Chapter 20: What the Room Saw

"Tilda," Davis hissed, and grabbed her sleeve again. "Sit down."

She stepped away from him.

She walked to the foot of the stage, in her white dress, and looked up at three hundred faces.

"My mother cut my sister's wrist," she said.

The room made a sound I have never heard from a crowd.

It was not a gasp.

It was a long breath, going out of everyone at once.

"I was fifteen feet away, in the hall."

"The razor was in her right hand, and the garnet ring flashed on it."

"I have seen that ring every day of my life, and I will see it in my sleep."

She held up her own bandaged hand.

"She said, 'Get me a towel, Tilda.' I got a towel. I held it while she pressed it down."

"She washed the razor in the bathroom sink afterward, and she put it back in Daddy's shaving case."

"Then she called the ambulance, and she told them Jo did it herself."

"Liar," my mother said.

Her voice was thin and strange.

"She's lying, she's been given something, they've all been poisoning her against me..."

"Mom," Tilda said, without turning. "I haven't slept for three years either."

My mother went on talking, and nobody listened.

"I am the doctor's wife," said a voice from table two.

It was the old woman in the gray cardigan.

She stood up with her hand on her husband's shoulder.

"My husband has something to say," she said clearly.

"Say it, or I will."

The doctor got to his feet.

He looked like a man being lifted by his own collar.

"Jo Alder is left-handed," he said, to the room.

"I knew it the moment I saw the cuts, and I wrote the lie anyway."

"Here is the real chart."

He took the folder from his bag and carried it to the old judge's table with both hands.

"The blood showed a sedative at four times the dose on the label."

The judge opened it, read the first page, and passed it to the man beside him.

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