“Was Mr. Platz staying with you regularly?”
“Seven days and nights of the week.”
“Did he pay you regularly?”
“He did that!”
“Did he seem to have a regular profession?”
“Well, that’s all whether you’d call bootlegging a regular profession.”
“Now, Your Honour,” remonstrated Mr. Farr, who had been following this absorbing recital with an air of possibly fictitious boredom, “I don’t want to indulge in any legal hairsplitting, but surely a line should be drawn somewhere when it comes to this type of baseless slander and innuendo.”
“Do I understand that you have evidence of Mr. Platz’s activities?” inquired Judge Carver severely.
“The evidence of two eyes and two ears and a nose,” remarked Mrs. Shea with spirit. “Goings and comings and doings such as—”
“That will do, Mrs. Shea. The question hardly seems material. It is excluded. You may take your exception, Mr. Lambert.”
Mr. Lambert, thus prematurely adjured, stared indignantly about him and returned somewhat uncertainly to his task.
“Is it a fact that Mr. Platz’s relationship with Miss Cordier during their sojourn under your roof was simply that of a friend?”
“Fact!” Mrs. Shea snorted derisively. “ ’Tis a black-hearted lie off a black-hearted baggage. Friend, indeed!”
“That will do, Mrs. Shea,” said Judge Carver ominously. “Mr. Lambert, I request you to keep your witness in hand.”
“It is my endeavour to do so,” replied Mr. Lambert with some sincerity and much dignity. “I will be greatly obliged, Mrs. Shea, if you omit any comments or characterizations from your replies. Will you be good enough to give us the day when you first discovered that Mrs. Cordier and Mr. Platz were not married?”
“.”
“Have you any way of fixing the date?”
“You may well say so. Wasn’t it six years since Tim Shea died, and didn’t that big tall Swede come roaring down there saying that the two of them was no more married than Jackie Coogan and the Queen of Spain, and that he was going to beat the life out of his dear brother-in-law, Mr. Adolph Platz? And didn’t he go and do it, without so much as by your leave or saving your presence, and in the decentest and—”
“Madam!” Judge Carver’s tone would have daunted Boadicea.
“And are those what you call comments and characterizations?” inquired Mrs. Shea indignantly. “Well, God save us all!”
“That will be all, thank you, Mrs. Shea,” said Mr. Lambert hastily. “Cross-examine.”
“No questions,” said Mr. Farr with simple fervour. Mrs. Shea, looking baffled but menacing, moved forward with a majestic stride, leaving the courtroom in a state of freely expressed delight. Across the hum of their voices boomed Mr. Lambert’s suddenly impressive summons.
“Mr. Bellamy, will you be good enough to take the stand?”
Very quietly he came, the man who had been sitting there so motionless for so many days for them to gape their fill at, moving forward now to afford them better fare. Dark-eyed, low-voiced, courteous, and grave, he advanced toward the place of trial with an unhurried tread. In the lift of his head there was something curiously and effortlessly noble, thought the redheaded girl. Murderers should not hold their heads like that.
“Mr. Bellamy, where were you on the night of at nine-thirty o’clock?”
The proverbial dropped pin would have made a prodigious clatter in the silence that hovered over the waiting courtroom.
“I was in my car on the River Road, about a mile or so from Lakedale.”
“You were not in the neighbourhood of the Thorne estate, Orchards?”
“Not within ten miles—twelve, perhaps, would be more accurate?”
“Was anyone with you?”
“Yes; Mrs. Patrick Ives was with me.”
“You have a way of fixing the time?”
“I have.”
“I will ask you to do so later. Will you tell us now at what time you left the Rosemont Country Club?”
“At a little before six, I think. We dined at quarter to seven, and my wife always dressed before dinner.”
“Had you noticed Mr. Farwell in conversation with Mrs. Ives before you left?”
“Yes; my wife had called my attention to the fact that they seemed deeply absorbed in a conversation on the club steps.”
“Just how did she call your attention to it?”
“She said, ‘Oh, look, El’s got another girl!’ ”
“Did you make any comment on that?”
“Yes; I said, ‘That’s clear gain for you, darling’—” He caught himself up, olive skin a tone paler, teeth deep in his lip. “I said, ‘That’s clear gain for you, but a bit hard on Sue.’ ”
“You were aware of Mr. Farwell’s devotion to your wife?”
Behind Stephen Bellamy’s tragic eyes someone smiled, charming, tolerant, ironic—and was gone.
“It was impossible to be unaware of it. Mr. Farwell was candour itself on the subject, even with those who would have been more grateful for reticence.”
“Your wife made no attempt to conceal it?”
“To conceal it? Oh, no. There was nothing whatever to conceal; his infatuation for Mimi was common property. She laughed about it, though I think that sometimes it annoyed her.”
“Did she ever mention getting a divorce in order to marry Farwell?”
“A divorce? Mimi?” His eyes, blankly incredulous, met Mr. Lambert’s inquiring gaze. After a moment, he said, slowly and evenly, “No, she never mentioned a divorce.”
“If she had asked for one, would you have granted it to her?”
“I would have granted her anything that she asked for.”
“But you would have been surprised?”
Stephen Bellamy smiled with white lips. “ ‘Surprised’ is rather an inadequate word.” He sought for one more adequate—failed—and dismissed it with an eloquent motion of his hands. “I should have been more—well, astounded than it is possible for me to say.”
“So you had no inkling that your wife was contemplating any such action?”
“Not the faintest, not the—” Once more he pulled himself up, and after a moment’s pause, he leaned forward. “That, too, sounds ridiculously inadequate. I should like to make myself quite clear; apparently I haven’t succeeded in doing so. I believed my wife to be completely
