A Stranger in the Kingdom

by Howard Frank Mosher

  “I don’t recall that I was ever at home when he came. The work would simply be done a day or two after I’d spoken to him about it.”

  “Can you think of a specific instance?”

  “Yes. After the shooting episode at the parsonage, I asked him to replace both the front and back door locks with modern locks. Two days after the shooting, when I returned from a morning meeting with the session and just before I drove Nat back to Montreal the locks had been installed and the keys were on my desk and labeled.”

  “So Elijah Kinneson had complete access to your house at any time?”

  “Objection! It’s been established that the sexton had access to the parsonage only in connection with his job and upon the minister’s request.”

  “Strike the question,” Charlie said casually. “How would you characterize Elijah Kinneson’s attitude toward you in general, Reverend Andrews?”

  “He rarely spoke to me directly. I had the impression he avoided me when possible.”

  “Do you have any idea why?”

  “Immaterial, your honor,” Moulton said. “Were speaking of the vaguest impressions here.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Allen said.

  “Let me inquire more precisely,” Charlie said. “Reverend Andrews, did you ever have any difficulty, any arguments with Elijah Kinneson?”

  “We disagreed on occasion,” the minister said. “I recall asking him one Saturday morning to change the text on the bulletin board outside the church. I thought the message he’d put up was inappropriate, and we exchanged some sharp words over it. He walked away in a huff, so I changed it myself. After that, he refused to have anything more to do with the bulletin board.

  “On the other hand, I never had any cause to complain about the sexton’s regular work, he kept the church in apple-pie order. Doctrinally, we never pretended to agree. Mr. Elijah Kinneson is a Reformed Presbyterian, one of the very last in the congregation. I was brought up as a United Presbyterian.”

  “Was Elijah Kinneson aware of your interest in Pliny Templeton’s life?”

  “Yes, he was. That was a curious thing. More than once he gave me to understand that he didn’t at all approve of the research I was conducting on Templeton. When I began looking into the circumstances of Pliny’s alleged suicide, he went out of his way to tell me that wasn’t any of my business. He objected when your father lent me Pliny’s book, The Ecclesiastical History of Kingdom County. Elijah said that Pliny was a born troublemaker who was at the root of a turn-of-the-century feud between local Reformed and United Presbyterians. I presumed that Elijah thought Pliny richly deserved to languish in obscurity because of the changes he sought to effect in the church and Academy.”

  Sigurd Moulton, who once again seemed to have resumed the duties of chief prosecutor, was on his feet. “Your honor, these speculations and presumptions on the part of a defendant in a first-degree murder trial have no place in this courtroom. They’re totally unrelated to the case at hand.”

  “The jury will disregard Reverend Andrews’ presumptions. You may proceed with this line of inquiry, Mr. Kinneson, if and only if Reverend Andrews confines his replies to what he knows for a fact, with no presumptions.”

  “Thank you, your honor. Reverend Andrews, where do you keep your research papers on Pliny Templeton?”

  “Until recently, I kept them in the lower left-hand drawer of my desk in the parsonage study.”

  “Why did you say ‘until recently’?”

  “A few weeks ago I asked your father if he’d bring my research notes up to Memphremagog for me. He checked in my desk and found they were missing. So were two newspapers from the summer of 1900, the summer Pliny died, which I’d borrowed from the back files at your father’s office.”

  “What, specifically, did those two newspapers contain?”

  “One contained an article on Pliny’s suicide. The other contained a notice concerning a sudden illness of Charles Kinneson—your greatgrandfather and Pliny’s close friend and benefactor.”

  “Did you keep your desk locked, Reverend Andrews?”

  “Yes, always.”

  “Do you have any clues as to who might have taken your research notes and the two newspapers?”

  “Not without presuming again.”

  “Thank you very much, Reverend Andrews. Your testimony has been very illuminating. That’s all for the time being.”

