But they did not know her.

They could not communicate with the inner spectator-participator. It had needed nineteen years to create the Monkshood Girl, a short time, yet to the jurors, the Judge, Cecil, even to Edith, the nineteen years amounted to an infinite complexity never to be explored. They could not watch the golden kitten Bonnie, nor Aunt Cora. They could not learn of the young discoveries: language, music; endless expansion of the visible world as her hand acquired certain powers of dealing with line and color and mass or began to acquire it. They had no vision for the dreams of her sleep, or the waking dreams.

Ann Doherty, inarticulate Jim, mysteries quite as obscure. What do you think you know about Ann, gentlemen? Cute, blonde, and married: isn't that about as far as you go?

We are not what you see, we people who look at you out of clever photographs in the paper at your breakfast tables. When you burn the image you have created you burn the true self also, but you cannot know that self. I am here with you, and captured, and maybe you ought to fear me as you do, but I am not what you suppose.

III

He met the flat patient stare of Sergeant Lloyd Rankin, which indicated a readiness like that of a dog who will not attack unless provoked. Say a Boxer: Rankin was built like that, and would fight in a Boxer's style, with single-minded courage closely akin to stupidity.

He saw T. J. Hunter seated at the prosecution's table and turned partly away from the witness chair, making a show of rereading that transcript of Callista's ordeal. T.J. would be listening to the cross-examination, and sharply; but Cecil Warner had to admit that the show of bored indifference was quite as expert as anything he could have managed himself. This silence had lasted long enough, or too long; he heard fidgeting in the back rows; he could not spend any more time gloomily viewing Rankin's Boxer jaws.

"Sergeant Rankin, when Miss Blake realized she would be under suspicion, you asked her—I think these were your words—you asked her who she thought would believe a story like hers. Correct?—that's your recollection of what you said?"

"Yes, sir, I think I put it that way."

"Meaning, I suppose, that you didn't believe her story yourself?"

"No, sir—I mean no, I didn't believe it."

"Did you suggest that she ought to change her story?"

"Oh, I told her—more than once, I guess—that she ought to tell the truth about it, that she'd get a better break if she did."

"A better break. Those were your words, 'a better break'?"

He noticed a dim flush on Rankin's heavy cheeks, some flicker of doubt or uneasiness in chilly gray eyes. Rankin could have no way of knowing how much Callista might have told. "Yes, I think that was how I put it, Mr. Warner. She seemed to be expecting me to believe it, and—"

"But she replied: 'Who knows what anyone believes?'"

"Yes."

"And asked then if you were going to arrest her?"

"She did, and I told her that would be up to my superiors, not me."

"This conversation took place in the kitchenette, after she had taken you out there and shown you the brandy bottle, and volunteered her account which you preferred not to believe?"

"It wasn't a case of preference, Mr. Warner. I—"

"All right, never mind that. The conversation took place in the kitchenette?"

"Yes."

"And you told her to go back to the living-room, and she did so?"

"Yes."

"She went ahead of you?"

"Ahead of me?"

"My words are plain, aren't they?" Give him no time—Boxer hates to be pushed. "She stepped out of the kitchenette and walked ahead of you down that little hallway toward the living-room, did she not?"

"Really I don't remember. I suppose—"

"Don't remember! In direct examination you showed an excellent memory for details. Let me just check your memory a little. What way does the front of that apartment house face, 21 Covent Street? East?"

"Why—yes, east, or south-east anyway."

"Was it a bright day, August 17th?"

"Yes, bright sunny day."

"Hot?"

"Very hot."

"Sunlight in the living-room windows, was there? Remember?"

"Yes."

"In the hallway?"

"I guess so."

"Good memory. Let me check it just a little more. What was Miss Blake wearing that day?"

"A—oh, just a dress, I don't know what a dressmaker would call it."

"Well—color?"

"White."

"Good. A simple white dress. Now look, Sergeant, I think you can remember whether she went ahead of you into the living-room. I'll help you out—you wouldn't have left her alone with that brandy bottle when you'd as good as told her she was under suspicion, would you?"

"Oh—well, that. Yes, if it matters, I remember she went first."

"Did you again tell her she ought to change her story?"

"I may have."

"Sergeant, I point out to you again, your memory under direct examination was excellent. You referred to your notebook, you repeated several remarks verbatim—to some of which the defense might have justifiably objected, if I had seen fit. Now—did you tell her a second time that she would get a better break if she changed this story which you say you didn't believe? Did you, Sergeant?"

"Yes, it's my recollection that I did."

"Did you suggest any other thing she might do that would, in your words, give her a better break?"

"Any other—I don't know what you mean."

"Then let me help your memory again. This conversation, when you repeated that she ought to change her story—did this conversation take place while you were going back to the living-room?"

"I—oh, I guess so."

"I'm asking for testimony, not guesswork. Did it, or not?"

