"He'll come back to it, though. 'How could you know, Callista? How could you _know_ she was dead?' And then I say: 'Sir, dead or not, she was so quiet I couldn't disturb her rest.'" "Cal, please!" "Are you going to cross-examine Sergeant Peterson?" "I don't think so--nothing to gain." "Ah, I was hoping you'd ask him why his damned silly face looks like a camera bellows." "Hush! Shall I come to see you this evening?" "Oh--no--no, I am unwell. I mean--that is, I would so like to have two candles, one for you and one for--I'm sorry ... I'm all right now. I'll be quiet. But don't come tonight--I did mean that. It's something--I can't explain it." "All right, my dear. Maybe tomorrow evening." "Yes, without fail. Let me tell you one thing more?" "What?" "I think I'm discovering that I want to live." III Sergeant Peterson had droned his last and had been succeeded on the stand by Trooper Curtis, brisk and dry, with his plaster casts and fingerprints. Both men, Edith Nolan understood, were competent, honest, not deliberately wasting time. Hunter himself was not really unduly slow at this business of hammering home what was already clear and established: Callista had been there. The fingerprint evidence at Shanesville was quite negative: no prints except Ann's on handbag or key case, none but hers and Jim's on the Pontiac or the Dohertys' front porch. All right and so what? It was half past three before Hunter and Curtis were solemnly finished with that apparent futility. It had never occurred to Edith that any part of this ordeal could be a bore. But it was. Then in a brief cross examination Warner brought out the fact that a police search of the grove between the pond and Walton Road had produced nothing at all. It could not matter. Curtis and Peterson had both acted rather pleased with their casts and photographs of the Volkswagen's tire marks on the shoulder of Walton Road. They liked things complete, well wrapped. But it couldn't matter, for in her statement to District Attorney Lamson Callista had admitted taking the Volkswagen first into the Dohertys' driveway, following the footpath, seeing Ann's body in the pond. She had admitted leaving then, driving around to Walton Road, parking there out of sight of her mother's house.