Sleep Long, My Love

by Hillary Waugh

  Fellows’s next armload revealed the rest of the answer, and Restlin shrieked. He said, “Oh my God,” and ran across the cellar up the stairs.

  CHAPTER III

  Thursday, 12:45-1:25

  Dr. James MacFarlane, the Stockford medical examiner, trudged slowly up the cellar steps with his little black bag in his hand. In the kitchen, two ambulance attendants were sitting in their overcoats at the table in the breakfast nook, smoking a cigarette and having a cup of black coffee. They gestured at the living room when he asked for the chief and he went on through, past a policeman who was shoveling the fireplace ashes into a paper bag, toward the chief, who was standing near the front door talking with two reporters.

  “It was a body,” Fellows was saying. “White, female, dark hair. That’s all we know.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  “It’s a truncated torso. Head, arms, and most of the legs cut off.” He turned when MacFarlane came up. “Well, Jim, anything you can add?”

  The medical examiner shook his head. “She’s been dead anywhere from three days to a week or even longer. May be pretty hard to determine what the cause of death was. You photographed her yet?”

  “Hank Lemmon of the Bulletin took some pictures for me before you got here. You ready to take her away?”

  “Yeah. You going to want that sheet spread out in front of the trunk with the clothes on it?”

  “You can use it, only don’t get those clothes dirty.”

  The doctor nodded. “I’ll work on her over at the hospital. By the way, it looks as if some of the abdominal organs have been removed.”

  “Any skill involved?”

  “None whatever. Whoever did it knows nothing about anatomy —not so much as a butcher.”

  “And she’s been dead at least three days?”

  “Probably much longer. She was dead some time before the attempt to dismember her.”

  Wilks came down the stairs from the attic. “Nothing up there, Fred. Nothing at all.”

  “Set a couple of the boys to work fingerprinting the house. I want every room.”

  Wilks went off and MacFarlane went with him. The policeman who’d been cleaning out the fireplace came up with the bag of its contents. The chief said, “That goes to the State Police lab, Henderson. You got it marked?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “O.K. Now you get another bag and go down in the basement and collect all the ashes in the furnace. They go to the lab too.” One of the reporters said, “How did you come to find her?”

  “The missing leases I told you about. I guessed the only reason for stealing them was to remove a handwriting specimen. People don’t do that for nothing.”

  “And the man’s name is John Campbell?”

  “That’s what Restlin says. Now I can’t tell you any more, so if you’ll kind of wait outside, so you don’t track anything around in here, I’ll be much obliged.” He ushered them out the front door, down the stone slab in front to the cold dry grass. A screen of trees blocked the view of Old Town Road. The woods on the other side of the drive were dense. Across Highland Road in front were woods, but a hundred yards down, stood a clean white house. One of the reporters pulled out a cigarette, and Fellows said, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t smoke around here, mister. I’ve got five men out back combing the yard and I wouldn’t want them coming around and bringing in one of your butts for a clue. Might confuse us some.”

  He left them there and walked down between the ambulance and six cars that filled the drive and lined the road, starting for the house across the way. Midway there, he turned once for a look back at the murder bungalow. It was white, small, unprepossessing and isolated, all features that made it ideal for the purpose. The reporters had got back in their car, probably to smoke and keep warm, and the front yard was deserted. The men in the back were hidden by the cars in the drive and no one was in evidence just then. Fellows turned and continued to the larger white house across the way. A white curtain fell in place behind a first-floor window there and when he got to the porch, a woman opened the door the moment he rang the bell. She was fiftyish, gray and stout, and she wore glasses. Her name, according to the mailbox by the walk, was Banks and she said an expectant, “Yes?” Fellows introduced himself with his hat properly in his hand and was invited into the parlor. “What’s happening, Inspector?” the woman asked, hardly withholding her curiosity until she closed the door. “All those cars—all those policemen.”

