"Callista, I'm not sure the jury—it's a difficult thing to express."
"I know, Mr. Warner, and I'm doing it badly. Well—sometimes a person can get rid of the self-preoccupation long enough to really know someone else, without illusion or pretense. It's like that with Edith Nolan and me. We—communicate. But with Jimmy—with Jim Doherty and me it was all illusion. On both sides. And I gave up on that letter because I realized rather suddenly that I was—talking to someone who wasn't there." (And he isn't here in the courtroom—he is—it doesn't matter.) "You asked something else—oh, about the monkshood. Yes, I made the infusion that night, and then pushed it away to the back of the shelf. I don't know how to tell this either, Mr. Warner. There's a fascination about an ugly and foolish thing like that. I don't understand it: it takes hold of you in spite of yourself. I remember I almost poured out a drink from it, that night, simply from a sort of curiosity, and then I thought—this is going to sound idiotic—"
"Never mind, just tell it as it comes to you."
"Well, I thought: Look, Callista, if you can be interested and curious about a miserable thing like this, maybe you could be interested in better things. After a while if not now. So don't drink it. And I didn't of course—I just pushed it to the back of the shelf and—oh, I read that evening, I think. Some book or other. It didn't hold me, I wasn't quite alive, but it was something to do. That Saturday evening after the picnic was probably the time I came nearest to actually drinking the stuff."
"I see. A week later, Callista—I mean Sunday, August 16th—did you telephone to Ann Doherty?"
"Yes, early in the afternoon."
"You wanted to reach her and not Jim, is that right?"
"Yes. If Jimmy had answered the phone, I don't know—I suppose everything would be different, wouldn't it? I wasn't prepared to talk to him then. Maybe I'd've hung up without speaking. Anyway Ann did answer, and I—asked her over."
"Did you say why you wanted to see her?"