A Stranger in the Kingdom

by Howard Frank Mosher

  Julia turned red as a beet. “Well, you know. Bedroom eyes and all. He kept looking at my legs.”

  “Now, Julia,” Charlie said with a very broad smile this time. “Who could blame any man for admiring an attractive young woman like you?”

  Here the courtroom broke up. Even Julia laughed, more from embarrassment, I think, than for any other reason.

  But Charlie cut the laughter off himself by saying loudly, “So he was looking at you in a certain way?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. In fact, he kept smiling.”

  “The way I am now?”

  Again the courtroom broke out in laughter, and Judge Allen did nothing to stop it. I think that he may have felt that Julia deserved exactly what she was getting.

  “So he looked at you and smiled. Was that when you invited him to dinner and said your son would be gone that evening and you two would have a ‘quiet little chat and a few brandies together’?”

  “Objection, your honor! He’s leading the witness.”

  “On the contrary, your honor. In my opinion the witness was leading Reverend Andrews—straight down the primrose path!”

  Now the whole courtroom sounded like the Saturday matinee in the Academy auditorium during a Three Stooges movie. But once again Charlie restored order himself by saying, “Mrs. Hefner, did you, during your first visit to the parsonage, invite the minister to dinner and tell him that your son would be out that night?”

  “I can’t recall where Bobby was going to be that evening, but I’m not ashamed of inviting the local pastor to dinner. It’s customary, you know. Besides, I was desperate to get out of there. When you think you might be molested on the spot, you’ll say any old thing.”

  “Did Reverend Andrews say he’d be glad to come to dinner, if his son was invited, too, and did you say no, you had some private matters to discuss with him?”

  “Objection, your honor, the defense attorney is entirely out of line himself to pursue these idiotic speculations.”

  By now Julia had begun to snuffle into a little embroidered handkerchief.

  “Sustained,” the judge said.

  “Just one more question, Mrs. Hefner. Are you familiar with the old phrase, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned’?”

  “OBJECTION! This is disgraceful!” Zack roared.

  “Well, Zack,” Charlie said, “for once, you and I agree. Strike the question.”

  “You may call your next witness, Mr. Barrows.”

  Zack stood up. “Thank you, your honor. I have just two more witnesses. I’d like to thank the jury for its patience and attentiveness so far, and ask only that each juror please pay particular attention to the testimony of these last two individuals, who will amply clarify the one remaining question in this case: Walter Andrews’ motive in brutally murdering and maiming Claire LaRiviere. Sheriff White, will you please bring Resolvèd Kinneson forward to the witness stand?”

  To say that I was astonished, to say that the entire local population of the courtroom was astonished, does not begin to describe our collective amazement as my outlaw cousin made his way down the far right-hand aisle beside the sheriff. He was wearing neither a suit nor his ratty old poaching clothes, but a clean pair of green work pants and a new green work shirt and new hunting boots. He was cleanshaven and his hair was slicked down, as though he’d just wet and combed it a few moments ago.

  Zack began by having Resolvèd establish how he had written away for a housekeeper with Charlie’s assistance and how Claire had shown up out of the blue one morning late last June, stayed a week, and then left.

  “By the time she split the coop, I was laid up with a broken leg,” Resolvèd continued in a voice that was already half a snarl. “But as soon as I was up and around, I decided to get her back again. So on the night of August the fourth, I went out a-hunting for the woman in question, who I’d bought and paid for through the mail and then run off on me. I knowed where she was. I knowed she’d gone to ground at that parsonage, and I intended to snake her out. So around eleven, eleven-thirty I slipped up onto the property through the empty lot next door and past that old sugar maple tree without no top and so along beside them red bitterberry vines a-clinging to the porch. It wasn’t any light on inside the house, but I can see good in the dark, always have, and I says to myself, says I, I’ll just go ’round by the windows and take a look-see inside and see if she’s to home. Well, sir, I slid up onto the porch real quiet-like and then I could hear two voices coming from inside the front room. I crept up closer until I could look in the window where the voices was. It was open some and I could hear everything very distinct, only now it weren’t so much voices as this moaning-like, a-moaning and a-groaning, just like a heifer cow coming into heat for the first time. And by God, I stuck my head in the window and switched on the lamp that set on the preacher’s desk, and there on that di-van, ladies and gentlemen all”—Resolvèd was on his feet, and Judge Allen had already begun to rap on the bench, but it was too late; unless he’d had a gun, there was no way in the world that the judge could have stopped my cousin, now pointing directly at Reverend Andrews—“there on the di-van, I see that big buck nigger setting over there beside Charlie Kinneson a-putting the britches to my housekeeper.”

