The Case of the Petticoat Murder

Chapter Nine

EVERYTHING in Dr. Clifford Campbell's air-conditioned outer office — the unframed abstractions on the walls, the softly playing hi-fi console opposite the row of gold-brocaded chairs, and the carefully groomed brunette receptionist — told you the moment you stepped through the door that this was no place to bring either a minor ailment or a minor bankroll.

“Well, it sure ain't no rabbit hutch,” Stan said as we crossed to the desk. “It looks like brain surgery pays off.”

The receptionist had hair like fresh-washed coal and a tiny, almost perfectly round face with almost no chin at all. She started to smile, then took a closer look at us and apparently decided we weren't worth it.

“Yes?” she said.

I took out my folder and showed her my badge. “Police officers,” I said. “We'd like to talk to Dr. Campbell.”

She looked at the badge as if it were an old tennis shoe “What do you wish to see him about?”

“We'll tell him all about it,” I said.

She glanced uncertainly at the door behind her, and then at the intercom on her desk. “Doctor Campbell is quite busy,” she said. “I'm really not sure he has the time to—”

Stan moved toward the door. “In here, Miss?” he said.

“Just a moment,” she said hurriedly, depressing a key on the intercom. “Doctor, there are two police officers here. Shall I — Yes, sir.” She glanced up at me disdainfully. “Doctor Campbell says you may go in.”

“Nice of him,” Stan said holding the door for me. “After you, Pete.”

The inner office was smaller, warmer, and contained only a low blond-wood desk, three matching chairs, and an examining table. There was nothing on top of the desk but a pen set, an intercom, a huge brass ash tray, and a glass jar filled with some kind of colorless fluid and containing a small, curious object that looked a little like a dried apricot.

The man who came from behind the desk to shake hands with us was a bit younger than I had expected — about forty, I judged — a stocky, barrel-chested man with prematurely white hair, a ruddy, strong-featured face, and very white, very even teeth.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said pleasantly, smiling first at Stan and then at me. “I'm Dr. Campbell.”

“Detective Selby,” I said. “This is my partner, Detective Rayder.”

“A pleasure,” Campbell said. “Please sit down.”

Stan and I took chairs, and Campbell went back to sit behind his desk.

“A very warm day,” he said. “I understand it's over ninety.”

“About ninety-three,” Stan said. “Nice and cool in here, though.”

“Yes,” Campbell said, still smiling. “Yes, it is.”

The three of us sat looking at one another. There was a long silence. Outside, the receptionist was pecking away at something on her typewriter.

“Well,” Campbell said, smiling a little more broadly, “what can I do for you?”

“You know a Nadine Ellison, Doctor Campbell?” I asked.

He started to shake his head, then pressed his lower lip between thumb and forefinger and tugged at it thoughtfully. “Nadine Ellison,” he said.

“Hmmm. No, I can't say that I do.”

I glanced at Stan to see whether he had noticed what seemed to me to be one of the least skilled fragments of acting I'd seen in some time.

It was hard to tell about Stan; he just sat there, looking a little surprised, staring at the small, apricotlike object in the glass jar on Campbell's desk.

Campbell saw the direction of his gaze, and jumped in fast. “Rather intriguing, isn't it?” he said.

“It looks like somebody's cauliflower ear,” Stan said. “Whose is it? That painter that got hard up and sent off his ear to somebody?”

Campbell laughed. “No, I'm afraid poor Van Gogh's celebrated ear is yet to be located.”

“What is it, then?” Stan said. “A little brain of some kind?”

“Part of one, yes,” Campbell said. “It's known as a pineal body.” He glanced at the jar fondly. “Actually, it's not so much a part of the brain as an appendage to it, it's all that's left of what, among our ancestors, must have been a very important sense organ.”

“Pineal body,” Stan said musingly. “What'd it do?”

“No one knows,” Campbell said happily, smiling at me to involve me in the discussion. “It's just another of the body's many mysteries.”

“Has everybody got one?” Stan asked.

“Yes,” Campbell said. “All craniate vertebrates have pineal bodies, Mr. Rayder.” He leaned back in his chair, beaming at both of us — a clear case of a man with an almost compulsive determination to delay the inevitable, and having a pretty pathetic time of it.

“I suppose it's been the subject of more speculation and controversy than almost anything else about the body,” he went on. “Take Descartes, for instance. As you know, he was interested in a great many things besides philosophy.”

