Yeah, I'm a regular Neiman-Marcus. And so when Andy Dufresne came to me in 1949 and asked if I could smuggle Rita Hayworth into the prison for him, I said it would be no problem at all. And it wasn't.
When Andy came to Shawshank in 1948, he was thirty years old. He was a short neat little man with sandy hair and small, clever hands. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. His fingernails were always clipped, and they were always clean. That's a funny thing to remember about a man, I suppose, but it seems to sum Andy up for me. He always looked as if he should have been wearing a tie. On the outside he had been a vice-president in the trust department of a large Portland bank. Good work for a man as young as he was, especially when you consider how conservative most banks are ... and you have to multiply that conservatism by ten when you get up into New England, where folks don't like to trust a man with their money unless he's bald, limping, and constantly plucking at his pants to get his truss around straight Andy was in for murdering his wife and her lover.
As I believe I have said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they read that scripture the way those holy rollers on TV read the Book of Revelations. They were the victims of judges with hearts of stone and balls to match, or incompetent lawyers, or police frame-ups, or bad luck. They read the scripture, but you can see a different scripture in their faces. Most cons are a low sort, no good to themselves or anyone else, and their worst luck was that their mothers carried them to term.
In all my years at Shawshank, there have been less than ten men whom I believed when they told me they were innocent. Andy Dufresne was one of them, although I only became convinced of his innocence over a period of years. If I had been on the jury that heard his case in Portland Superior Court over six stormy weeks in 1947-48, I would have voted to convict, too.
It was one hell of a case, all right; one of those juicy ones with all the right elements. There was a beautiful girl with society connections (dead), a local sports figure (also dead), and a prominent young businessman in the dock. There was this, plus all the scandal the newspapers could hint at. The prosecution had an open-and-shut case. The trial only lasted as long as it did because the DA was planning to run for the US House of Representatives and he wanted John Q Public to get a good long look at his phiz. It was a crackerjack legal circus, with spectators getting in line at four in the morning, despite the subzero temperatures, to assure themselves of a seat.
The facts of the prosecution's case that Andy never contested were these: That he had a wife, Linda Collins Dufresne; that in June of 1947 she had expressed an interest in learning the game of golf at the Falmouth Hills Country Club; that she did indeed take lessons for four months; that her instructor was the Falmouth Hills golf pro, Glenn Quentin; that in late August of 1947 Andy learned that Quentin and his wife had become lovers; that Andy and Linda Dufresne argued bitterly on the afternoon of 10 September 1947; that the subject of their argument was her infidelity.
He testified that Linda professed to be glad he knew; the sneaking around, she said, was distressing. She told Andy that she planned to obtain a Reno divorce. Andy told her he would see her in hell before he would see her in Reno. She went off to spend the night with Quentin in Quentin's rented bungalow not far from the golf course.
The next morning his cleaning woman found both of them dead in bed. Each had been shot four times.
It was that last fact that mitigated more against Andy than any of the others. The DA with the political aspirations made a great deal of it in his opening statement and his closing summation. Andrew Dufresne, he said, was not a wronged husband seeking a hot-blooded revenge against his cheating wife; that, the DA said, could be understood, if not condoned. But this revenge had been of a much colder type. Consider! the DA thundered at the jury. Four and four! Not six shots, but eight! He had fired the gun empty ... and then stopped to reload so he could shoot each of them again! FOUR FOR HIM AND FOUR FOR HER, the Portland Sun blared. The Boston Register dubbed him The Even-Steven Killer.