  The courtroom was in an uproar. Charlie was roaring objections, Judge Allen was banging for order, Farlow Blake was shouting at Resolvèd to sit down and trying to yank him forcibly back into his seat. Once again, Judge Allen had to call a recess, this time to talk to Resolvèd and Zack Barrows. I would have liked to be a little bird on Forrest Allen’s shoulder during that session, but all I know for certain is that ten minutes later, when they reemerged, Resolvèd looked considerably subdued.

  “Mr. Kinneson,” Zack said when Resolvèd resumed the witness stand, “would you please tell us in polite and appropriate language what you saw in the United Church parsonage study on the evening of August fourth when you put your head inside and turned on the light?”

  With a snaggle-toothed smirk, Resolvèd said, “Yes, sir. I seen the preacher, Andrews, and the LaRiviere woman engaged in sexual innercourse.”

  “Your honor, is that answer acceptable?” Zack said.

  “It’s close enough,” Judge Allen said dryly.

  “What did you do then, Mr. Kinneson?” Zack said.

  “Well,” Resolvèd said, “I weren’t very god—I weren’t at all well pleased with the situation, let us say. But I kept my manners and only said good and loud, in a pretty sarcastic way, ‘Excuse me!’”

  “Did either of the two people on the divan speak?”

  “Yes! He did, preacher fella there. He hollered, ‘Shut off that bloody light.’ La-de-da Englishman’s accent and all.”

  “Resolvèd, I’m going to ask you just one more question,” Zack said. “Please be assured that you do not have to say anything further to me or to the defense attorney, Charlie Kinneson, that would in any way prejudice the outcome of any further legal dealings in which you yourself may already be involved. I’d just like to ask you if you’re absolutely sure of what you saw on the divan that night?”

  “I be.”

  “Thank you very much, sir.”

  Charlie wasted no time with preliminaries. “Resolvèd, you say you looked in the window and saw the preacher and the LaRiviere girl engaged in sexual intercourse. Remembering Judge Allen’s instructions to keep your language acceptable, what precisely were the people in the parsonage study doing?”

  “Going right at it two-forty.”

  The judge’s gavel was poised, but except for a few suppressed laughs, the courtroom was silent.

  “There are a thousand and one ways to ‘go right at it,’ even on the relatively cramped quarters of a couch,” Charlie said. “Please describe exactly what you saw.”

  Oddly, Resolvèd turned nearly as red as Julia Hefner had. I had never seen my cousin in any way flustered, and in other circumstances I would have been amused.

  “Well, now. The first thing I see when I reached in and sna
pped on the light was the back of the girl’s head. Blondish-color hair. Back of her neck. Back of her smock.”

  “By ‘smock’ do you mean a dress?”

  “Smock, shift, gown, or dress, call it what you will. It was that rainbow-color one she wore down from Canady. It was all bunched up around her waist, and her legs and behind was nekkid as the day she was borned.”

  “Was she lying down or sitting up?”

  “You really want to get into all this smut here, Cousin? Well, the fact is, not to offend the judge’s nor nobody else’s ears but just to tell the strict truth, she was setting up and a-straddling him, if you must know. He was sort of slumped into one corner of the di-van, and his bare feet and bare legs was sticking out under her.”

  “Could you see the man’s face?”

  “Not all that plain. No, I couldn’t see his face plainly. But I knowed who it was, all right.”

  “How did you know who it was if you couldn’t see his face?”