“Yes,” Stan said, nodding solemnly. “That's very true.”

“Among other things,” Campbell said, “he studied the nervous system, trying to find the seat of the human soul. When he arrived at the pineal body, he was convinced his search for the soul had ended.”

“Why don't you want to talk to us, Doctor Campbell?” I asked.

He glanced at me, his smile fading. “But I am talking to you,” he said. “What do you mean?”

“All this business about pineal bodies,” I said. “What are you trying to put off?”

He looked at me, a little hurt. “I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about. Aren't you gentlemen here in connection with a police benefit of some kind?”

As an actor, he was a wonderful surgeon.

“Another thing that pineal body looks like,” Stan said, “is a great big wart.”

Campbell didn't even glance at him. “You asked me about someone named Nadine Ellison. I know no such person, and never have. What would you have me say?”

“Perhaps you know her under another name,” I said.

“That's possible. What does she look like?”

I described Nadine as graphically as I could.

He shook his head. “I'm reasonably certain I know no one of that description,” he said. “I may have met her casually at a party, or in a group somewhere, of course, but I really don't know anyone like that.”

“This wouldn't be a case of meeting someone casually,” I said.

“May I ask what this is all about? I think there must be limits of some kind, Mr. Selby, even in police work.”

“There are,” I said. “And I'm very much aware of them.”

“I'm delighted to hear it,” he said. “In that case, perhaps you'll make me a party to your secret.”

“This is a homicide investigation, Dr. Campbell,” Stan said. “Miss Ellison has been murdered.”

Campbell lowered his eyes, aparently without willing it. “Yes?” he said. “Well, in what way does that concern me?”

“We're interested in a conversation you had with her,” I said.

“I thought I made myself quite clear, Mr. Selby. I don't know this girl. How could I have had a conversation with her?”

“On the phone,” Stan said.

“No,” Campbell said. “Neither on the phone nor in any other way. I tell you I simply do not know anyone named Nadine Ellison.”

“Day before yesterday,” Stan said. “In the middle of the morning.”

Some of Campbell's smile came back, but it was not the same kind of smile it had been before. “You're certain about the time, are you?”

“Yes,” Stan said.

“Then let me be the first to disillusion you, Mr. Rayder,” Campbell said. “Apparently you are not quite so infallible as you seem to think.”

“I'm waiting to be disillusioned,” Stan said.

“Yes, and I'm only too happy to accommodate you. It happens that I wasn't here, Mr. Rayder. I wasn't in the office that day until well into the afternoon. If my memory serves me, I didn't get here till some time after three.”

“Where were you?” Stan asked.

“Home,” Campbell said. “Does that satisfy you, Mr. Rayder?”

“Yes, it does,” Stan said. “Because that's where you did your talking — from your place in Scarsdale.”

“I talked to no one, Mr. Rayder,” Campbell said. “And I'll tell you frankly that I'm getting more than a little tired of—” He paused abruptly, then nodded, as if something had just occurred to him. “I–I did get a phone call that morning.”

“Attaboy,” Stan said. “That's more like it.”

“When I said I didn't talk to anyone, I meant I didn't really hold a conversation with anyone,” Campbell said. “But I did receive a call. In fact, I received four of them.”

“And all of them from Nadine,” Stan said.

“No,” Campbell said, “At least that isn't the name she gave me.”

“What name did she use?” I asked.

“Norma… uh… Edwards. That's it. Norma Edwards.”

I nodded. “Same initials,” I said.

Campbell was trying hard for the smile he'd lost a few moments ago. “It would seem your Miss Ellison did use a different name, after all.”

“You say she called you, but you didn't hold a conversation with her?” I said. “Why not?”

“For one thing, I didn't know her. And besides, it was a crank call. I've never received anything quite like it.”

“My partner and I are old hands at crank calls,” I said. “Tell us about it.”

“There's really very little to tell. When I picked up the phone, she asked if I were Doctor Clifford Campbell. When I said yes, she began to curse me. I tried to break in, but it was impossible. Finally, when she'd run out of breath, I told her she obviously had the wrong number, or that she'd confused me with some other Doctor Campbell.”

“And that was the extent of the call?” I asked.

