The Case of the Petticoat Murder

Chapter Thirteen

IN THE muster room at the station house, a five-minute phone call to the Tombs confirmed Stan's and my foreboding that, as Stan put it later, Johnny Farmer's bad news had been much too bad not to be true.

He had been arrested yesterday afternoon on suspicion in connection with a two-month-old mugging, held in custody while a witness to the crime was summoned from Jersey, and released at 9:02 this morning. And although Johnny Farmer jeered at us incessantly during the entire time it took us to transfer him to the Burglary Squad, neither Stan nor I had very much to say, either to Farmer or to each other.

While Stan helped the Burglary detective arrange for the removal of the earrings, handbag and strongbox to Lost Property, I phoned Lost Property to ask for an expedited check on the handbag to determine its ownership. There was every likelihood Farmer had stolen it elsewhere and lied about finding it in the strongbox in an attempt to conceal still another burglary.

“Oh, that miserable damned Farmer,” Stan said, sitting down at his desk. “I'll never forget that bastard as long as I live.”

“He'll be thinking of you, too,” I said. “All the time he's up there in Sing Sing, making fifty cents a day.”

“You're a real big comfort to me,” he said. “You really are.”

There were several messages on my call spike. I separated the ones in connection with squeals upon which Stan and I had been working before we caught the homicide, and tossed them over to him.

“A little something to keep you occupied,” I said

“Thanks so much,” he said.

One of the remaining messages was from the tech chief and said that the two clear fingerprints found on the bottle in Nadine's apartment had been identified as her own.

A second message was from Ted Norton, the modus operandi expert, who notified me that a thorough search of the files had turned up no sex criminal whose M.O. satisfied the requirements I have given him.

There were two notes asking me to call back, one from BCI and the other from Dr. Vincent Baretti at Bellevue.

I decided to call Dr. Baretti first.

“Just got your message, Vince,” I said when he answered. “How's it going?”

“You can never find a policeman when you want one,” he said. “I left that message for you more than an hour ago.”

“New York cops are no damned good,” I said. “Everybody knows that.”

“It's a fact,” he said. “Next to M.E.'s, they're the worst”

“You got something for me, Vince?” I asked, signaling Stan to listen in on the extension.

“Nothing very interesting,” Vince said. “I just thought you might like to have a little preliminary pitch on the cause of death.”

“Off the record, of course?”

“Of course. Nothing's official yet, but at least you'll have something to work on.”

The official report of the autopsy sometimes takes as long as three or four days, and the reports of the toxicologists even longer.

“All set,” I said, opening my notebook. “How'd she die, Vince? Fractured larynx?”

“No,” he said. “Her larynx was fractured, all rights — and pretty thoroughly too. But that isn't what killed her, Pete. She died of a ruptured liver.”

“I'll be damned,” I said.

“Yes,” Vince said. “I made the same remark.”

“When you say ruptured, do you mean from a blow?”

“From a blow, Pete. From some kind of direct force.”

“But there wasn't a single mark on that girl's body,” I said. “Not a damned one.”

“It happens that way sometimes,” he said. “In fact, I might even go so far as to say it happens that way just about as often as not.”

“Without even so much as reddening up the skin a little?”

“Yes, Pete — without leaving any external evidence at all.”

“Wouldn't it take quite a bit of force, though?” Stan broke in. “Look at prizefighters, Doc. They soak up a terrific pounding down there every time they get in the ring.”

“That's true, Stan,” Vince said. “But this girl's no prizefighter. The same-blow that killed her probably wouldn't do any more to a fighter than make him grunt.”

“For God's sake,” Stan said. “Who'd have figured a thing like that?”

“Not I, frankly,” Vince said. “I was just as surprised as you are.”

“Any other indications of a beating, Vince?” I asked.

“No, none at all.”

“How about the alky count?”

“The tox men took care of that before they did anything else, Pete. She'd had two — maybe three — ounces; no more.”

“Hardly enough to know she'd been drinking.” I said.

“Hardly enough for her to know, chances are. Others might be able to see the effect. It would depend on how used she was to liquor.”

“How about dope?” Stan asked. “She didn't have any needle punctures; but how about the other stuff? Orals.”

“I very much doubt it,” Vince said. “The tox men may be able to give us a report on that before morning.”