A clerk from the Wise Pawnshop in Lewiston testified that he had sold a six-shot .38 Police Special to Andrew Dufresne just two days before the double murder. A bartender from the country club bar testified that Andy had come in around seven o'clock on the evening of 10 September, had tossed off three straight whiskeys in a twenty-minute period - when he got up from the bar-stool he told the bartender that he was going up to Glenn Quentin's house and he, the bartender, could 'read about the rest of it in the papers'. Another clerk, this one from the Handy-Pik store a mile or so from Quentin's house, told the court that Dufresne had come in around quarter to nine on the same night. He purchased cigarettes, three quarts of beer, and some dish-towels. The county medical examiner testified that Quentin and the Dufresne woman had been killed between eleven p.m. and two a.m. on the night of 10-11 September. The detective from the Attorney General's office who had been in charge of the case testified that there was a turnout less than seventy yards from the bungalow, and that on the afternoon of 11 September, three pieces of evidence had been removed from that turnout: first item, two empty quart bottles of Narragansett Beer (with the defendant's fingerprints on them); the second item, twelve cigarette ends (all Kools, the defendant's brand); third item, a plaster moulage of a set of tyre tracks (exactly matching the tread-and-wear pattern of the tyres on the defendant's 1947 Plymouth).
In the living room of Quentin's bungalow, four dishtowels had been found lying on the sofa. There were bullet-holes through them and powder-burns on them. The detective theorized (over the agonized objections of Andy's lawyer) that the murderer had wrapped the towels around the muzzle of the murder-weapon to muffle the sound of the gunshots.
Andy Dufresne took the stand in his own defence and told his story calmly, coolly, and dispassionately. He said he had begun to hear distressing rumours about his wife and Glenn Quentin as early as the last week in July. In August he had become distressed enough to investigate a bit. On an evening when Linda was supposed to have gone shopping in Portland after her tennis lesson, Andy had followed her and Quentin to Quentin's one-storey rented house (inevitably dubbed 'the love-nest' by the papers). He had parked in the turnout until Quentin drove her back to the country club where her car was parked, about three hours later.