“Not quite. She said I was the Doctor Campbell she'd meant to call, and that her name was Norma Edwards. Then she began to curse me again, and I hung up. She called back three times within the next five or ten minutes. I finally had to take the phone off the hook.”

“She threaten you in any way, Doctor Campbell?” I asked.

“Yes, she did,” he said. “And quite vehemently, too.”

“Can you be a little more specific?”

“She threatened me with all sorts of dire things. She included just about everything from a broken nose to the Eternal Fire.”

“Did she by any chance say you were going to be the sorriest son of a bitch that ever lived?”

“I believe she did make me some such promise, yes. It would be hard to think of something she didn't say.”

“You think she may have been drinking?”

“No. In my opinion, the woman was demented.”

“What was the general subject matter of the call?” I asked.

“I've just told you,” Campbell said. “Curses and threats.”

“My partner means, what did they apply to?” Stan said.

“I know what he means,” Campbell said. “But this was simply some kind of insane purging.” He spread his hands. “That's a purely legal term, of course, 'insane' — not a medical one. But nevertheless, it'll serve as a handy label.”

“Put it this way,” I said. “If we had a recording of that conversation, and went over it word by word, do you think we could find even so much as one tiny phrase other than threats and curses?”

“Do you have such a recording, Mr. Selby?”

“It wouldn't be unheard of,” I said.

“You do have one,” he said. “Otherwise you wouldn't have been able to repeat what she said about my being the sorriest son of a bitch alive.”

“Please answer the question, Doctor,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I mean, no, there was absolutely nothing other than threats and curses, except for her asking my name and telling me her own. Her assumed name, I realize now.”

“Have you any idea why she should have picked you for such a call?” I asked.

“None whatsoever.”

“Did she ever call you here at your office?” Stan asked.

“No.”

“There were just those four calls you told us about?” I asked.

“Yes. She never called again.”

“Is there anything in your personal life that might have prompted someone else to put her up to it?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If you were having some kind of trouble with anyone, it's possible he or she might have gotten Nadine to call you.”

“You mean, a spite call?”

“Yes. It happens quite often, Doctor Campbell.”

“Yes, I suppose it does. But I don't think that was the case. My personal and professional life are both quite tranquil, Mr. Selby. And even so, my colleagues and acquaintances are hardly the kind who would even consider such a thing.”

“Wrong,” Stan put it. “People will do anything, Doctor, and you damn well know it.”

“You commute every day between here and Scarsdale?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I have living quarters here. Whenever I want to stay in the city, I—”

His intercom buzzed and he leaned forward to press down the key. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Campbell is here, sir,” the receptionist's voice said.

Campbell frowned, then looked at me questioningly. “My wife is here,” he said. “We're going out to dinner.”

I didn't say anything.

“Will this take much longer?”

“I don't know,” I said.

He hesitated, then said, “Miss Hardesty, please tell my wife I'll be with her as soon as I can.”

“We'd like to ask her a few questions,” I said. “Why not ask her to come in?”

“Questions? What on earth about?”

“About your phone calls front Nadine Ellison.”

“This is ridiculous! My wife knows nothing about them.”

“We'll keep it brief, Doctor,” I said. “Ask her to step

He pressed the intercom key again. “Ask my wife to come in, Miss Hardesty,” he said. “Mr. Selby, I must tell you I consider this very much uncalled for. I'm not at all sure I won't find it necessary to write a letter to the Commissioner.”

“Be sure you make a copy for the American Medical Association,” Stan said.

A young girl stepped into the office, and I found myself glancing past her, expecting her to be followed by an older woman, who would be Mrs. Campbell. But there was no one behind her, and as she closed the door and approached us, I started getting used to the idea that this could actually be Mrs. Clifford Campbell. Middle-aged men married to teen-age girls may be no novelty in other parts of the country; but in New York City, at least on Campbell's social level, they are.

Mrs. Campbell was a honey-blonde, with deep-blue eyes beneath almost incredibly long lashes, a heart-shaped face that most people would call pretty rather than beautiful, and a firmly-rounded, provocative body molded by a strapless sheathlike dress of exactly the same deep-blue as her eyes. She was, I felt certain, no more than eighteen, and perhaps not quite that.

Campbell, Stan, and I had all come to our feet, of course, and now Mrs. Campbell walked to her husband, went up on her toes to kiss him on the mouth, and then turned to smile at us, her arm around his waist.

