Sleep Long, My Love

by Hillary Waugh

  “You think I killed that woman in Stockford? You’re crazy. I’ve never even been to Stockford.”

  “You sold three vacuum cleaners there, Burchard. You’ve been there all right, and we don’t think making calls is all you did.” Fellows raised a hand as Burchard tried to protest. “Now don’t tell me again how innocent, you are. Just get your coat and your shaving things, if you want, and come along with us.”

  Burchard said, “You can’t do this,” but he knew they could. He put on a tie in the bedroom with Fellows and McGarrity standing in the door. He went into the bathroom, with the chief following, got his shaving kit while mumbling that he was going to call a lawyer and sue for false arrest. He took a jacket out of the closet and put that on, then got into a dark winter overcoat and scarf, taking a dark brown hat from the shelf. When he stepped away, Fellows took a look into the closet himself. A tan overcoat was also there, of lighter weight, and a gray spring topcoat. There were two other hats and half a dozen suits of varying shades.

  Fellows closed the closet and followed Burchard into the living room where Harris opened the door. The five of them went down the stairs and stopped for Wilks, who was inside the front apartment door in the hall talking to the landlady.

  Outside, at the car, Wilks put handcuffs on the man while Fellows had a brief conference with McGarrity. “He’s our pigeon,” Fellows said, coming back. “McGarrity’s letting us take him.” They put Burchard in the rear seat, guarded by Wilks, and drove back to Stockford in silence, Harris following in his own car.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Monday, 10:30 P.M.—Tuesday, 12:45 A.M.

  Clyde Burchard was put in a cell in the block behind the police waiting room at ten-thirty that evening. Wilks and Harris took the contents of his pockets, his wrist watch, belt, garters, and shoelaces, and gave him a receipt while Fellows called up the grocer boy again.

  When Wilks returned from the cell block, Fellows was sitting in his chair at his desk, tilting back with his arms on the armrests, his eyes closed. He opened them when Wilks came in to report things under control.

  “I gather the landlady didn’t clear him,” Fellows said.

  Wilks pulled up another chair. “She says she doesn’t know what her tenants do. Most of the time she doesn’t know whether they’re in or not.”

  “Or if they’ve got girls in?”

  “I asked her about that. She didn’t know and didn’t seem to care. As long as she gets the rent and there’s no noise and nothing gets damaged, her tenants can do as they like.”

  Fellows said, “He wears good clothes, and he fits the description.” He sat up. “I got hold of that kid, Andy. He’s coming right down.”

  “You going to let him identify him tonight?”

  “Why not? If we’re wrong, I don’t want to keep the guy in jail. If we’re right, the sooner we know it the better.”

  Andy arrived ten minutes later, coming through the side door in a too thin jacket and no gloves. Wilks, Fellows, and Sergeant Gorman were at the main table drinking coffee, and the young lad pulled off his cap and said, “I’m here, Chief. What is it you want me to do?”

  Fellows produced an extra container of the liquid for the boy, who sat down to it with mixed pleasure and awe. “I only want you for a minute, Andy. Sergeant Wilks and I are going to show you a man we’ve got in a cell beyond that steel door. I don’t want you to say anything while we’re in there, but after we leave, I want you to tell me if you’ve ever seen him before.”

  “Sure. I get it. Is this the guy?”

  “I’m not saying who it is or why we want you to look at him, Andy. When you finish your coffee, just follow us and, remember, don’t speak while you’re there.”

  They didn’t make the boy hurry, letting him smoke a cigarette over the beverage, and Fellows even tried one of Andy’s cigarettes himself, smoking it experimentally, contrasting the effect with chewing. Wilks was a little restless at the chief’s lack of speed in settling the issue and Gorman was downright impatient, though he tried hard to conceal it.

  Then, when they were all through, the three left Gorman behind, and Wilks slipped back the heavy bolts on the sheet steel cell-block door and pulled it open. The gap revealed a long, dimly lighted hall to a head-high barred window at the end that looked out onto the yard. Six small cells were spaced on the right, each with its worm’s-eye barred window, and Burchard was in the farthest one down, the only one occupied.