“Any reason to think she was raped?” I asked.

“No, Pete. At least there's no positive evidence of it — not that that means very much.” He paused. “And for whatever it's worth to you, she's borne at least one child.”

“I know,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “I think that's just about it, Pete. If we come up with anything more, I'll let you know.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We'll appreciate it.”

“Ruptured liver,” I said as I hung up the phone. “That's the last thing that would have occurred to me.”

“Well, at least we know why she didn't put up any fight when somebody dropped that petticoat around her neck,” Stan said. “She was already dead.”

“Yeah. And if she was already dead, why wouldn't the guy just string her up on the rope? Why bother with the petticoat?”

“Let's don't start kicking that one around again, Pete. All it'll buy you is a headache.”

I dialed BCI and asked for the extension noted on the second message asking me to call back.

BCI told me they were still working on the check I'd requested on Dr. Clifford Campbell and that, so far, they had turned up nothing of interest. Campbell's personal life was, apparently, exemplary in every way, and he was obviously as highly regarded by his neighbors in Scarsdale as he was by the members of his profession. As for his acquisition of a teen-age wife, it seemed to have made for a fairly awkward social life; nothing more.

BCI's call had, however, been primarily in connection with Dr. Campbell's wife, whose check they had just completed, and about whom they had turned up no derogatory information whatever. Aside from my strong suspicion that she had falsified the application for her wedding license by giving her age as eighteen, her personal life — at least to a detective — was as uninteresting as her husband's.

Susan Campbell, nee Susan Leeds, had married Campbell in Scarsdale eleven months ago. The report on her went back some three years and showed a steady attendance at a variety of evening courses, including one in typing, and an even greater variety of short-term and part-time jobs. The picture BCI had put together was that of a girl determined to improve herself in as many areas as she could, and her life, for such a pretty girl, seemed to have been an exceptionally spartan one. There was every indication that she had been both high-minded and single-minded, and that she had had few girl friends and even fewer boy friends. She had met Clifford Campbell when an employment agency sent her to relieve Campbell's regular receptionist during the latter's two week vacation. Later, the receptionist had resigned, and Susan had once again been sent as a temporary replacement.

The replacement had been fairly temporary, at that: two months after going back to Campbell's office, she had married him. Whereupon Susan had, in turn, been replaced by a Miss Edna Hardesty, the disdainful, chinless brunette who had eavesdropped on Stan's and my talk with both Dr. and Mrs. Campbell in the doctor's inner office.

The phone out in the squad commander's office had started to ring a moment or so before I hung up, and Stan walked out to answer it.

I took the receipted bill from the Joyner Translation Bureau from my pocket and looked it over again, wondering whether it was important enough to have someone from the Joyner outfit open the office and give us a look at the printed matter Nadine Ellison had paid to have translated. It was now a few minutes past eleven; by the time we got hold of someone and had him locate the office copy of the translation, we would have killed at least another hour or two.

I was still mulling it over when Stan came from Barney Fells' office.

“That was Gus Heinz, at Headquarters,” he said. “He tried to get you on your phone, but it was tied up.” He grinned at me happily. “Our boy's got a mad on, Pete.”

“Which boy is that?”

“Burt Ellison.”

“Burt, eh? St. Louis come up with some more dope on him?”

“No,” he said. “Ellison called Headquarters to raise hell about the cops letting somebody else beat him to his wife.”

“You mean Nadine's husband is here in New York?”

“He sure as hell is, Pete. He didn't stay on the wire long enough for Headquarters to trace the call, but he was on there long enough to give them a piece of his mind.” He shook his head. “Boy, that guy must be a real wack. He said all he'd lived for was to kill Nadine with his bare hands, and now that somebody had cheated him out of it, he was going to find out who it was and kill him.”

“Crazy isn't a strong enough word,” I said. “When St. Louis said that Nadine's having that Mongolian baby drove Ellison out of his mind, they weren't fooling.”

“St. Louis was on the ball when they figured he'd hit for New York, too.”

“What's Headquarters doing about it, Stan?”

“What can they do? Just get out a supplementary alarm on the pickup for him — and hope for the best.”

“If we only had a picture of the guy,” I said. “That description we've got is next to worthless.”

“It'll help, once we get him, though. If we come up with a suspect with a scar on his wrist and a tattoo on his shoulder, we'll have it made.”