  “Little trouble with those what’s-their-names,” Fellows said, standing until the woman took a seat in a high-backed rocker so placed that she could look through the window curtains up the road. He sat then, near the window.

  “The Campbells?” She rocked contentedly. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Know anything about them?”

  “Not much,” Mrs. Banks said primly. “Not very sociable, and I mind my own business.”

  “Ever seen them, Mrs. Banks?”

  “Oh, yes indeed. Mr. Banks and I went to call on them a couple of Sundays back. Not very welcoming, I will say. She dresses fancy, but there was dust in the comers. She gave us tea. Tried to offer us liquor. That kind of woman.” She rocked a little more vigorously in disapproval.

  “What’d she look like?”

  “Brunette. Wore lipstick. That kind of woman.”

  “There’re quite a few women of that kind, Mrs. Banks. That doesn’t exactly identify her.”

  “Well, I suppose there are those who would call her pretty.”

  “About how old was she?”

  “Youngish, but old enough to know better. Not very well brought up, I will say.”

  “You called on her just once?”

  “Mr. Banks and me. We wanted to be neighborly. It’s the decent thing to do, Inspector. Can’t say it was a pleasure. She wasn’t very welcoming and she never returned the call. Had her hair in curlers when we arrived. Sunday afternoon, too. She had a blue and white bandana around her head and a house dress, light blue with tiny white figures. But she had her lipstick on. We dressed up. Mr. Banks and I wouldn’t go around like that on a Sunday, especially when neighbors drop in, but she didn’t seem to care. Not that one. She could have put her hands on the liquor soon enough, but she had trouble finding tea.”

  “What was Mr. Campbell like?”

  “He wara’t there. He was off on a business trip, so she said. Never did see the man.”

  “You see Mrs. Campbell any other time?”

  “Saw her just about any time she left the house, but it wasn’t much. She’d come out once in a while to hang up some clothes in her back yard. You can see the yard from here except for those cars in the drive. I guess her husband must’ve done the shopping; well, she called him her husband, but I noticed she didn’t wear any wedding ring. ’Tany rate, she didn’t have a car and there’s no place you can go around here without a car. I know because I don’t drive. That’s why we women along this road are right neighborly and I was being generous because it can be pretty lonesome out here if you don’t have any neighbors to kind of chin with on the phone or walk over to visit, but she was the lonesome kind, I guess. Leastwise, she didn’t make no effort to be friendly.”

  Fellows rubbed his chin and was about to ask more questions about the mysterious Mr. Campbell when Mrs. Banks got half out of her chair. “Say, now, what’s that?”

  Fellows, nearer the window, turned his chair and pulled aside the curtain. The two ambulance men were coming into view from behind the cars, carrying the sheet-wrapped torso on a stretcher. It looked like a lump of bedding riding in the middle of the taut canvas. Seen anywhere else, it would never suggest a body and even on a stretcher one wouldn’t suspect it was the body of an adult.

  Mrs. Banks hurried to the window to watch the procession, the stretcher followed by Dr. MacFarlane and two policemen. “Why,” she cried. “It’s a child. They’ve killed a child. Why that’s an ambulance. I thought it was the police wagon.”

  “There’s been a
n accident,” Fellows said, rising in courtesy. “They’re kidnappers, aren’t they?” she said, her eyes glued to the window.

  “We’re not sure what they are, Mrs. Banks.” The chief shifted his feet. He knew further questioning would be fruitless while there was something to watch, so he waited patiently until the doors of the ambulance were closed and it backed around in the road, turned left at the comer, and disappeared from sight.

  “Well, I never,” Mrs. Banks said, coming away. “Well, I never.” She went back to her seat, and the chief took his own again. “We were talking about Mr. Campbell.”

  “Yes, well he had the car and he was away all day. He must have left real early in the morning and he was never around weekends. He’d get home around half past five most of the time, but then he’d drive right off again. Then he’d come back around eight and he’d be there for a couple of hours and then sometimes he’d go off again, ’long about half past ten and once, when we were in bed, he drove out about eleven. When he came back after that, or if he came back at all, I never knew, but I do know his car was never around when we got up in the morning.”

