Alias Grace

Simon meets with Kenneth MacKenzie. Grace’s case was his first, and it made his career. He’s a prosperous and well-known lawyer now.

Simon explains to MacKenzie that he’s looking for information that can help him understand if Grace was insane at the time of the murders. MacKenzie replies that Grace never said anything to him that amounted to a confession, and that she was very troubled and melancholy in prison. Simon asks how MacKenzie managed to save Grace’s life. MacKenzie takes him through the court case and the arguments that he made. He was James McDermott’s lawyer too, though there was very little that he could do for McDermott.

He believes that Grace’s motivation in appearing to open up to Simon is love: she must be in love with him. Simon is appalled when MacKenzie’s encourages him to take advantage of Grace’s supposed feelings for him, mentally calling him a “conceited little troll” (377). MacKenzie got Grace off in the Kinnear case because it was clear that she didn’t have anything to do with shooting Kinnear. She wasn’t tried for Nancy’s case because she had already been sentenced to death. If she had been tried for Nancy’s case, she surely would have been hanged.