“I would have begged her to try to find happiness with me.”
“And if that had not succeeded, you would have prevented her?”
“How could I have prevented her?”
The prosecutor took a step forward and lowered his voice to that strange pitch that carried farther than a battle cry. “Quite simply, Mr. Bellamy. As simply as the person who drove that knife to Madeleine Bellamy’s heart prevented her joining her lover—as simply as that.”
Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash. “Let that remark be stricken from the record!”
Stephen Bellamy’s head jerked back, and from somewhere an arm flashed out to catch him. He motioned it away, steadying himself carefully with an iron grip on the witness box. His eyes, the only things alive in his frozen face, met his enemy’s unswervingly.
“I did not drive that knife to her heart.” His voice was as ominously distinct as the prosecutor’s.
“But you did not raise a hand to prevent it from striking?”
“I could not raise a hand—I was not there.”
“You did not raise a hand?”