  “Which is what time?”

  “Half past six.”

  “And he was away every weekend?”

  “Never saw hide nor hair of him weekends. Business trip his wife said. Monkey business, I say.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d know what kind of a car it was?”

  “No. He always got home after dark. He was never around when it was light.” She hesitated. “Wait a minute. There was one afternoon when he came home. That was a strange one.”

  “What happened, Mrs. Banks?”

  “It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. I was cleaning around upstairs when I saw this car pull up. Ford car, it was, tan, pretty new. Well, Inspector, out gets Mr. Campbell, big as life, and he’s got a vacuum cleaner in his hand, you know, one of those long round things on a slide? He was wearing a brown hat and a tan overcoat and he went up to the door, and Mrs. Campbell let him in. Well, they were in there for about twenty minutes and suddenly he and she come to the front door again and he doesn’t have his coat or hat on and he’s in his shirt sleeves. He closes the door and jumps back into the car and drives into the drive. Then, when he was coming around to the front of the house, the grocer boy drove up. That was the only time I ever saw the grocer make a delivery there. He had a bag of groceries and Mr. Campbell took it and paid for it and then he went back inside. He was in there for at least an hour and a half, because I saw the car there that long and then, a few minutes later, I saw that his car was gone. That was around four-thirty or quarter of five, Inspector, and then he came back at five-thirty, because my husband was home and I was telling him about it when I saw the lights of Mr. Campbell’s car and this time he went right into the drive and in the house and he didn’t go right out again like he usually did. This time he was there all evening until after we went to bed, but he was gone again the next morning.”

  Fellows had his notebook out and was jotting down the pertinent items. He looked up. “You remember exactly what day that was?”

  “Friday the thirteenth.”

  “What did Mr. Campbell look like?”

  “He was pretty far away, Inspector, and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. Tall, I would call him, but I couldn’t say more than that.” She leaned forward. “He’s done something terrible, hasn’t he?”

  “We think he hasn’t been behaving himself very well. What color hair did he have? You saw him without a hat.”

  “Oh, dark hair. Tall and dark and slender. I couldn’t tell anything about his face.”

  Fellows nodded and made notations. “Now, Mrs. Banks, can you tell me the last time you saw Mrs. Campbell?”

  Mrs. Banks hesitated. “Well, I can’t say. I’d judge a week or more ago.” She covered the lapse by saying, “Of course I’m not nosey and I don’t pry and she might have been around a lot when I wasn’t looking.”

  “But at least a week ago is the last time?”

  “Far’s I remember.”

  “Did you recognize the grocery boy? Do you know what store he delivers for?”

  “Oh my, no. I don’t know anything about those delivery boys. My husband takes me shopping.” She peered past his shoulder. “My, look at all the cars. They’re blocking the whole road.”

  Chief Fellows turned and saw. The word had been spread and now a horde of sight-seers was descending on the quiet of Highland Road. He thanked the woman and took a hasty leave.

  CHAPTER IV

  Thursday, 1:25-2:15

  Fellows went back to the murder house and ordered the sight-seers who were congregating in the front yard back into their cars, “Move on. There’s nothing to see. Keep moving.” Then he went inside and ordered two policemen to chase away the cars of anybody not authorized to be there and to set up a road block at the corner. “I don’t want anybody coming down this road who doesn’t have business here.” After that, he hunted up Wilks, who was busy fingerprinting the house.

  “It’s useless,” the detective sergeant told him. “Looks like the guy wiped everything with a towel, door frames, doors, everything. The best we’ve got are a couple of smudges that aren’t any good.”

  “You inventorying the place?”

  “As we go along.”

  “Got anybody you can spare?”

  “They’re all busy, why?”