“Sure,” I said. “Once we come up with such a guy.”

“We will,” he said. “We've got to.”

“It occur to you that he might be trying to throw us off?”

“Sure it did,” he said. “I keep the old pineal body oiled up all the time, Pete. He could have killed her himself, and then made that call in the hopes of having us chase our tails from here on in.”

“You pretty hot on him, as the killer?”

“Not just pretty hot, Pete. Damned hot.”

There was a commotion in the hall outside, and a moment later two detectives dragged in a small, emaciated-looking man who flailed about wildly, both eyes tightly shut, his mouth working horribly and silently.

“Tried to push his wife out the window,” one of the detectives said as he and his partner pulled the struggling man toward the door that led out to the interrogation room. “When we got there, she was hanging on the ledge with her fingertips and old lover-boy here was trying to mash her fingers off with a book end.”

The detectives and their prisoner disappeared through the door and I sat wondering what Nadine and Burt Ellison's life had been like before the fateful night their car had stalled on that lonely road out in Missouri. The chances were I would never know.

My eyes fell on the momentarily forgotten bill from the Joyner Translation Bureau, and I picked it up and handed it to Stan.

“You feel like a little change of pace?” I said.

“I feel more like a four-pound steak. Why?”

“No reason you can't have both,” I said. “The steak first, of course.”

“You want me to check out this bill?”

“It's all we've got to chew on, right at the moment”

“Except a steak.”

“I'm going to try to knock off a little of the paper work,” I said. “If you asked me real nice, Stan, I just might let you stay and help me.”

He got to his feet so suddenly he overturned his chair. “Not that, by God,” he said, grinning. “Consider this bill checked out, Pete. I'm already halfway there.”

“Call in if you come up with anything.”

“I'll do even more than that,” he said as he went through the door. “I'll bring you back a new typewriter ribbon.”

I took Nadine Ellison's folder from the file cabinet, rolled a fresh report form into my Underwood, and got down to work.

When the phone rang, twenty minutes later, I had finished two reports and was starting on a third.

It was Sid Kaplan, one of the detectives on permanent duty at Communications.

“Got a little something for you, Pete,” he said. “Whether it's crank, or spite, or the McCoy, I wouldn't know.”

“What is it, Sid?”

“A telegram,” he said. “You got a pencil handy?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“Well, it's addressed to Detective Selby, Police Department, New York City,” he said. “Guess the sender didn't know how else to reach you.”

“Who's it from?”

“It's unsigned,” he said. “Anyhow, it reads, 'Murderer Nadine Ellison is Albert Miller. Stop. Eight Fifteen West Seventy-fourth. Stop. Evidence bottom desk drawer his apartment. Stop.'”

“Is that all of it, Sid?” I said.

“That's the works.”

“Anybody checking with Western Union for a line on the sender?”

“We've tried that already. It's no go, Pete. The wire was phoned in from a public pay phone. The sender paid for it just as he would a toll call.”

“The operator notice anything distinctive about his voice?”

“Nothing that'd set it apart from any other. She says he sounded a little hoarse, and that she had to keep asking him to talk louder.”

“Probably disguising it,” I said. “Maybe using a handkerchief or something over the mouthpiece.”

“Yeah. You come across any Albert Millers so far?”

“No.”

“Well, the chances are it's just some sorehead taking out a little spite on him. Mr. Miller's probably got some enemies, and his enemies have got some ideas. We get more spite stuff all the time, it seems like.”

“Still, the sender knew who was carrying the squeal,” I said. “Usually spite calls end up with the Commissioner or the Chief of Police.”

“Or the Mayor,” Sid said. “He gets a lot of interesting stuff, that guy.”

“Thanks, Sid,” I said. “I'll check it out.”

“Well, don't break your neck on it. One will get you fifty that the worst thing you find in Miller's desk will be a couple of dirty books.”

“Maybe I'll wish I'd taken you up,” I said.

“I doubt it,” he said. “Between you and me, you're just not that lucky.”

“There's always a first time,” I said. “Thanks again, Sid.”

After I had phoned the BCI for a check on Albert Miller, I returned Nadine Ellison's folder to the homicide file, speared a note on Stan's desk pen to let him know where he could reach me, and left the squad room for a trip uptown to West Seventy-fourth Street.