After a long pause, Lambert asked, “Before you did what, Mrs. Ives?”
She gave a convulsive start, as though someone had let fall a heavy hand across the nightmare. “Before I—saw her.”
The voice was hardly a whisper, but there was no one in the room beyond the reach of its stilled horror.
“It was Mrs. Bellamy that you saw?”
“Yes, I——” She swallowed—tried to speak—swallowed again, and lifted a hand to her throat. “I’m sorry. Might I have a glass of water? Is that all right?”
In all that room no one stirred save the clerk of the Court, who poured a glass of water with careful gravity and handed it up to her over the edge of the box. She drank it slowly, as though she found in this brief respite life itself. When she had finished it, she put it down gently and said, “Thank you,” in a voice once more clear and steady.
“You were telling us that you saw Mrs. Bellamy.”
“Yes. . . . I must have dropped the lamp immediately; all I remember was that we were standing there in the dark. I heard Stephen say, ‘Don’t move. Where are the matches?’ He needn’t have told me not to move. If I could have escaped death itself by stepping aside one inch I could not have moved that inch. I said, ‘I have them here—in my pocket.’ He said, ‘Strike one.’ I tried three times. The third time it lit, and he went by me and knelt down beside her. He touched her wrist and said, ‘Mimi, did it hurt? Did it hurt, darling?’ The match went out and I started to strike another. He said, ‘Never mind. She’s dead.’ I said, ‘I know it. Dead people can’t close their eyes, can they?’ He said, ‘I have closed them. She’s been murdered. I got you into this, Sue, and I’ll get you out of it. Where are you?’ I tried to say, ‘Here,’ but I couldn’t. And then I thought that I heard something move—outside—in the bushes—and I screamed.
“I’d never done that before in my life. It didn’t sound like me at all. It sounded like someone quite different. Steve whispered, ‘For God’s sake, be still.’ I said, ‘I heard someone moving.’ He said ‘It was I, coming toward you. Give me your hand.’ His was so cold on my wrist that it was horrible.
“I put my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming again, and he pulled me through the hall and on to the porch. I said, ‘Steve, we can’t leave her there like that—we can’t.’ He said, ‘She doesn’t need us any more. Get in the car.’ I pulled back, and he said, ‘Listen to me, Sue. It doesn’t make any difference how innocent we are, if it is ever known that we were in that room this evening, we’ll never be able to make one human being in God’s world believe that we aren’t guilty—and we’ll have to make twelve of them believe. I’ve got to get you home. Get into the car.’ So I got in, and he drove me home.”