The hermit of Turkey Hollow : $b The story of an alibi, being an exploit of Ephraim Tutt, attorney & counselor at law

Description

"The hermit of Turkey Hollow" by Arthur Cheney Train is a legal mystery novella written in the early 20th century. It follows a small-town murder in the Mohawk Valley, where Skinny the Tramp is accused of killing a reclusive hermit, and an ambitious district attorney faces off against the crafty defense lawyer Ephraim Tutt over a pivotal alibi. The opening of the story contrasts a hermit’s hard-nosed materialism with a tramp’s mystical talk of souls and moths, then sketches Turkey Hollow, the hermit’s shanty crowned by a grand old clock, and the village of Pottsville with its sheriff, gossip, and fraternal lodges. After a storm, Skinny chases a rainbow to the hermit’s hut, glimpses a crock of gold, and moments later a witness hears a cry and a gunshot; the hermit is found dying with a gold coin in his hand. Skinny shows up in town breathless at four o’clock, pockets full of similar coins, and is captured amid a jeering crowd, while the newly minted prosecutor Hezekiah Mason—ethically compromised and eager for fame—builds a circumstantial case. The local lodge hires Ephraim Tutt, whose investigator scouts the scene and the players. In court, after Mason’s grandstanding, a key witness quietly fixes the moment he found the body by the hermit’s clock—exactly four o’clock—setting up the defense’s timing-based alibi as the central issue of the case. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Subjects

• New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
• Legal stories
• Attorney and client -- Fiction
• Law firms -- Fiction
• PS