The Trial of Callista Blake

nt of the sun on Callista's black hair, and on the polished bleakness of the table where her arm rested. The daily journey and decline of the sun affect

afness, uncertainty of his powers. And in all activities between foggy waking and not quite desired sleep, a fading, a knowledge of relinquishment. If his eyes sought and cherished (as now) the delicate swell of Callista's

a useful effect on the jury-enact anything at all, from sputtering rage to glacial contempt-but don't feel it! He could not afford to feel it, without a far more flexible control of his private emotions than he now

to four. My opening will be brief. If agreeable

robably hoped for, in having the jury sleep on his opening masterpiece, might be no advantage at all-a jury can forget impressions as well as facts.... Startled, he realized that Terence with his curious courtesy was deferring, looking down from the ben

intend to summarize, to outline

n that case, the defe

nchester College is a distinguished man, author of a textbook in English widely used in the secondary schools. Her mother is active in the Presbyterian Church, past president of the Shanesville P.T.A.-in short I know of nothing in this girl's history or family surroundings to account for her present situation unless you attach more importance than I do to

n insanity defense being made here. I think it's a case where the individual must be held clearly responsible for a wanton and cruel act, the one act that strikes most dangerously against the welfare and secu

ll Callista to look toward him for comfort. He checked an impulsive motion of his hand. Still-faced, she was watching a spot on the wall above the gaunt grim skul

rom the Shanesville High School, Class of 1958-with high honors by the way. Dr. Chalmers wished to send her to college. She is a girl of exceptional intelligence, and don't forget it." (So, T. J.? She's on trial for unauthorized possession of a brain?) "But immediately after graduation, Callista Blake preferred to seek employment, and found it as an assistant in a pho

there was not. Callista herself would not have it so. On the stand, he knew, she would tell the truth so far as she knew it-the whole impossible cl

ather's estate, plus her salary from Edith. Warner felt some wry pleasure, although it meant nothing, really, except an opportunity to rub Hunter's nose in a minor blunder. "There was no break in the family relation, me

ried in 1955, and moved to this neighborhood. Mr. Nathaniel Judd of Winchester is the father of a friend of James Doherty's killed in Korea. Mr. Judd grew acquainted with Doherty through correspondence, and in '55 offered him a partnership in his re

hifting arrows of living light that could not move without grace. His first sight of it had been about a year ago, an invitation to the little apartment at Covent Street soon after Edith had done his portrait and Callista's rapid pen had drawn that strangely affectionate cartoon of him, comedy without spite; as if at eighteen the girl could incredibly glimpse the quality of sixty-seven and find something there for the unhurtful entertainment of both of them-and of Edith, who had remarked laconically: "What the hell good is a camera?"

d man on Doherty's left. It would be Father Bland's habit, Warner supposed, to show at all times that careful benignity smooth as

eography. Giving the

. The Doherty place is near that right-angle fork of Summer and Walton, back from the road, its drive opening north on Summer Avenue. The house itself stands about a hundred yards west of the fork. The Chalmers house is south of Dohertys'-entrance on Walton Road about the same distance from the fork. Except for not very hea

es used a winding footpath through the grove for visiting back and forth. And you must imagine the region as it is in summer, leafed out so that the two houses are quite hidden from each other. Maple, pine, hemlock, oak-some very big pines at the edge of Walton Road.... In the grove near the

there, it might have been possible to catch a glint of light from the Chalmers house, through the lea

annoyance, amusement. The night in August had been delightful; relaxed, no attempt to achieve a counterfeit of youth, and no wish for it. Leisure of a sort was possible-it ought to be, at Mrs. Willoughby's rates!-and the girl, small, brown-eyed, pert, had been convincingly friendly; more so, once she understood that the Old Man, in spite of being sixty-eight and too fat, didn't care for elaborate variations but wanted only the bread-and-butter-steak-and-potatoes of natural intercourse. They had talked a while, h

the illusion of detachment that can make existence appear truly like a river, yourself able to look back upstream at nearly forgotten vistas: trees, meadow

dvancing out of the ever-distressed Atlantic and growing a snowy froth, never pausing yet seeming to pause when the froth spilled over the crest. Then a topplin

