From the front row of the public gallery, Beth watches her father take the stand and is shocked by how much the trial has aged him. His frailty makes her feel newly guilty, because Beth knows he is giving evidence without knowing the full truth. Beth reflects that she, Frank, and Jimmy are all trapped by a lie, and that too much is at stake for her to tell her father everything.

At first, the questioning from Frank's barrister goes smoothly. Beth's father settles into his practiced teacher's voice, gives his name and background, and provides the kind of respectable character evidence the defense wanted. Watching him, Beth's mother visibly relaxes, reassured by how confidently he presents Frank in court.

The mood changes when Crown prosecutor Donald Glossop begins his cross-examination. He starts gently by asking how long Beth's father has known the Johnson family and whether he ever saw conflict between Frank and Jimmy. Beth's father insists the brothers were exceptionally close and describes Frank as devoted, kind, and always trying to help Jimmy, while also calling Jimmy sweet-hearted though troubled.

Glossop then pushes toward the recent tensions at the farmhouse. Beth's father, uncomfortable with anything less than the truth, admits that things became strained before the shooting and says Jimmy had become volatile and was drinking heavily. When Glossop directly links that tension to Beth's affair with Gabriel Wolfe, Beth's father resists discussing Beth's private life, but the prosecutor keeps control of the exchange.

Glossop broadens the argument by tracing Beth's history with Gabriel. He establishes that Beth loved Gabriel first, that the relationship ended, and that Beth soon married Frank. With the courtroom now alert to his line of attack, Glossop suggests Beth never fully recovered from that first passion and argues that Frank must have carried a deep jealousy of Gabriel from the start of the marriage and again when the affair resumed.

Beth feels the cruelty of hearing her affair described so bluntly in open court before her parents, yet she also recognizes how long she has lived with shame and public scrutiny. In his final answer, Beth's father holds his ground as far as he can: he says Frank understood Beth's reasons for the affair, and if Frank felt jealous, he hid it completely. Glossop ends there, having planted jealousy as a possible motive while exposing the emotional strain and secrecy destroying Beth's family.