“Susan, these men are police officers,” Campbell said. “My wife, gentlemen.”

“Selby,” I said.. “This is my partner, Detective Rayder.”

She was not a very large girl, and, standing so lose to her husband, she seemed almost dwarfed.

“What's wrong, Clifford?” she asked, tilting her head to one side in order to smile up at him. “Has one of your patients been bad?”

“Somebody's patient has been up to something,” he said sourly. “Somebody's mental patient, I should say.”

She nodded, in that way women do when they don't really understand something said to them, and yet don't care enough about it to ask for an explanation. “It's getting late, darling,” she said, glancing at a wrist watch built into a wide gold bracelet. “if we expect to meet Bob and Peg in time for cocktails…”

Campbell cleared his throat, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “We'll have time,” he said, scowling at me. “Susan, Mr. Selby here would like to ask you a question or two.”

She turned back to face me. “Really?” she said. “Me? What in heaven's name about?”

“About that ridiculous phone call I got the other day,” Campbell said. “Why they should think it necessary to talk to either of us, I do not know.”

“We have to follow a certain routine, Mrs. Campbell,” I said. “You realize that, of course.”

She nodded. “We! yes, I suppose you do. But what can I tell you about a silly thing like that telephone call?”

“Did you overhear the call, Mrs. Campbell?” I asked.

“Why, yes,” she said. “That is, I heard my husband's end of it. Why? What's so important about it?”

“How many times did she call back?”

“Now just a moment, Selby,” Campbell said. “I won't have you—”

“Clifford!” she said, her eyes widening. “What's happened?”

“Nothing for you to concern yourself about,” he said.

“But something must have,” she said. “Why are these men—”

“Nothing has happened, Susan,” he said. “It's just that I resent such a high-handed way of going about things.”

She took her arm from around Campbel's waist and stood looking at me quizzically. “Will you be good enough to tell me what this is all about, Mr. Selby?”

“I'd appreciate an answer to my question, Mrs. Campbell.” I said. “How many times did this girl call back?”

She bit at her lip for a moment. “Three or four,” she said tightly. “Three, I think.”

“You know a Nadine Ellison?” Stan asked,

She shook her head. “No.”

“How about Norma Edwards?” I said.

“No, I don't know any girl named Norma Edwards, either,” she said, her face flushing angrily. “Will you please tell me what's going on?”

“One more question, Doctor Campbell,” I said. “Where were you between two and six this morning?”

“Clifford, I want to know what they're talking about!” Mrs. Campbell demanded. “Why won't you tell me?”

“I was here,” Campbell said. “In our apartment at the rear of this office. My wife and I went to the theater, came straight home, and went to bed.”

“That right, Mrs. Campbell?” Stan asked.

The angry flush on her cheeks was dangerously high now and her blue eyes seemed almost black. “Of course it is!” she said, her voice beginning to rise. “Why do you—” She turned suddenly and reached up to put both hands on Campbell's shoulders. “Darling, something terrible has happened. I just know it!”

I caught Stan's eye again, then turned toward the door. “That's about all, I guess,” I said. “Thanks very much, Doctor Campbell.”

He wasn't looking at me; he was patting his wife's shoulder in exactly the same way a father might pat that of a very small daughter.

On our way through the outer office, I heard the click of the intercom key and looked back at the brunette receptionist. Her face was even more flushed than Mrs. Campbell's had been, and it occurred to me that she had very probably been eavesdropping on the entire conversation.

“Well,” Stan said as he followed me into the self-service elevator and pressed the button for the street floor, “what do you think?”

“I think they make a very handsome couple,” I said.

“You and I should be so lucky,” he said. “I could have looked at that Susan Campbell the rest of the night.”

“About eighteen, would you say?”

“If that. When they're all dressed up that way, it's hard to tell.”

“But no older?”

“Hell, no,” he said as we stepped out into the lobby. “But you still haven't told me what you thought.”

“I think Campbell is lying like a rug,” I said.

“Ditto,” Stan said. “Make that double.”

“He was expecting us, Stan. All that talk about pineal bodies with a couple of cops was just a stall.”

“I know,” Stan said. “The guy was sweating plenty.”

“The question is, what does he have to sweat about?”

“Like they say, it's a good question.” He shook his head. “You wouldn't think a guy with a wife like that Susan would bother bedding down with anybody else, would you?”

