Sergeant Rankin's voice echoed something of Judge Mann's perplexity; a
true echo probably, for Callista sensed that Sergeant Rankin had never
until this moment entertained the notion that the Monkshood Girl might
be of unsound mind. And the notion might be, to Sergeant Rankin,
interesting, without regard to the tender feelings of the District
Attorney's office. For an accusation of physical coercion and threat of
rape would be far less convincing from a psychopath. Cecil would be
noticing the Sergeant's tentative nibbling at the idea. Cecil might be
wishing that the Judge would make more inquiry along that line--for to
Cecil, she knew, an insanity defense might still be a sort of last-ditch
possibility in spite of her total refusal to go along with it. While she
herself rather hoped the little man in the too priestlike gown would
shut up and mind his own business. _What's it to him? Perhaps it will be
to him, and not to Cecil whom I love, that I'll find the courage to say:
I am guilty._
Sergeant Rankin picked his way among words like a man stepping from
hummock to hummock through a marsh. "I would say, your Honor, that there
was, maybe, something like that about her--general behavior. But--a
vague sort of thing--I don't know if I should express an opinion, just
a--a layman's opinion anyhow--"
"Well," said the Judge crisply, "did Miss Blake become abusive, or
scream, cry, talk irrationally or too loud or too fast, anything like
that?"
"No, your Honor, none of those things, not at all."
"Did she seem confused, inattentive to what you said or unable to
understand it?"
"No, your Honor. Very cool and self-possessed, really. I had--if I might
put it this way--I had an impression that she was deliberately talking
over my head--that I didn't understand some of the things she said
because I wasn't meant to."
"Do you mean her answers were unresponsive, unconnected with the
questions you asked?"
"No, not quite that, your Honor. Well, I recall one thing, after she
broke the aquarium heater and we exchanged those remarks about--about
killing beautiful things. I said to her: 'Look, Miss Blake, if they
decide to arrest you, surely you've got some friend who would have
looked after that aquarium for you while you're away.' Now it's my
recollection that I said that in a perfectly friendly, kindly way--I
certainly had no wish to make things hard for her--but Miss Blake said:
'A spring morning can't be warmed up in the oven.' Well, I wouldn't know
whether a head--whether a psychiatrist would call that an irrational
reply or not. I just didn't think it made much sense."
"I see. Go on, Mr. Hunter."
"Did anything else significant happen before Chief Gage arrived?"
"I think not, sir. Nothing I remember. I didn't think I was getting
anywhere trying to talk with her, so for the last five or ten minutes we
just sat there waiting for the others to come."
"Yeah," Callista said under her breath, "we just sat there." She leaned
a little against Cecil's shoulder, weary, suddenly desiring sleep above
all things, yet touched and curiously disturbed by the Old Man's
harmless, rather pleasant smell of shaving lotion, soap, tobacco.
Drowsily she thought: _He's really nothing like my father._
"What happened, in your presence, after Chief Gage and the others
arrived at Miss Blake's apartment?"
"Well, Miss Blake was briefly questioned by Chief Gage and yourself. It
covered the same things I'd talked about with her. She was asked by
Chief Gage about a photograph and a couple of letters that I found in a
desk in her bedroom."
"She was not at that time under arrest, was she?"
"No, sir, she was not. I recall that Chief Gage quite formally asked her
permission to look around the apartment, and she gave it."
"Please describe those items, the photograph and the letters."
"The photograph was a snapshot of a man in swimming trunks, taken at
some beach or other, and the name 'Jimmy' was written on the back--just
the name, nothing else. One of the letters, dated July 5, 1959, was
signed 'J', and Miss Blake, when shown it, identified it as one written
to her by Mr. James Doherty of Shanesville. The other one, bearing no
date and not signed--in fact not finished--was identified by Miss Blake
as one that she had started to write to Mr. Doherty, but had never
mailed."
"Was Miss Blake questioned about those letters, there at her apartment?"
"Not much then, sir. She identified Mr. Doherty as the husband of the
Mrs. Doherty who had been found dead in Shanesville. Chief Gage asked
her to explain the relation between herself and Mr. Doherty, and she
said without any show of emotion--with a shrug, as a matter of fact--she
said: 'Oh, he was my sweetheart for a little while, a summertime
amusement.'"
She saw T. J. Hunter, relaxed and thoughtful, walk to the prosecution's
table and spend a weary time standing there, brooding at the small
papers he had taken up. Callista closed her eyes. "If it please the
Court, I will offer these two letters and photograph for admission in
evidence, but, if they are accepted, I will have the letters read to the
jury somewhat later, to make a more orderly presentation. For the
present I merely wish to establish their identification by Sergeant
Rankin."
