“And then, somehow, I don’t know how it came about, he was suggesting I go back with him and go to his place. He said he’d parked his car in Stamford and he lived in Stockford and we could ride back on the train together and pick up the car and go there. Of course I knew what he was proposing and I guess I should have been horrified, but I wasn’t, really. I don’t mean I wanted to do anything like that, but I wasn’t shocked. I said I couldn’t, of course, but he was so nice I wasn’t angry. The way he did it kind of made me feel flattered, because it was obvious he was a ladies’ man and this was the way his mind worked and I knew he could invite dozens of girls back to his house and they’d all go, so it was really flattering that he should ask me.
“I guess I didn’t say ‘no’ strongly enough. I wasn’t mad and I just said I couldn’t and then he asked why and I said I kept house for my father and he was expecting me home Sunday night and I had to get breakfast for him Monday morning before he went to work. He didn’t see why my father couldn’t get his own breakfast just one morning and I couldn’t really either. He said I was just making excuses and that he thought I’d liked him and he must have been mistaken. I told him I did like him, but what he was proposing, well, I didn’t think I ought to. He smiled and asked me if I was afraid of him. I said I wasn’t, so then he told me I was afraid of life. He asked me if I’d ever had an affair before and I had to say I hadn’t. It made me feel very foolish saying that because it meant I was very gauche and unattractive to men and I got red in the face and wanted to cry.
“He put his hand on mine and said that it didn’t matter, that most women had had affairs by the time they’d reached my age, but that many of them had had too many affairs and it was better to have too few than to be promiscuous and have too many. I nodded and then he said that, even so, a girl ought to have one, at least. He said that time was fleeting and if I didn’t grab life when I had the chance, I might miss everything and regret it as long as I lived. I didn’t know what to say. Then he asked me what I was saving myself for. He already knew men didn’t like me and he knew, just as I knew, that this might be the only chance I’d ever have. He said he didn’t want to persuade me to do anything against my will because it would spoil everything if I said yes and didn’t mean it. He said it’d be better to say no right then and there and we’d forget the whole thing.
“The trouble was,” she said, wiping her eyes again, “I didn’t want it to end right then and never see him again. I didn’t want to say no. He could tell I didn’t, and he put his hand on mine and said I didn’t have to give him an answer right then, that he’d call me at my sister’s for my answer. Then he told me what it’d be like. He had this house about half an hour’s drive from Stamford and if I were willing, we could take an early train back Sunday evening and go there and have supper and I could call my father and make some excuse why I wouldn’t be home. We’d have dinner by candlelight and nobody would know anything because the house was out by itself away from other houses, and he’d put me on the nine o’clock train to Stamford the next morning and no one would be any the wiser. The way he said it made it sound like heaven and he was right. Nobody would ever know anything about it. There was only one thing, he said. I couldn’t just agree to come. I had to want to come.
“I did want to. That was the whole trouble. I thought about it half the night at my sister’s and I kept telling myself it was wrong and all, but I knew he was right. It was now or never. If I said no, I’d never see him again and if I said yes, then there might be other times and if I tried hard, he might fall in love with me. My sister got married. She’s been married four years and I thought maybe I might get married.”
She sighed. “He called on Saturday, right around dinnertime. I still had doubts and I was still worried. I guess it was scruples and I’d been trying so hard to fight them down. Then, when I heard his voice, so cheerful and friendly and interested, calling me ‘sweet’ and ‘dear,’ that was all I needed to decide me for keeps. I said yes, I’d go with him and we discussed it and made plans that we’d take the five forty-five train from Grand Central Sunday evening. I’d make excuses to my sister about having to get home and I wouldn’t let her and her husband see me to the train and I’d meet him at the information booth in the station at five-thirty. And that’s what we did.”
She looked up at Fellows, red-eyed and pleading. “I know it was wrong, Mr. Fellows. I know I shouldn’t have done it. I didn’t know I’d get caught.” She said, “Will I go to jail?”
Fellows shook his head. “Miss Sherman, if you’re telling the truth, and if you co-operate with us, I doubt that anything will happen to you at all.” He sat down on the couch again and got out his notebook, scribbling in it at length while Miss Sherman composed herself. Then he said, thumbing back a few pages and studying, “That address you wrote on the telephone pad. He ask you to do that?”
“Yes. I did it before we left Monday morning.”
“He put you on the nine o’clock train?”
“Yes. He said he had to go to work.”
“What kind of work did he do?”
She chewed her lip. “I’m not sure exactly. I think he said it was hardware. I don’t know what position he held.”
“Can you describe the car he drove?”
That drew a blank. Miss Sherman had no idea. “It was dark when we got in to Stamford and I guess I was nervous and excited. I didn’t notice. I don’t know cars anyway.”
“It wasn’t dark when he drove you to the train Monday morning.”
“I know that, but I still don’t know. I don’t remember anything about the car. I don’t even remember anything about the train ride.”
“Was it a tan car?”
“It could have been tan or blue or purple. I can’t tell you.”
“What did Mr. Campbell look like?”