  The three walked down the cement hallway and stopped in front of his door. Burchard was sitting on his bunk against the side wall, his tieless shirt open, his beltless pants sagging, his laceless shoes on his feet. His jacket was neatly folded on the bunk beside him, for the windows were closed and the steam heat of the building kept the tightly stoppered area overwarm. He was slumped in dejection with his elbows on his knees, and he looked up at their arrival, staring at them dully, without expression.

  Fellows said, “Are you comfortable, Mr. Burchard?”

  The man answered with a snort. “Mister Burchard!” He spit at the wall. “You come in like the Gestapo and pull a guy out of his house and slap him in jail in the middle of the night and then you think if you act like Emily Post, it’s going to be all right.”

  “I’m doing my job, Mr. Burchard.”

  “Who’s the kid supposed to be?”

  “Take a look at him, Mr. Burchard.”

  Burchard did. He took a long look and thereby gave Andy an equally good look at him. He said, “I looked. Are you happy?” Fellows and Wilks turned back with Andy, and the youth couldn’t completely hide his eagerness. Halfway down the hall he whispered loudly, “It’s him. That’s the guy.”

  “All right. Keep it quiet.” They went out and bolted the door again. Andy was almost jumping. “He’s the man. He’s the man at that house, the one with the tan Ford. How’d you find him?”

  “You’re sure, now? You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Hell, yes—I mean—sure I’m sure. I’ll swear to it on a stack of Bibles. I wouldn’t ever forget that man.”

  “Would you be willing to swear to it in court?”

  “Any time! You just let me get into court and I’ll swear it any time.”

  They sent the boy home, and Wilks clapped Fellows on the back. “How about that, Freddie, boy? How about that? You going to call Merrill?”

  Sergeant Gorman cocked his head. “Ssh. What’s that?”

  They listened. Through the steel door came the faint sound of hollering. Fellows went over and pushed back the bolts and he and Wilks returned through the corridor to where Burchard gripped the steel bars and shouted.

  “AH right,” Fellows said. “Quiet down, Burchard. You can talk to a lawyer in the morning.”

  “Listen,” Burchard was saying. “Listen to me. Who was that kid?”

  “You don’t recognize him?”

  “Who was he? I’ve got a right to know.”

  Fellows shook his head. “I don’t know what rights you do have, Mr. Burchard, you being a prisoner. But I guess we can tell you. He’s one of the witnesses we’ve got who laid eyes on the man called Campbell.”

  “Is he claiming I’m Campbell?”

  “He’s swearing to it, if you want to know.”

  “That’s not true. Who is he? Where did he claim he saw me? Where does he get the idea I’m Campbell?”

  “He delivered groceries to you, Mr. Burchard. Friday the thirteenth of last month to be exact. At two Highland Road.”

  Burchard sagged. He said, “Oh, my God.”

  “And then some, mister. Now you keep quiet in here.”

  “Listen. Listen, Chief. I want to talk.”

  They got Ed Lewis in to take down the statement since he was the shorthand man on the force, and when he arrived, they brought Clyde Burchard into the chiefs office, seating him at the end of the table there, back by the cabinets. Wilks and Lewis sat opposite each other on either side of the table and the chief, swinging his desk chair around sat at the head. When Lewis
was ready, he said, “All right, Mr. Burchard. You want to make a statement.”

  Burchard swallowed. “I do.” He wet his lips. “First off, I want to say I’m innocent. I want to get that down on the record.”

  “All right. Mr. Lewis has that down. I hope you have more than that.”

  Burchard nodded. He said, “I guess some of the things I told you back at my place weren’t exactly the truth.” No one answered him. He looked into sets of steadily staring eyes. “All right. I—you came at me so fast I—” He had his jacket on now and slapped the pockets. “In that envelope you’ve got with all my things there’s a notebook. I want you to look at it.”

  Fellows left without a word and came back with the sealed manila envelope Gorman had locked in the safe. He broke it open, dumped the contents.

  “That’s it,” Burchard said, pointing to a worn brown dime-store pocket notebook.

