e
watched the lights downstairs in Quentin‘s place go out. He watched a single light go on
upstairs ... and fifteen minutes later he watched that one go out. He said he could guess
the rest.
‘Mr Dufresne, did you then go up to Glenn Quentin‘s house and kill the two of them?‘ his
lawyer thundered.
‘No, I did not,‘ Andy answered. By midnight, he said, he was sobering up. He was also
feeling the first signs of a bad hangover. He decided to go home and sleep it off and think
about the whole thing in a more adult fashion the next day. ‘At that time, as I drove home,
I was beginning to think that the wisest course would be to simply let her go to Reno and
get her divorce.‘
‘Thank you, Mr Dufresne.‘
The DA popped up.
‘You divorced her in the quickest way you could think of, didn‘t you? You divorced her
with a .38 revolver wrapped in dishtowels, didn‘t you?‘
‘No sir, I did not,‘ Andy said calmly.
‘And then you shot her lover.‘
‘No, sir.‘
‘You mean you shot Quentin first?‘
‘I mean I didn‘t shoot either one of them. I drank two quarts of beer and smoked however
many cigarettes that the police found at the turnout. Then I drove home and went to bed.‘
‘You told the jury that between 24 August and 10 September, you were feeling suicidal.‘
‘Yes, sir.‘
‘Suicidal enough to buy a revolver.‘
‘Yes.‘
‘Would it bother you overmuch, Mr Dufresne, if I told you that you do not seem to me to
be the suicidal type?‘
‘No,‘ Andy said, ‘but you don‘t impress me as being terribly sensitive, and I doubt very
much that, if I were feeling suicidal, I would take my problem to you.‘
There was a slight tense titter in the courtroom at this, but it won him no points with the
jury.
‘Did you take your .38 with you on the night of September?‘
‘No; as I‘ve already testified -‘
‘Oh, yes!‘ The DA smiled sarcastically. ‘You threw it into the river, didn‘t you? The Royal
River. On the afternoon of 9 September.‘
‘Yes, sir.‘
‘One day before the murders.‘
‘Yes, sir.‘
That‘s convenient, isn‘t it?‘
‘It‘s neither convenient nor inconvenient. Only the truth.‘
‘I believe you heard Lieutenant Mincher‘s testimony?‘ Mincher had been in charge of the
party which had dragged the stretch of the Royal near Pond Bridge, from which Andy
had testified he had thrown the gun. The police had not found it
‘Yes, sir. You know I heard it.‘
Then you heard him testify that they found no gun, although they dragged for three days.
That was rather convenient, too, wasn‘t it?‘
‘Convenience aside, it‘s a fact that they didn‘t find the gun,‘ Andy responded calmly. ‘But
I should like to point out to both you and the jury that the Pond Road Bridge is very close
to where the Royal River empties into the Bay of Yarmouth. The current is strong. The
gun may have been carried out into the bay itself.‘
‘And so no comparison can be made between the riflings on the bullets taken from the
bloodstained corpses of your wife and Mr Glenn Quentin and the riflings on the barrel of
your gun. That‘s correct, isn‘t it, Mr Dufresne?‘
‘Yes.‘
That‘s also rather convenient, isn‘t it?‘
At that, according to the papers, Andy displayed one of the few slight emotional reactions
he allowed himself during the entire six-week period of the trial. A slight, bitter smile
crossed his face.
‘Since I am innocent of this crime, sir, and since I am telling the truth about throwing my
gun into the river the day before the crime took place, then it seems to me decidedly
inconvenient that the gun was never found.‘
The DA hammered at him for two days. He re-read the Handy-Pik clerk‘s testimony
about the dishtowels to Andy. Andy repeated that he could not recall buying them, but
admitted that he also couldn‘t remember not buying them.
Was it true that Andy and Linda Dufresne had taken out a joint insurance policy in early
1947? Yes, that was true. And i

上一页  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]  ... 下一页  >>