"Yes."

"What did Miss Blake say?"

"It's my recollection that she—I don't think she said anything."

"She didn't? You remember how she looked, don't you?"

"Of course."

"Of course. Simple white dress, you said—correct?"

"Yes."

"Walking down the hall, between you and the sunlight in the living-room. Didn't she say, or rather cry out: 'Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!'—have you forgotten that?"

He heard Hunter jump up, and waited motionless for the angry blast: "Objection! This is outrageous. There has been nothing—"

Judge Terence Mann said: "There has been a good deal." Warner looked up quickly then; if his astonishment showed for a second, probably no one but Terence saw it. There was time to wonder how much of a surprise it was to T.J.—complete, very likely. And Terence Mann himself looked astonished at the swiftness and sharpness of his own words. "If there is any suspicion that a police officer has acted in that manner toward the defendant, the defense is well within its rights to pursue this line of questioning. The objection is overruled." But Terry must know we can't prove it. "Answer the question, Sergeant."

Staring at the Judge, T. J. Hunter said slowly: "Exception."

"Answer the question, Sergeant Rankin."

Rankin too had gone quiet, no visible motion in him except a rhythmic twitch at the corners of his Boxer jaws. "Will you repeat the question, Counselor?"

"I will. I ask whether Callista Blake said to you: 'Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!'"

"She did not."

"I quote to you these words: 'Look, I can give you a lot of breaks if you'll put out.' Did you say that to Callista Blake?"

"Objection."

"Overruled."

"I did not."

"You have no recollection of that?"

"It didn't happen, that's all. I never touched her."

"No? You didn't, a few minutes later, strike her across the face with the flat of your hand?"

"Objection!"

"Overruled."

"I certainly did not. The whole thing is imaginary."

"Did Callista Blake, while you had hold of her, tell you that she was ill, that she had had a miscarriage the night before?"

"Objection!"

"Overruled." So Terry sticks his own neck way out, his own feelings involved, his judgment slipping, and where does that take us?

"Exception."

"She did not tell me that, Counselor. She had no occasion to tell me that. I say again, the whole thing is imaginary. I know my duties, and my position as a police officer. Nothing like that happened, and if the defendant says it did, she is lying." Except for that twitch, and the high tension of his blocky hands gripping the witness chair, nothing in Rankin's solid front suggested he might himself be lying.

"You say the whole thing is imaginary. Really! Is it imaginary, just a bad dream cooked up by the defense—what do you take us for, Sergeant?—is it imaginary that you shoved Callista Blake down on the couch in the living-room, that she then told you she was ill, that in spite of that you went on trying to force her, that you exposed yourself, that she then said a certain thing which frightened you, so that you let her go, after first striking her across the face with the flat of your hand?"

"Objection of course. Whole question improper and fantastic."

"Overruled."

Terry, I don't know—

"Exception."

"Nothing like that happened. I deny it absolutely."

"In that view of it, I won't question you further about this, or anything else, I think, since the only thing of service to my client is the truth. I dare say, in redirect examination, you'll have opportunity to repeat your virtuous denials—"

"That's outrageous."

Warner swung around. "Something else is outrageous—"

"Mr. Warner!" But that was Terry, and he must listen. "We cannot have this. Please control yourself."

"I am sorry, your Honor. My apologies to the Court, and to Mr. Hunter—who, I am sure, knew nothing about any improper conduct on the part of his witness. That's all."

Warner sat down, with a sudden breaking out of sweat on his face, a dizziness and blurring of vision. Callista's hand slipped over his, easing his fingers out of their involuntary clench. She was repeating his name softly: "Cecil—Cecil—are you all right?"

"Yes." He covered his mouth to speak to her. "I couldn't break him. I thought I could break the bastard."

"Never mind. Relax. You bent him, but good."

"Not enough. You'll have to take the stand, maybe."

"But I must anyway. Relax."

Concerned for me. He noticed the courtroom was quiet, Hunter delaying. Judge Mann's gaze was on him too, worried and speculative. Do they think I'm going to fold like Judd? Judd—I said to that man Judd: 'If you do not understand that question—' He wiped his forehead. Maybe Callista had helped him get that handkerchief out of his pocket. He would not fold. Let them take their eyes off him. Let them get on with it.

Hunter was getting on with it—neutrally it seemed. "Sergeant Rankin, I'll merely ask you: is there any foundation in fact, anything at all, to support this suggestion of misconduct on your part with the defendant Callista Blake?"

"None whatever, sir. None whatever."

Hunter was pausing another long time. Warner now helplessly understood that he was giving Rankin time to think, time for the man's rather slow wits to come up with the obvious countercharge. Hunter said at last: "In summary, then, you simply questioned Miss Blake about the story she had told you, you took charge of the brandy bottle and so on, you called Chief Gage, and then there was this episode of the fish-tank—when Miss Blake, you say, was composed, sort of philosophical and all that, hardly the way a girl would act, I guess, if she'd just been threatened and pushed around. That's a correct summary?"

