He wore a tan palm beach suit; upon the table near him lay a smart leather brief-case and a straw hat with a red-and-tan band, and he gazed lazily out a window above the ranked heads, picking his teeth.
Horace stopped just within the door.
“It’s a lawyer,” he said.
“A Jew lawyer from Memphis.”
Then he was looking at the backs of the heads about the table, where the witnesses and such would be.
“I know what I’ll find before I find it,” he said.
“She will have on a black hat.”
He walked up the aisle.
From beyond the balcony window where the sound of the bell seemed to be and where beneath the eaves the guttural pigeons crooned, the voice of the bailiff came:
“The honorable Circuit Court of Yoknapatawpha county is now open according to law.……”
Temple had on a black hat.
The clerk called her name twice before she moved and took the stand.
After a while Horace realised that he was being spoken to, a little testily, by the Court.
“Is this your witness, Mr Benbow?”
“It is, your Honor.”
“You wish her sworn and recorded?”
“I do, your Honor.”
Beyond the window, beneath the unhurried pigeons, the bailiff’s voice still droned, reiterant, importunate, and detached, though the sound of the bell had ceased.
28
The district attorney faced the jury.
“I offer as evidence this object which was found at the scene of the crime.”
He held in his hand a corn-cob.
It appeared to have been dipped in dark brownish paint.
“The reason this was not offered sooner is that its bearing on the case was not made clear until the testimony of the defendant’s wife which I have just caused to be read aloud to you gentlemen from the record.
“You have just heard the testimony of the chemist and the gynecologist—who is, as you gentlemen know, an authority on the most sacred affairs of that most sacred thing in life: womanhood—who says that this is no longer a matter for the hangman, but for a bonfire of gasoline—”
“I object!” Horace said:
“The prosecution is attempting to sway—”
“Sustained,” the Court said.
“Strike out the phrase beginning ‘who says that’, mister clerk.
You may instruct the jury to disregard it, Mr Benbow.
Keep to the matter in hand, Mr District Attorney.”
The District Attorney bowed.
He turned to the witness stand, where Temple sat.
From beneath her black hat her hair escaped in tight red curls like clots of resin.
The hat bore a rhinestone ornament.
Upon her black satin lap lay a platinum bag.
Her pale tan coat was open upon a shoulder knot of purple.
Her hands lay motionless, palm-up on her lap.
Her long blonde legs slanted, lax-ankled, her two motionless slippers with their glittering buckles lay on their sides as though empty.
Above the ranked intent faces white and pallid as the floating bellies of dead fish, she sat in an attitude at once detached and cringing, her gaze fixed on something at the back of the room.
Her face was quite pale, the two spots of rouge like paper discs pasted on her cheek bones, her mouth painted into a savage and perfect bow, also like something both symbolical and cryptic cut carefully from purple paper and pasted there.
The District Attorney stood before her.
“What is your name?”
She did not answer.
She moved her head slightly, as though he had obstructed her view, gazing at something in the back of the room.
“What is your name?” he repeated, moving also, into the line of her vision again.
Her mouth moved.
“Louder,” he said.
“Speak out.
No one will hurt you.