The Empty Bed

A man had once boarded with an older couple and knew their house. He had taken an interest in the wife, asking why they could not marry if the old man were out of the way. One night two pistol shots were fired through a window into the downstairs bedroom where the husband usually slept. The bullets hit a pillow and a dresser. The husband was upstairs and unhurt. The man was charged with attempted murder. He says he was elsewhere, and that firing at an empty bed cannot be an attempt to kill.