"Yes, sir, I think that about sums it up. Well—" It was comic enough, to observe the slow grimace as Rankin caught on to what Hunter would like him to say.

Hunter asked mildly: "Something you wish to add?"

"Well—I guess not. Of course I'm very much surprised that the defense should see fit to make a charge like that against me, but there seems to be no way of proving anything—Miss Blake's word against mine—and if I say anything about—about her own conduct in that respect, it's the same situation, so I would rather ignore it, let it go."

Warner sickened inwardly with self-blame. I underestimated the brains in the son of a bitch—no, hardly even that, for a cub lawyer should have seen it coming, the obvious countercharge by innuendo. Rankin had done it cleverly, though; he could hardly have said anything better calculated to make Callista seem a whore. I should sell apples on a streetcorner.

A sober workman driving in finishing nails, T. J. Hunter said: "I understand your reluctance, Sergeant, and I think we might as well leave it at that. Recross, Mr. Warner?"

Cecil Warner remembered how, long ago, on childhood occasions when he had been goaded into fighting, he had often been struck by a crying spell in the midst of battle. It had become a sort of distinction: "Cecil's all right till he goes to bawling—then watch out!" It would not happen now. But he knew his voice was shouting, too loudly, and cracking absurdly in the shout: "Are you being humorous, Mr. District Attorney? I am concerned with establishing the truth, and questioning that man will not serve any such purpose."

Judge Mann started to speak but checked himself, watching Sergeant Rankin step down and stride away. Terry will not look at me. Take my hand, Callista. Hardly wondering at the coincidence, he felt the cool pressure of her fingers renewed. I shall not survive the conclusion, win or lose, but that hardly matters, Old Man—

"If it please the Court, the prosecution is ready to read the transcript of the interrogation of Callista Blake on August 17th, which has been admitted in evidence and which I have here."

Judge Mann said drily: "It will be read by the clerk of court."

Something accomplished anyway, in that side-bar huddle before Rankin's cross-examination: the transcript would not be read with baritone sound effects. Hunter passed the pages to Mr. Delehanty with good enough grace, having no choice. To the hearers, Warner knew, much of it would be dull, a repetition of what had already been said. A welcome dullness, allowing time to rest. Mr. Delehanty would begin smartly, then fall to droning as the question-and-answer rhythm caught hold of him. The duller the better. Keep my hand, Callista.

Cecil Warner drifted into bewilderment, a sense that at some point there had been an illogical reversal of roles. Must he draw on the strength of this girl who in a few months might be butchered by the State, as if there remained in him no power at all, not even the power of wisdom? As if it were natural, and right, that in her danger and misery, in her green youth too, it should be Callista who possessed a power to heal and save? The defense never rests, but—

Can anyone save another? Maybe, with good fortune.

Or help another? The heart says yes. Keep my hand, Callista.

He came alert with a frightened start. Mr. Delehanty's voice had already sagged into a singsong monotony, and might have been burbling on a long time.

QUESTION (by Mr. Lamson): Can anyone support your statement that you were experiencing what you call a suicidal depression for a month or more, from early July to the middle of August?

ANSWER: No, I never spoke of it to anyone.

Why not to me? I might have—

Near his eyes, Callista's face took on a momentary immensity, like a great image on a softly brilliant screen. She must have had her teeth clamped a while on her underlip. It looked swollen as though from a bout of love.

QUESTION: Was anyone aware of your taking those monkshood roots?

ANSWER: No one.

QUESTION: Not even James Doherty?

ANSWER: I have had no communication with James Doherty since receiving that letter of his you took from my desk. In that time I've seen him only once—at the picnic when I got the monkshood. I didn't talk with him then, he did not talk with me, he knew nothing of what I was doing.

"You'll come to see me tonight, Cecil?"

"Yes."

"Something I must tell you."

"What, dear?"

"Not now. Tonight."

QUESTION: You had these roots, this poison, a week ago Friday. What about the suicidal depression?—change your mind?

ANSWER: I don't know how the mind works.

QUESTION: Now, Miss Blake! Anybody knows if he's changed his mind.

ANSWER: Does he?

QUESTION: All right. I can assume you gave up the notion of suicide?

ANSWER: Not a notion. An uncompleted decision, perhaps. Which did lose its importance after a while.

QUESTION: Did you, or you and James Doherty acting together, intend that poison for Mrs. Doherty?

ANSWER: Must I answer that again? James Doherty knew nothing about any poison, or my possession of it. I intended it only for myself.

QUESTION: But kept it there more than a week, where I suppose anyone might have stumbled on it?

ANSWER: Not exactly. Back of a shelf. Nobody visiting me was likely to go get a drink from a back shelf without invitation.

