"Yes. I suppose so."
"Thank you. I'll take that answer."
The next witnesses were the medical experts--Dr. Spilsbury and Dr. Wilcox. Them Ronnie did not cross-examine. But as Maggie Peterson, answering instantly to the call of her name, flounced through the glass doors and made her defiant way past the reporters' table to the box, John Cartwright--watching counsel for the defense as a trainer watches his man in the ring--saw his mouth set, his chin protrude. And John Cartwright thought, "I wonder if I was right about briefing Cavendish. I wish I knew what he was driving at with that last cross-examination. I wonder what he'll make of this witness. From the look in H. B.'s eyes, she's the crux of his case."
Lucy Towers, too, seemed to realize the importance of Maggie Peterson's evidence. Again, as during Brunton's opening, aloofness went from her. She leaned forward from the dock.
"You're a married woman, Mrs. Peterson?" Hector Brunton in person rose to examine the blowzy black-eyed creature who had just kissed the well-thumbed book.
"I am."
"And at the time when Lucy Towers shot her husband you were living at 25 Laburnum Grove?"
"I was."
"Could you tell us the date of the shooting?"
"The fifth of July."