  Sigurd Moulton stood up. “Reverend Andrews, I’m not going to conduct a class up here on local history. We’re all sure that your interest in Pliny Templeton is a very fascinating little hobby to take up your spare time when you’re not out getting into fistfights or shooting matches with local citizens, but—

  “Objection, your honor. That’s exactly the sort of misleading, gratuitous insult that you’ve warned the prosecutor against.”

  “Sustained. Mr. Moulton, if you insult anyone in this courtroom just once more, I’ll slap you with a cool one-hundred-dollar fine on the spot.”

  “I was simply going to say, your honor, that I intend to back up and ask the defendant some much more relevant questions. Now, Reverend Andrews, I want to explore in more depth your relationship with your son. I’d like to ask you whether you were aware that he was going to testify here today.”

  “Not until my attorney told me so this morning. I wasn’t even aware that Nat was back in Vermont until Charlie Kinneson informed me this morning that he’d called and asked him to return from Montreal last night.”

  “Why did you spirit your son off to Montreal in the first place?”

  “As I’ve said, this simply wasn’t a safe place for him after the shooting at the parsonage. He’d been happy at his grandmother’s before moving to Vermont, and both he and I thought that it was best for him to return there, at least temporarily.”

  “Did your son ever tell you or hint to you that he had slept with the LaRiviere girl?”

  “No, he did not.”

  “Did the LaRiviere girl tell you or in any way intimate to you that it was your son who had slept with her?”

  “No, she did not. And I’m not at all ready to concede that he was the only one who did.”

  “Do you know that from firsthand experience?”

  “Objection, your honor. Once again, the prosecutor is using innuendo to try to trap and discredit my client.”

  “I don’t mind answering that question, your honor,” Reverend Andrews said. “No, Mr. Moulton, I do not know that from firsthand experience. My sole interest in the girl was in trying to help her find a suitable situation, and frankly, a situation as far away from Kingdom Common as possible. As I’ve testified, I knew better than any of my congregation that the parsonage was no good place for her to be.”

  “Well, then,” Moulton said, “the obvious question, Reverend Andrews. Did you suspect that there might be something between your son and Claire LaRiviere?”

  “I suspected that if there wasn’t something between them already, there soon might be. Human nature would only lead one to that conclusion.”

  “Did your knowledge of human nature also lead you to suspect, when Claire LaRiviere told you that she was pregnant, that your son might be the father of the baby?”

  “She’d been with us for only five weeks. I must own that the thought crossed my mind, but I more or less dismissed it because I thought five weeks would be too soon for that to happen, or for her to be sure about it if it had happened.”

  “Then why on earth, if you suspected that your son and Claire LaRiviere might have been sleeping together, didn’t you say something about it earlier in this trial?”

  “Several reasons. One, no one’s on trial here for sleeping with the girl, and I was under no legal obligation to mention any suspicions that I may have harbored on that head. Two, I saw no reason why Nathan should have to answer questions on this matter. Even if I suspected that there might have been something between him and the girl, I didn’t see how his testimony could be relevant to my case. Finally, I didn’t want him t
o have to go through just this type of ordeal.”

  “You seem very protective of your son.”

  “Is that a question?”

  “You’ve testified that it was partly on your son’s behalf that you decided to come here to Kingdom County. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you also want to protect your son, as well as yourself and your own professional and personal reputation, from the criticism that inevitably would have resulted from the unsavory disclosure that he was involved in a sordid sexual affair with a girl who had worked as a stripper in one of the notorious tent shows at Kingdom Fair?”

  “As I’ve already indicated, I had no proof at all that my son was engaged in such a liaison with the LaRiviere girl.”

  “But you’ve admitted that you suspected that he might have been. Weren’t you concerned about your reputation and his then?”

  “If my reputation had been my principal concern, I wouldn’t have allowed the girl to stay with us in the first place.”

  “Let’s get back to Elijah Kinneson. Are you seriously suggesting that a man with an impeccable reputation, not only as a sexton and a citizen of this village, but as a pillar of the church, broke into your house and stole a bunch of haphazard notes on a man who died fifty years ago?”