QUESTION: But you say that's just what Mrs. Doherty did.

ANSWER: Why, I think her idea was to get the drink for me. Then I guess she understood I'd locked myself into the bedroom. With the drink in her hand, and upset by what I'd been saying, I suppose she just tossed it off, maybe not even knowing she did. It would be natural.

QUESTION: Didn't she knock? Call to you? Try the door?

ANSWER: I don't know, Mr. Lamson.

QUESTION: Don't know. I can't accept that.

ANSWER: It's the truth, and all I can say. Partial amnesia.

QUESTION: Do you have any idea how many professional criminals try that amnesia thing? Everything went black—yeah. You're not a professional criminal, you're a very intelligent girl. How do you think that amnesia stuff is going to sound in court?

ANSWER: Bad.

QUESTION: Well? Don't you care?

ANSWER: I can't invent for you. I don't know. I can't remember.

QUESTION: All right. Mrs. Doherty was upset by what you'd been saying. What had you been saying?

ANSWER: I told her about my affair with her husband.

QUESTION: Just like that?

ANSWER: Yes. I think I was very stupid. I hoped to persuade her to allow a separation. I knew her church doesn't allow divorce, but I thought she might permit us that much. I wanted my baby to have a father, married or not. It's bad, trying to grow up without a father. Mine died when I was seven. I wanted mine to have a father.

QUESTION: Yes, that was in the letter you wrote him.

ANSWER: Wrote but never mailed. I should have destroyed it.

QUESTION: Why didn't you mail it?

ANSWER: I'm not sure I can explain that. An obsession is a strange thing, and so is suicidal depression—and so's pregnancy. You don't just sit quiet and work out the mathematics. Your mind shifts and struggles like a thing in a web, tries to decide what matters most. The answers don't always stay the same. The day after I started that letter, I didn't go on with it because then I didn't even want Jimmy to know I was pregnant. I saw it wouldn't work out even if he were entirely free. Too different. We couldn't possibly have lived together. Then later I was trying again to think it might work—and so on.

QUESTION: Go on, please.

ANSWER: How? Mr. Lamson, I know ten million more things about myself than you ever could, but you're asking me to explain things that even I don't know. How can I? Well, the night before Ann came to see me, Saturday, I had a time when everything looked possible. I wanted to have the baby, I was almost happy, I wasn't thinking of suicide—I even forgot about that poison. Next day, Sunday, I was imagining again that Ann might permit a separation so that he could be with me. Crazy, but that's how I had it lined up that day, that's why I telephoned her, that's how it looked right up until I began to talk with her. Then—card-house fell down.

QUESTION: You told her you were pregnant?

ANSWER: No, I didn't even get that far. I saw it was no use, waste of time. We had not enough words in common.

QUESTION: Not enough words?

ANSWER: Oh—oh—whatever I said meant something else in her mind, the way everything I say now means something else to you, heaven knows what. No such thing as a common language. We all talk in the dark. If a bit of light breaks we're frightened and try to blot it out.

QUESTION: I don't follow you.

ANSWER: Don't try. I'm not going your way.

QUESTION: This isn't an occasion for humor, is it?

ANSWER: People will tell you I laugh at the damnedest things.

QUESTION: If you didn't say you were pregnant, how much did you say?

ANSWER: All she understood was that we'd had an affair.

QUESTION: Did you quarrel?

ANSWER: No.

QUESTION: She wasn't angry?

ANSWER: No, very forgiving. That's when I was sick to my stomach.

QUESTION: Really, Miss Blake! Are you saying—

ANSWER: I don't know what I'm saying any more.

QUESTION: Yes, I realize you're having a bad time. I'm not intentionally cruel, it's merely my job to enforce the laws of this community. Naturally your pregnancy entitles you to every consideration, but—

ANSWER: Mr. Lamson, didn't I say I was pregnant? I had a miscarriage last night.

QUESTION: Oh. I'm sorry, I don't think you did tell us that. When did it happen?

ANSWER: Out there, after I'd found her in the pond.

QUESTION: A result of shock, or—exertion?

ANSWER: Shock maybe. Is this the fourth time I've told you I didn't push her in the water? I found her, I knew she was dead, I came away.

QUESTION: The miscarriage—I'm sorry, but I must ask—

ANSWER: Why, frankly, Mr. Lamson, it hurts.

QUESTION: You know very well that's not what I meant. Where exactly were you when it happened?

ANSWER: First pain, there by the pond. I went back to my car because I thought I might be able to drive home somehow—

QUESTION: You mean to your mother's house?

ANSWER: I do not, I mean my apartment. But it was getting worse, and at the junction I did turn that way on Walton, because I remembered the woods across the road. I left the car by the pines, and got over there, into the woods. It was over pretty soon.

QUESTION: You must have a good deal of courage, Miss Blake.

ANSWER: Enough, I hope.

