“I see. Then when was the last time you saw Mrs. Hatch go into her husband’s room?”

“The night the children were shot,” Mrs. Wright answered. “She was flying all through the house-I couldn’t stop her, I was too busy trying to help the children. But she locked herself into Mr. Hatch’s old room for a good five minutes.”

“Locked herself?” Mr. Picton repeated. “How did you know that she locked the door?”

“She was in there when the sheriff and Dr. Lawrence came,” Mrs. Wright answered with a shrug. “They tried to get to her, so Dr. Lawrence could give her something to calm her down. But the door was locked. After a few more minutes she came back out, still screaming and running all around. She said she’d found her husband’s gun, and that she was afraid she was going to do herself some injury with it. She told me to get rid of the thing-so I wrapped it up in a paper bag and dropped it down the old well.”

“And do you remember what kind of paper bag it was?”

Mrs. Wright nodded. “Mr. Hatch’d bought everything in bulk, to save money. We still had a whole crate of bags from Mr. West’s factory.”

Mr. Picton moved to his table and picked up the piece of paper bag what Lucius had cut away from the Colt revolver the evening he found the thing. “So the bag would have borne this imprint?” He handed her the snippet of brown paper.

Studying the thing, Mrs. Wright nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certainly I’m sure. You see, two years ago West’s bag company moved this writing, here, from the bottom of the bags to up around the top. If you have enough of the things, you notice.”

“And do you have enough of the things?”

“Yes, sir, I never throw them away. A widow living on an army pension can’t be too careful about expenses.”

“No, of course not. Well, thank you, Mrs. Wright. I have no more questions.”

Mr. Picton sat down, still looking very pleased that none of Mrs. Wright’s testimony had been excluded from the record. Mr. Darrow, on the other hand, seemed to be going through one of those on-the-spot strategy shifts of his: holding his hands in front of his face and knitting his brows tight over his eyes, he waited a minute or two before saying anything or moving.

“Mr. Darrow?” the judge asked. “Do you have questions for this witness?”

Finally showing some movement, but only in his eyes, Mr. Darrow mumbled, “Just one or two, Your Honor.” Then, after another pause, he stood up. “Mrs. Wright, did you ever observe anything in the defendant’s behavior that would’ve led you to believe that she might’ve been capable of murdering her own children?”

Mr. Picton, who’d only just settled into his chair, got right back up. “I must object to that, Your Honor. The witness is not qualified to speak to such matters. We have alienists who will tell us what the defendant might or might not have been capable of.”

“Yes,” the judge replied, “and no doubt they’ll contradict each other and get us absolutely nowhere. The witness is a woman of uncommon good sense, it seems to me, Mr. Picton-and it was you, after all, who argued to have her impressions included in the record. I’ll let her answer.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Mr. Darrow said. “Well, Mrs. Wright?”

Taking a moment to think it over, and stealing another look at Libby as she did, Mrs. Wright said, “I-hadn’t counted on being asked that question.”

“Oh?” Mr. Darrow said. “Well, I’m sorry to surprise you. But try to come up with an answer, all the same. Did you ever, during all the years that you were in her employ, suspect that Mrs. Hatch was capable of murdering her own children?”

Mrs. Wright looked to Mr. Picton, and the struggle what was going on in her mind was plain to see in her face.

“What the hell’s Darrow doing?” Mr. Moore whispered. “I thought that was supposed to be one of our questions!”

“He’s seen what the jury’s inferring from her testimony,” the Doctor answered. “He wants to rattle her by attempting to force her to make an outright accusation.” He leaned forward anxiously. “But will she be rattled…?”

Mr. Darrow folded his arms. “I’m still here, Mrs. Wright.”

“It-” Louisa Wright wrung her hands for a few seconds. “It’s not the kind of thing to bandy around-”

“Really?” Mr. Darrow replied. “It seems to me you’ve done an awful lot of ‘bandying’ already. I wouldn’t think this would give you any pause. But let me make it easier for you. You claim that Mrs. Hatch was engaged in what sounds like it was a pretty torrid affair with the Reverend Parker. Don’t you think it would’ve been easier for her to run off with him, once her husband was dead, if she didn’t have three children to drag along?”

“That’s a hard way to put it,” Mrs. Wright answered, glancing at Libby again.

“If you can think of an easy way to put such accusations,” Mr. Darrow said, “you just let me know. Well, Mrs. Wright?”

“You don’t understand,” the woman said, a little more defiantly.

“And what don’t I understand?”

Mrs. Wright leaned forward, eyeing Mr. Darrow. “I have children, sir. My husband and I had two, before he was killed in the war. I can’t imagine what would drive a woman to do something like that. It isn’t natural. For a mother to end any life that she brought into the world-it just isn’t natural.”

“Your Honor, I’m forced to ask for your help here,” Mr. Darrow said. “The question was, I think, pretty close to clear.”

“Mrs. Wright,” Judge Brown said, “you’re only being asked for your opinion.”

“But it’s a terrible thing, Your Honor, to accuse someone of!” Mrs. Wright said.

Mr. Darrow, smelling her fear, moved in closer to the witness stand. “But the state is accusing her, Mrs. Wright, and you’re a witness for the state. Come, now, you knew that Mrs. Hatch had been written out of her husband’s will-that the only way she could inherit his money was if the children died. Didn’t that make you at all suspicious?”

“All right, then!” the woman finally hollered. “It does make me suspicious-but it’s still an awful thing to accuse someone of!”

“It does make you suspicious, Mrs. Wright?” Mr. Darrow asked quietly. “Or it did? Let me see if I follow you. You say that Mrs. Hatch had a violent temper sometimes. You say that she was romantically involved with the Reverend Parker. And you say that she wanted her husband’s money. And all of this, you now say, is grounds for believing that she killed her children-although you didn’t make any such accusations at the time.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Mrs. Wright protested. “I was only asked for my opinion a week or so ago!”

“Exactly, Mrs. Wright,” Mr. Darrow answered, very satisfied. “Tell me-have you ever known any other women who raised a hand to their children?”

Mrs. Wright’s face grew puzzled. “Yes, of course.”

“Ever heard of any who were unfaithful to their husbands?”

Shifting nervously, Mrs. Wright tried to rein her voice in. “One or two, perhaps.”

“How about any that married rich old men to get their hands on their money?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you think any of them would’ve been capable of murdering their own children?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say, Mrs. Wright.”

“I-I don’t know.”

“But you’ve got pretty definite suspicions about Mrs. Hatch. Now, I mean.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Oh, I think you do,” Mr. Darrow replied, coming in close again. “Mrs. Wright, isn’t it true that you only think Mrs. Hatch might have killed her children now because the assistant district attorney and his investigators suggested to you that she might have done it?”

“Your Honor!” Mr. Picton shouted, popping up. “If the counsel for the defense is implying that the witness is lying-”

“Your Honor, I am implying no such thing,” Mr. Darrow answered. “I’m simply trying to trace the origins of Mrs. Wright’s suspicions, and to show that they, like so many other things in this case, seem to lead back to the assistant district attorney-and to the people who are advising him in this matter.”