  “I knowed because, as I said, I could see his feet and legs and they was a nig—a colored fella’s.”

  “You’ve testified that immediately after you turned on the desk lamp, the man in the room said, ‘Shut off that bloody light.’ What did you do then?”

  “I decline to answer.”

  “Did you go home and get your shotgun and come back and fire at the parsonage and order the LaRiviere girl outside?”

  Resolvèd looked at the prosecutor’s table. Zack looked at Moulton, who shook his head. Zack, in turn, shook his head at Resolvèd.

  “I decline to answer that question, Charlie Kinneson, on grounds that it might in—get me into more hot water!”

  “Your honor,” Charlie said, “I don’t see how the defense can be expected to present its case if Resolvèd Kinneson refuses to tell us the rest of the story. We have a right to know what happened next.”

  “I’m sorry, Charles,” the judge said. “But Mr. Kinneson has a right not to incriminate himself. If he doesn’t wish to answer that question, that’s his constitutional right.”

  “It’s his constitutional right not to say yes or no when I ask him if he fired on the parsonage and ordered—”

  “Mr. Kinneson, one more word and I will slap you with a cool one-hundred-dollar fine on the spot,” the judge said. “You have my ruling.”

  “Resolvèd, did you tell the sheriff these allegations about the minister and the LaRiviere girl early on the morning of August fifth, after the shooting episode at the parsonage that we can’t discuss?”

  Resolvèd looked at the prosecutor’s table. Again, first Moulton, then Zack shook their heads.

  “Your honor, I’m going to request that Mr. Resolvèd Kinneson answer or decline to answer these questions himself, without signals and assistance from the prosecutors.”

  The judge sighed. “And I’m going to request, Mr. Charles Kinneson, that you rephrase your question without any reference to a shooting. Then I’ll consider ruling whether he has to answer it.”

  “Resolvèd, on the morning after this alleged incident at the parsonage, did you tell the sheriff what you’d seen?”

  “I decline to answer on the grounds that it might ’crim’nate me.”

  “Your honor, telling the jury whether or not he informed the sheriff of what he allegedly saw at the parsonage when he looked in the window cannot, by any stretch of my imagination, incriminate this witness. I request that you instruct him to answer the question.”

  The judge thought briefly. Then he said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Kinneson. Resolvèd Kinneson does not at this time have to answer that question.”

  “Resolvèd, I noticed that the sheriff escorted you down the aisle to the witness stand. Why is that?”

  “I decline to answer.”

  “Resolvèd, are you currently residing in the Kingdom County Jail?”

  “What if I am?”

  “One more question, Resolvèd. How many times have you been in this courtroom?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that, Charlie K. A dozen? Two dozen?”

  “Which?” Charlie said. “One dozen? Two dozen? Three dozen times? Fifty times?”

  “You ought to have some idea, Cousin,” Resolvèd said. “Over the past few months, you’ve rupresented me here every time.”

  “You may call your last witness, Mr. Barrows.”

  Zack nodded to Mason White, who disappeared through the double swinging doors at the rear of the room. He was gone for perhaps fifteen seconds.

  Accompanied by the sheriff, Zack’s final witness entered the courtroom and walked stiffly down the center aisle. He wore green work clothes and work shoes with holes and dull little scallops of printer’s lead cooked into them. His cropped gray hair looked like a sprinkling of lead filings. As he passed us I caught a whiff of that sulfurous redolence he carried everywhere, and his great ring of keys clanked sternly at his side.

  “Your honor,” Zack said, “as its final witness, the county calls Elijah Kinneson. Once again, because of his expertise in first-degree murder cases, Mr. Moulton will conduct the questioning of Mr. Kinneson.”

  After Farlow had sworn Elijah in, Sigurd Moulton said, “Mr. Kinneson, would you please state your full name, your profession, and your place of business.”

  “Elijah Kinneson. Printer and linotype operator for the Kingdom County Monitor.”

  “I believe that printing demands close attention to details, Mr. Kinneson?”

  “I don’t make many mistakes.”