QUESTION: I hope so too. By the way, Miss Blake, you might glance at this folder, if you will.

"That's where he flashed the morgue pictures at you, Cal?"

"Uh-huh. I was a—what's the term?—a cool customer. Oh yes—he's reading my intelligent comments now. Not bad for a beginner, don't you think? Like Lizzie Borden."

"Hush, dear."

"Well, Lizzie was a beginner too. What's more she had to operate on a breakfast of mutton broth."

Cecil Warner could wonder then whether it had been Callista's wry and thorny humor that saved her during the moments last August—there must have been such moments—when she had drawn that dark bottle forward on the shelf and perhaps set out a single glass.

IV

As Joe Bass emptied the ash tray and made gentle needless motions with a dustrag at the bookshelves, Judge Terence Mann glanced at the handful of doodle scraps he had taken out of their temporary shelter in the minute book at the close of the day. None of them pleased him now, except possibly his sketch of the fingerprint technician Sergeant Zane scratching the lens he wore in place of a head. Drawing the toxicologist Dr. Ginsberg with his smooth face modified into a chemical retort had not turned out well. There was no comedy in solemn Dr. Ginsberg, unless it might be in his very self-conscious aloofness, his volunteered declaration on the stand that he never listened to anything about a criminal case except the facts immediately pertinent to his specialty. He had said in effect: "That for your emotional involvements!"—but it was a valid attitude if you happened to be Dr. Ginsberg, and not very funny.

"Did you stick it out, Joe?"

"No, I wanted to tidy up in here, so I slipped out after Mr. Delehanty finished reading that statement. Did I miss anything important?"

"Not much. Fingerprints. Mrs. Doherty's and Callista Blake's on the brandy bottle. It should even help the defense slightly, showing that Mrs. Doherty handled the bottle and that no attempt was made to wipe it or dispose of it. Callista Blake had all night and next morning to get rid of anything incriminating, if she'd been so minded. Then we had Dr. Ginsberg. Nothing new, he just made it official. Four milligrams of aconitine in the organs he studied, and they say one milligram is enough to kill. Wound up the day with Mr. Lamson; he testified to receiving those three other letters of Miss Blake's, direct from James Doherty. It seems Doherty simply walked in and dumped them on Lamson's desk, following the advice of his priest. I hadn't known it was quite like that. Lamson seemed to imply it was an example of civic virtue. No comment, Joe. I'm unhappy. Well, Lamson identified the letters, and they went in without protest, but won't be read till tomorrow, which will wind up for the State, I guess. Defense ought to open tomorrow afternoon, or sooner. Oh—you would have liked this. When Mr. Hunter asked if Mr. Warner wanted to cross-examine Lamson, the Old Man said: 'I believe I will decline the privilege.' But nobody laughed."

"Do you think Mr. Hunter will put James Doherty on the stand?"

"No. Not needed, and too likely to blow up in his face. Doherty couldn't testify to anything but the affair, so far as I know, and that's been proved and admitted."

"I was watching Mr. Doherty a little this afternoon, Judge. One of his knuckles is bloody, from biting it."

"Another casualty of the case. Nobody will be the same after it, not even you and I."

"I, Judge? I'm too old to change much. I already knew the world's full of sadness according to where you stand."

"I suppose I knew it too," said Judge Mann, and watched Joe's small crinkled hands spread out on the other side of the desk resting on the fingertips, and felt not only uncertain but immature. Bring out the inner voices.

I should have taken another road, Mr. Brooks—other roads. I should have married, maybe.

Where does anyone find the vanity to become a judge? No, that's not it. I have vanity enough, or too much. But in me, I suppose other forces balance the native vanity, cancel it out. There was never anything in Judge Cleever to make him doubt he's God's own right hand man.

Exercising a privilege of age and kindness, Joe said softly: "Relax, boy."

"Yes, when it's over, I must do that. Do we ever know where we're going?"

"Not to say know, maybe. Just the present road, and good or bad guesswork."

"And crossroads?"

"Same thing, Judge. You try to make the right guess, with whatever good judgment you've got at the time. I've always been alone at my crossroads—I guess everyone is. Or if there was a crowd, I didn't see how they could know where I was going. I was better off trying to puzzle out the signposts myself."

6

I

"In the prison house are many mansions. This one looks very nice—thank the good Sheriff for me, for us, Cecil. Is it wired for sound?"

"No, dear, it's just an office. Sheriff's working late down the hall—records room—and said we could have this. Nobody'll bother us."

"May I sit at the desk and judge humanity?"

"Why not?"

"Or I'll be a lady of the Abbey of Theleme, where the law was 'Do what thou wilt.' No—can't have anything like that going on in the Sheriff's own office. And still—flowers on the desk?"

"The explanation is anticlimax. Sheriff's good-looking, has a devoted secretary, her brother-in-law runs a florist's shop."

