'No, I did not,' Andy answered. By midnight, he said, he was sobering up. He was also feeling the first signs of a bad hangover. He decided to go home and sleep it off and think about the whole thing in a more adult fashion the next day. 'At that time, as I drove home, I was beginning to think that the wisest course would be to simply let her go to Reno and get her divorce.'
'Thank you, Mr Dufresne.' The DA popped up.
'You divorced her in the quickest way you could think of, didn't you? You divorced her with a .38 revolver wrapped in dishtowels, didn't you?'
'No sir, I did not,' Andy said calmly.
'And then you shot her lover.'
'No, sir.'
'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.'
The DA hammered at him for two days. He re-read the Handy-Pik clerk's testimony about the dishtowels to Andy. Andy repeated that he could not recall buying them, but admitted that he also couldn't remember not buying them.
Was it true that Andy and Linda Dufresne had taken out a joint insurance policy in early 1947? Yes, that was true. And if acquitted, wasn't it true that Andy stood to gain $50,000 in benefits? True. And wasn't it true that he had gone up to Glenn Quentin's house with murder in his heart, and wasn't it also true that he had indeed committed murder twice over? No, it was not true. Then what did he think had happened, since there had been no signs of robbery?
'I have no way of knowing that, sir,' Andy said quietly.
The case went to the jury at one p.m. on a snowy Wednesday afternoon. The twelve jurymen and women came back at three-thirty. The bailiff said they would have been back
earlier, but they had held off in order to enjoy a nice chicken dinner from Bentley's Restaurant at the county's expense. They found him guilty, and brother, if Maine had the death penalty, he would have done the airdance before that spring's crocuses poked their heads out of the dirt.
The DA had asked him what he thought had happened, and Andy slipped the question - but he did have an idea, and I got it out of him late one evening in 1955. It had taken those seven years for us to progress from nodding acquaintances to fairly close friends - but I never felt really close to Andy until 1960 or so, and I believe I was the only one who ever did get really close to him. Both being long-timers, we were in the same cellblock from beginning to end, although I was halfway down the corridor from him.
'What do I think?' He laughed - but there was no humour in the sound. 'I think there was a lot of bad luck floating around that night. More than could ever get together in the same short span of time again. I think it must have been some stranger, just passing through. Maybe someone who had a flat tyre on that road after I went home. Maybe a burglar. Maybe a psychopath. He killed them, that's all. And I'm here.'
As simple as that. And he was condemned to spend the rest of his life in Shawshank or the part of it that mattered. Five years later he began to have parole hearings, and he was turned down just as regular as clockwork in spite of being a model prisoner. Getting a pass out of Shawshank when you've got murder stamped on your admittance-slip is slow work, as slow as a river eroding a rock. Seven men sit on the board, two more than at most state prisons, and every one of those seven has an ass as hard as the water drawn up from a mineral-spring well. You can't buy those guys, you can't no, you can't cry for them.
As far as the board concerned, money don't talk, and nobody walks. Pc other reasons in Andy's case as well ... but that belongs a little further along in my story.

