A Stranger in the Kingdom

by Howard Frank Mosher

  “In his summary speech,” Charlie said, “the hired prosecutor asked you to rely on facts. That’s a spectacularly ironical request on his part because over the course of this trial he’s presented so few of them. Nonetheless, I’m going to echo his sentiments here, because the only way you folks on the jury can come to a fair decision is by sticking close to the facts that we do have available.

  “The first fact I’d like to remind you of is that in this country, everyone, stranger and native alike, is equal before the law. And in this country, everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. What constitutes a reasonable doubt? I’m sure Judge Allen will explain that to you in his final instructions far better than I could. I want to remind you only that you must base your decision concerning Walter Andrews’ innocence or guilt on facts, not suppositions. And the facts all lead to the same conclusion—that this case is rife with reasonable doubts about the identity of the killer, who by the prosecutor’s own arguments today could conceivably be any one of several persons.

  “To make my summary as simple as possible, I’m going to focus primarily on the facts as they transpired on just three days this past summer, August fourth, fifth, and sixth. I want to ask you to review, first with me now and then later in the privacy of your deliberations, not whatever guesses and surmises and conjectures we may share about those days, and the weeks and months that preceded them, but what we know for a fact to have taken place during that seventy-two-hour interval.

  “August fourth dawned raining. That was a huge disappointment for nearly the entire Kingdom. But under Reverend Andrews’ sterling leadership, the sesquicentennial celebration went forward with great success despite the rain.

  “As you know, however, there was an ugly incident afterwards at the parsonage, in which Resolvèd Kinneson saw Claire LaRiviere and Nathan Andrews together on the study couch, mistook Nat for his father, went home and got his shotgun, and fired two blasts of lethal buckshot through the minister’s window.

  “The prosecution has tried to make something, I’m not quite sure what, out of the fact that Reverend Andrews fired back in self-defense. But he fired only to protect his home, which I believe every man and woman in this room would have done.

  “That brings us to August fifth, when, after a lengthy private conversation with Resolvèd Kinneson, Zack Barrows elected to charge him not with assault with a deadly weapon—but with disturbing the peace.

  “August fifth. What else do we know for a fact about August fifth? Well, we know from the testimony of both Reverend Andrews and Elijah Kinneson that in the very late hours of August fifth, or more probably the very early hours of August sixth, Claire LaRiviere went to Reverend Andrews and informed him that she was pregnant. We have no evidence, no facts, to suggest that either then or later did she or Nat Andrews indicate to him that she believed herself to be pregnant with Nat’s child. Indeed, given the hand-to-mouth existence Claire LaRiviere had led in Canada and both while traveling to Kingdom County and during her first days here at Resolvèd Kinneson’s, combined with the fact that she had been staying at the parsonage for only about five weeks, it can be very logically argued that Reverend Andrews had no reason to suspect that Nat, of all the possible candidates, was the baby’s father. And I submit to you that without that suspicion, Reverend Andrews would have had no conceivable motive for doing what he is accused of doing here today.

  “Fine. We know for a fact, from both Reverend Andrews’ testimony and from Elijah Kinneson’s, that during that conversation on the parsonage porch in the very early morning hours of August sixth the minister recommended to Claire that she go to the Mary Margaret Simmons Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, which he might or might not logically have done if he had known Nat was the father of the baby, but never, certainly, if he intended to murder her. We know furthermore that he even went to the trouble of calling the Simmons Home.

  “Let’s move along to the daylight hours of August sixth. Elijah Kinneson was a busy man that day. He had to change the locks on the parsonage and get back to the newspaper office where he worked by noon. Sticking just to the facts, we know that Elijah Kinneson has testified that he never left that newspaper office from noon until well into the evening. Yet Frenchy LaMott has testified that on the afternoon of August sixth he went to the parsonage and saw a man with short gray hair and green work clothes and shoes with holes in their tops go through the minister’s desk and remove some papers and a revolver.

