“He’s dead, Millie. June and I both saw a figure that looked like Julius entering their house.”
I was more interested in hearing what Finesaw had to say. “Tell us how you did it,” I urged.
His smile was sly as a tiger’s, a mixture of pure evil and insanity. “Millie was in her room. When it got near midnight I got out of bed with my cane, put on my slippers and jacket, and made myself invisible.”
“Show us that,” I suggested, as I had the previous day.
“No, no! I can’t overuse the power.”
“How did you kill Cedric?” Sheriff Lens asked.
“When I reached his door I became visible again. I wanted him to see who was killing him. I smashed the glass and opened the door, then swung my stick around at things. June was screaming. I felt sorry for her. Then Cedric appeared and I clubbed him with my stick.”
“You left it there,” I said. “How did you get back without it?”
The sly smile again. “I don’t need the stick when I’m invisible. My body has no weight and I can float.”
“If you admit to killing him, I’m going to have to arrest you,” the sheriff said.
“Of course. I don’t expect you’ll be able to hold an invisible man in prison very long, though.”
“We’ll see to that,” I said. Before he knew what was happening I gripped his wrist and pulled the shepherd’s ring from his finger.
“No!” he screamed, but it was already off.
“Now you’re just a human like the rest of us.” I handed the ring to Sheriff Lens. “Keep this in a safe place.”
Finesaw was thrashing in the bed. “Millie!” he shouted. “They’ve taken the ring!”
She stood in the doorway shaking her head, close to tears. “We’ll have to take him away,” the sheriff told her. “I’m sorry.”
He called for an ambulance and stretcher, and when Finesaw tried to resist I had to sedate him. There was no doubt that the man was mentally incompetent, but that still didn’t explain — in a rational world — how he’d killed Ralph Cedric.
Finesaw was hospitalized under guard, and a grand jury quickly indicted him for murder. In his testimony Sheriff Lens admitted he might not have seen the man approaching the house because the light was poor. “What else could I say, Doc?” he told me later. “They’d never buy an invisible man. Finesaw admits to the killing and has even described how he did it. Except for the invisibility part it makes perfect sense.”
“Except for the invisibility part. Don’t you see, Sheriff, that’s the most important element.”
“There are no streetlights on Chestnut Hill Road. Maybe I didn’t see Finesaw until he was in the light from Cedric’s house.”
I shook my head. “Even without the invisibility I doubt Finesaw could have hobbled over a hundred yards with his cane. He certainly couldn’t have gotten back to his bed without the cane.”
“What other possibility is there?” he asked.
“Cedric’s wife.”
“June? That couldn’t be. She ran out screaming before I even reached the house. There was no time for her to have done it. Besides, if she killed her husband how could Julius know exactly what happened?”
“You’re right,” I admitted, but I still didn’t like it.
The case dragged on through the Christmas holidays and into January. The war news was mainly about the Russian advances, recapturing much of the land Hitler’s legions had overrun the previous year. With the war and Annabel’s pregnancy always in my thoughts, I had little time for Julius Finesaw’s situation.
That was why the phone call from Millie in mid January came as a surprise.
“Dr. Hawthorne? This is Millie Finesaw. I’ve engaged a lawyer from Shinn Corners to defend my husband and he needs to speak to you. I was wondering if you could meet with us one day this week.”
I glanced at my appointment calendar. “I have some free time tomorrow afternoon, around two. How would that be?”
“Fine. At your office?”
“I’ll be expecting you.”
They arrived right on time, Millie wearing a fur jacket against the winter winds and Terrance Mellnap dressed in a ski parka and boots. He shook hands and gave me his card. “We’ve got more snow in Shinn Corners than you have,” he said, perhaps as an excuse for his foul-weather gear. Then he added, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Hawthorne. I’ve heard a great deal about you over the years.”
“All good, I hope.”
“Certainly.” He opened his briefcase. “There’s a preliminary hearing next week. Naturally we’ll be pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“Of course.” I glanced over at Millie.
“Since he was never examined by a psychiatrist, we’d like your testimony as to his mental condition. That should persuade the judge to order a mental examination.”
“I can testify as to what I know. Tell me, Millie, what is his present condition?”
“He’s depressed. He keeps telling me he wants his ring back.”
I shook my head. “That’s not going to happen. It’s part of his obsession.”
“What harm would it do?” Mellnap asked. “Surely you don’t believe this invisibility business.”
“Of course not, but my point is that he still does. Give him the ring and he might think he’s invisible and try to escape when they’re bringing him to court.”
The attorney nodded in agreement. “You have a point there.”
The following Monday I testified at the preliminary hearing and the judge ordered a psychiatric examination for the defendant. I doubted if the case would ever come to trial with the shape Finesaw was in. After the court session I had lunch with Sheriff Lens at the counter in the drugstore across from the courthouse.
“How’s Annabel doing?” he asked.
“Fine. She’s seeing Lincoln Jones for her regular checkup next week.”
“July will be here before you know it.”
“I hope so.”
“What’s the matter, Doc?”
I shook my head. “It’s this Finesaw case. Nothing about it satisfies me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Since Finesaw couldn’t have become invisible there has to be some other explanation. You might have missed him hobbling down the street in the dark, but he still had no way to get back. The person who killed Ralph Cedric must have gone out the back door of the house and run through the field in the dark.”
“But in his confession Finesaw described the crime in detail. If he didn’t do it, how did he know about it?”
“Exactly, Sheriff. And there’s only one explanation for that. It was Millie who crossed that road in the hooded jacket, Millie who killed Cedric and escaped through the back door to tell her husband exactly what she’d done.”
It was a good idea but Sheriff Lens shot it down at once. “Couldn’t be, Doc. For one thing, Millie is a full head shorter than her husband. I could never mistake her for him, not even in dim light. And I had a deputy there within minutes, watching Finesaw’s house to catch him returning. He was shining a spotlight around the place and saw nothing.”
I thought about that but I didn’t like it. “It couldn’t have been Julius unless he really was invisible. It couldn’t have been June Cedric because there was no time for her to do it, and she couldn’t have told Julius what she did. It couldn’t have been Millie because she’s too short and would have been seen returning to her house. Where does that leave us?”
The sheriff shrugged. “A passing hobo, looking for a house to rob?”
“You forget the murder weapon was Julius Finesaw’s walking stick, which I saw in his house just a day earlier.”
“Then it has to be Finesaw, Doc. However he did it, he’s got to be guilty. What difference does it make? He belongs in a mental hospital anyway, and that’s where he’ll go.”