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.