  Fellows didn’t pick it up right away. “What is it?”

  “My record book. I told you I didn’t have one, but I did. That’s a complete list of my calls, addresses of all the houses.”

  Fellows still didn’t touch it. “What’s that mean to us?”

  “Read what it says for Friday the thirteenth.”

  The chief finally picked it up and thumbed through the pages, pausing to read with a blank face. He put it down open in front of him and said, “What’s this supposed to prove?”

  “Don’t you see it there? Two Highland Road, Stockton?”

  “I saw it. With an asterisk beside it.”

  “Well, don’t you see? I made a call there. That’s how the delivery boy saw me. I was there trying to sell the woman a vacuum cleaner.”

  “And you pay for the groceries and you come out of the house in your shirt sleeves and park your car in the drive? And when you’re asked about it you lie and say you never went near the place? Is that what we’re supposed to believe?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Fellows bent over the page again. “You told me your method of selling is to saturate a neighborhood. This is the only call you’ve got anywhere near that neighborhood, Mr. Burchard. Since it’s the last entry on that day and there are blank lines after it, I’d guess a more likely explanation is that you wrote that in some other time to cover yourself.”

  “I can explain all that,” Burchard said desperately. “You see that asterisk beside the name? You know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “It means the lady is willing.”

  Fellows was silent as he turned through the other pages in the book. “I count four other asterisks, Mr. Burchard. Are you trying to tell me those ladies are also willing?”

  He nodded. “But please don’t let it get in the papers. Those women are married.”

  Fellows closed the notebook and tossed it onto the desk behind him. “So far, Mr. Burchard, I don’t see that you’ve explained anything.”

  Burchard spread his hands. “Look, this is what happened. You came in and asked me about that house and that woman and I lied about not knowing her because, hell, I can’t go around letting it be known that some of the people I call on don’t mind a little play on the side. I’ve .got that sentence on my record and the moment I’m asked about me and some woman, especially some married woman, I'm going to play dumb. That’s the whole trouble. Once I said I didn’t know her, I was stuck with it. I kept getting in deeper. Well, I don’t want to admit anything like this, but what you’re pegging me for isn’t fooling around, it’s murder. You can do what you want to me for making plays, but I’m not getting sent up for knocking off some dame. I’d never do a thing like that.”

  Fellows said, “I’m still waiting for your explanation.”

  “I was out making calls, see? So I decide I’ll hit that area. I never touched it before and it looked ripe. So the first house I stop at is this number two, comer house. I park in front and get out my demonstrator and lug it up to the stoop. Well, this woman opens the door. She’s a nice-looking woman, not beautiful, but good-looking and well built. I don’t want you to get the idea, Chief, that I make passes at everyone who opens a door, but a man gets so he can tell when he meets a woman if she’d be interested in a pass. I’m telling you, she was interested. I don’t know that I blame her, living out in the sticks alone like that. You tell me she was married. Well, I didn’t honestly know that when I met her. In fact, I thought she wasn’t married on account of she wasn’t wearing any ring. So when she acted friendly-like, really glad to see me, you can’t blame me for figuring, O.K., anything she wants, I’ll take her up on. This girl, I want to tell you, wasn’t any kid. She knew her way around as well as I did. We spoke the same language right from the start and it was obvious what we were talking about wasn’t going to be vacuum cleaners.

  “Well, she gets out a bottle and I take off my coat and tie and get ready to make myself at home. Now what I mean about her knowing the score is she brings in the liquor and she looks out the window and she says I should move the car. She thinks it would look bad for some salesman’s car to be sitting out front of the house for an hour or more. If I put it in the drive, it’ll look more like I belong there. She says, especially, there’s a nosey dame across the way who’d be sure to notice the car and start drawing conclusions. So I move the car into the drive and just when I’m getting out, up comes this grocery truck and a guy gets out with a box full of food. I can’t see any point in him bringing it in the house and maybe wondering who I am and what it’s all about, her and me there alone. You see, I don’t know what’s what about the place. All I know is the girl’s name is Joan—Joan Campbell, she calls herself. I don’t know what she’s doing there or anything else —meaning whether she’s married or lives with her family, or lives there alone, or what, so I don’t want to do anything that’s going to look out of the way. I pay for the groceries myself, so the kid won’t be coming in and I send him on his way and go back inside. She paid me back for them as soon as I came in. I wasn’t even buying her anything.