  “I’m not suggesting that. But someone took them. I have no way of knowing who.”

  “Exactly. If in fact they were stolen at all. Reverend, since coming to Kingdom County you’ve punched a local man in the jaw, fired shots at a local citizen in the street in front of your house, maiming that citizen for life, and spirited your boy back off to Canada after the girl who was staying at your house informed you she was pregnant—all in the interest of protecting that boy. Just how far would you go in protecting your son?”

  “I suppose I’d go as far as necessary.”

  “What do you mean by ‘necessary’?”

  “I mean that short of violating the law or my personal conscience, I would do what I had to do to keep him out of harm’s way.”

  “I’m going to ask you a question, then, in the interest of, shall we say, broadening the field of suspects. Would you, Reverend Andrews, protect your son from murder charges by remaining silent, even to the point of throwing suspicion onto yourself?”

  “OBJECTION, YOUR HONOR! Nat Andrews is not on trial here. That’s the most ridiculous—”

  “Sustained! Don’t let me warn you on this issue again, Mr. Moulton.”

  “Ridiculous?” Moulton said. “Quite possibly. Quite probably. Almost definitely, in fact. So my last question, at least for the time being, is this: Would you, Reverend Andrews, murder someone yourself to protect your son from being named as the seducer of a homeless girl staying in your house? Would you do that, sir? Did you do that? Did you murder Claire LaRiviere in order to prevent what you yourself suspected from becoming public knowledge—that your son had gotten her pregnant?”

  I thought that Reverend Andrews might leap right out of the witness box and coldcock Sigurd Moulton on the spot, the way he had Bumper Stevens the past spring. But he betrayed no emotion at all as he said, “No, I did not. Or for any other reason.”

  “We’ll let this group of twelve Kingdom County natives determine that,” Moulton said, with a nod at the jury. “I have no further questions.”

  Charlie next recalled Cousin Elijah. Now as Elijah took the stand he looked as triumphant as his Biblical namesake.

  “Mr. Elijah Kinneson,” Charlie said, “would you mind telling the jury again why you passed through the United Church cemetery on the early morning of August sixth?”

  “I don’t chew my cabbage twice.”

  “Mr. Barrows and Mr. Moulton,” Judge Allen said, “your witness is now standing on the thinnest of ice. A mere skim of ice, in fact. Unless otherwise instructed from the bench, he will respond to the defense attorney’s questions promptly and courteously.”

  “Just answer the question, please, Elijah,” Zack said from the prosecutor’s table.

  “I passed through the cemetery because it’s a shortcut home from work,” Elijah said in a surly tone. “Besides that, as I indicated earlier, I quite often detour out around through the graveyard in order to check on this or that in my capacity as sexton.”

  “I’m interested in your sexton work, Elijah. What, exactly, does it entail?”

  “Irrelevant,” Moulton said.

  “The witness has just testified that he was checking up on things in the cemetery in connection with his job as sexton on the night he overheard Claire LaRiviere tell my client she was pregnant.”

  “Answer the question, Elijah,” Judge Allen said.

  “What does being a sexton entail? Well, mowing the cemetery grass. Planting the dead. Keeping the church clean, the church walk clear in the wintertime. Maintaining the parsonage.”

  “Are you paid for these duties?”

  “Yes and no. I compute my time at a fair hourly rate and donate it to the church as my tithe. Fact is, it comes to way more than your standard tithe. This way I tithe for a number who won’t, or at any rate don’t.”

  “You said you maintained the parsonage. Do you have access to it at all times?”

  “I don’t go there unless I’m summoned.”

  “When you changed the front and back door locks at the parsonage on the morning of August sixth, did you keep a duplicate set of keys for yourself?”

  “Objection, your honor. Counsel for the defense is adopting a prosecutorial stance with the witness.”

