EQMM, Sep-Oct 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "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."

  I felt as if the spirit had drained out of me. “And for the first time since coming to Northmont I've got a mystery I can't explain."

  It nagged at me, in the office and at home with Annabel. “You've got to get it off your mind, Sam,” she told me a few days later. “Think about becoming a father."

  She was right, of course, but the following morning I decided on one more visit to the sheriff's office. “What's up, Doc?” he asked, imitating a popular movie cartoon character.

  "Please, Sheriff."

  "Just joking a bit. What can I do for you?"

  "Do you still have Julius Finesaw's ring, the one that makes him invisible?"

  "Sure do. If the case goes to trial, the district attorney might need it, but for now it's still in my file."

  He slid it from an envelope onto his desk and I studied it carefully. “It doesn't look particularly ancient or valuable."

  "It's not. They sell ones like it at Ross Jewelers for nineteen ninety-five. I checked."

  "And yet something convinced him it was like the shepherd's ring of Gyges, described in Book Two of Plato's—” I froze in mid sentence.

  "What is it, Doc?"

  "That's it, Sheriff! That's the answer! Come on, I'll explain on the way."

  * * * *

  We took the sheriff's car and as he drove I talked. “Where would a man like Julius Finesaw, a farmer with mental problems, who didn't know enough to keep a tractor off a steep hillside, come across a book like Plato's Republic? Certainly not in his house, where the bookshelves were filled with plants and china figurines, and the only reading matter in his bedroom was a Sears catalogue."

  "What are you saying, Doc?"

  "The books were down the road in the other house, Ralph Cedric's house. Remember how some of them were pulled from their shelves during the killing?"

  We turned onto Chestnut Hill Road. “Is that where we're going now?"

  "No. We'll stop first at the Finesaw house."

  It was a lucky choice. Millie and June were having morning coffee together. “What is it?” Millie asked, meeting us at the door with a cup of coffee in her hand.

  "There's been a new development,” I said.

  "Join us. I'll get two more cups."

  "What is it?” June Cedric asked. “Bad news?"

  "In a way. I want to tell you both a story. It's about two women, neighbors, who desperately wanted to get rid of their husbands."

  The coffee cup slipped from Millie's hand. “Oh my God!"

  "Don't say anything,” June warned her.

  "She doesn't have to,” I told them. “I'll do the talking. The idea probably came to you when Julius broke his leg in the tractor accident and threatened to kill Ralph for selling him a defective machine. Over coffee one morning you must have decided that would be the perfect solution to your problems—if Julius killed Ralph and ended up in a mental hospital. Julius's mental condition was already so bad that you thought he could be goaded into making good on his threat. It must have been you, June, who remembered reading about the shepherd's ring and its powers of invisibility. You even found a ring that Millie could use to convince him of its power."

  "How could I ever convince him of that?” Millie asked.

  "He was taking painkillers for his leg and they left him muddled. Added to his existing mental problems, it wasn't hard to convince him he was invisible when he turned the ring a certain way. The killing was set for that certain midnight, only when the time neared it became clear Julius might have been mentally willing to commit murder but wasn't physically able. You switched to plan two. While Julius stayed in bed with an extra dose of mind-numbing painkillers, June did the job for him and bludgeoned her husband to death."

  "Wait a second, Doc,” the sheriff interrupted. “You're forgetting he was killed with Finesaw's walking stick. How did it get over there?"

  "We witnessed its arrival, Sheriff, in that cotton-ball snowman Millie made. It was about the same height as the walking stick, which must have served as the anchor for those big balls of cotton. That was why the snowman had to be ripped apart, and why the other damage was done, to make it less obvious."

  "You're saying it was June that I saw entering her own house?"

  "It had to be, Sheriff. Millie was too short to pass for her husband, but June was taller. She wore the hooded jacket, a duplicate of Julius's own coat, wrapped a piece of white paper around her leg to pass for a cast, and limped along on the cane. She'd gone out the back door of the house and walked around the far side to the front, which was why the figure seemed to appear out of nowhere in front of the house."

  But the sheriff had another objection. “I thought we ruled that out earlier, Doc. She wouldn't have had time to kill him, bust up the place, and appear in the doorway almost instantly."

  "She killed him first, Sheriff. She did it all
first. When she approached her front door and smashed the glass, he was already dead on the kitchen floor. She only had to toss the jacket and paper into the mess, drop the cane near his body, and return screaming to the front door."

