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'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.'