She looked at the chief, puzzled. “Don’t you know him?”
“We know of him. Will you describe him, please?”
“Tall. I guess probably around six feet. I’m not good at judging height. Slender build. He wasn’t fat at all.” She turned pink at that remark and said quickly, “Dark hair and brown eyes, fair skin. A very good-looking man.”
“How was he dressed?”
“Conservatively. When I saw him on the train he had a dark overcoat and a brown hat. Brown shoes.”
Fellows referred to his notes. “Did he wear a scarf?”
“A gray wool scarf. Charcoal gray.”
“Good quality clothes?”
“I don’t know much about men’s clothes. They looked average.”
“Has he got in touch with you since Monday?”
She shook her head a little sadly. “I haven’t heard from him since. He said he’d call as soon as he had the chance, but he hasn’t yet.”
“Can you describe his face?”
She chewed her lip again. She wanted to be helpful, but she didn’t have the ability. “I thought it was a nice face, and I can close my eyes and see it just as plain, but it’s hard to describe.
It’s a—a—” She gestured helplessly. “It’s a face. Eyes, nose that looked like anybody’s nose, it wasn’t too big or too small, maybe his mouth was a little wider than average.”
“You can’t do any better than that?”
She shook her head.
“Moles? Scars? Other marks?”
“Not on his face. He had a small mole”—and here she blushed again—“on the small of his back, and another on his right shoulder blade. I don’t remember anything else.”
Fellows shifted his position on the couch. “Miss Sherman, are you telling me the truth when you say you have no definite plan to see him again?”
She nodded earnestly. “Yes, that’s the truth.”
“What did you do with your suitcases?”
“What suitcases?”
“I presume you took something to New York with you.”
“Yes. Of course I did. One suitcase. I don’t know what you mean, what did I do with
it? I brought it home with me.”
“What kind of a suitcase is it?”
“Brown—tan, I guess. It’s an old one I’ve had for years.”
“You don’t own any other suitcases?”
“No. What would I need one for? I don’t go anywhere, really.”
“How about a green trunk?”
“You mean do I have one? I don’t have any trunk.”
Fellows nodded. “I see,” he said and made some additional notations. “Now, Miss Sherman, I suppose while you were there you looked over the whole house?”
She hesitated. “Most of it.”
“Not all of it?”
“There was one back room he kept locked. He said he used it for his office and it contained valuable papers.”
“You didn’t question this?”
“No. I wasn’t interested in his valuable papers.”
Fellows said slowly, “Miss Sherman, I hope you realize you were extremely foolish to take up with a man you knew nothing about, but I’m glad you at least had the wisdom not to be curious about his locked room.”
She leaned forward, holding her hand to her breast. “What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t valuable papers he kept in that room. He was keeping the dead body of another woman.”
The girl came half out of the chair in horror. “No. You’re fooling!”
“That’s not something we fool about. And if you’d become too suspicious, Miss Sherman, I don’t doubt he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you too.”
Jean Sherman shrieked. She covered her face and began to scream hysterically. Fellows got up in alarm. He pulled her to her feet and shook her, but he couldn’t stop her screaming. She tore at her hair until he seized her wrists and held them. The wild sounds that came from her throat reverberated through the house, jarring the walls and the crockery, paining his eardrums, making him wince. He struck her twice with his palm, striking her hard and then harder and the blows reddened her pale cheek, but otherwise had no effect. She was completely out of control. He tried to talk to her, to calm her with his voice, but nothing could be heard in the room but the peal upon peal of hysterical noise.
Finally he held her tight to control her writhing and clapped a hand over her wide mouth. It muffled her, but only until she could twist her head away and shriek again. He picked her up and carried her screaming into the nearest bedroom, laid her down, and hunted up the bathroom, cringing still at the violence of the sound. He came back with a glass of water and threw it in her face. She sputtered but only for a moment then tore at her hair and face again, emitting more piercing yells. He got a second glass and aimed it carefully. This time she choked and sat up coughing and gagging. He patted her on the back as she jerked convulsively with the effort and her face turned red.
She got her breath back and burst into tears, rolling over on the bed face down, sobbing bitterly. Fellows stood by, breathing heavily. He said, “I’m sorry, Miss Sherman. I didn’t mean to upset you like that.” She kept on sobbing, but the hysteria had been broken and Fellows turned to the bedroom window and looked out at the house next door, wondering how much the neighbors had heard. He expected faces at the opposite windows and the wail of police sirens, but the house next door looked empty and there were no faces. Perhaps no one had heard. He bit off a piece of chewing tobacco and munched it quietly, waiting for the sobs to stop.
It was fully fifteen minutes before Jean exhausted herself and struggled to an elbow on the bed. Fellows wet a washcloth in the basin and brought it in to mop her face. She held her head steady like an obedient child and then moaned, “I can’t stand it.”
He returned the washcloth and came back again. She said, “What am I going to do?”
“I guess forget it.”
“I wish I was dead.”
He stood over her shaking his head. “If I were you, Miss Sherman, I’d consider myself mighty lucky to be alive. I wouldn’t wish for anything like that.”