  “Whether Frenchy LaMott actually saw this you must judge for yourselves. But I suggest that in making this judgment, you ask yourselves what conceivable motivation Frenchy could have for coming forward, at his own risk, and lying about what he saw. Keep in mind Frenchy LaMott’s and his mother’s reputation in this community for truthfulness when you make this judgment.

  “What further facts can we be sure of? Well, that at ten o’clock on the evening of August sixth, after returning from Montreal, Reverend Andrews called the police to report that Claire LaRiviere was missing, which I, for one, can’t imagine his doing if he were in any way implicated in her disappearance, and that late in the afternoon of August eighth, a minor and the so-called Dog Cart Man discovered Claire LaRiviere’s dreadfully mutilated body in the granite quarry in the Kingdom gore, lying on a ledge just above the water approximately fifteen feet below the edge of the quarry, as though someone had thrown her down there after dark—supposedly assuming the body would sink out of sight in the water. Now I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, in the name of the common sense invoked by the Montpelier prosecutor, is it remotely believable to you that, not hearing the splash of that body striking the water, a murderer who wished to conceal the body would just go away and leave it exposed to plain sight there? Or, for that matter, toss the murder weapon after it into the water, where it would be bound to be found? Hardly!

  “Now let’s return to Elijah Kinneson. It is a fact that his name, more than any other except that of the Reverend Walter Andrews, persistently comes up in connection with this entire affair. We know that Elijah Kinneson was a most determined adversary of Reverend Andrews. We know that Elijah Kinneson, for whatever private reasons he may have had, above all else did not want the minister investigating the death of Pliny Templeton or the sad conclusion of the life of his father, ‘Mad Charlie’ Kinneson, in the state lunatic asylum. And we know that Elijah Kinneson, and this is a fact, refused to answer yes or no when I asked him here in this courtroom whether he murdered Claire LaRiviere and framed Reverend Andrews!”

  “That’s more than enough, Charles,” Judge Allen said angrily. “I warned you about incriminating anyone else in any of your remarks. The jury will disregard Mr. Kinneson’s last statement regarding Elijah Kinneson’s refusal to answer that question!”

  Charlie cleared his throat. His voice was raspy from talking all day. He looked carefully at each jury member—the same people he had seen on the street most of his life.

  “When I asked Elijah Kinneson why he resented Reverend Walter Andrews, he had no real answer for me. The reason, of course, is that there is no answer to that question. That particular kind of hatred has no rhyme or reason. The most unfortunate and dangerous thing about any kind of human intolerance is that you’ll find it wherever there are humans, because, ladies and gentlemen, it’s potentially as much a part of the human heart, including yours and mine, as its opposite, tolerance, and we all have to guard against it every single day of our lives, whether we live in deepest Africa or up here in what we’re pleased to call God’s Kingdom.

  “Of course we know that this isn’t a perfect place. But as a close relative of mine likes to say, it’s an eminently improvable place, and the fact that it can be improved and that we’re in a position to do that may yet be its greatest strength and ours. Now I’m nearly finished.”

  Charlie turned back to the defense table. He took a long drink of water, emptying the entire glass. With his profile to the courtroom, he pointed a long arm at the jury, looking f
or all the world now like a preacher himself. I could feel my father go tense beside me, no doubt waiting for the torrent to come, for Charlie to roar like an evangelist about the girl whose blood had drenched our town and the innocent man who had been crucified for her death. I know Charlie was tempted to do just that because he told us so afterwards. But when he spoke again he didn’t say anything about murder or martyrdom or racism. Instead, he dropped his arm, shook his head sadly, and as much to himself as anyone else said:

  “Folks, you’re left with a hard decision. Who do you believe? A pillar of the church or a young man who by his own admission is an outcast—an outcast with a reputation for always telling the truth? I remind you of the courage it required for Frenchy LaMott to come forward. I remind you of all the facts that we’ve reviewed together. I remind you too that by finding Reverend Andrews innocent, you’re in no way pre-judging any other individual, only affirming that you have been unable, beyond a reasonable doubt, to find him guilty because in fact, as Sigurd Moulton himself said, we have drastically broadened the field of candidates during these past two days. That is what all this now comes down to, ladies and gentlemen. Reasonable doubt. If in your minds there is a reasonable doubt that Reverend Andrews murdered Claire LaRiviere, my client must go free.

