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The drone of Judge Langley’s voice ruling on Brice Mack’s request formed an unintelligible hum in the background of Janice’s thoughts, still focused on the contents of Elliot Hoover’s message. Some dire premonition must have prompted his sudden concern; of this she was sure. Too much had happened in their lives for her to start doubting him now. If some intuitive apprehension for Ivy’s safety had telepathed itself to him, then she must honour and act upon it. Her first thought was that the dreams had come back, that Audrey Rose had once again succeeded in blasting through Ivy’s subconscious and was crying out to her father sitting in a jail cell some fifty miles away. And that he had received the message. But if that were so, the school would certainly have got in touch with them. In any case, she must call Mount Carmel and speak to Ivy. Now!

Rising and leaving the courtroom during the judge’s solemn oration would certainly draw attention to her, might even incur the judge’s displeasure, but there was no help for it. She had to get to a phone. Shifting around in her seat, she hurriedly whispered to Bill that she wasn’t feeling well and edged her way across to the side aisle. Judge Langley’s voice hesitated in midsentence as a soft hum of whispers, like a distant drone of locusts, accompanied her progress to the door. A gentle rap of his gavel rebuked all and sundry for the unseemly interruption.

Janice found the public phones in a cul-de-sac between the men’s and ladies’ rest rooms at the very end of the long corridor. She was happy she had committed the school’s phone number to memory and had kept her purse bulging with coins for just such an eventuality. Still, the transaction took close to five minutes before Ivy’s voice sprang back at her through the receiver.

‘Mom! How great! What gives?’ The voice was joyful, exuberant, healthy, thank God!

‘Nothing important, dear. Just lonely,’ said Janice with an inward sigh of relief. ‘How’re things?’

‘Great!’

‘Sleeping okay?’

‘Sure, except not enough. They wake you up at six for matins. By the way, guess what you interrupted?’

‘What?’ Janice tried to keep her voice casual.

‘Algebra,’ Ivy said with disgust. ‘Sister Mary Margaret was just about to call on me. I could tell by the shifty looks she was giving me …’

As Ivy chattered, Janice listened with the concentrated, intensive smile of a mother sharing a moment of joyful intimacy with her child, yet in actuality she was scarcely listening. Her mind flitted over other fields of concern. With the play the trial was getting in the press and on television, could it be that Ivy still knew nothing about it? True, the sisters had promised to do their best to shelter Ivy from its impact, but Mount Carmel was certainly no walled-in cloister observing the rule of silence. Certainly there was television, and most of the children owned transistor radios. How Ivy could have been kept innocent of what was going on for so long was a total mystery to Janice.

‘… and Sylvester’s more than sixteen feet tall, and we’re only up to his shoulders.’

Ivy was talking with unrelieved enthusiasm when Janice tuned back in to her.

‘Mina thinks he’ll top twenty-three feet when we crown him, and that’ll beat the school record…’

Sylvester was the school snowman - a yearly tradition at Mount Carmel, weather permitting, the cooperative project of the entire student body.

‘I’m happy to hear you’ve stopped coughing, dear,’ Janice interposed.

‘I still do at night a little. Postnasal drip. Nothing serious, the nurse said.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Jill O’Connor menstruates. At least that’s what she told Mina. And she’s only nine, Mom, do you believe it?’

‘No, I don’t.’ Janice laughed. ‘I think Jill O’Connor’s a fibber.’

‘She’s a liar’ Ivy affirmed with sudden vehemence. ‘She’s spreading the craziest stories about me around the school.’

‘What sort of stories?’ Janice inquired with apprehension.

‘She says I’m two people, that I’m some kind of freak and that it’s all over the radio and TV.’

Janice hesitated. ‘That’s silly.’

‘I know,’ Ivy answered cheerfully. ‘Besides, there aren’t any radios and TVs allowed here any more. Mother Veronica Joseph outlawed them last week. The sisters had a shakedown inspection and collected every one of them.’

Janice hesitated again.

‘Daddy and I are looking forward to tomorrow,’ she said, forcing a cheery note into her voice.

‘So are we. Mina and I’ve decided on pork chops and French fries for supper. We hardly ever get meat here.’