　　啊，我的商品目录可说是无所不包，因此当安迪·杜佛尼在一九四九年来找我，问我能否把丽塔·海华丝丽塔·海华丝（RitaHayworth，1918—1987），二十世纪四五十年代好莱坞著名性感女星。弄进监狱时，我说没问题。确实没有任何问题。
　　安迪在一九四八年到肖申克时是三十岁，他属于五短身材，长得白白净净，一头棕发，双手小而灵巧。他戴了一副金边眼镜，指甲永远剪得整整齐齐、干干净净，我最记得的也是那双手，一个男人给人这种印象还满滑稽的，但这似乎正好总结了安迪这个人的特色，他的样子老让你觉得他似乎应该穿着西装、打着领带的。他没进来前，是波特兰一家大银行的信托部副总裁。在保守的银行界，年纪轻轻就坐上这个位子，可说是前程似锦。尤其在新英格兰这一带，保守的风气更是十倍于其他地方；除非你是个精神委靡的秃头中年人，不时整整西装裤上的线条，惟恐不够笔挺，否则很难得到当地人的信任，让他们把钱存在你那里。安迪是因为谋杀了老婆和她的情夫而被关进来的。
　　我相信我说过，监狱里每个犯人都声称自己无辜。他们只是碰上了铁石心肠的法官、无能的律师、警察的诬告，而成为受害者，再不然就是运气实在太坏了。尽管他们手按《圣经》宣誓，但却口是心非，像电视布道家那样信口开河而已。大多数囚犯都不是什么好人，无论对自己或对别人，都没什么好处，他们最大的不幸，就是被生到这世上来。我在肖申克的那些年中，尽管许多人告诉我他们是无辜的，但我相信其中真正无辜的人不超过十个，安迪·杜佛尼就是其中之一。不过我是经过了很多年才相信他的无辜，如果一九四七到四八年间，波特兰高等法院审判他的案子时我也是陪审团的一员，我想我也会投票赞成将他定罪。
　　那是个轰动一时的案子，具备了所有耸动刺激的案子必备的要素。三位主角，一位是交游广泛的美丽名媛（已死），一位是当地的运动健将（也死了），被告则是著名的青年企业家，再加上报纸的渲染、对丑闻的暗示。检察当局认为这个案子几乎是铁证如山，而案子之所以还审了那么长的一段时日，是因为侦办此案的检察官当时正要出马竞选众议员，有意留给大家深刻的印象。这是一场出色的法庭秀，旁观的群众清晨四点钟就冒着零度以下的低温到法院排队，免得抢不到位子。
　　在这个案子里，安迪始终不曾抗议过由检察官提出的指控，包括安迪的太太琳达在一九四七年六月表示有意去学高尔夫球，她选了佛茂丘乡村俱乐部的课程学了四个月，教练叫格林·昆丁，是一名职业高尔夫球手。结果没有多久，琳达便和高尔夫球教练好起来了，到了八月底，安迪听说了这件事。于是安迪和琳达在一九四七年九月十日下午大吵一架，争论的导火线便是琳达的外遇。
　　安迪供称琳达当时表示她很高兴安迪知道这件事，并说偷偷摸摸瞒着他约会，实在很不舒服，她要去雷诺城办离婚。安迪回答，要他一起去雷诺，门儿都没有，他们会先去地狱。琳达当晚即离家出走，到昆丁住处过夜，昆丁家就在高尔夫球场附近。第二天早上，为昆丁清扫洗衣的佣人发现他们两人死在床上，每人各中四枪。
　　最后一项事实对安迪最不利。怀抱着政治热情的检察官做了慷慨激昂的开场白和结论。他说安迪·杜佛尼不只是个因为妻子不贞而热血沸腾、急于报复的丈夫，如果是出于这样的动机，我们虽然无法原谅，却可以理解，但是他的报复手段实在太冷血了。想象一下！他连珠炮般对着陪审团说：每人各射了四枪，不是射完手枪里的六发子弹就算了，而是总共射了八枪。把原先枪膛里的子弹射完后，停下来，重新装子弹，然后再一人补一枪！第二天《波特兰太阳报》以斗大标题怒吼着：给他四枪，她也四枪！
　　路易斯登镇一家当铺的伙计作证说，他在案发两天前卖了一支点三八口径、有六发子弹的警用手枪给安迪·杜佛尼。乡村俱乐部的酒保作证说九月十日晚上七点左右，安迪到酒吧来喝酒，在二十分钟内喝了三杯烈威士忌酒，当他从椅子上站起来时，他告诉酒保要去昆丁家，并说欲知后事如何，明天看报纸就知道了。还有一个距离昆丁家一英里远的便利商店店员告诉法庭，安迪·杜佛尼在当晚八点四十五分左右去过他的店。他买了香烟、三夸脱啤酒，还有一些擦碗布。法医证明昆丁和琳达是大约在晚上十一点到凌晨两点之间遇害的。检察官派出的探员作证时表示，昆丁家七十码外的地方有个岔道，九月十一日下午，他们在岔道附近找到三样物证：两个空啤酒瓶（上面有被告的指纹）、十二根烟蒂（是被告抽的牌子）以及轮胎痕迹（正是被告一九四七年出厂的普利茅斯牌车子的车胎印子）。
　　在昆丁住处的客厅中，有四条擦碗布扔在沙发上，上面有弹孔和火药灼伤的痕迹。警探的推论是，凶手把擦碗布包在枪口上来消音（安迪的律师对探员擅自推论提出强烈抗议）。
　　安迪·杜佛尼也走上证人席为自己辩护，他很冷静、镇定、不带感情地述说自己的故事。他说早在七月底就听到太太和昆丁密切来往的事。八月底他悲苦到受不了了，开始调查。一天傍晚，琳达上完高尔夫球课以后，原本说要到波特兰购物，但他尾随琳达和昆丁却到了昆丁住的地方（媒体不可免俗地把这里冠上“爱巢”二字）。他把车子停在附近，一直等昆丁驾车送琳达回俱乐部取车才离开，那是三小时以后的事了。