"Like that. Never mind, I hereby make-believe the flowers are for me, the blood-red roses and the little white ones, sweet hot-house children. Not quite real, are they?—no black-spot, no bitten leaves, sheltered children, I guess they don't understand. But I'll make-believe. Am I occasionally beautiful, Cecil?"

"To me, always."

"I've always loved words, you know. It amounts to a fault. I can't make them do as I wish. I could never write. I don't know enough about people, maybe never shall. But I know the power of words. You say I'm beautiful to you, and that makes me so, I believe it, the words shut away everything foreign to the Abbey of Theleme—no, that's not where we are. But isn't it strange what words can do? Comfort and terrify, heal and kill. Make out of nothing, something, and another word can send the something back to a nothing. It was my father's gift, that love of words. I was reading precociously at least a year before he died. Mother (who is definitely literate and past president of the local PTA, no kidding) felt it wasn't quite right at such an age."

"What's that paper? Are you tearing it?"

"Just a blank sheet the good Sheriff left on his desk. I hope he won't miss it. Not tearing, love, building. It's my crown, Cecil. I need a pin. Is that a pin in your lapel?"

"Yes—here."

"Thanks. That'll do it. Ouch! Well, nothing created without pain. How does it look?"

"Royal."

"Does it suit my complexion?"

"White and ivory—yes, not bad."

"Is it all right for a queen to suck a pin-pricked finger?"

"Rank has its privileges."

"Good. So, not a lady of Theleme but a mere queen, I'll do my best while I have authority. This object shaped like a ruler is my scepter, and this apparent ink-bottle—no, if rank has its privileges, we'll omit the orb and you give me a cigarette. You may light it for me, and remember you have the right at any time to be seated in my presence. My lord, do you have any defense to set forth in favor of this mewling monster, this three-billion-headed lurching mooncalf humanity?"

"Your Majesty, I must first know what specific charges have been made."

"Item, he stinks of shrewd stupidity like his father Caliban."

"A fault that might be remedied by going to school a few thousand years more; at least there's manifest intelligence."

"Latent, you mean, don't you?"

"Mostly latent, but a good deal of it overt, liberated."

"Item, his fears are inconsistent: he's afraid of the dark but quite ready to play with matches."

"Another trait of childhood."

"Also of masturbating monkeys. Item, he talks a great deal about truth, but in the end, what he believes is what he wishes to believe."

"At that point I must draw your Majesty's attention to an essential point in the original indictment, namely the admission that this monster possesses roughly three billion heads. And three billion bodies. In that view of it, it's good law as well as necessary charity to insist that each head-and-body unit of the monster be tried separately."

"There isn't time, sir, there isn't time. Are you implying that not everyone is snotty?"

"Something like that."

"But then we can have no trial. No trial, no justice, no fun. Ah, damn it, I was looking forward to a hanging, with a bang-up speech from the platform and not a dry eye in the entire public square except for a few pickpockets and sellers of soft drinks."

"Callista—"

"Sir! No—fair enough. I'll put my scepter down. Maybe I'm tired of being queen. But may I keep my crown a while?"

"You've always worn it."

"No. No. Bring your chair—no, take this one, Cecil. I'd like to sit on the floor with my head on your knee—not that you're like my father at all. My crown—oh, put it away somewhere, keep it, I don't care. I don't hear that wind any more. Is it turning cold?"

"Yes, it's quite cold tonight. Callista, the prosecution will finish tomorrow, with the reading of those letters. We'll probably open after the noon recess.... Is there anything, anything at all, you haven't told me?"

"Yes."

"You said, in court today, you said there was something."

"Yes. Why did you stop moving your hand over my hair? I loved it. That's better. Cecil, I am guilty."

"The—blank?"

"Yes. Haven't you almost known it all along?"

"No. But I've been afraid you might remember something, or convince yourself that you've remembered it, and so come to believe yourself guilty."

"Oh, Cecil, this isn't belief, this is knowledge. You're trying to give me a way out before you even hear. It's like this: it came back as a clear auditory memory, the dull noise of that bottle being pulled forward on the shelf, and the cork, and a clink of glass, then the tap of her little high heels outside the bedroom door. I remembered what she said, each word very clear in that high sweet voice of hers: 'Callie, come on now!—I poured a little drink for you.' That's how it was, Cecil. And I lay still. I didn't speak. Knowing what might happen. I won't say, wishing for it to happen, but knowing, Cecil. Oh, sure enough, my mind squirmed around a bit trying to imagine the drink was from an innocent bourbon bottle, but knew all the time that the bourbon had been emptied the week before and the bottle thrown away. I'm no split personality, Cecil. Call it a paralysis from conflicting drives, if you want to. The self that had no wish to murder was the same self that—that hated her guts and wished she was dead. So I lay still. And my brain began generating the smoke-screen, first the useless fraud about a bourbon bottle that wasn't there, then the amnesia."

