenly, with difficulty. And as I said, later he mentioned a heart condition."

"In other words he was in a state where you'd hardly expect him to make a clear interpretation of anything he'd seen?"

"I can't answer that, sir, because I've noticed some people can think pretty straight in spite of a bad shock. I don't know Dr. Chalmers well enough to say whether he could or not."

She heard the Old Man exclaim under his breath: "Brother! good thing I didn't bother to object." But after Hunter's leading question Callista had seen the smooth jowls of juror Emma Beales bobbing with gratification at the way nice Mr. Hunter had gone straight to the point.

"Has Dr. Chalmers, in any later conversation with you, again brought up the theory that Mrs. Doherty might have committed suicide?"

"No, sir, he has not."

Hunter dropped it there. Callista was aware of the Sergeant rising, meeting her glance for an instant with something in his own not at all unkind. It was not understanding, perhaps not really compassion. He had never spoken to her. She thought she remembered his face among others at District Attorney Lamson's office during her worst time of questioning. He had said nothing then; would have given Mr. Lamson his information at some other time; maybe he had turned up there (if he really did) just to have a look at her. What she read in him now might be a simple adult refusal to condemn, by a busy man, not involved, not personally much excited or concerned, his thought and daily life filled with a thousand other matters. And now he was marching away. With nothing of the sarcasm that would have distorted the words if she had spoken aloud, Callista thought: Good-bye—nice to have known you.

The next witness, Sergeant Peterson the photographer, unwound his scrawniness from some part of the outer blur and strode into the arena to take the oath. Dark hair, a pallor as if bleached in his own hypo. Unexpectedly Callista's fingers itched for a pencil, to draw Peterson's lank face as an expanded kodak. She could ask Cecil for a pencil—no, he was getting up. Hunter had rather lovingly produced a big Manila folder, and now came Cecil's sonorous: "May it please the Court—"

Those would be the photographs of Ann Doherty dead, and Cecil would try to keep out the most lurid ones.

Over Callista swept a weight of memory. Even the smell of the District Attorney's office—tobacco, book leather, a peculiarly penetrating shaving-lotion stink. She saw again the half-star shape of a spot on the wall behind Mr. Lamson's shoulder, an imperfection in the paint like a chip flaked off the man's pinkish face; and the face itself in all detail, slightly ascetic in spite of that healthy glow, under carefully theatrical gray hair. She saw his manicured hand, womanish except for a scattering of black hairs, reaching across the desk to her, in a reek of too much hygiene and primping, presenting a Manila folder like the one Hunter now cherished, possibly the same one. "By the way, Miss Blake—" tone polite, fruity, luscious with some kind of enjoyment that perhaps the man himself did not recognize—"you might glance at this folder, if you will."

So I held her in my hand. Ann's arms reached upward in rigor out of the shadow of earth, for in that first photograph they had let the drowned girl lie on her back while the camera peered impersonally at wet skirt tumbled down from flexed thigh (the knee discolored), and soaked white underpants, the position pointlessly (accidentally?) erotic: Death, my lover. Accidental surely, for the camera had given a sharper focus to the bedabbled mouth, darkened cheeks, empty eyes. Why must the small breasts push up so urgently? Why, a happen-so: she was drifting face down, arms and bent knee probably holding her up a little from the pond's bottom, when rigor began—all right, I understand. The lifted hands were a blur, foreshortened, ghostly; innocently acquisitive hands transformed to shadows incapable of holding fast to anything, even pity.

The second picture was an enlargement of the face to life size, no detail spared. Drops of pond water blurred the eyes; a black twig was caught in water-soaked hair. Discoloration, and foam.

The third picture was one taken at the morgue, after rigor had passed off, and though the face was still a comment on the brevity, the insecurity of beauty and warmth, Ann's no longer vulnerable nakedness conveyed no great sorrow. It was just a portrait of death; apart from the drowned face, not unlovely. Callista remembered that in Mr. Lamson's office she had very nearly remarked aloud: "Never knew she'd had an appendectomy." The lividity, yes; but one could think of that as simply the shadow of death. This photograph, Callista supposed, would hardly go to the jury, for in the morgue nobody had bothered to toss a prudish towel over the innocent little triangle. Maybe they had fixed up another one for the purpose, that wouldn't distress the sensibilities of Mr. Emmet Hoag. Yes, granted, certainly, that Ann had been very pretty and desirable, a long time ago.