There was no possible way to shield her from the truth for ever. Sooner or later she would have to be told, and if Janice had her way, it would be sooner.

As soon as possible.

This weekend.

Sunk in a mood of agitated gloom, Janice forbore returning to the courtroom till the last possible moment, lingering in the ladies’ room to sponge her face and repair her makeup until she felt her continued absence ran the danger of exciting Bill’s curiosity. If she didn’t return soon, she was certain a matron would be dispatched to search for her.

One hour and twenty-five minutes after she had left, she returned to the big double doors and, reaching out to the brass handle, felt the door push silently outward as the guard emerged. Smiling and nodding, the elderly man graciously held the door open for Janice to enter.

‘Thank you,’ Janice whispered, and crossed the threshold.

The shock of what greeted her brought her to a full swaying stop. Holding on to the door handle, she found herself unable to move as she stood staring, in pained surprise, at Brice Mack battering questions at Bill, sitting grimly in the witness box. That Bill had been called to the stand as a witness was not what shocked Janice; it was that he had been called so soon. She had thought surely there would be several interim witnesses, Russ, Harold Yates, before it would be their turn. But for some reason, Scott Velie had put Bill on sooner, which meant that she would probably follow him. And probably today. It was still quite early. Janice was seized with panic. She had not counted on taking the stand today. She wasn’t prepared tq or at least hadn’t fortified herself for the ordeal. She had banked on more time, the weekend at least, to think about it, to put her head in order, to get her act together. They had no right to rush her on to the stand like this.

Her return to her seat caused no stir among the spectators since all eyes and ears were firmly fixed on the witness box.

Brice Mack stood with his arms folded across his chest, shooting questions at Bill, who was sitting just inches away from him.

‘You have declared under oath that the moment you ordered Mr Hoover to leave, he seized you and flung you bodily oyer his head? Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that prior to this hostile act of his, you did nothing that could, in any way, be construed as having, either by movement, gesture, or direct physical contact, precipitated this harsh and seemingly arbitrary reactipn of Mr Hoover’s?’

‘I never laid a hand on him,’ Bill said resolutely, failing to add that he had been given no opportunity to do so.

The defence attorney was about to question Bill further on this point, had a change of mind, and asked instead, ‘After the neck-pinching epispde, Mr Templeton, during which time you were paralysed, tell me again, if you don’t mind, exactly what happened after Mr Hoover released your carotid artery?’

‘Well, as I said, my wife came out and helped pull him off me, at which point he turned and rushed into the apartment and locked himself inside.’

‘Yes, so you’ve said, but think back, Mr Templeton. Was he not, in fact, requested to enter your apartment?’

‘Requested?’

‘Yes, requested - by Ivy!’

Bill hesitated. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean, Mr Templeton, that Ivy’s pathetic cries and pleadings funnelled down through the apartment and were heard and accepted by Mr Hoover as, a legitimate summons for his help, that’s what I mean!’

Bill shook his head. ‘I didn’t hear any cries or pleadings.’

‘Is it not a fact that Ivy, just shortly prior to Mr Hoover’s arrival, had experienced one of her nightmares - a nightmare from which she could not be awakened and of such a punishing nature as to require you and your wife to tie her to the bed?’

‘Just a moment,’ Velie interrupted. ‘I object to the form of the question. It calls for a compound answer, and furthermore, it is objectipnable because it goes beyond the scope of direct examination.’

‘The objection is sustained,’ Judge Langley ruled.

Brice Mack shrugged. Then, turning to Bill: ‘The witness is excused, but I will ask the court to instruct him to keep himself available to serve as a witness for the defence when we present our case.’

‘The witness is so instructed.’ Judge Langley looked towards Scott Velie. ‘Your next witness?’

Janice shut her eyes and tensed her body for the expected blow, but it failed to materialize, There was a slight delay as Scott Velie selected this moment to introduce Ivy’s birth certificate into the record. Bill edged his way down the row to his seat as the attenuated ritual of entering the birth certificate in evidence as People’s Exhibit Number One was ceremoniously performed.

Looking grim and baleful, Janice leaned over to Bill. ‘I’m not ready for this,’ she said in a high, choked whisper.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Bill whispered back, his hand gripping her knee, which he found was trembling.