do a little better next year; Manuelo in the empty boathouse showing off how many times he could do it in half an hour; Great-aunt Harriet who turned up every Thanksgiving, who liked to announce abruptly out of her world of deafness that she'd been in Ford's Theatre when Lincoln was shot-then she would read lips a minute while the company hollered how wonderful that was, and then, eating loudly and cheerfully, she wo

radle endles

-bird's throat, th

Ninth-mon

eyond, where the child, leaving his bed,

f Mother's. Carried off to his room and secretly saved from disaster when his stepmother dismissed all the books in the parlor that didn't have pretty red or brown bindings. The fury

nine years of the river's journey before Callista Blake was born, the nineteen years sin

wife. He remembered damning the Kaiser. The murky spooks of Stalin and Hitler bulked so much larger in the years between, in front of them the mushroom cloud-hard to reconstruct true

ose, with caution, remembering that if you don't make it, they'l

with Edith, maybe (and flowers), so ma

escape, never more

s of unsatisfied lo

he peaceful child I was befo

er the yellow a

aroused-the fire, th

ant, the dest

tes he had been studying, possibly fo

word is adultery, and I must remind you now, members of the jury, that Callista Blake is not here on trial for adultery. She is on trial for murder, nothing else. The State will prove the fact of adultery to establish motive-whic

ne. If anything at all had been uncovered involving James Doherty in this crime, you know he would not be at liberty. Nothing of the sort has been found; everything points the other way. He decisively broke off the affair more than a month b

. But as the State's representative, I remind you that instead of the many fair and decent solu

was going there except Callista Blake who, by her own admission, had telephoned and asked her to come. James Doherty had gone to New York City by train the morning of t

llowed her home because he thought she might be ill, felt uneasy about her welfare till he saw her drive in safely at her house on Summer Avenue-

d the Chalmers house, hidden by the trees. At 9:40, another half-hour later, Callista Blake drove that car part way into the Chalme

eadlights and motor but left the car door open. Her key ring, with house and car keys, fell by the porch steps. She dropped her handbag on the path leading through the woods to the Chalmers house. Aconite causes numbness of the extremities, nausea, thirst, general muscular collapse, but usually no impairment of the intelligence. Evidently Ann's mind

he Chalmers house? We don't know, for certain. Took the wrong turn in the moonlight, being sick and confused?-possible. She was found in the water, drowned. Stumbled and fell in, couldn't get out?-that

for another sip of water, and Warner's gaze wandered to the fac

s almost devoid of vanity, incredible as that might seem in a judge. No fanaticism in Terence Mann, no insistence on the rightness of a view because it was his own, no false identification of self with id

ann who had died the year before. A superficial resemblance. Old Norden had been a born pettifogger, loving legal labyrinths for their own sake. Terence, skeptical, a bit sharp, would look for the simplest way to pass through a labyrinth and come out on the other side. Terence had served his apprenticeship in Norden's firm, re-entering it after his discharge from the Army. Until that graf

ub and began a more relaxed acquaintance over a few drinks. Then an invitation to Terence's apartment that became an evening of Chopin and Bach. Music was an aspect of Mann's life unsuspected, dis

sagging red-veined blob, the face of Boss Timmy Flack of the Third Ward-who, in a way, was the politics of Winchester, the half-submerged and partly useful human force, neither honest nor demonstrably a crook, The Man You Went To See. Himself hono

-hu

? Civic virtu

hi

hat are you goin

ling me,

tle

to do, now he's in? The son of

understood that he now feared Terence Mann only because Terence's mind demanded demonstrat

as led us to this conclusion. The State contends that Callista Blake followed Ann Doherty, searched her out, found her there helpless

lista gazing down at her fingertips, frowning slightly as if bothered

olice at Shanesville. The poison aconitine was found there, in two forms-in an opened bottle of brandy, and in a canister that held chopped-up monkshood roots, the sourc

llista Blake gave it to her with malice aforethought, with full intent to cause her death. The State contends th

ring in vertigo and he must grab the back of his chair and wait. The clock hands stood at three minutes past five. T

oft and friendly. "Ce

idence, before the jury has had opportunity to learn the tru

nswering,

not, hurr

the night, and very p

low and delicio