Sergeant Peterson had droned his last and had been succeeded on the
stand by Trooper Curtis, brisk and dry, with his plaster casts and
fingerprints. Both men, Edith Nolan understood, were competent, honest,
not deliberately wasting time. Hunter himself was not really unduly slow
at this business of hammering home what was already clear and
established: Callista had been there. The fingerprint evidence at
Shanesville was quite negative: no prints except Ann's on handbag or key
case, none but hers and Jim's on the Pontiac or the Dohertys' front
porch. All right and so what? It was half past three before Hunter and
Curtis were solemnly finished with that apparent futility. It had never
occurred to Edith that any part of this ordeal could be a bore. But it
was.
Then in a brief cross examination Warner brought out the fact that a
police search of the grove between the pond and Walton Road had produced
nothing at all. It could not matter. Curtis and Peterson had both acted
rather pleased with their casts and photographs of the Volkswagen's tire
marks on the shoulder of Walton Road. They liked things complete, well
wrapped. But it couldn't matter, for in her statement to District
Attorney Lamson Callista had admitted taking the Volkswagen first into
the Dohertys' driveway, following the footpath, seeing Ann's body in the
pond. She had admitted leaving then, driving around to Walton Road,
parking there out of sight of her mother's house.
And the prosecution would surely not trouble to deny or even question
Callista's story of what happened then, in that half hour. She had
stumbled off into the thick second-growth woods on the other side of
Walton Road, a tangle of saplings, briers, poison ivy, wiry bushes, and
young locust trees thorny in the dark, to get through a miscarriage in
secret like a wounded animal and have done with it. To Edith, on the
first occasion when with Warner's help Edith had broken through the
barriers and won a visit with Callista in the detention cell, Callista
had said tersely, in haste to change the subject: "The brambles were the
worst of it." And that visit was not a time when she would accept any
word of consolation. Something held back, Edith knew, some private
tormenting reason why, even to her, Callista could not speak freely
about that agony in the woods. Later, maybe. Everything now must be
qualified with such words: "later"--"some time"--"after all this is
over, Cal, and you are free."
Curtis was gone. Something smart and bright-eyed was down there swearing
to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
"Your full name and occupation, sir?"
"Sutherland R. Clipp. I own and manage Clipp's Garage on Duke Street,
uptown--you know, repairs, gas, body work, matter of fact we do
everything, you'd be surprised."
In startled disgust Edith thought: _Everything? How lovely for you, Mr.
Clipp!_ With the utmost geniality, Mr. Clipp went on to testify that on
the evening of Sunday, August 16th, he had been driving home to
Winchester by Walton Road, after delivering a 1956 Buick in the nicest
condition you could imagine to a customer in Emmetville. He wanted to
emphasize that the Buick was a dish, in spite of--well, low mileage. He
had practically robbed himself, but that was his way, the customer came
first, and it paid off--oh--yes, he'd been watching the time that
evening because he had to pick up his wife after a church supper; got
talking with that (completely satisfied) Emmetville client, and besides,
the car he'd taken in exchange was kind of a sad heap that wouldn't
safely do anything over forty, and you know how women are if you keep
them waiting, not that she--yes, he had passed the junction of Summer
Avenue and Walton Road between 9:10 and 9:15, no later. He had seen a
maroon Volkswagen parked under the pines, not too well off the road
either, careless parking, one reason why he'd noticed it, although he
always did notice them cheap foreign cars, which weren't too bad if all
you wanted was economical transportation, like, however--what?--no,
there wasn't anybody in the Volks or near it, unless somebody was
scrouched down back of the dashboard when his headlights got there, but
you couldn't hardly do anything like that in them foreign
cheapies--"Your witness, Mr. Warner."