The deep voice by her shoulder remarked: "I will ask to see them." _Do
you have to go over there, Cecil?_ Then Callista was aware of a small
but unaccountable lapse of time, for Cecil was already by the
prosecution's table glaring morosely at little scraps of paper, his
bushed eyebrows in a clench, while T. J. Hunter stood by politely, hands
in his pockets. Had she fallen asleep sitting up? Was it possible for an
accused witch to do that in a court of law? _Oh, likely had something to
attend to, and took off on my broomstick--well, sure, a mission, three
times around the Shanesville house casting a spell to curdle Cousin
Maud's plum jam, and high time too--it merely slipped my mind--how'd I
manage without a cat?_ She saw the Old Man's shoulder sag and stiffen.
It was cut and dried, he had told her: the letters would go in, mostly
because he hoped to gain more than lose by them, when there was a chance
for the defense to interpret them. This present show of examining them
was what he called legal window-dressing. She saw him make some quick
_sotto voce_ comment, his face savagely disgusted, an aside that no one
but T. J. Hunter could hear. Hunter flushed all the way up his bald
forehead; the flush passed, leaving no sign of anger. Then Cecil spoke
in his courtroom voice, smoothly, a tone of indifference close to
contempt: "The defense will not protest the admission of these
documents."
_How could I have slept?_ Cecil was returning. _Apparently no one
noticed--a minor accomplishment of necromancy--I just toss these things
off, you know._ Some mumbling and talking over yonder, as she felt the
return of Cecil's warmth, and took hold of his hand, though he was
really nothing like her father. Yes, Rankin, identifying the silly
things. _Poor Jim, spelled "relinquish" r-e-l-i-n-q-u-e-s-h. E for
effort._ "Cecil, what did you say to the rising young lawyer that turned
him pink?"
He looked at her doubtfully, not smiling. "I said the prosecution must
be running out of keyholes."
"Maybe you touched a childhood trauma."
"His childhood be damned," the Old Man grumbled. "He's still a snotnose
pulling the wings off flies, as a profession."
"I decline to be compared to a house-fly."
"Shut up, dear. I've got to listen again."
"Sergeant, after Miss Blake's admission that James Doherty had been her
lover, was she questioned any further, there at her apartment?"
"No, sir. Chief Gage informed her that she would be detained for
questioning. She made no protest. Accompanied by yourself, Mr. Hunter, I
took her in a police car direct to Mr. Lamson's office, in this
building."
"Was she questioned there, in your presence?"
"Yes, sir, mainly by Mr. Lamson. My recollection is that the others
present were yourself, Chief Gage, Miss Wallingford--that's Mr. Lamson's
secretary--who made a stenographic record of the interrogation, and
Sergeant Shields of the State Police, who was present only a part of the
time, a few minutes."
"Did Miss Blake sign anything during that interview at Mr. Lamson's
office, while you were present?"
"She did, sir. The stenographic record of the interrogation was typed by
Miss Wallingford. Miss Blake then read it, and signed it--signed the
written statement that the answers given by her and recorded in the
transcript were true to the best of her knowledge and belief. Her
signature was witnessed by Mr. Lamson and yourself, and Mr. Lamson
requested me to read and initial the pages of the typescript, which I
did."
"If it please the Court--" and Cecil was gone again, looming over
yonder, examining the pages, large ones this time, impressive legal
size. More window-dressing. But discussion was longer; she grew
inattentive in her drowsiness. She heard Hunter remark that the
transcript would be read after cross-examination of Sergeant Rankin--if,
said the bald polite man with the shovel chin, Mr. Warner elected to
cross-examine. Cecil grunted. A side-bar huddle followed that. Some of
the time she knew her eyelids had drooped, hiding her in a murmurous
partial darkness; some of the time she was watching, with an abstract
friendliness and faraway approval, the thoughtful and still puzzled
features of Judge Terence Mann. _I can't explain it either, Judge.
According to my own biased notions, I'm not mad, at least no more than
my old buddy Hamlet, who also had a mother. Gets complicated there,
because Hamlet was decidedly male, I think, any side up, while I'm every
inch a wench. Ask Rankin. You see_--
It disturbed her, to reflect how little any of those present would ever
know about her. They looked at her; anyway their eyes did. In a few days
they would hear her talk from that dizzy isolation of the witness stand;
anyway their ears would register certain sounds. Already through the
testimony their mental vision (imperfect, cloudy, variously preoccupied)
had watched her squeaking grass-blades with the Wayne kids, snapping at
poor Cousin Maud on the front porch. They had seen her (through the fogs
and excitements of their own scrambled sexual histories) caught in that
slow frenzy--(_wearing a blouse_)--on the divan in Jim's office, under
the glazed smirk of an "art"-calendar nude. _Who were you then,
Callista?--what were you then?_ They had seen her, guilty or innocent,
standing by black water, under hemlocks, under a hazy moon.
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._