"When you lifted the body part-way from the water, you saw a hole like this one in the right stocking, correct?" "Yes, I did." "As a housekeeper, you know dressmaking and such things?" "You could say so." "Does anything about this hole strike you as unusual, peculiar?" "It's not where you'd get a run. I can't see how you'd get it unless you bumped or scraped your ankle across something." "When you found the body, was this hole visible above the line of a shoe, do you recall?" "Oh--the right shoe was missing." "Only the right one, you're sure?" "Yes, she was wearing the left." "This blue left slipper I'm now holding. Do you identify it?" "Yes," said Maud Welsh, and fumbled at her face with a sodden handkerchief, while Edith's gaze swung in futile desperation to study the jury. Mrs. Kleinman was crying and, rather surprisingly, the cool black-haired beauty Dolores Acevedo. _So could I._ Instead, Edith looked down. She held away the irrelevant pathos of those garments on the State's table, the mud-spotted frilly blouse, crumpled blue skirt and jacket, the single water-streaked shoe, by contemplating the dark green tweed suit that she herself was wearing. Less than perfect. Needed pressing. A small spot, maybe watercolor paint, near the bottom of the skirt (_well, hell!_)--but having thought of it this morning, she could wear no other costume, for once last winter at the studio, in March or February, Callista had glanced up and remarked apropos of nothing: "Fact, I love that thing on you. Makes your thatch a sort of bonfire off in the green woods." And seeing it when she entered the courtroom, Callista had smiled. "Miss Welsh, we'll go back to the evening of Sunday, August 16th, about nine o'clock. Where were you then and what were you doing?" "Setting out on the front porch. It was dark enough so I'd put my sewing things aside some time before. I'd gone out there about eight, I guess, when the light was still good. Usually do." "Did you see or hear anything you particularly remember?" "Didn't see anything special. Heard a car stop, on Walton Road, out of sight of me behind the pines." "Did you notice any glow from its headlights?" "I don't think I did." "Anything distinctive about the sound of that car?" "Well, a buzzy thing, and of course I--" "Was the motor shut off?" "Not right away--oh, I remember something. A rattle, while the motor was running, loose metal, like a license-plate or something." Edith saw Callista lean to Warner for a quick whispered conference; Cal seemed unexcited, but the Old Man was pleased. His back turned, Hunter would have missed it. "Motor not shut off right away--how long did it run?" "A minute, maybe, before the car door opened and shut." "Can you establish the time you heard that car stop?"