“Removed?” She was on her feet in an instant, poised and light. “You wish me to go?”
“I wish you to get yourself in hand immediately. You are doing yourself untold injury by pursuing this line of conduct. The rules that you are refusing to obey were made largely for your own protection.”
“I don’t want to be protected. I want to tell the truth. Apparently no one wants to hear it.”
“On the contrary, you are permitted to take the stand for that express purpose.”
“For that purpose? To tell the truth?” The scorn in her voice was almost gay.
“Precisely. The limits that are imposed are for your benefit, and you are injuring your co-defendant as well as yourself by refusing to abide by them.”
“Stephen?” She paused at that, considering gravely. “I don’t want to do that, of course. Very well, I will try to go on.” She turned back to her chair, and a long sigh of incredulous relief trembled through the courtroom.
“I have forgotten where I stopped.”
“You were about to tell us what you did after you came down the nursery stairs?” Lambert’s shaken voice was hardly audible.
“Yes. Well, then—then we did exactly what Stephen said we did. We drove through the back road to the River Road, where we turned to the left and went into Lakedale in order to get more gasoline. I distinctly remember the time, because we had been discussing whether the movies would be out by the time that we got back. It was twenty-five minutes past nine. After that we retraced our steps—down the River Road to the back road, down to the place in the back road where I had met Stephen, past our house into the main street of the village, past the movie house, which was dark, and up the main street, which runs into the Perrytown Highway—up the Perrytown Highway to the Bellamy house.