The door opened and Eustace Carey came bargin’ in, followed by a half-dozen other local businessmen. “We want to talk, Sheriff. There’s ugly words goin’ around. Even if you keep that one safe, there might be an attempt to burn the gypsy wagons.”
I knew then that I had to speak out. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Settle down, and I’ll tell you what really happened to Parson Wigger. He wasn’t killed by the gypsy, and he wasn’t killed by any invisible demon, unless you count the demon within himself.”
“What do you mean by that?” Carey demanded.
I told them what I’d just learned from Sheriff Lens. “Don’t you see? Don’t you all see? The parson was standin’ there in the doorway and he saw us comin’ for him. It was the sight of the sheriff that frightened him, that told him the jig was up. Why else would he run into the church and up the belfry stairs, boltin’ the door behind him? It was fear that drove him up there, fear of Sheriff Lens and the truth.”
“But who killed him?”
“When he heard that bolt break, when he heard us on, the stairs and realized his masquerade was about to be uncovered, he took the gypsy’s dagger and plunged it into his own chest. There was never any invisible murderer or any impossible crime. Parson Wigger killed himself.”
It took a lot more talkin’ after that, of course, to convince them it was the only possible solution. You see, I had to get Carranza out of his cell and demonstrate that he couldn’t have stabbed the parson with his right hand because of that old arm injury. Then I showed, from the angle of the wound, that it had to be done by a right-handed person-unless he’d stabbed himself.
“There was no one else up there,” I argued. “If Carranza Lowara didn’t kill him, he must have killed himself. It’s as simple as that.”
They released Lowara the next mornin’, and Sheriff Lens drove him out to the gypsy encampment in the town’s only police car. I watched them go, standin’ in the doorway of my office, and April said, “Can’t you close that door, Dr. Sam? Now that you’ve solved another case can’t you let the poor man go home in peace?”
“I have something else that must be done, April,” I told her. “See you later.”
I got into the Runabout and drove out over the snow-rutted roads to Minnie Haskins’ place. I didn’t stop at the farmhouse but continued out around the back till I reached the gypsy encampment. When Volga saw the car she came runnin’ across the snow to meet me.
“How can we ever thank you, Dr. Hawthorne? You have saved my husband from certain imprisonment and even death!”
“Go get him right now and I’ll tell you how you can thank me.”
I stood and waited by the car, venturing no closer to the wagons, where I could see little Tene playing in the snow. Presently Carranza joined me with Volga trailing him.
“I owe you my thanks,” he said. “My freedom.”
I was starin’ out across the snowy fields. “I owe you somethin’ too. You taught me something about the different types of deception-deception as it is practiced by the gadjo and by the rom.”
As I spoke I reached out and yanked at his long black hair. It came away in my hand, and Volga gasped. He was almost bald without the wig, and seemed at least ten years older. I stripped the mustache from his upper lip too, and he made no effort to stop me.
“All right, Doctor,” he said. “A little deception. Will you have me arrested again because I wear a wig and false mustache? Will you say after all that I killed Parson Wigger?”
I shook my head. “No, Carranza. This doesn’t tell me that you killed Wigger. But it does tell me that Volga killed him.”
She gasped again, and fell back as if I’d struck her. “This man is a demon!” she told her husband. “How could he know?”
“Silence!” Carranza ordered. Then, turning to me, he asked, “Why do you say these things?”
“Well, I proved for myself that you didn’t kill Wigger. But I didn’t for a minute believe that such a man would kill himself simply because the sheriff wanted to talk to him. And yet he had run away from us. That was the key to it-the key to the crime and the key to the impossibility. I was lookin’ around in the churchyard, and in a snowbank I found this.” I drew the bloodstained surplice from under my coat.
“And what does that prove?”
“See the tear made by the knife goin’ in? And the blood? Parson Wigger had to be wearin’ this when he was stabbed. Yet Sheriff Lens and I saw him without it in the church doorway. Are we to believe he went up to the belfry, put on his surplice, stabbed himself, removed it somehow, stuck the knife back in his chest and died-all while we were breakin’ in the door? Of course not!
“So what is the only other possibility? If the body in the belfry was Wigger’s, then the person we saw in the doorway was not Wigger. He fled from us simply because if Sheriff Lens and I had gotten any closer we’d have known he was not Wigger.”
Volga’s face had drained of all color, and she stared silently as I spoke. “If not Wigger, then who? Well, the man in the cassock ran up into the belfry. We were right behind him and we found two persons up there-the dead Wigger and the live Lowara. If the man in the cassock was not Wigger-and I’ve shown he wasn’t-then he had to be you, Carranza.”
“A good guess.”
“More than that. I’d noticed earlier you were both the same size. At a distance your main distinguishing feature was your black hair and mustache. But I remembered that day two weeks ago when I was out here and noticed your earrings under your short hair. When I visited your cell, your hair was long enough to cover your ears. It couldn’t have grown that fast in two weeks, so I knew you were wearing wigs. If the hair was false, the mustache could be too-mere props to add to your gypsy image. A bit of deception for the gadjo.”
“You have proved I was Wigger for a fleeting moment. You have not proved Volga killed him.”
“Well, what did you accomplish by posing as Wigger? From a distance, with our vision blurred by the falling snow, the sheriff and I saw only a tall man in a black cassock, wearing Wigger’s thick glasses. If we hadn’t come after you we’d have gone away convinced that Wigger was still alive after Volga and the others had left the church. You did make two little slip-ups, though. When you turned away from us in the church doorway you bumped into the frame because you weren’t used to his thick glasses. And yesterday in the cell you told me how Wigger had stood in the doorway-something you couldn’t have seen if you’d really been in the belfry all that time, as you said.”
“That does not implicate Volga!” the gypsy insisted.
“Obviously you weren’t doing this to protect yourself, because it gave you no alibi. No one saw you leave the church. The only possible purpose of your brief impersonation was to shield another person-the real killer. Then I remembered that Volga was the last gypsy to leave the church. She’d been alone in there with Wigger, she was your wife, and she was the most likely person to be carrying your little dagger. Where? In your stocking top, Volga?”
She covered her face with her hands. “He-he tried to-”
“I know. Wigger wasn’t a real parson, and he’d been in trouble before because of his interest in parish wives. He tried to attack you up there, didn’t he? You were only a handsome gypsy woman to him. He knew you could never tell. You fought back, and your hand found the dagger you always carried. You stabbed him up there and killed him, and then you found Carranza in the church and told him what you’d done.”
“It would have been a gypsy’s word against a parson’s reputation,” Carranza said. “They would never believe her. I sent her back with the wagon and tried to make it look as if he was still alive.”