  “Your honor, the prosecution has just finished adopting exactly the same stance with Nathan Andrews. It’s as though if they can’t prove their case against my client, which they can’t because my client is totally innocent of these absurd charges, they’re going to go out after my client’s son. Well, they’re the ones who wanted to ‘broaden the field of suspects.’ That’s all I’m doing.”

  “Your objection is overruled, Mr. Moulton. Elijah Kinneson may answer the question. Put your question again, Attorney Kinneson.”

  “Elijah, when you changed the locks at the parsonage, on the morning of August sixth, did you keep a set of new keys for yourself?”

  “I may have. What of it? That’s only standard procedure.”

  “Do you have the new keys with you now, and if so, could I please see them?”

  “Objection. The only way I’ll agree to that, your honor, is if those keys are going to be entered as evidence.”

  “They are,” Charlie said. “Toward the end of broadening the field of suspects, Mr. Moulton.”

  “That murder didn’t take place in the parsonage, it was committed in or near the stone quarry.”

  “The revolver presumed to be the murder weapon came from the parsonage, your honor. The prosecutor is using this fact as prima facie evidence that my client himself must have used the revolver to commit the murder. I’m only broadening the—”

  “We know, Mr. Kinneson,” Judge Allen said. “We know. Do you intend to enter the keys in question as evidence immediately?”

  “Yes.”

  “Proceed.”

  Elijah undipped his great key ring and scowled at it as though the dozens of keys had offended him personally and unforgivably. From the ring he selected two new keys and handed them to Charlie, who had them duly entered as evidence.

  “Do you have any other keys belonging to the parsonage, Mr. Kinneson?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Could I please see the ring?”

  Elijah, who had clipped the keys back on his belt loop, gave a long exasperated sigh. He unfastened them again and handed them to Charlie.

  “What’s this one go to?” Charlie said, fingering a very small key like the key to a cedar chest or padlock.

  Elijah hesitated. “I couldn’t say for a certainty.”

  “Might it go to the desk in the parsonage office?”

  “I can’t tell you. I’m not in the habit of going into other folks’ private desk drawers
.”

  “Just one more question, then. Did you, Elijah Kinneson, go back to the parsonage on the afternoon of August sixth, after Reverend Andrews had left with Nathan for Montreal?”

  “Objection! Elijah Kinneson’s whereabouts on that afternoon are totally irrelevant.”

  “You’re basing a large part of your case on his whereabouts the night before,” Charlie roared. “If you can ask him where he was on the night of August fifth, I can damn well ask him where he was on the afternoon of August sixth.”

  “Answer the question, Mr. Kinneson,” Judge Allen said.

  “I’ll tell you where I was,” Elijah said angrily. “I was at the newspaper office from one that afternoon until well on into that evening, whilst my cousin and his boy were off fishing. Anyone who says otherwise is a bold-faced liar.”

  “Fine,” Charlie said. “Then unless the prosecution wishes to redirect questions to Mr Elijah Kinneson, I’d like to call Claude ‘Frenchy’ LaMott to the witness stand.”

  “Your honor, I must protest again that in a case of this gravity a mere boy’s notions cannot be taken seriously.”

  “Mr. Moulton, kindly be seated. We will entertain no ‘notions,’ I’ll assure you, and I, not you, will continue to determine who may and may not testify before this court. Administer the oath, Mr. Blake.”

  As Frenchy LaMott came forward, his black hair slicked back with tonic, wearing an ancient herringbone suit coat over a flannel shirt open at the collar, he looked a good thirty years old.

  Charlie had obviously coached Frenchy about the swearing in, because he gave his actual name, Claude, when he took the oath.

  “Just relax, Frenchy,” Charlie said. “You’ve been waiting for what, an hour already? You probably know more about how a courtroom’s run than some over-the-hill persecuting attorneys and their flatlander hirelings.”

  Bang! Judge Allen’s hand hit the top of the bench as hard as a gavel.

  “Charles Kinneson, I am fining you a cool hundred dollars, payable on the spot. You will disburse this amount, in full, to Mr. Blake before we proceed one step further.”