“Who is it that keeps saying people will do anything, Stan?”

“Knock it off. You think Campbell might have been renting bedroom time from Nadine?”

“He knew her,” I said. “Whether it was from renting her bed for quickies with some other woman is something else again.”

“With stuff like that at home, the guy would be nuts.”

“We'll find out,” I said, pausing in front of the phone booth just inside the street door. “And the sooner the better. I'm going to call BCI and ask them to put a couple of their men on him.”

“A tail?”

“Not necessarily. All I want is a rundown on everything that guy's done and thought in the last six months,”

“Man, will BCI love you for that.”

“It has to be done.”

“You're really hyped up on him, aren't you?”

“Not as hyped up as I'd be if Nadine didn't have a psycho husband loose somewhere. But I do have a feeling about him, Stan. I think the least he's done is pay rent on Nadine's mattress. If she'd been working in a little blackmail or something, he could be the one we're looking for.”

“If she was in the blackmail business, there's no telling how many candidates we've got. Only trouble is, we don't know who they are.”

“We know who Campbell is,” I said. “And we know Nadine threatened him.”

“I was kind of surprised when he admitted that,” Stan said. “My hopes went way down.”

“He thought he'd better admit what he realized we already knew, and hope we didn't know any more.”

I went into the phone booth, dialed BCI, and asked for the check through on Clifford Campbell. Then I decided to go all the way, and asked for one on his wife.

“Better call the squad room,” Stan said as I hung up. “Maybe there's been a little action.”

I'd run out of coins, so I borrowed one from Stan, called the squad room, and asked the detective who answered whether there were any messages for Stan or me.

“There's just one,” he said. “But it ought to make you mighty happy.”

“What is it?”

“Benny Bucket's back in town.”

Benny's last name was Buckner, but I'd never heard him called anything but Benny Bucket since the night, now almost ten years ago, when he had very nearly succeeded in braining a hotel porter with a fire bucket. He was a petty thief, a conscienceless, friendless, ferret-faced little man who had, in the past, been one of my most valued stools.

“You mighty happy, like I said?”

“Mighty happy.”

“That's what I figured.”

“I thought Benny was out in San Francisco,” I said. “Somebody told me he saw him hanging around the North Beach section somewhere.”

“Not any more, Pete. The guy wants you to call him. He says it's the biggest thing you'll ever hear.”

“Small doubt,” I said. “He leave a number?”

“He said you could reach him at the old one.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I'll give him a buzz.”

I hung up and glanced at Stan. “You got any more change?”

He fished in his pocket. “Here, for God's sake. Why don't you just give the operator your badge number, like everybody else?”

“Bad memory. Benny Bucket's back, Stan.”

“That who you're calling?” He shook his head. “Your pineal body must be acting up, Pete. That's the only answer.”

“Hello?” It was Benny's voice, soft and whispery from his having been struck on the windpipe by the same hotel porter whom Benny had flattened with the bucket

“Pete Selby, Benny,” I said.

“Pete! Lord, ain't it good to hear your voice again! I was saying to some of the boys just the other day. Boys, I said—”

“Never mind the grease,” I said. “You got something for me?”

“Have got something for you! Just wait'll you hear I” He paused, then went on guardedly. “You're not calling from the squad room, are you, Pete? All them phones are bugged.”

“I'm pretty busy, Benny,” I said. “If you've got something to say to me, say it.”

“Well, I just wanted to ask you about that Ellison hit, Pete. You're on it, aren't you?”

I motioned for Stan to lean closer to the phone. “You know I am, Benny,” I said. “Talk a little.”

“This is for points,” he said. “Right, Pete?”

He meant that, by giving me a lead of some kind, he would be banking good will against some future time when he might very well need all the good will he could muster.

“Everybody loves you already, Benny,” I said. “The only trouble is, you're so quiet.”

“Jesus, Pete, you're a wonderful guy. You know that

“Talk,” I said

“Yeah, I was just going to ask if anybody scored some jewelry off the Ellison girl. If they did, you and me's in business.”

“What kind of jewelry, Benny?”

“I wouldn't whistle this for nobody but you, Pete. I mean it. Nobody in this world.”

“Benny—”

“Sapphires,” he said, as if the word awed him. “Big, gorgeous sapphire earrings.”