"None, sir. I just wanted to make sure Mr. Clipp hadn't left out
anything. No further questions."
During the short courtroom roar, checked by the gavel, Edith thought she
could read exasperated forgiveness in the face of Judge Terence Mann.
But foreman Peter Anson, she saw, was not amused, nor Hoag, nor Francis
Fielding. Business is serious: to make fun of a man when he's
advertising is something like interrupting him in the men's room.
State Trooper Carlo San Giorgio, solemn, deceptively fresh-faced and
young, followed Mr. Clipp. He had stopped a blue and white Pontiac,
license JD1081, on Walton Road two miles beyond the city line, at 8:34
P.M., Sunday, August 16th. The driver was a young woman who gave her
name as Mrs. James Doherty, which agreed with her driver's license. Her
driving had been unsteady, with some wavering over the white line.
"Was she driving fast, exceeding the limit?"
"No, sir, rather slow. Just unsteady."
"Did she seem in good command of herself when you spoke to her?"
"Yes, but I did ask if she'd been drinking a little."
"Was her response satisfactory to you as a police officer?"
"Well--yes, sir, it was."
"Did you notice any smell of alcohol on her breath?"
"A trifle." San Giorgio fidgeted. "Just barely noticeable."
"But according to your observation, she wasn't what you'd call drunk, is
that right?"
"No, sir, she certainly wasn't. Spoke coherently, understood what I
said--real polite and--and nice."
"Did anything in her appearance suggest she might be ill?"
"She was slightly hoarse. I'd stopped her car where there was a pretty
good light from a house across the road, and I thought her eyes looked
very slightly inflamed. Enough to suggest she might be--oh, perhaps
coming down with a cold. You understand, sir, these were very slight
things, otherwise I couldn't have let her drive on."
Back of all that, Edith knew--back of the hedging, the slowly chosen
words, back of Hunter's questions blunted by the hearsay rule--was the
thing that San Giorgio knew and keenly remembered and could not say.
Warner's dark eyes had narrowed to cold watchfulness, and Judge Mann's
pencil was still. There wasn't any hearsay rule in Mr. Lamson's office.
But here in the arena, Carlo San Giorgio couldn't say: "_She said she'd
had one little shot of brandy. And I said: 'Oh well, Miss, I guess we
won't throw the book at you for that.'_"
Last night at dinner, Cecil Warner had done some thinking out loud about
Trooper San Giorgio, who would have in his own young mind no reasonable
doubt. San Giorgio could not repeat Ann's words on the stand. And yet if
he could, the Old Man said, it ought (if juries were logical) to make no
essential difference. For there was no defense, he said, except a
reasonable doubt as to criminal intent. "Reasonable doubt!" he said, and
set down his glass because his fat hand was shaking. "You see it, Red?
T.J. can say that criminal intent and premeditation are proved up to the
hilt by the mere presence of the poison in Cal's apartment. He will.
He'll rub their noses in it. Against that and a flock of other
circumstantial facts, we've got just one fact, the fact of something
that happened in Cal's mind. Is it a fact?"
"You and I both know it, don't we? She had no intent to kill."
But instead of answering directly, the Old Man had said: "Red, do you
understand she's not certain of it herself?"
Edith had not quite understood it, until then.
"Did you give her a ticket, Trooper?"
"No, sir. From the address on her driving license I knew she had only
about a mile to go. I told her she'd better head straight for home, and
I told her I'd follow along behind till she got there, which I did."
The youth was reliving it, Edith saw, and perhaps painfully. A pretty
girl, hot night and hazy moon--had he hoped to be invited into the house
for a quick check on burglars and a little drink? Oh, probably not. Ann
had carried an obvious flag of conventional virtue. San Giorgio would
have recognized and respected it, and done no more than a bit of
summer's-night dreaming.
"You drove behind her car, as far as the house on Summer Avenue?"
"I did, sir. I saw her turn in at the driveway, and since she made it
all right, I drove on."
"Did you note the time?"
"Yes, sir: 8:43."
"Mr. Warner?"
"No questions."
Later last night, up at her studio, watching the fire in the grate
through the prism of his wineglass, the Old Man said: "Who started the
legend that the law court is a place devoted to search for truth?
Answer, lawyers of course. But not counsel for the defense, Red. We know
our function is to persuade. The prosecution may fool itself now and
then, and kick the word 'truth' around; we can't afford to."