  “So anyway, I was there until nearly five o’clock, I guess. Then it’s time for me to go and I lug the demonstrator back to the car and take off. O.K. You’re wondering why I wasn’t making any more calls in that area. Well, do you think I’d call on someone else and then have the neighbors know I’m selling vacuum cleaners? Me, spending an hour and a half with that Joan Campbell? I got a little more respect for women than that. And besides, it was quitting time anyway and besides that, well, who the hell wants to go sell vacuum cleaners after that visit? I’m asking you.” He paused and looked around. “Now that’s my story and it’s the truth.”

  Fellows sat very still for a good many seconds. He wanted to punch holes in the tale, but he didn’t quite know how. The trouble was, it could actually have happened that way. It was a perfectly plausible explanation and there wasn’t one loose thread he could seize on. A woman who’d live with a man under an assumed name would be quite capable of an adventure like that, so the Burchard story even took her character into consideration. Finally he said, “You made no attempt to see her again?”

  “I starred her name. That was just in case I was in the neighborhood and felt in the mood, but I don’t often go back to places.”

  “And when did you learn she was dead?”

  “When you told me tonight, Chief. I swear, that’s the first I heard of it.”

  “It’s been in the papers.”

  “I don’t read the papers much. I might have seen it, but I wouldn’t have connected it. Honest I wouldn’t.”

  “One of those photographs in your collection a picture of her?”

  “Hell no. Those are just pictures I picked up over the years, from high school and the war on. I guess the latest one is five years old.”

  Wilks asked a few questions then, but his were no more pointed than the chief’s. The story was believable and, against their will, they found themselves believing it. One thing, of course, remained. They would show him to Raymond Watly in the morning.

&
nbsp; There was one other thing, and Fellows did it that evening after Burchard was returned to his cell. He copied all the Townsend addresses from Burchard’s record notebook. It would help break down his story if they found the murder victim had lived at one of them.

  “At least,” Wilks said as they departed from headquarters late that night, “we can guess the ‘J’ in her initials stands for ‘Joan.’ ”

  CHAPTER XVII

  Tuesday, March 3

  Tuesday was mild and almost warm with a bright sun eating up the snow. When Raymond Watly pulled into the yard behind the town hall at quarter after nine, the streets were slushy and the gutters runny. He came down the concrete steps wearing rubbers and an unbuttoned coat, pulled open the basement door, and entered. “The chief wants to see me. I’m Raymond Watly,” he explained to Sergeant Unger.

  Fellows came out of his office with Wilks, greeted the man, and explained the nature of the situation. They took him down the long corridor past the empty cells to Clyde Burchard. Burchard, reading on his bunk, got up and made a bitter comment, and Watly looked him over carefully. The real estate agent shook his head. “That’s not the man, Chief. That’s not the John Campbell I met.”

  They brought Watly back to the main room and he explained that there was a bit of a resemblance, the shape of the face and mouth, but that was as far as it went. They thanked him and he went away again.

  Burchard wasn’t released immediately, however. Fellows wasn’t overlooking the possibility of an accomplice, and he would not be satisfied with Burchard’s innocence until the Townsend addresses in his report book had been checked. There were sixteen such listed, and two men had been sent out that morning to investigate each one.

  Meanwhile, other activities were taking place. With the hunt for the man in the case at a dead end. the search was redoubled for the woman’s identity. A request was sent to the Bureau of Internal Revenue in Hartford for names and addresses of any woman in Townsend. Connecticut with the initials J.S. Three other men were also in Townsend, working with Chief Ramsey, asking questions of shopkeepers and business establishments, trying to find someone who worked for or traded with such people, Fellows had his men pay particular attention to beauty parlors and drug stores.