“But he—but a murderer! How could he?”
“It takes all kinds and he’s one of the rotten ones.”
“I meant nothing to him. He would have killed me, wouldn’t he?”
“If he’d had to. Look, I don’t think we ought to hang around the bedroom like this. Let’s go back and sit down quietly and talk about how you’re going to help us.”
“Help you?”
“That’s right.” He took her arm and gently urged her off the bed. They went back to the living room and she sat numbly again in her chair. “Why did I do it?” she said.
“That’s over and done with, Miss Sherman. Try to forget it. The main thing is, we need your help in catching him before he kills anybody else.”
“You don’t know where he is?”
“We know very little about him. He was gone when we found the body.”
“Was she—who was she?”
“We don’t know. We thought she was you. Will you help us?”
She nodded and said weakly, “But how?”
“Would you be willing to meet him again?”
She groaned at the thought. “I couldn’t stand to see him ever again.”
“The point is, he may call you. If he does, would you agree to meet him wherever he says and then call the police? You wouldn’t have to go yourself. Just let the police know where he’ll be, so they can go.”
She brushed her cheeks. “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “I can try. But I don’t think—I mean I couldn’t talk to him. Even on the phone. He’d know something was wrong the minute I answered.”
“Do the best you can.”
She nodded. “But he wouldn’t call. Not with the police looking for him.”
“He might, Miss Sherman,” the chief said. “Judging from what we’ve found out about him, he very well might.”
CHAPTER VIII
Friday, 1:10-1:40 P.M.
It was early afternoon when Fellows got back to Stockford. Detective Sergeant Wilks was eating lunch at the chief’s desk in the little office behind the main room, munching a sandwich and washing it down with coffee from a thermos when the chief came in.
“You get coffee on my papers,” Fellows said, “and I’ll skin you.”
“Papers? You mean the crossword puzzle and the movie schedule and the circulars?”
“I’ve got your pay reports in there too.” Fellows went to the chest-high windows that looked out onto the green from the ground level of the basement. The room was small with a rolltop desk and swivel chair, a wooden table, three glass-faced cabinets, and a straight chair crowded in its confines. The walls were a neutral tan and decorated with a large collection of nude calendar girls in color, the accumulation of choice selections over the years. Fellows turned from the window, glanced at the gathering of bare bosoms and flirtatious smiles overlooking the desk, and said, “Have you been eating all day, or did you get anything else done?”
“You’re sounding like a man without a lunch,” Wilks said, chewing. “That picture of John Campbell came in from Erie this morning. I showed it to Watly. It’s not the same man.”
“What about the suitcases?”
“We had a locksmith in. He opened them up for us. Nothing but odd items and women’s clothes. No identification or laundry marks, and the clothes are off-the-rack things you buy in any department store. I’ve got the inventory list here on your desk, but it’s probably lost under two feet of papers by now. Oh yes. We found a blouse with a missing button that fits the one you turned up in that back room bureau. Unger’s got the suitcases out front under the desk if you want to see for yourself.” Wilks swung Fellows’s chair around. “Want one of my sandwiches?”
“Naw. I’m on a diet. I’m trying to give up lunch. I’ll take some of your coffee, though.”
“You would.” Wilks drained his from the thermos cap and refilled it, handing it to the chief. “There’s milk and sugar in it.”
“I didn’t eat breakfast, so that’ll make it all right.”
“Says yo
u.” Wilks watched Fellows sip it. He said, “Nope. No luck in most places. In twenty-four hours all we’ve found out is the identity of the victim.”
“Says you,” the chief retorted, hooking a leg over the edge of the table. “We don’t even have that. We don’t know who either of them are.”
“You mean the address was a phoney?”
“Not a phoney. The girl was alive.” Fellows went on to detail his interview with Jean Sherman.
Wilks whistled when he finished. “What kind of a guy is he? Are you meaning to say he killed a girl, then hopped a train for New York for the weekend and then brings another girl back to the house for the night and makes love to her in one room while the corpse is lying in the other?”
“If he killed the girl before he went to New York, that’s the way it has to be.”
“And how do you account for Jean Sherman being a ‘J.S.’? What does he do, go through the train asking every young girl he sees what her initials are?”
“Why would he care what they are? He wouldn’t be trying to set the girl up for anything.”
“You mean the similarity was just a freak coincidence, huh?”
“Coincidence, but not a freak, Sid. J.S. are probably the commonest initials there are. He took the paper Jean wrote her address on with him, remember? He didn’t leave it out for bait.”
“If her story is true, that is.”
“If it’s true. Of course the alternative is something like him leaving J.S. in the house to go to New York and finding her still there when he gets back with a new lady friend. There’s a fight and the victim gets it either from him or from the new girl, or from them both.”
“That stinks too. You know that, don’t you?”
“Sure it stinks. Doesn’t life?”
Wilks said thoughtfully, “I guess no matter how you tell it, though, the initials don’t matter. So it’s coincidence. But what about the Sherman girl? You think she’s involved more than she says?”
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