The Trial of Callista Blake

e, even release her entirely. It had not, not entirely, but it might be no longer rising; maybe this was the turn. She had heard Cecil speak, and had listened. Listening, she had felt within the wear

epeating what poor Herb had said to him. Herb c

eyes were no longer blurred. She could discover the thousand crow's-foot wrinkles in Cecil's face over

comprehend the pattern of a May-fly's wing, since for that you'd have to comprehend the protein molecule. When we can do that, Edith said, we shall still be ignorant, learning all new things with reluctance,

a little panic, Callista recaptured it out of the counterpoint

spectability, congealed in half-truths? Wall them off, like the twentieth, with the soft barrier of democratic smugness or a steel barrier such as Marxian demonology? Maybe, Edith grumbled, the twenty-first century would return to punishi

coming b

nged within the threescore and ten, how much of wonder and experience, speculation, pleasure, suffering

tle nearer to five. The Old Man was sitting down by her, covering her hand briefly, his own heavy and ho

ht. What's h

f redirect. Sore too. Nothing makes a pros

uit didn't look mad. "Sergeant, when you firs

Spoke brokenly, with difficulty. And as I

you'd hardly expect him to make a clea

can think pretty straight in spite of a bad shock. I don't k

ect." But after Hunter's leading question Callista had seen the smooth jowls of juror Emma

n with you, again brought up the theory tha

r, he h

ney Lamson's office during her worst time of questioning. He had said nothing then; would have given Mr. Lamson his information at some other time; maybe he had turned up there (if he really did) just to have a look at her. What she read in him now might be a simple adult refusal to condemn, by a

hair, a pallor as if bleached in his own hypo. Unexpectedly Callista's fingers itched for a pencil, to draw Peterson's lank face as an expanded kodak. She could

Ann Doherty dead, and Cecil would

flaked off the man's pinkish face; and the face itself in all detail, slightly ascetic in spite of that healthy glow, under carefully theatrical gray hair. She saw his manicured hand, womanish except for a scattering of black hairs, reaching across the desk to her, in a reek of too muc

ite underpants, the position pointlessly (accidentally?) erotic: Death, my lover. Accidental surely, for the camera had given a sharper focus to the bedabbled mouth, darkened cheeks, empty eyes. Why must the small breasts push up so urgently? Why, a happen-so: she was drifting fac

no detail spared. Drops of pond water blurred the eyes; a blac

e, not unlovely. Callista remembered that in Mr. Lamson's office she had very nearly remarked aloud: "Never knew she'd had an appendectomy." The lividity, yes; but one could think of that as simply the shadow of death. This photograph, Callista supposed, would hardly go to the jury, for in

e I understand. If these pictures shock me, that's evidence of remorse, in other words guilt. If

ur Shields? An indistinct word or suppressed grumble; not significant, but Mr. Lamson's cool gaze had flicked upward at the sound, not liking it. "No, Miss Blake, I don't think you have it quit

k it was a place where you could get by fairly well by telling t

't think

ief flare of gratification, a thin spear of flame shooting up from an ember behind his eyes. Oh, he was doubtless a decent and respectable ma

tand that what we are trying to

is t

comm

I shouldn't have had it there, I do feel remorse. But I am not breaking d

issue of the pictures. I thought it might be to your interest to look at them, since a jur

rather blind. He murmured: "Couldn't do much, Cal. They're

e'd look the same whether

course. But it assumes that t

shoe superimposed on another mark. Peterson was even wordy and boring, explaining unnecessarily how you could tell that the footprint was made

n hadn't come out of a cloud-I wonder, Cecil-would I have refused to understand she was there? It was a small cloud but deep, suddenly come, suddenly gone. The r

e m

gap of the hemlocks, and there was my rock, and then the whiteness in the water. Her arm, or that blouse-n

Cal, this is

go into the pond, if your story is true? W

h that in direc

ta? How could you know she was dead?' And then I say: 'Sir,

, pl

cross-examine Se

ink so-noth

im why his damned silly face

come to see you

s, one for you and one for-I'm sorry ... I'm all right now. I'll be quiet.

dear. Maybe tom

l. Let me tell yo

ha

scovering that