testified that there was a turnout less than seventy yards from the bungalow, and that on the afternoon of 11 September, three pieces of evidence had been removed from
that turnout: first item, two empty quart bottles of Narragansett Beer (with the
defendant’s fingerprints on them); the second item, twelve cigarette ends (all Kools,
the defendant’s brand); third item, a plaster moulage of a set of tire tracks (exactly matching the tread-and-wear pattern of the tires on the defendant’s 1947 Plymouth).
In the living room of Quentin’s bungalow, four dishtowels had been found
lying on the sofa. There were bullet-holes through them and powder-burns on them.
The detective theorized (over the agonized objections of Andy’s lawyer) that the murderer had wrapped the towels around the muzzle of the murder-weapon to muffle
the sound of the gunshots. Andy Dufresne took the stand in his own defence and told
his story calmly, coolly, and dispassionately. He said he had begun to hear distressing rumours about his wife and Glenn Quentin as early as the last week in July. In August
he had become distressed enough to investigate a bit. On an evening when Linda was
supposed to have gone shopping in Portland after her tennis lesson, Andy had
followed her and Quentin to Quentin’s one-story rented house (inevitably dubbed ‘the
love-nest’ by the papers). He had parked in the turnout until Quentin drove her back to the country club where her car was parked, about three hours later.
‘Do you mean to tell this court that your wife did not recognize your brand-
new Plymouth sedan behind Quentin’s car?’ the DA asked him on cross-examination.
‘I swapped cars for the evening with a friend,’ Andy said, and this cool admission of
how well-planned his investigation had been did him no good at all in the eyes of the
jury. After returning the friend’s car and picking up his own, he had gone home. Linda had been in bed, reading a book. He asked her how her trip to Portland had been. She
replied that it had been fun, but she hadn’t seen anything she liked well enough to buy.
That’s when I knew for sure,’ Andy told the breathless spectators. He spoke in the
same calm, remote voice in which he delivered almost all of his testimony. ‘What was
your frame of mind in the seventeen days between then and the night your wife was
murdered?’ Andy’s lawyer asked him.
‘I was in great distress,’ Andy said calmly, coldly. Like a man reciting a
shopping list he said that he had considered suicide, and had even gone so far as to
purchase a gun in Lewiston on 8 September.
His lawyer then invited him to tell the jury what had happened after his wife
left to meet Glenn Quentin on the night of the murders. Andy told them… and the
impression he made was the worst possible.
I knew him for close to thirty years, and I can tell you he was the most self-
possessed man I’ve ever known. What was right with him he’d only give you a little at
a time. What was wrong with him he kept bottled up inside. If he ever had a dark
night of the soul, as some writer or other has called it, you would never know. He was the type of man who, if he had decided to commit suicide, would do it without leaving
a note but not until his affairs had been put neatly in order. If he had cried on the
witness stand, or if his voice had thickened and grown hesitant, even if he had gotten yelling at that Washington-bound District Attorney, I don’t believe he would have
gotten the life sentence he wound up with. Even if he had’ve he would have been out
on parole by 1954. But he told his story like a recording machine, seeming to say to
the jury: this is it. Take it or leave it. They left it.
He said he was drunk that night, that he’d been more or less drunk since 24
August, and that he was a man who didn’t handle his liquor very well. Of course that
by itself would have been hard for any jury to swallow. They just couldn’t see this