‘What happened to Russ and Harold Yates? Why didn’t he put them on?’

‘He’s saving them as rebuttal witnesses after the defence has put on its case.’

‘I’m not ready for this,’ Janice reiterated. Her face was florid, unhealthily so.

‘Proceed with your next witness,’ Judge Langley directed.

‘My next witness,’ Velie announced, ‘is Mrs William Templeton.’

Janice pushed herself up from the seat and immediately began to feel worse. Her face, flushed and red a moment before, became pale as ashes, and she was sure she would collapse before reaching the witness stand.

An uncommon quiet settled over the courtroom as Janice awkwardly sidestepped her way to the aisle and, the blood surging and pounding in her head, mechanically made her way towards the gate in the railings, each step of her wavering progress seemingly energized by an inner force beyond her command or comprehension. It struck her that under just such a dissociated, yet irresistible compulsion must the French nobility have climbed the ladder to conclude their tete-a-tete with Madame La Guillotine.

At the witness stand Janice held up her right hand, took the oath, then sat, all at the bailiff’s direction.

Scott Velie approached her with a mien of gentle warmth and compassion.

‘Would you state your full name, please?’

‘Janice Gilbert Templeton.’

‘You are the wife of William Templet6n?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the mother of Ivy Templeton?’

‘Yes.’

‘She is your natural child?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mrs Templeton, describe the events that occurred between the date you first saw the defendant and the date he removed your daughter from your apartment and carried her to his apartment.’

Janice swallowed, cleared her throat, and sought her voice. That she found it, and found it full-bodied, strong, and authoritative, was a further enigma in an afternoon of enigmas. The sound of her own voice was immediately reassuring to her, and soon she heard herself talking more rapidly.

It was with the confidence, assurance, and the practised hand of a master that Scott Velie elicited the story he wished the jury to hear from Janice, permitting her no opportunity to flesh out, embellish, or develop any points or stray into areas that could in any way provide the defence with an opening wedge on cross-examination that would be detrimental to the people’s case. Even Brice Mack had to admit it was an astonishing feat of legal legerdemain.

At last, Scott Velie turned to the defence attorney.

‘Cross-examine,’ he said.

‘Your Honour’ - Brice Mack purposely kept the moment dangling, taking an obvious sadistic pleasure in tantalizing the frightened woman in the witness box - ‘may I say that as long as Mrs Templeton is shielded by the rules of evidentiary procedure, there is little I can hope to learn in cross-examination. However, there is a great deal to be learned from this witness and from the witness preceding her, a great many truths that have been suppressed by my distinguished colleague’s artful and inspired direct examination.’ His eyes fixed Janice with a cold, steely look of warning. ‘Truths that I fully intend to bring forth into the light of day. Therefore, I have no questions of the witness at this time, but I will certainly want her back as a witness for the defence.’

‘Very well,’ Judge Langley said as Brice Mack strode back to the defence table. ‘The witness is excused but instructed to keep herself available as a witness for the defence.’

Turning to Scott Velie, who was heavily engaged in a strategy pow-wow with his associate, Judge Langley drily registered his annoyance.

‘Mr Velie, if you will forgive the court’s interruption, we are awaiting the calling of your next witness.’

‘If the court please,’ Velie said, rising with an apologetic smile, ‘that is my case. I have no further evidence to put on at this time.’

‘In that case,’ said Judge Langley with a solemn rap of his gavel, ‘we will adjourn the trial until Monday morning at nine o’clock. The defendant is remanded to custody.’

Rising from her chair, moving unsurely and unsteadily towards Bill, Janice experienced the sense of elation, the delicious inertia of a person stumbling dazed but unscathed away from a plane crash.

The time for telling Ivy ‘all the facts’ came the following evenIng just after they had returned from delivering Mina back to the school and had settled themselves into their family suite at the Candlemas Inn.

Bill and Janice had driven up earlier in the day, arriving just after lunch, in time to sit in on afternoon choir practice along with a number of other parents. Ivy’s vivid blond beauty could be easily distinguished among the group of girls in the alto section. It was during Handel’s Kyrie Eleison that Janice began to sense the first vague stirrings of interest and curiosity in the air - the secretive glances, smirks, and whisperings flitted about them like straws in a high wind.