  "What was Millie doing all this time?"

  "Talking to Julius in his crazy drugged state, telling him exactly what he'd done, how he'd become invisible, crossed the street, broken the glass, and killed Cedric with his walking stick. She even dirtied the bottoms of his slippers to add to the story. Ralph Cedric was dead and Julius Finesaw admitted to killing him. You had witnessed part of it yourself, Sheriff. It had to be true, only when they changed their plan June and Millie here neglected to work out a way in which Julius could have returned home. It left the invisibility part in place without any alternative."

  They were both held on suspicion of murder, and it only took a day before Millie cracked and confirmed everything I'd said. It was sometime later that Sheriff Lens said to me, “You know, Doc, maybe the ring could have made him invisible. Did you ever consider that?"

  "We live in a rational world, but there are times when even I must consider the irrational. Remember when I checked the pulse on Finesaw's right wrist? I twisted the ring so the stone was inside. It didn't make him invisible."

  Copyright © 2006 Edward D. Hoch

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  LOST LUGGAGE by Mick Herron

  Mick Herron grew up in Newcastle and attended Oxford University. He continues to live in Oxford, where his series of “literary” private eye novels are set. The first book in the series, Down Cemetery Road, is not yet available in the U.S., but the second and third, The Last Voice You Hear (10/04) and Why We Die (8/06) have been published by Carroll & Graf.

  Her name was Jane Carpenter, she worked at an estate agent's, and she'd been taken at 7:26 that morning as she cut across the playing field behind the secondary school to reach her bus stop on the other side. She was twenty-three. She had wavy brown hair with fresh blond highlights. Maybe she would, but probably she wouldn't, go to Malta with her sister this summer; she had hopes her boyfriend Brendan would suggest they go somewhere to-gether instead. These and other details still fizzed through her subconsciousness, but mostly what she was now was a machine for not dying: an unwilled continuation of heart, lung, and nervous system that pumped away, undeterred by the narcotics in her system, the ropes binding her ankles and wrists, the gag, the blindfold, the car boot's lock.

  Her name was Jane Carpenter, but she was currently luggage. And if nobody found her soon, she'd be lost.

  * * * *

  The car was parked midmorning at a motorway service station. The restaurant there was brightly lit, and its furnishings fixed in place, so the symmetry didn't spoil. Laminated menus offered pictures of the food on offer, and the sound system regurgitated an inoffensive medley to match. A man in jeans and scuffed black leather jacket left the counter carrying a tray with the mixed-grill option and a large mug of tea. He hadn't shaved for a while, nor shampooed, by the look of it. He took a seat near the corner, facing out towards the car park. There weren't many people in the restaurant, and he wasn't sitting near any of them.

  "What about him?"

  "Whom?"

  She liked it that he said “whom."

  The couple talking were Peter Mason and Jennifer Holmes, and they'd been an item for somewhere approaching eight months. In that time they'd done most of the usual getting-to-know-you dances, and made one or two of the usual surprising discoveries about shared interests and passions. They'd spent a few weekends together, and enjoyed what they'd learned, but this was the first time they'd come away as a couple—they were heading for a party in a cottage Pete had got hold of, up in the Peak District; somewhere pretty isolated—and their mood was a little scatty. A bit off-the-leash. On the way here they'd talked about their respective weeks at work, then moved on to mildly salacious hints about what the weekend might hold, before reverting—not to get too ahead of themselves—to inconsequential stuff: movies, music, childhood friends. Now they'd stopped for coffee, which had turned into coffee and sandwiches, and Pete had been talking about people-watching; a hobbyhorse of his. It was amazing, he maintained, what you could tell about someone just by observation. Provided you looked in the right way, and picked up on the available clues.

  "With a name like yours, this shouldn't be any big surprise."

  "Jennifer?"

  "Ha, ha. Holmes, pumpkin. As in Sherlock."

  "The great detective."

  "Who could deconstruct a character soon as look at him. No villain was safe. No secret undiscovered."

  "Didn't he have expert knowledge, though? Couldn't he always tell, I don't know, that you had your hair cut by a one-armed barber who plied his trade on the Strand every second Tuesday? That kind of cheating knowledge no real person could have?"

  "Well, yeah. But the theory is absolute. Observation brings knowledge."

  "You reckon."

