Mystery fiction; Trials (Murder) -- Fiction; United States -- Fiction
"What are the origins of crime? Does anyone know? Psychiatrists? Well,
the State is prepared to offer psychiatric testimony, if the defense
elects to do so. I can't see the necessity myself. I can't imagine an
insanity defense being made here. I think it's a case where the
individual must be held clearly responsible for a wanton and cruel act,
the one act that strikes most dangerously against the welfare and
security of human society: namely murder. It was, and the State will
prove it, a murder motivated by sex jealousy, but obviously not in any
gust of passion. No, it was coldly premeditated, planned, and
heartless."
Warner fought down the perilous anger. This was simply Hunter's opening
barrage. _I can roar, too._ Yet he wished that without disturbing her by
a touch he could will Callista to look toward him for comfort. He
checked an impulsive motion of his hand. Still-faced, she was watching a
spot on the wall above the gaunt grim skull of the juror Emerson Lake.
She would turn to him and listen if he whispered, maybe even smile. But
it might be that she needed those withdrawals, a kind of rest.
"In 1950, Mrs. Blake and her daughter Callista moved from New York City
where Callista was born, to Winchester. Mrs. Blake was employed in the
Registrar's office of Winchester College, and there met Dr. Herbert
Chalmers; they were married in 1951. Dr. Chalmers had bought a
Shanesville property a few years before--1946, I think. Callista lived
there till she graduated from the Shanesville High School, Class of
1958--with high honors by the way. Dr. Chalmers wished to send her to
college. She is a girl of exceptional intelligence, and don't forget
it." (_So, T. J.? She's on trial for unauthorized possession of a
brain?_) "But immediately after graduation, Callista Blake preferred to
seek employment, and found it as an assistant in a photographic
studio--Nolan's, on Hallam Street here in Winchester. Well, Dr. and Mrs.
Chalmers have always wanted to satisfy any reasonable wish of
Callista's." (_Have they?_) "They offered no objection to her taking
this job. In fact for her eighteenth birthday, July of last year, Dr.
Chalmers bought her a car of her own, a Volkswagen--it will be important
in the evidence."
Important enough, Warner admitted. If there were any way to deny or even
cast doubt on Callista's presence out there in Shanesville that
night--but there was not. Callista herself would not have it so. On the
stand, he knew, she would tell the truth so far as she knew it--the
whole impossible clouded story that left her no defense except a
reasonable doubt as to criminal intent. And if she did not take the
stand, there was no defense at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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