“Madam!” Judge Carver’s tone would have daunted Boadicea.
“And are those what you call comments and characterizations?” inquired Mrs. Shea indignantly. “Well, God save us all!”
“That will be all, thank you, Mrs. Shea,” said Mr. Lambert hastily. “Cross-examine.”
“No questions,” said Mr. Farr with simple fervour. Mrs. Shea, looking baffled but menacing, moved forward with a majestic stride, leaving the courtroom in a state of freely expressed delight. Across the hum of their voices boomed Mr. Lambert’s suddenly impressive summons.
“Mr. Bellamy, will you be good enough to take the stand?”
Very quietly he came, the man who had been sitting there so motionless for so many days for them to gape their fill at, moving forward now to afford them better fare. Dark-eyed, low-voiced, courteous, and grave, he advanced toward the place of trial with an unhurried tread. In the lift of his head there was something curiously and effortlessly noble, thought the red-headed girl. Murderers should not hold their heads like that.
“Mr. Bellamy, where were you on the night of June nineteenth at nine-thirty o’clock?”
The proverbial dropped pin would have made a prodigious clatter in the silence that hovered over the waiting courtroom.
“I was in my car on the River Road, about a mile or so from Lakedale.”
“You were not in the neighbourhood of the Thorne estate, Orchards?”