  “An innocent verdict won’t atone to this good man for what we’ve done to him. It won’t expiate us or our town from the guilt we all have to share, the guilt of knowing we stood by and allowed this to happen, if nothing else. But it will be a small redressing of some of the injustice that’s taken place. I’m not as religious as many people. No doubt I’m not the best one to say this. But I hope the Lord can forgive us for what we have done here in this town this summer, because I don’t see how on earth any mere human being could be expected to.”

  As my brother sat down, my father wrote something in the ensuing silence. I looked at his notebook, and my eyes filled with tears to see scrawled there the single word:

  “AMEN.”

  “So what, precisely, constitutes a reasonable doubt?” Judge Allen was saying. “The best way I can put it, ladies and gentlemen, is that if your collective common sense tells you that for whatever reason or reasons you can’t be sure who killed Claire LaRiviere, then you must find the defendant not guilty. Now understand that if you come to that conclusion, you aren’t in any way incriminating anyone else. If you can’t be sure the defendant is guilty, that doesn’t mean that you’re pointing your finger at another person and saying you think he or she did it.

  “If, on the other hand, after considering all of the evidence, including admitted circumstantial evidence, common sense tells you that the defendant very probably committed this crime, then you must find him guilty. And as I’ve said, the fact that he’s a Negro or the fact that he is a good father or the fact that he’s a good minister mustn’t enter into your decision at all. In other words, you can’t be swayed by sympathy, any more than you can be swayed by prejudice That’s what the blindfold on the figure of justice means.

  “Now, it’s getting late, and you people must be getting tired. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I want you to begin your deliberations now, while everything you’ve heard over the past two days is still fresh in your mind. If you don’t come to a clear decision tonight, you can sleep on it. As soon as you do go into deliberation, I’m going to send Mr. Blake to the hotel and have him bring you back some hot food and coffee, and I’m going to have him reserve rooms there for you. When and if you get tired, just let him know, and I’ll recess court until tomorrow morning. Above all, I want you to take all the time you need because this is an extremely important decision, not just for this defendant, but for the town as well. Like it or not, the eyes of the county are on us tonight, but once you begin deliberating I want you to forget that, too, to forget the reporters and the tape recorders and the newsreel cameras outside the courtroom and, as both Attorney Kinneson and Attorney Moulton said, just pay attention to the facts of this case.

  “I’m going to say one more thing, then I’ll pipe down and you folks can take over. I want to say that despite everything that’s happened here in this county this summer, I have faith in two things. First, I have faith in our legal system, however unwieldy it may seem at times. And just as important, I have faith in you twelve folks and in your ability to sort out everything that you’ve heard over the past two days and to bring back the right and just verdict. That’s why I never for a single minute considered transferring this trial out of Kingdom County. Discuss the case until you come to a decision or get tired; then let me know. Take your time. A year from now, nobody’s going to remember whether you reached your decision tonight or tomorrow or, the next day. All they’ll remember is that decision itself. Good luck, ladies and gentlemen—good luck!”

  “They’re going to need it, editor,” Plug Johnson said a minute later as we jostled our way out of the courtroom. “That luck the judge wished them. I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes tonight, no sir. Jim here, though, he’s probably come to a decision already. What is it, Jim, heh? Guilty or innocent? Use your common sense now, boy, like the old judge said. Don’t be swayed by sympathy or nothing, else.”

  “They won’t come back with a verdict tonight. I’m positive of it,” Farlow Blake half-whispered to us as he headed down the stairs on his way to the hotel for provisions. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, boys, but on his way into the jury room I heard Yves St. Pierre say they should have brought their nightcaps.”