"I don't believe you hated her guts, Callista. She was a frustration, someone in the way, as T.J. would insist on saying, has said in fact. But I don't think you hated her as a person."

"Not for long, but long enough. I killed her."

"That was a thing that happened. You did not will it to happen. You were sick, bewildered, temporarily unable to prevent it from happening. If you'd been out in the living-room with her—do you remember that bronze paper-knife you kept on the table, a handsome thing with a sharp point? She was small, slight, your arms are strong. You know you could never in the world have taken it up against her."

"Why, dear apologist, you're only saying that I'm a coward about physical violence. I killed her by lying still. She's as dead as if I'd taken that knife to her. I say the guilt is greater. Seeing red might have excused me, or so most people would say. My very cowardice, weakness, retreat—that's what killed her. Cecil, I killed her by a failure in simple decency and common sense. If I'd been decent, sensible, I'd have run out there the moment I heard that bottle move on the shelf."

"Callista, if the good, the righteous, the respectable were half as stern in self-judgment as you are—"

"Oh, there'd be no living with them at all. Mother's a Colonial something-or-other because some worm-eaten ancestor was a Saint in the Bay Colony. I think Father must have laughed at it, but I was too young to get the point. The Puritan in me gives many a squirm. But the point is, my self-judgment serves no one now—she's dead. Well, it seems to be a jury of the righteous and respectable, more or less, who are stern enough in judging others, I've noticed. Cecil, will you give me a sharp honest answer to a question you don't want me to ask?"

"I'll try."

"Do you think we have a chance?"

"Of course we have a chance. Today was bad. They'll go on feeling Judd's collapse, in spite of common sense, in spite of everything. The poor guy couldn't have done us more harm if he'd been trying. T.J. will manage to drop in some apparently inadvertent reminder of it, no doubt in his closing speech when I'm done talking—hell, mere mention of Judd's name in a baritone tremolo would be enough, and there's no legal barrier against that. Terence will charge the jury again to forget it, and most of them will honestly try to, which would mean something only if people knew how to watch their own minds. And today was bad because this was the day when they laid out the heavy circumstantial stuff, proving your episode with Jim, making it official on the aconite, all that. But now, dear, so far as evidence is concerned, T.J. has finished, done his worst. Those letters to be read tomorrow aren't evidence. T.J. just thinks they are. He'll try to interpret them as indicating premeditation as well as motive; I know better, and I think I can make that fly up and hit him in the face, in my own closing speech or sooner. I'm not painting it bright for you, Callista. It's not bright. But we have a chance. There is this: with your story clearly told—as it has been already, really, in that Lamson interrogation—it passes my understanding how anyone in his right mind could find first degree."

"Mr. Lamson had the answer. Remember?—'the fact is, my dear girl, we just don't believe your story.'"

"Hell with Butch Lamson—he's not the jury."

"You think they might find second degree?"

"That could happen. The only just verdict would be involuntary man-slaughter."

"My love, can't you hear me? I've told you, I am guilty. Twenty to life. What do people feel when they cry out 'O God! O God!'—does the sound do something for them?"

"I don't know, Callista. I was never religious. Were you, ever?"

"Not for real, I guess. Away back, soon after Father died, I think the fluff and tinsel mythology of Sunday school had some hold on me for a short while. But I kept remembering a few of Father's comments, spoken when I was too young to get the point. They fell into place finally, made sense. When I was thirteen I told Mother I wasn't going to make the motions any more. Stuck it out, too, with a bit of surprising help from Herb. One of the rare times I've seen him lose his temper—popped half-way out of the armchair while Mother was lecturing, and said: 'God damn it, Vic, let the kid do her own thinking! She will anyway.' I could've loved him for that, if he hadn't lapsed back into being Herb Chalmers—if he wasn't a stepfather—if I wasn't a crossgrained bitch who never knows how to make advances at the right time. Well, that time Mother was so startled the artillery just didn't function. She went meek, maybe to see what Herb would do next—which was nothing. But also she never bothered me about it again, much. I suppose because her own religion is pure social conformity. If she'd had any serious convictions I might have had a battle on my hands. Twenty to life. What happens tomorrow?"

"The letters first. We sit quiet and hear them. I can't ask you to display anything you don't feel, Callista—as an actress, my dear, you're nowhere. But if you feel—well, indifferent about those letters; if it seems all far away and irrelevant, don't let your face shout to the jury that you feel that way."

"I'll be thinking of the briers. They'll read no indifference in me then, I think."

"The briers—"

"Where I lost my baby, Cecil. Some little tree whipped me across the face when I was leaving there—a birch, I think. I remember I was superstitiously grateful, glad of the sting. A primitive game, Cecil, the mind snatching at notions of punishment and atonement. We're still savages, and I suppose some of the time there's no harm in it. As if the birch tree—the whole dark place, and the thorns—had accomplished enough of the punishment so that I could meet the rest well enough. And maybe the savage, the poor greasy primordial Eve down inside, would say that I have, so far. After the letters, the State rests?"

