George was given coffee regularly, but was not allowed to smoke because Evans and Stark wanted him to sweat for each cigarette he’d be allotted later. They were dressed sharp as usual. Evans’s suit was blue serge, and he had a grey tie and shoes. Stark was also natty, but in the usual black clothes, a skinny black tie, and a white shirt. George was outclassed: he had on hobnailed boots and looked like a lumberjack. The detectives hulked around him, scribbling, taking notes, sipping coffees, and casting larger-than-life shadows. They were composing a res gestae, a spontaneous statement, a script that, with Georgie’s embroidered answers, would one day be pressed into death-sentence paper and then wrung into hangman’s hemp. The pair untangled every riddle, every puzzle, of this cheerless violence that was now being woven into True Crime literature of the most official and fatal sort. Evans and Stark had foolscap sheets with typed notations verifying George’s screwy army service, his Montreal fracas, his drab tool theft in Fredericton.