  Instead of going over to the shop, Mom and Dad and Athena and I went upstairs to Charlie’s office. (There were only two chairs in Charlie’s office, so Mom and Athena sat down, I perched on the edge of Charlie’s desk, and Dad stood by the window looking out over the dark common below.) And there we were, waiting again, right in the same room where all of this had first begun last spring, on my thirteenth birthday, when I had come back from Burlington to find Charlie just finishing Resolvèd’s letter to Young Love, True Love.

  Charlie appeared a few minutes later with Nat, looking tired and tense. He squeezed Nat’s shoulder. “Thanks, buddy. Thanks for coming back and for testifying. It had to help.”

  “So what will they decide?” Nat said

  My brother shook his head. “I’d like to say they’ll be back in ten minutes with an innocent verdict, Nat. But you never, never know. It’s almost impossible to predict. One thing I’m pretty sure of, though. The longer they take to make their decision, the better our chances are. That means that at least somebody in that deliberation room, probably more than one somebody, is seeing something our way.

  “Where’s Elijah, by the way?” Charlie asked.

  “The last I saw of him, he was still downstairs in the courtroom,” Athena said “I’m surprised that somebody isn’t keeping a closer eye on him.”

  “Why should you be surprised? He hasn’t been charged with anything yet.”

  “It’s going to snow pretty soon,” Athena said, winking at me. “There’ll be some big snowbanks, right, Jim?”

  “Right!” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it.

  “I loved it when you got up and delivered your unsolicited testimonial for old Frenchy,” Charlie said.

  “My father didn’t,” Athena said. “You can bet that the minute this trial is over, he’ll be on his way up to the big lake for a week or two.”

  “Duck hunting’s coming, and that’s a fact,” Charlie said. “I’d like to go with him. But I doubt he’ll invite me. He was pretty mad over that hundred-dollar mistake I made.”

  “I’m going over to the shop,” Dad said. “James, keep an eye peeled for Farlow Blake. If it looks as though the jury’s going to come back in with the verdict tonight, which I very much doubt, come right over to get me.”

  Nat and I went back downstairs and peered into the courtroom only to find Elijah carving away on his chain, intent as old Dr. Manette at his cobbler’s bench in A Tale of Two Cities. It made my flesh creep to watch him. Even then I did not believe
that the old sexton was capable of murder, but if ever pure evil seemed compressed into a single form or being, it seemed compressed into Elijah Kinneson and that dizzying chain, as he carved on and on under the courtroom lights, oblivious to everything around him, with the thin curly shavings flaking off and accumulating around his pitted shoes.

  We wandered back out to the second-floor landing, where Farlow Blake had buttonholed me last spring to tell me about the Most Peculiar lawyer. Nat went downstairs to the jail to wait with his father, and I drifted aimlessly here and there, from the second-floor landing to the first floor of the courthouse, back up to Charlie’s office, down onto the street. The straw Harvest Figures around the common looked spooky in the dim streetlamps, and wherever people were gathered I heard bits and snatches of opinions about the outcome of the trial, but the only opinion that counted that night was the opinion of the twelve men and women sequestered in the jury room of the Kingdom County Courthouse.

  Farlow popped outside two or three times, looking solemn, but he wouldn’t say a word. Charlie came back downstairs to sit with the minister and Nat in the jail cell. In the adjacent cell, an uncharacteristically morose Resolvèd was working on a bottle of Old Duke someone had passed in to him through the bars of the tiny basement window. On the sidewalk in front of the courthouse, Welcome shared glimpses of the full October moon through my great-great-great-grandfather’s telescope.

  Plug Johnson nudged me with his elbow. “Can you see them green fellas up on Mars with that spy glass, Welcome?”

  “Aye, and more besides,” Welcome said, “for with this wondrous device, a man may peer deep into the far reaches of creation and view the comings and goings of many a distant civilization. In fact, I was just about to take it up into the church steeple with me, to get a closer look at Old Mother Moon. You come, too, Jimmy.