　　“没有，我没有。”安迪回答。他说，到了午夜，他逐渐清醒过来，同时宿醉的感觉开始让他不舒服。于是他决定回家，睡一觉后，第二天再像个大人般好好冷静地想一想，“当我开车回家时，我开始觉得，最好的办法还是就让她去雷诺办离婚吧。”
　　“多谢，杜佛尼先生。”
　　检察官从椅子上跳起来发言。
　　“你用了最快的离婚方式，不是吗？直接用一把包着布的点三八左轮手枪解决她，对不对？”
　　“先生，不对，我没有。”安迪冷静地说。
　　“然后你又杀了她的情夫。”
　　“不是这样，先生。”
　　“你是说，你先射杀了昆丁？”
　　“我是说我谁都没杀，我喝了两夸脱的啤酒，还抽了警察在岔道找到的随便多少根的烟吧，然后便开车回家，上床睡觉。”
　　“你告诉陪审团在八月二十四日到九月十日之间，你曾经想自杀。”
　　“是的，先生。”
　　“因此去买了一把左轮枪？”
　　“是。”
　　“杜佛尼先生，我看你不像是想自杀的人，如果我这么说，会冒犯你吗？”
　　“不会，”安迪说，“不过你看起来也不像特别敏感的那种人。如果我真的想自杀，大概也不会找你谈我心里的苦闷。”
　　庭上一阵窃笑，但他这番话并不能赢得陪审团的同情。
　　“你那天晚上带着你的点三八口径手枪吗？”
　　“没有，我已经说过了——”
　　“哦！对了！”检察官讽刺地微笑道，“你把它扔进河里了，是吗？在九月九日的下午，扔进皇家河中。”
　　“是的，先生。”
　　“在谋杀案发生的前一天。”
　　“是的，先生。”
　　“真是太巧了，不是吗？”
　　“这无所谓巧不巧合，是事实罢了。”
　　“我相信你已经听过明彻警官的证词了吧？”明彻带人去搜索庞德路桥一带的水域，安迪说他把枪从那儿扔到河里，但警方没找到。
　　“是的，先生，你知道我听到了。”
　　“那么你听到他告诉法庭，他们虽然找了三天，还是没找到枪。你这么说，不是太取巧了吗？”
　　“不管巧不巧，他们没找到枪是事实，”安迪冷静道，“但我要跟你、还有陪审团说明一件事：庞德路桥很靠近皇家河的出海口，那里水流很急，枪也许被冲到海湾中了。”
　　“因此也就无法比对你手枪中的子弹，以及射入你太太和昆丁先生浑身是血的身体中的子弹了，是吗？”
　　“是的。”
　　“这不也很巧吗？”
　　按照当时报纸的记载，安迪听到他这么说时，脸上浮现出一丝苦笑，整整六个星期的审判过程中，这是安迪不多见的情绪反应之一。
　　“由于我是无辜的，再加上当我说我把枪丢入河里时，我说的是实话，因此找不到枪，对我而言，其实是很不巧的。”安迪说。
　　检察官炮火猛烈地质问了他两天，把便利商店店员的证词中有关擦碗布的部分重新念一遍。安迪反复说明他记不得曾经买过擦碗布，但也承认他记不得没买过擦碗布。
　　安迪和琳达于一九四七年初合买过保险，是吗？是的。如果安迪无罪开释，是否可以得到五万元的保险理赔？是的。那么他前往昆丁的屋子时，不是抱着杀人的打算？打算杀了自己的妻子和昆丁？不是。如果不是的话，那么他认为那天到底发生了什么事，因为这个案子不像劫财害命。
　　“先生，我完全想不透发生了什么事。”安迪静静地说。
　　这案子在一个大雪纷飞的星期三下午一点钟，交付陪审团表决。十二位陪审员在三点半回到庭上。法警说，他们原本可以早一点返回法庭，但是为了能享受一顿从班特利餐厅买来、由公家招待的免费鸡肉大餐，而拖了一点时间。陪审团判定安迪有罪。各位，如果缅因州有死刑的话，他会在番红花还未从雪中冒出头之前上了西天。
　　检察官问过安迪，他认为那天晚上到底发生了什么事，安迪避而不答。但他其实心中的确有一些想法，我在一九五五年一个黄昏时把这些想法套出来。我们两人花了七年工夫，才从点头之交进而成为相当亲近的朋友，但直到一九六年之前，我都从未真正感到跟他很接近。而且我想，我是惟一曾经真正跟他接近的人。我们由始至终都在同一层囚室，只是我在走道中间而他在走道末端。
　　“我认为到底是怎么回事？”他笑道，但笑声中没有丝毫幽默的意味，“我认为那天晚上，我真是倒霉透了，古往今来最倒霉的事都集中在这短短几小时内发生。我想一定有个陌生人凑巧经过。也许在我走了之后，有人车子爆胎了，也许是个强盗，也许是个神经病，走进去把他们杀了，就这样，我就被关进来了。”
　　就这么简单。而他却得下半辈子——至少在离得开以前——都待在肖申克。五年后，他开始申
　　请假释，但每次都被驳回，尽管他是模范犯人。但当你被烙上了谋杀的罪名后，想离开肖申克可有
　　得等了，慢得就像流水侵蚀岩石一样。假释听证会中有七个委员，比一般州立监狱还多两个，你不
　　能收买那些家伙，也无法用甜言蜜语哄他们，更不能向他们哭求。在假释听证会中，有钱都不能使鬼推磨，任你是谁都插翅难飞。而安迪的情况，原因就更复杂……不过且待下文分解吧。