Yes—but all that was before Ann Doherty drank poison.
Once more laboriously, appearing to herself rather like a high school child hungry for a good mark, Callista attempted to review her knowledge of that night last August. Not only as it would be presented when she took the stand (as she must do whether Cecil thought best or not) but as it would be declared to the court of her own intelligence before that court could grant any acquittal. The face of Judge Mann intruded, however, again and once again, when her toiling revery reached the Blank, the lost moment, the miserable blur of amnesia where the crucial thing, the one answer Callista must have, was surely lying hidden. A quiet face, probably wise and certainly not vain, with the small chronic frown, the sense of cleanness and good health, the gentleness that Callista believed no face could wear if it were functioning as a mask—very well then: admit the face of Judge Terence Mann to this lonely privacy and make use of it.
Let the empty wall beside the barred door dissolve a little. Blur the flat plaster, doubtless reinforced within; it looks like stone and by daylight shows a few sad scribblings of the last tenant, not quite scrubbed away: Why can't they let me read what the wench wrote and criticize her bit of a drawing that might now be either a baby or a phallus?—blur that, and let the high walnut bench stand there. Give him the gown—black, please!—and the pencil, and the look, startled but not unkind, that he wore when the spiteful child said: "Which is the Clerk?" He would be less ghostly if now and then, there in the foggy opening of the wall, he could move his thin hand in the writing—could it possibly be drawing?—up there in the dignified isolation where even Mr. Delehanty, the Clerk-which-is-the-Clerk, couldn't watch it. All right now? Go ahead!
Begin with the talk, the flustered moment when Ann came into the apartment a little fogged up with wondering what it was all about. If she was wondering—hard to be sure, since dewy-eyed confusion was one of Ann's best faces: look-how-cute-I-am-when-I'm-thinking-about-something. Not that a talk with Nancy could ever decide anything except that she would continue certain of her own placid rightness. Your Honor, it had a bearing on my state of mind—and by the way, my cantankerous cattiness and unfairness are duly noted and admitted. I couldn't stand her. I never could stand her, even before—before Jim. I can't stand people who cuddle continually inside one ready-made idea like babies growing old in the crib. Yes—granted—they can't help it.
YOU ARE ADMITTING YOU HATED YOUR LOVER'S WIFE?
No, I'm not. I said I couldn't stand her. It's not the same thing. Wasn't that correct? A difficult point, but not too difficult for Judge Mann—he with his calm face, his busy pencil: without the black robe, in ordinary clothes, what would you take him for? Doctor? Scientist? Teacher? Besides, your Honor, on that night he was no longer my lover. That was the night of the 16th of August, with a hazy moon. He had been my lover from the first of May to the sixth day of July.
DO YOU WISH TO TESTIFY ABOUT THAT?
I think I should like to have the hazy moon admitted in evidence.
CALLISTA, WILL YOU NEVER UNDERSTAND THAT MOST HUMAN CREATURES ARE AFRAID OF LAUGHTER? GET TO THE POINT.
All right.