Free Practically Perfect by Dale Brawn

someone could shoot himself in the left side of his head with his right hand. It was also strange that although it had poured rain the night before, the soles of the shoes of the dead man were dry, and there were no tracks in the mud leading up to or away from the spot where Gauthier lay.
    A few days later a coroner’s inquest was held in a local restaurant. Jurors were undecided about how Gauthier died. Some believed Asselin when he testified that the evening before Gauthier’s body was found the two were out drinking, and he dropped off his passenger near the spot where his body was found. Others were convinced the death was the result of some kind of accident, while a few felt Asselin was not telling the truth. As a result, the inquest was terminated, and a second one convened. This time jurors had no doubt — it was death by suicide. The police promptly closed their files, and life went back to normal.
    On the occasions when someone in town spoke of Gauthier, it was likely to relate a story about his drinking. The mayor, for instance, recalled the time he dropped by Gauthier’s house. As he walked up to the door, a bullet whizzed by his head. Gauthier quickly admitted to the shooting, but said he was not really trying to hit the mayor, just scare him a bit. The two men had a long relationship, albeit not a particularly pleasant one. The mayor frequently received complaints about Gauthier’s rowdiness, and once, when things had gone too far, he ordered local hotels to stop serving the garage-man. But that did not stop Gauthier from drinking and acting rowdy. Typical was an anecdote told by the town secretary, who remembered Gauthier breaking three window panes trying to get into his house one morning at 3:00 a.m. Gauthier said he wanted to pay his property taxes.
    If Gauthier’s widow had been better able to cope with her husband’s death, things would almost certainly not have ended as they did. Although Alice married Ulric in 1937, she was never really committed to making the marriage work. After Alice hanged herself, the police reopened their investigation into the death of Ulric, and most of the people they interviewed were asked the same question: “Did you ever hear that Gauthier’s wife ran around with other men?” Almost everyone agreed that he had. The exception was the local veterinarian, who, when asked the question, replied, “No, I never heard she ran around with other men.” [1] Well, then what did you hear? “I heard only that she had relations with other men.” According to most of those who testified, Roland Asselin was one of those with whom she was most intimate.
    These rumours could not be ignored, and for the next ten months Quebec Provincial Police officers looked for some concrete evidence that Asselin, or Asselin and Alice, murdered Ulric Gauthier. Persistence paid off. On December 29, 1947, a little over a year after Gauthier was killed, Asselin confessed, not to murdering the husband of his lover, but to accidently shooting him. According to Asselin, the two men drank beer at several bars just outside St. Telesphore. As they left the last one they got into a heated discussion over Gauthier’s insistence that he drive Asselin’s cab. The two argued, and Gauthier produced a revolver. They fought, and during the scuffle Asselin wrestled the gun away from Gauthier. He fired a single shot, to scare him, but the bullet struck Gauthier in the side of the head.
    After Asselin gave his statement to the police he was taken into custody. A third coroner’s inquest was quickly convened to look into the death of Ulric Gauthier. The hearing lasted just two hours, and it took juror’s only fifteen minutes to find Asselin criminally responsible for Gauthier’s death. A week later the cabbie was arraigned on a charge of murder. His trial got underway during the second week of June 1948, and after six days of testimony he was found guilty. The only real question was whether Gauthier’s death was