The witness started to say something, checked herself, stopped, then said savagely, “I guess Mrs. Moar wanted to make sure he was dead. That’s her type!”
“In other words,” Mason went on, smiling, “your idea is that Mrs. Moar, standing within three feet of her husband, wasn’t certain he was dead when she dragged him to the rail, whereas you, standing some fifty or sixty feet away, took one look at him and are willing to swear that he was dead. Is that right?”
“He was dead,” she said.
Mason continued to smile. “Now then, just before Mrs. Moar lifted her husband to the rail, the ship had rolled far to the left, hadn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“By the way,” Mason said, “weren’t your stockings torn when you came down off the boat deck?”
“One of them was, yes.”
“What caused it to tear?”
“I skinned my knee and tore my stocking when I fell down.”
“Oh,” Mason said solicitously, “you fell down, did you?”