“Your Honour—”
Farr’s warning voice was hardly swifter than Judge Carver’s: “I am afraid that you cannot tell us what you heard, Mrs. Ives.”
“I cannot tell you what I heard Kathleen Page saying?”
The wonder in the clear, incredulous voice penetrated the farthest corner of the courtroom.
“No. Simply confine yourself to what you did.”
“Did? I did nothing whatever. I could no more have moved a step nearer to the door than if I had been nailed to the floor. She was crying dreadfully, in horrid little pants and gasps. It was absolutely sickening. Pat said, ‘Keep quiet, you little lunatic. Do you want—’ ”
“Mrs. Ives, the Court has already warned you that you are not able to tell us what was said.”
“Why am I not able to tell you what was said? I told you what we said downstairs.”
Judge Carver leaned toward her, his black sleeves flowing majestically over the edge of the rail. “No objection was raised as to that conversation. Mr. Farr objects to this and the Court sustains him. For your own sake, the Court requests you to conform promptly to its rulings.”
For a moment the two pairs of dark eyes met in an exchange of glances more eloquent than words; a look of grave warning and one of fearless rebellion.
“I do not understand your rules. What am I permitted to tell of the things that I am asked to explain?”
“Simply tell us what you did after you heard the voices in the room.”
“Very well; I will try again. I stood there for a moment, staring at the door to the day nursery. The key was on the outside so that the babies couldn’t lock themselves in. I don’t remember moving, but I must have moved, because suddenly I had the doorknob in my hand. I jerked it toward me and slammed the door so hard that it nearly threw me off my feet. The key—”
“Yes, yes,” cut in Lambert, his face suffused with a sudden and terrifying premonition. “We needn’t go too much into all these details, you know. We want to stick to our story as closely as possible. You didn’t say anything, did you?”
“No.”
“Just went on downstairs to meet Stephen Bellamy, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You did not?” Mr. Lambert’s blank query was enough to wring commiseration from a stone. Sue Ives did not look particularly merciful, however. She had turned in her chair so that she faced her devoted adversary squarely. She leaned forward a little now, her lovely mouth schooled to disdain, her eyes under their level brows bright with anger.
“No, not then. I was telling you what I did. I turned the key in the lock and put it in my pocket. You didn’t want me to say that, did you, Uncle Dudley? You wanted everyone to believe that it was Pat who murdered Mimi, didn’t you?”
“Mrs. Ives—Mrs. Ives—”
“Silence! Silence!”
“Mrs. Ives!”
Over the outraged clamour of the law, her voice rose, clear and triumphant: “He didn’t murder her, because he was locked in those rooms until quarter to eleven that night, and I had the key in my pocket. Now, you can all strike that out of the record!”
“Mrs. Ives!” Over the last crash of the gavel, Judge Carver’s voice was shaken with something deeper than anger. “Mrs. Ives, if you are not immediately silent, the Court will be obliged to have you removed.”
“Removed?” She was on her feet in an instant, poised and light. “You wish me to go?”
“I wish you to get yourself in hand immediately. You are doing yourself untold injury by pursuing this line of conduct. The rules that you are refusing to obey were made largely for your own protection.”
“I don’t want to be protected. I want to tell the truth. Apparently no one wants to hear it.”
“On the contrary, you are permitted to take the stand for that express purpose.”
“For that purpose? To tell the truth?” The scorn in her voice was almost gay.
“Precisely. The limits that are imposed are for your benefit, and you are injuring your co-defendant as well as yourself by refusing to abide by them.”
“Stephen?” She paused at that, considering gravely. “I don’t want to do that, of course. Very well, I will try to go on.” She turned back to her chair, and a long sigh of incredulous relief trembled through the courtroom.
“I have forgotten where I stopped.”
“You were about to tell us what you did after you came down the nursery stairs?” Lambert’s shaken voice was hardly audible.
“Yes. Well, then—then we did exactly what Stephen said we did. We drove through the back road to the River Road, where we turned to the left and went into Lakedale in order to get more gasoline. I distinctly remember the time, because we had been discussing whether the movies would be out by the time that we got back. It was twenty-five minutes past nine. After that we retraced our steps—down the River Road to the back road, down to the place in the back road where I had met Stephen, past our house into the main street of the village, past the movie house, which was dark, and up the main street, which runs into the Perrytown Highway—up the Perrytown Highway to the Bellamy house.
“I was absolutely sure that I saw a light over the garage, but it certainly wasn’t there a minute
