QUESTION (by Mr. Lamson): Can anyone support your statement that you were experiencing what you call a suicidal depression for a month or more, from early July to the middle of August? ANSWER: No, I never spoke of it to anyone. _Why not to me? I might have_-- Near his eyes, Callista's face took on a momentary immensity, like a great image on a softly brilliant screen. She must have had her teeth clamped a while on her underlip. It looked swollen as though from a bout of love. QUESTION: Was anyone aware of your taking those monkshood roots? ANSWER: No one. QUESTION: Not even James Doherty? ANSWER: I have had no communication with James Doherty since receiving that letter of his you took from my desk. In that time I've seen him only once--at the picnic when I got the monkshood. I didn't talk with him then, he did not talk with me, he knew nothing of what I was doing. "You'll come to see me tonight, Cecil?" "Yes." "Something I must tell you." "What, dear?" "Not now. Tonight." QUESTION: You had these roots, this poison, a week ago Friday. What about the suicidal depression?--change your mind? ANSWER: I don't know how the mind works. QUESTION: Now, Miss Blake! Anybody knows if he's changed his mind. ANSWER: Does he? QUESTION: All right. I can assume you gave up the notion of suicide? ANSWER: Not a notion. An uncompleted decision, perhaps. Which did lose its importance after a while. QUESTION: Did you, or you and James Doherty acting together, intend that poison for Mrs. Doherty? ANSWER: Must I answer that again? James Doherty knew nothing about any poison, or my possession of it. I intended it only for myself. QUESTION: But kept it there more than a week, where I suppose anyone might have stumbled on it? ANSWER: Not exactly. Back of a shelf. Nobody visiting me was likely to go get a drink from a back shelf without invitation. QUESTION: But you say that's just what Mrs. Doherty did. ANSWER: Why, I think her idea was to get the drink for me. Then I guess she understood I'd locked myself into the bedroom. With the drink in her hand, and upset by what I'd been saying, I suppose she just tossed it off, maybe not even knowing she did. It would be natural. QUESTION: Didn't she knock? Call to you? Try the door? ANSWER: I don't know, Mr. Lamson. QUESTION: Don't know. I can't accept that. ANSWER: It's the truth, and all I can say. Partial amnesia. QUESTION: Do you have any idea how many professional criminals try that amnesia thing? Everything went black--yeah. You're not a professional criminal, you're a very intelligent girl. How do you think that amnesia stuff is going to sound in court? ANSWER: Bad. QUESTION: Well? Don't you care? ANSWER: I can't invent for you. I don't know. I can't remember. QUESTION: All right. Mrs. Doherty was upset by what you'd been saying. What had you been saying? ANSWER: I told her about my affair with her husband. QUESTION: Just like that?