  “So I’ve been told. Now, Mr. Kinneson, will you please tell the court where you were and what you were doing on the evening of August fifth of this past summer?”

  “That was Production Night at the shop. From about eight o’clock on I was putting out my newspaper.”

  “Were you alone in the building?”

  “Yes and no. The other fella skipped out around midnight. After that I was alone and could get something done.”

  “Who is the other fella?”

  Elijah thrust out a sallow talon in the direction of my father. “Fella out there in the congregation. My cousin, Charles Kinneson. So-called editor over at the Monitor.”

  “I see. Editor Kinneson left around midnight and then you were alone. Do you recall what time you finished your work that night?”

  “Not to the exact minute I don’t. It was in the vicinity of one-thirty A.M. I would say that give or take a few minutes either way I put my paper to bed at just about half-past one o’clock in the morning. I locked up, which I might not otherwise have done except that so-called Old Home Day had been held the day before and you can’t tell what riffraff such an affair as that might draw. Then I started on home.”

  “Did you drive home?”

  “Drive home? No, I did not. I don’t own a motorcar. Never have, never will. Unlike some I could point out, I’d rather pay my bills than make car payments.”

  “Elijah Kinneson,” Judge Allen said sharply, “you will answer the questions put to you and only those questions. You will kindly restrain yourself from favoring the court with your opinions on borrowing and lending, automobiles, and all other topics not directly related to the questions you are asked. Do you understand me, sir?”

  Elijah gave the judge the barest curt nod.

  “Answer yes or no,” Judge Allen said angrily. “The court stenographer has no way of recording a surly gesture.”

  “Yes,” Elijah muttered.

  “Where do you live, Mr. Kinneson?” Moulton said.

  “On the edge of the churchyard, heading out the county road toward Lord Hollow. Last house on the right going away from town.”

  “By the churchyard, do you mean the precincts of the church?”

  “I do not. The church would be clear across town at the south end of the common. I mean the graveyard. Cemetery. Final resting place. Call it whatever you want, everybody in town winds up there. Except the papists, that is. They’re planted up on Anderson Hill.”

  “Do you customarily pass by this cemetery o
n your way home from work?”

  “I customarily pass through a corner of it. It’s a shortcut. From the shop I cut cross the common, and down between the courthouse and the Academy, and so on through the edge of the churchyard to my house.”

  “On the evening of August fifth—actually it would have been the early morning of August sixth, by then—did you see anything unusual as you approached your house?”

  “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here today, now, would I?”

  “What did you see?”

  “Well, I didn’t actually see much of anything. It was black as pitch. But I heard something.”

  “Tell the court what you heard, please.”

  “Two voices.”

  “Could you tell where these voices were coming from?”

  “Yes, from the parsonage porch, just across the street.”

  “Were you startled?”

  “Startled! Startled by what?”

  “By the voices. You said it was a dark night. I thought you might have mistaken them for ghosts.”

  Elijah snorted. “Ghosts don’t jangle,” he said. “At first I thought it was fishermen navigating around on the lawn and picking up nightwalkers, which they frequently do over in the churchyard, and trample all over my plots into the bargain. But this wasn’t nightwalker pickers. These voices were coming from the parsonage porch. It was a fella and a woman. Jangling.”

  “Jangling?”

  “Yes. Back and forth.”

  “Could you please explain the term ‘jangling,’ Mr. Kinneson?”

  “Jangling,” Elijah said impatiently. “Like these.”

  He half rose and gave his key ring a great clangorous jerk.

  “Arguing,” he said.

  “I see. Did you hear any of the words of the argument?”

  “Yes. I stepped out toward the street a short ways, so I could hear clearly, just to be sure it wasn’t housebreakers, you know, or one of the preacher’s enemies, of which he’d made a goodly number. As I say, it was a fella’s voice and a girl. Once I got out in the street, I could tell that the girl talked like a Frenchman. Anyway, the fella said, ‘Well, what’s done is done. If you are, I shall see to it that it’s taken care of straightaway. I have a good friend in Burlington, who runs a home where you’ll be taken care of.