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said that he had considered suicide, and had even gone so far as to purchase a gun in 

Lewiston on 8 September. 

His lawyer then invited him to tell the jury what had happened after his wife left to meet 

Glenn Quentin on the night of the murders. Andy told them ... and the impression he 

made was the worst possible. 

I knew him for close to thirty years, and I can tell you he was the most self-possessed 

man I've ever known. What was right with him he'd only give you a little at a time. What 

was wrong with him he kept bottled up inside. If he ever had a dark night of the soul, as 

some writer or other has called it, you would never know. He was the type of man who, if 

he had decided to commit suicide, would do it without leaving a note but not until his 

affairs had been put neatly in order. If he had cried on the witness stand, or if his voice 

had thickened and grown hesitant, even if he had gotten yelling at that Washington-bound 

District Attorney, I don't believe he would have gotten the life sentence he wound up 

with. Even if he had've he would have been out on parole by 1954. But he told his story 

like a recording machine, seeming to say to the jury: this is it. Take it or leave it. They 

left it. 

He said he was drunk that night, that he'd been more or less drunk since 24 August, and 

that he was a man who didn't handle his liquor very well. Of course that by itself would 

have been hard for any jury to swallow. They just couldn't see this coldly self-possessed 

young man in the neat double-breasted three-piece woollen suit ever getting falling-down 

drunk over his wife's sleazy little affair with some small-town golf pro. I believed it 

because I had a chance to watch Andy that those six men and six women didn't have. 

Andy Dufresne took just four drinks a year all the time I knew him. He would meet me in 

the exercise yard every year about a week before his birthday and then again about two 

weeks before Christmas. On each occasion he would arrange for a bottle of Jack Daniels. 

He bought it the way most cons arrange to buy their stuff-the slave's wages they pay in 

here, plus a little of his own. Up until 1965 what you got for your time was a dime an 

hour. In '65 they raised it all the way up to a quarter. My commission on liquor was and is 

ten per cent, and when you add on that surcharge to the price of a fine sippin' whiskey 

like the Black Jack, you get an idea of how many hours of Andy Dufresne's sweat in the 

prison laundry was going to buy his four drinks a year. 

On the morning of his birthday, 20 September, he would have himself a big knock, and 

then he'd have another that night after lights out. The following day he'd give the rest of 

the bottle back to me, and I would share it around. As for the other bottle, he dealt 

himself one drink Christmas night and another on New Year's Eve. Then that one would 

also come to me with instructions to pass it on. Four drinks a year -and that is the 

behaviour of a man who has been bitten hard by the bottle. Hard enough to draw blood. 

He told the jury that on the night of the 10th he had been so drunk he could only 

remember what had happened in little isolated snatches. He had gotten drunk that 

afternoon - 'I took on a double helping of Dutch courage' is how he put it -before taking 

on Linda. 

After she left to meet Quentin, he remembered deciding to confront them. On the way to 

Quentin's bungalow, he swung into the country club for a couple of quick ones. He could