"Reasonably well. I met her first in 1951, when she was eleven. That is eight years." Mann sighed and relaxed. Eight years ago, law practice at Mann and Wheatley already routine: 1951 was the Forman will case; and spare-time reading in constitutional law with old Joe Wheatley, Uncle Norden a dusty memory; and creeping up on forty. "You've been continuously acquainted with Miss Blake all that time?" "Yes. Of course I saw less of her after she moved to Winchester." "At that picnic, August 7th, did you have any talk with her?" "No. We waved or nodded I suppose, when I arrived. Those picnics are quite informal. The fact that I had no talk with her was accidental; I was engaged with the other guests, and she was spending her time with the Wayne children." "All her time?" "Why, yes, until about 3:30 anyhow." "Did anything noteworthy happen then?" "I don't know if I can judge what's noteworthy, Mr. Hunter." Mann's attention sharpened at the hint of hostility. Was this State's witness by any chance intending to pull the rug out from under Hunter? "I'll rephrase my question. At 3:30, did anything happen important enough so that you now remember it and wish to tell it under oath?" "It's not a question of my wishing to tell it, Mr. Hunter. I do not. If I may use an old-fashioned and unpopular word, it's a matter of duty. At 3:30 Callista went alone into a wild garden back of the lawn." "Are you yourself familiar with that wild garden?" "Yes." "I ask you to show the jury, on this map, the location and extent of the wild garden. And describe it in your own words, if you will." Tense but self-contained, Mrs. Jason stood by the map, her hands moving intelligently, her voice firm and rather pleasant. Mann recalled that she had given her age as forty-seven; his own age; more weathered than himself in the face, but an outdoor type, possibly better preserved, her figure attractive and graceful. "The wild garden area is roughly square, about a hundred feet on a side. It's closed away from the lawn by a mixed hedge of forsythia and lilac. There's only one break in that hedge, an angled passage about two feet wide. It's marked here--" "Angled--you mean the opening is on a slant?" "Double slant, zigzag. The hedge is ten or twelve feet thick--that forsythia will take over everything. I understand the little passage has to be pruned out fresh every year." "If it's a zigzag, then you can't look through from the lawn area into the wild garden--is that correct?" "Correct. From the lawn it looks like an unbroken hedge. Well, the wild garden itself is just a patch where everything's been left more or less natural. There's an old paper birch. Hardy perennials." "In earlier testimony, the plant monkshood was mentioned in connection with that wild garden. Have you seen it growing there?" "Yes." She spoke reluctantly, returning to the witness chair. "After 3:30, when did you next see Callista Blake?"