mouth. Her husband's eyes watched her sadly.
'And you, Mrs. Tarrant?' Max asked gently.
Julia Tarrant blinked, then looked toward Max. 'That day—' She drank again and there was only a little left in the glass. 'I'd been upstairs.' Tears spilled down her cheeks. She made no effort to wipe them away. She sat there and wept, silently.
Max looked helplessly at Annie.
'Julia,' Annie said tentatively.
Slowly, the older woman turned her head. 'You have a soft voice. Like Amanda.'
Annie hesitated, then plunged ahead. 'Did Amanda hear the shot?'
A cunning smile lifted Julia's lips, yet the tears still slipped down her cheeks. She emptied the glass, looked at it regretfully, and put it on the Queen Anne table. 'Trying to trick me!' She waved a finger waggishly. 'Can't trick me. I'd just heard the grandfather clock. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. So it was just after four o'clock. So loud. I put my hands over my ears.' Waveringly, she lifted her hands and clapped them to her ears. Then she slid them over her face and hid her ravaged eyes. A shudder shook her frail frame. 'Awful. Awful. Awful.'
'Julia!' Miss Dora's cane thumped the rich old carpet. Julia's hands fell away, her head snapped up, and she stared, eyes wide and vacant, at Miss Dora.
'You heard the shot?' Miss Dora's stare demanded an an swer.
Annie found it hard to believe the words meant anything to Julia, so glazed and blank was her face, but, slowly, unhappily, she nodded.
'It's a dead horse—' Milam began angrily.
Miss Dora held up a hand, her eyes glittering with satisfaction. 'You all agree then, that the shot occurred at shortly past four that afternoon. Whitney? Charlotte? Milam? Julia?'
Each nodded acquiescence, reluctantly. Whitney massaged his temple as though his head ached. Charlotte clasped her hands together so tightly her rings must have bruised herfingers. Milam stood stiffly by the fireplace. Julia stared mo rosely into her empty glass.
Miss Dora used her cane as a pointer. 'How many shots, Whitney?'
'Why, one. Just one.' He looked surprised.
'Charlotte?'
'One, of course.' Her tone was pettish.
Miss Dora eyed her thoughtfully. 'You would have heard had there been more than one?'
'Certainly.' Charlotte obviously felt on safe ground here. 'I must have been among those nearest to the study—and I think the study window was open. Why, of course. That's why it was so loud. I was so startled, I dropped the vase. And it broke. I was so upset—and that's why it took me a minute or two to come into the house—not, of course, that I had any idea at the time that something dreadful had happened. As I came into the house, Julia ran past me, her face as white as a sheet.' She shot a tiny, vindictive glance toward her sister-in-law.
'One shot, Aunt Dora,' Milam interposed gruffly. 'Sorry, it wasn't the Wild West that day.'
'One shot,' Julia said with great precision.
Miss Dora nodded regally. 'That is my recollection, too. I
did wish to verify it, to make certain of my ground.'
There was a note in her voice that commanded attention. Every eye in the room focused on the implacable old lady. She did not disappoint them.
'Yes. I heard the shot. I was at the gate into the Tarrant House garden. But I had stopped for several minutes because I did not want to interrupt what was obviously a very private and personal meeting between Ross and Sybil. And I hesitated yet a while longer after you departed, Sybil. I wished to give Ross time to regain his composure. I had just raised my hand to push through the gate when Ross and I heard the shot—at just after four on the afternoon of May ninth, 1970.'
10:40 A.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970
Julia squeezed her eyes closed and bunched her hands over her ears, but the Judge's cold, scathing tone filled every crevice of her mind.
'You aren't fit to be a mother. You have forfeited every right.'
It was as though her mind was a cavern, a hideous, damp, dark place and his words echoed, louder and louder, '. . . right . . . right . . . right . . . right . . .'