  "I reckon."

  "What about him?"

  "Whom?"

  Jennifer nodded towards the man who'd just sat down on the far side of the restaurant. Sitting side by side the way they were, both were facing him, though he was facing the window. “Him."

  Jeans and scuffed black leather jacket with a faded tee underneath. Probably with logo or slogan, though it was impossible to see from here. He must have been early forties, with shaggy dark hair and a sallow complexion.

  "...Well?"

  It was meant as a challenge, he could tell.

  They couldn't be overheard. There was no harm in this. The man was a stranger.

  Peter said, “Okay. He's used to these places. Motorway service stations."

  "Everyone is. We've all been places like this."

  "But they're a way of life with him."

  "Evidence."

  "He's not looking round. He's focused on his food, see? The surroundings mean nothing to him."

  It was true: He was.

  "Maybe he's hungry."

  "Maybe he is."

  "And it's not like the surroundings are worth paying attention to."

  "I wouldn't say that. They're not tasteful or pleasant, true, but that doesn't mean they're without interest. I notice you took in what the menu had to offer. And you checked out the coasters and everything. The posters on the walls."

  "Is that shallow?"

  "No. I did too. I've been places like this before, but I've never been to this particular place. There's always something new. But I'm guessing there's a saturation point, and our man's reached it. Because he didn't look around when he came in. He barely glanced at the menu. It's like everything is so familiar to him, it's not worth paying attention to."

  "Good,” she said. “More."

  Peter thought. “Okay. When he was fetching his food, he didn't have to puzzle out the system. He already knew what was going on, that you fetch your food that side and pay this side. And where the drinks are, and everything. He didn't have to go back and fetch a teacup once he'd got to the hot-water urn. He knew to pick up the cup first."

  "I didn't see any of that."

  "Well, I did. Trust me. And another thing. See where he's sitting?"

  "What about it?"

  "Perfect place. He can eat and still keep an eye on his vehicle. That's the kind of precaution you take when we're talking about livelihood."

  "Ah. He travels for a living."

  "I think what we've got so far is bringing us to that conclusion, yes."

  "Salesman?"

  "He's not really kempt enough for a salesman, is he?"

  "Kempt,” she thought. That was up there with “whom."

  "So I don't know. Maybe a courier of some sort."

  Jennifer turned and looked out into the car park. There were no delivery vans out there. One estate car had writing down the side panels—something about double-glazing—but they'd decided he wasn't a salesman.

  Peter was ahead of her. “There's all kinds of couriers these day
s. You don't have to wear a uniform and drive a brown truck. Maybe he delivers cars."

  "Cars?"

  "You rent a car to drive to the airport, but for one reason or another you don't need it for the return journey. Maybe you're flying back somewhere else, because you got a deal on the flight or you're going to visit your mother or something.” He shrugged. “Somebody has to fetch the car, take it back to its starting point."

  "You know so much."

  What he liked about this was the absence of any trace of sarcasm.

  "It's all just speculation,” he said modestly.

  "Well, of course it is. But what speculation. Tell me more."

  He said, “Well ... Looks to me like he's on the skids."

  "I'll go along with that."

  "But he used to be prosperous. This motorway service-station life, this is something that's happened to him. It's not the way he started out."

  "Evidence,” she said again.

  He was ready for this. “Take his jacket. It's nice, but old. You buy a jacket like that because you want to look good, you want to look cool."

  "Leather jackets get cooler the more worn they are."

  "Point. But you have to wash your hair for the full effect. Nobody interested in their appearance is going to leave their hair unwashed for so long that you can tell from this distance it's dirty."

  "So what do we deduce from that, Sherlock?"

  Peter said, “Like I said, he's on the skids. He used to be a man who wears a jacket like that, and now he's a man who's still clinging to the jacket, but can't do the rest of it anymore.... Watch his hand as he raises his fork to his mouth ... There!"

  "He's not wearing a wedding ring."

  "Clever girl. But what else?"

  "You're going to tell me there's a white band of flesh there. That he used to wear a ring but doesn't now."

  Pete was shaking his head in admiration before she'd finished. “Damn, but you're good at this."

  "Sure. Except I don't believe it. I can't see any such thing from here, and you can't either, can you?"

  "Well, no. But what are the chances a guy who used to wear a jacket like that never had the chance to marry? And he's certainly not wearing a ring now."