But before I got there I seen this car parked in amongst the trees betwixt the river and Mr. Mason’s house. Big fancy car, parked right in there under the trees, off the road so you couldn’t see it unless you was walking by like I was. Well, I knowed it was his car, the fellow in the house with Mrs. Mason. Who else’s car was it likely to be?
Sure, I looked inside. Door was unlocked, so I figured I might’s well. But it wasn’t my intention to steal nothing, even if there’d been something to steal. Which there wasn’t. Big fancy car like that and not a thing in it that anybody’d want to steal. Not a thing you could of got fifty cents for at a hock shop, let alone a few dollars to buy you a decent meal and some new shoes and maybe a room to sleep in for a few nights.
I sure didn’t wait there for him to show up. No, sir, you’re wrong about that. I went on down to the river just like I said before. I went on down to the river and took off my clothes, all except my underpants, and I went for a nice cool swim. Then I laid on the bank a while and dried off. It was peaceful there on the bank, and I thought I’d stay right there the whole night. No point in going back to town, I says to myself. Might’s well just stay right there for the night and then in the morning go and see if Mr. Mason had come home from wherever he was and ask him for that job he promised. I didn’t have no intention of telling him about his wife fornicating with some other man. Not if he give me a job like he promised, and a place to sleep. I wouldn’t hurt a good man that way. No, not a good man, I wouldn’t.
Why didn’t I spend the night there? Why’d I go on back to town instead? Well, I told you — I found that money. Eighty-nine dollars. Lying right there on the river bank. Way I found it was, I decided to take a walk along the bank, after I dried off from my swim, and see could I find some soft grass for a bed. And there that money was, in a little cloth purse that somebody must of dropped. Some fisherman or somebody. Dropped it right there on the bank and never realized it. There was a bright moon that night, you remember? That’s how I seen the purse with the money in it lying there in the grass.
After I took the money out I throwed the bag in the river. I told you about that too. What did I want to keep an empty purse for? It didn’t have no identification or nothing in it. Finders keepers, losers weepers. So I walked back into town with that found money. I figured I might’s well spend some of it. I figured I was entitled, being as how I’d been down on my luck so long. So I bought myself a good meal and a bottle of bourbon whiskey and a room for the night, where you fellows found me the next morning.
What’s that? No, sir, I sure didn’t steal that money from Thomas Harper’s wallet. I told you where I got that money. I found that money in a cloth purse lying on the river bank—
No, sir, I didn’t hit Thomas Harper over the head with no chunk of willow limb. I didn’t kill Thomas Harper. I never even knowed his name until you told me, or that he was a bigshot lawyer, or nothing about him except he was sinning with Mr. Mason’s wife.
My fingerprints? Not just on his car but on one of them little window things in his wallet? Well, I don’t know how they could have got there. You sure them fingerprints is mine too? Well, I don’t know how they could of got there.
No, sir, I didn’t rob and kill Thomas Harper.
No, sir, I didn’t.
I tell you, I didn’t do it...
...All right. All right, all right. I guess it’s no use. I guess I might’s as well tell you.
I done it.
But I didn’t mean to kill him, nor even to rob him. I come walking back from the river, back toward that fancy car of his, and I had that chunk of willow limb in my hand. I don’t know why I picked it up down on the river bank. I just did, that’s all. And here he comes from Mr. Mason’s house where he’d been fornicating with Mr. Mason’s wife, all cheerful and whistling, real pleased with himself, and I don’t know... I don’t know, I just stepped up behind him and let him have it. I didn’t mean to hit him so hard. I truly didn’t.
Sure, I took the money afterwards. Eighty-nine dollars is a lot of money to a fellow down on his luck. But that ain’t why I hit him. I don’t know why I hit him.
Yes I do. He had it coming, that’s why. Sinning with Mr. Mason’s wife like that, saying all them things to her right there in Mr. Mason’s bed in Mr. Mason’s own house. That Thomas Harper had it coming, all right.
But I didn’t do that other thing. I swear I didn’t.
I never looked through the bedroom window when I was in the garden, I never watched them two in Mr. Mason’s bed. It’s a mortal sin for a man to fornicate with another man’s wife, and only a person with lust in his heart would gaze upon what he’s moral certain is a act of fornication. God knows I don’t have no lust in my heart and He knows I didn’t watch them two committing their mortal sin. You got to know it too. You got to believe me.
I didn’t do it!
Connoisseur
Norman Tolliver was a connoisseur of many things: art, music, literature, gourmet cuisine, sports cars, beautiful women. But above all else, he was a connoisseur of fine wine.
Nothing gave him quite so much pleasure as the bouquet and delicate taste of a claret from the Médoc region of Bordeaux — a 1924 Mouton-Rothschild, perhaps, or a 1929 Haut-Brion; or a brilliant Burgundy such as a Clos de Vougeot 1915. His memory was still vivid of the night in Paris when an acquaintance of his father’s had presented him with a glass of the impériale claret, the 1878 Latour Pauillac. It was Norman’s opinion that a man could experience no greater moment of ecstasy than his first sip of that venerable Latour.
Norman resided in an elegant penthouse in New York that commanded a view of the city best described as lordly. That is, he resided there for six months of the year; the remaining six months were divided among Europe and the pleasure islands of the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. During his travels he expended an appreciable amount of time and money in seeking out new varieties and rare vintages of wine, most of which he arranged to have shipped to New York for placement in his private cellar.
It was his custom every Friday evening, no matter where he might happen to be, to sample an exceptional bottle of claret or Burgundy. (He enjoyed fine whites, of course — the French Sauterne, the German Moselle — but his palate and his temperament were more suited to the classic reds.) These weekly indulgences were always of a solitary nature; as a connoisseur he found the communion between man and great wine too intimate to share with anyone, too poignant to be blunted by even polite conversation.
On this particular Friday Norman happened to be in New York and the wine he happened to select was a reputedly splendid claret: the Château Margaux 1900. It had been given to him by a man named Roger Hume, whom Norman rather detested. Whereas he himself was the fourth-generation progeny in a family of wealth and breeding, Hume was nouveau riche — a large graceless individual who had compiled an overnight fortune in textiles or some such and who had retired at the age of 40 to, as he put it in his vulgar way, “find out how the upper crust lives.”
Norman found the man to be boorish, dull-witted, and incredibly ignorant concerning any number of matters, including an understanding and appreciation of wine. Nevertheless, Hume had presented him with the Margaux — on the day after a small social gathering that they had both attended and at which Norman chanced to mention that he had never had the pleasure of tasting that difficult-to-obtain vintage. The man’s generosity was crassly motivated, to be sure, designed only to impress; but that could be overlooked and even forgiven. A bottle of Margaux 1900 was too fine a prize to be received with any feeling other than gratitude.