Judge Mann had read them, Cecil Warner and District Attorney Lamson present. James Doherty, Lamson said, had handed over the first three voluntarily. The fourth, found in Callista Blake's possession, had not been mailed to Doherty. For Mann, to read them had been like blundering into a private room where lovers clung together with locked loins and tortured faces; like being compelled to watch, afterward, when the woman was alone and wounded with loss. He had skimmed, his mind wincing aside, knowing it was not possible to understand the letters under those conditions. They had not been read to the grand jury. Some passages in them might be construed as admissions of guilt--or not, as you pleased. Warner evidently felt that this notion could be demolished. As for beauty and glamor, the prosecution would introduce other photographs of Ann Doherty that were no pretty portraits. Old Warner would object routinely and be overruled; the jury would then meet the unmitigated spectacle of a death by drowning. When Ophelia perishes offstage you don't think of post-mortem lividity or foam on the mouth. "Mr. District Attorney?" Assistant District Attorney Talbot J. Hunter nodded briskly but solemnly: he was being the man who profoundly regrets what he must do. That had not been altogether predictable. Dealing with professional crooks, T. J. could act downright jolly in a ferocious give-nothing way, often sweeping a jury along. With a tiger's grace, handsome in spite of too much chin and early frontal baldness, Hunter could have been athlete, actor, singer. He was a near-professional with the Winchester Choral Society, having once gone splendidly through the baritone solo in the Brahms _German Requiem_ when the guest artist turned up with laryngitis. Mann, himself a serious pianist, had heard that achievement, and remembered it at times when Hunter's courtroom personality annoyed him: the man could hardly have sung that well unless there was in him, somewhere, the element of compassion. In the law, Mann supposed, Hunter could use and enjoy his musical and histrionic abilities and at the same time make a living. "Call the Blake case!" The voice, Mann observed, was in top form, rich, melodious, and acceptably stern. "Mr. Warner?"