Callista recalled what it was she actually said aloud in Mr. Lamson's office: "I'd like to be sure I understand. If these pictures shock me, that's evidence of remorse, in other words guilt. If I don't display any shock, that means unnatural coldness; in other words, guilt. Is that correct?"

Someone behind the chair in Lamson's office where she sat facing the desk light had made a noise. Not T. J. Hunter; Sergeant Rankin maybe; or could it have been that young Sergeant, Samuel Arthur Shields? An indistinct word or suppressed grumble; not significant, but Mr. Lamson's cool gaze had flicked upward at the sound, not liking it. "No, Miss Blake, I don't think you have it quite correct. A girl of your intelligence and background ought not to be taking that world-is-all-against-me attitude. One expects it from common criminals—we look for it—but surely not from you."

"I've never thought the world was all against me. I used to think it was a place where you could get by fairly well by telling the truth, minding your own business, trying not to hurt anyone."

"You don't think so now?"

She herself had heard the wiry unpleasant note of pain in her voice: "No comment." And Mr. Lamson had heard it, and could not quite hide a brief flare of gratification, a thin spear of flame shooting up from an ember behind his eyes. Oh, he was doubtless a decent and respectable man, father of a family, pillar of the church. It would be only her sickened imagination that made him something with a whip out of Krafft-Ebing.

"Miss Blake, you ought to understand that what we are trying to do here is to discover the truth."

"What is truth?"

"No comment."

"Mr. Lamson, since she must have got the poison in my apartment, and since I shouldn't have had it there, I do feel remorse. But I am not breaking down and screaming at sight of these pictures, because that is not my way."

"Oh, now, the pictures aren't all that important, Miss Blake. No occasion to make such an issue of the pictures. I thought it might be to your interest to look at them, since a jury will. The whole point, my dear girl—the whole point is we just don't believe your story."

Cecil Warner came back from the side-bar discussion, looking rather blind. He murmured: "Couldn't do much, Cal. They're all going in. An open protest would just antagonize the jury."

"Does it really matter? She'd look the same whether she fell in or was pushed."

"Dear—I'll be saying that of course. But it assumes that twelve minds can respect logic."

Hunter and Sergeant Peterson were being immensely fair. Finished now with the portraits of death, they were showing a photograph of a blunt-toed shoe superimposed on another mark. Peterson was even wordy and boring, explaining unnecessarily how you could tell that the footprint was made later. Then came photographs of the disturbed areas at other parts of the bank, and of the flat rock by the water's edge that would take no sign.

The rock. Cecil ought not to be looking so distressed for her. Behind her hand she whispered: "Peterson must have held his camera right where I stood. If the moon hadn't come out of a cloud—I wonder, Cecil—would I have refused to understand she was there? It was a small cloud but deep, suddenly come, suddenly gone. The rock—I used to sit there for hours when I was a little girl, and dabble my feet. It was the first thing I saw, and suddenly, you understand?—because of the moon."

"The moon—"

"Yes, 'the moon, the inconstant moon'—don't you remember I told you? The way the light strengthened in that gap of the hemlocks, and there was my rock, and then the whiteness in the water. Her arm, or that blouse—no, her jacket hid the blouse, she was face down. It must have been her arm, that whiteness, don't you think?"

"I suppose. Cal, this isn't the time—"

"I know. Hunter will ask: 'Why didn't you go into the pond, if your story is true? Why, Callista? She might have been alive.'"

"We'll deal with that in direct examination."

"He'll come back to it, though. 'How could you know, Callista? How could you know she was dead?' And then I say: 'Sir, dead or not, she was so quiet I couldn't disturb her rest.'"

"Cal, please!"

"Are you going to cross-examine Sergeant Peterson?"

"I don't think so—nothing to gain."

"Ah, I was hoping you'd ask him why his damned silly face looks like a camera bellows."

"Hush! Shall I come to see you this evening?"

"Oh—no—no, I am unwell. I mean—that is, I would so like to have two candles, one for you and one for—I'm sorry ... I'm all right now. I'll be quiet. But don't come tonight—I did mean that. It's something—I can't explain it."

"All right, my dear. Maybe tomorrow evening."

"Yes, without fail. Let me tell you one thing more?"