  “We’re going to have to do some checking of grocery stores. Well, we can let that go until I come back. I want to get down to the real estate office.”

  Wilks said, “Give Restlin my love.”

  Frank Restlin, however, was not at the office. “He went home,” Watly explained. “He was feeling sick. It was really a murder?”

  “There was a body. We don’t know yet how she died.” Fellows pulled off his gloves and cap and unzipped his jacket. “Restlin was telling me you’re the one who handled the rent. You want to tell me about it?”

  Watly wet his lips. He got out cigarettes and offered one to Fellows, who shook his head and resorted to his chewing tobacco instead. “I wish I hadn’t handled it now, believe me,” the real estate agent said. “Mr. Restlin blames me for what happened— the pipes freezing, especially. He’s feeling pretty bad about that.”

  “Worse than about the body, I’ll bet.”

  Watly smiled, but not happily. “You probably aren’t kidding. He’d take it out of my pay, I’ll bet, if he thought I could afford it, but certainly, I couldn’t see anything wrong with the man.”

  Fellows sat down in a chair by the desk and fumbled for his notebook. “Tell me the whole story now, clear as you can remember, dates and times and what was said and any peculiarities the man might have had, anything you can remember about his looks and manner.”

  Watly, taking Restlin’s seat behind the desk, pulled his lip and dragged on the cigarette. “It was an afternoon. Twenty-third of January. I can tell you that because when Mr. Restlin came back all pale and white and told me what you found, I immediately looked up Campbell’s application. That was the day he came in, the twenty-third of January around the middle of the afternoon. Mr. Restlin was out with a prospect showing him some properties. This fellow Campbell came in. He was in his thirties, I’d guess, maybe thirty-seven or -eight, and he had dark hair, a moderate build, and stood about two inches shorter than me. He was about five-ten, I’d say. He told me he was interested,—”

  “What about his clothes?”

  “Clothes?” Watly thought about that. “No hat. A tan overcoat with a plaid scarf. Red plaid. Dark trousers as I recall—he didn’t take off his coat—and-uh-brown shoes, well shined. They looked like pretty nice clothes. Better clothes than I could afford.”

  “Go on.”

  “He said he was only going to be in town a short time and he wanted a house for a month. He said he wanted it completely furnished. He was a company representative or something like that. A salesman, I gathered, or some job where he moved around a lot. At least
that’s the impression he gave.

  “I said we had something he might like, two or three things, in fact, and he wanted the cheapest we could give him. I said the house on Highland Road was the cheapest, but it was pretty isolated. That didn’t seem to bother him at all. He seemed to prefer it that way. I told him he could have it for a hundred dollars for the month of February and that would include everything. I did try to interest him in one of the other houses because, well, they cost a little more and he looked like he could afford it. He looked used to nice things and this house isn’t the best we’ve got.”

  “Did he say anything about a Mrs. Campbell?”

  “He did say he’d need an extra key for his wife. That’s about the only time I remember him mentioning her, but I certainly got the impression he was married.”

  “Did you show him the house?”

  “I did. I drove him out. It’d been vacant since October and I offered to take him through it, but all he did was look at it from the outside as we drove by and that satisfied him. He didn’t bother to have me stop and, in fact, he seemed to go out to look at it with me more because he was supposed to than because he cared. I don’t know if that’s important or not, Chief.”

  “Everything’s important, Mr. Watly. Then what?”

  “I drove him back here and he signed the lease and paid the money. He had it on him.”

  “What about references?”

  Watly said, “Oh, he had them. They’re on his application.” He got up and went to the file cabinet, sorted quickly through the contents of the drawer above the one that had been robbed, and came back with it. He sat down and pressed his fingertips together on the desk while the chief studied it. “Employed by Gary Hardware Company, Erie, Pennsylvania,” Fellows said, and looked up. “I don’t see any character references listed.”

  “He said anyone at Gary from the president on down would be glad to vouch for him.”

  “You check on this?”