"I expect it. Hunter doesn't bother much with surprises—not his method. The State rests, and I move they dismiss the case, and Terence will deny the motion because he must."

"Part of the ritual?"

"In a way. We open then, probably after an early noon recess. The defense is going to be brief, Callista. It's better that way. We have only a few things to say. Reiterating them too much might turn the jury against us. They've heard the essence of the defense already, in my remarks, the cross-examinations, the Lamson interrogation. We mustn't repeat ourselves too much, because—well, heaven help any defendant if the jury is bored. What's happened is that, in effect, we're required to prove a negative. In the sense of tangible proof, on the same level as—oh, say Peterson's photographs—the thing is impossible. Proving a negative usually is, and that's fairly common knowledge among people who think at all. I'll bear down on it when I talk to them in closing, and before then. We must also insist on the element of reasonable doubt. I can see that Terence is very much aware of that aspect, and you must have noticed how he's given us every break he possibly could. Including some that surprised me. I shall open the defense by calling Edith. She's prepared to say anything at all that might help you, and if T.J. tries to get tough with her in cross-examination I'm sorry for him, that's all. She'll make a monkey out of him, and I believe she'll remember the jury every minute while she does it. In her direct testimony, the thing that will help most will be her emphasis on that suicidal depression."

"Haven't I already told Mr. Lamson that no one else knew of it?"

"Yes, but Edith did know, don't you think?"

"She knew I was unhappy."

"She's told me that you gave her the story about Jim, after that damn letter of his."

"Yes, I went to pieces too, that once. But at that time I wasn't even quite certain yet about the pregnancy. As for the suicide thing, why, I wasn't consciously thinking in those terms until the day of the picnic. It was all over, you know, but I'm female enough so I didn't enjoy watching Jim the tender husband and Ann acting like a new bride, Jim all braced to speak to me politely but hoping to God he wouldn't have to—and also wanting to—yes, I could feel that. So I wandered off into that part of the garden. It wasn't till I noticed the monkshood plants that I started telling myself how that way wouldn't hurt. Then I was digging up two or three, just to look at them. I nibbled at one, and spat it out."

"You saw Edith every day that week, didn't you? Went to the studio as usual?"

"Yes."

"Oh, she knew you were in the depths. She loves you. Your moods aren't the mystery to her that they are to most people, Callista. As for her factual knowledge—well, you might as well be prepared to hear her exaggerate that a little, even lie some about how much she knew if she thinks it will help you."

"I'm strangely rich and fortunate. I have two friends."

"I wish we were stronger. Well, after Edith testifies, then you, if you will promise me one thing—two things."

"One, that I shall not say I am guilty."

"Yes. The other is that when Hunter is attacking you, as he will, without mercy and with every trick he knows, you'll remember that you, and your friends, desire you to live."

"That I can promise. The other—"

"Callista, look up at me."

"Not yet. In a moment."

"Tell me this: is there any virtue, any rational good, in declaring a literal truth when misinterpretation is inevitable, when you know to a certainty that your hearers cannot grasp the whole truth nor keep the partial truth in proportion, nor even guess at the background, the related truths?"

"Virtue—rational good—I'm too confused, Cecil. Other thoughts. I don't know. I suppose not."

"You call yourself guilty—of a momentary lapse that happened to end in disaster. But if you say that much, the jury will inevitably charge you with a different sort of guilt. They will say: she brooded and planned to murder her lover's wife, the old story—let her burn! But is it right, reasonable, is it anything but insane, that for such a lapse, when you were sick in mind and body, you should be strapped in a chair and the life burned out of you?"

"You can frighten me, Cecil. It's strange. I don't think the brute fact has really frightened me before, not completely. It wasn't real."

"It's real. I was trying to frighten you. You must not say on the stand what you've said to me tonight. I know it to be truth, because you've said it to me. Telling it to the jury will not serve truth, because their minds will make a lie of it. Look up at me now."

"I'll promise it, I think—for a bargain. I'll lie by silence, in return for a promise from you."

"A promise—what is it, Callista?"

"Promise me that if I am acquitted, I may come to you, live with you—in marriage or not, it doesn't matter—love you and care for you so long as I can have you. Give me that, and then I will lie, I'll swear anything to save my life, I'll be such an actress—"

"Now I can look up at you. Now I know that what Edith said is true: living is journeying, and love's a region we can enter for a while."

"Yes, a region that changes if only because we do ourselves. Some try to prevent that, I suppose. They want it to be a closed room thick with perfume and curtains drawn against all weather, against night and day."

"But when I come to you—you've promised it—I'll make it a region of summer, of morning and summer evening and every star at night."