“Nope. Not yet.”
Fellows reached to the desk for the phone. “Let’s hope he’s got something by now.”
When MacFarlane was finally on the line, he sounded apologetic. “I don’t mean to keep you waiting, but it wasn’t an easy job, Fred. I’m still writing the report.”
“Don’t make me wait for the mails, Jim. Give it to me now.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry to say I just don’t know the cause of death. Whatever it was it must have been inflicted on parts of the body that are missing. She could have died from a blow on the head or strangulation.”
“It wasn’t natural causes, then?”
“Not in the body itself. She could have had a brain hemorrhage or something like that, but it was probably Occident or murder. It might even have been suicide by hanging. I can’t tell you.”
“Is there anything you can tell me?”
“I can estimate her age for you. About thirty. And she’s never had a child and she wasn’t pregnant.”
“You told me that last night.”
“Yes. As I said, a crude attempt was made to remove the organs affected, but it wasn’t entirely successful. As for the time of death, that’s been very hard to determine, but I have reduced the limits.”
“What are they down to now?”
“Some time between Friday afternoon and Saturday evening. It was some time in that thirty-hour period.”
Fellows said his thanks and hung up. “That woman,” he told Wilks, “was dead in his house before he went to New York if Jean’s telling the truth. She was lying in that back bedroom when he brought her home with him.”
“I didn’t know anybody got that hard up.”
“It makes me change my mind about him.”
“In what way?”
“We thought maybe this amateur butcher gave up destroying the body because he couldn’t stomach the task. It must be for another reason. Anyone who could kill a woman and weekend in New York and come back with another woman, anybody who’d have nerve to bring a woman into the house he’s hiding a body in, he’s not going to get queasy cutting the body up.”
“That doesn’t help tell us who he is.”
“No, but we’re starting to get a picture of the guy. We’re learning what he’s like.”
“That’s more of your mumbo jumbo. All this theorizing doesn’t get us anywhere. Facts are what you need, Fred, facts and data and that reminds me. I did a few other things this morning I should tell you about. We collected all the dust in the house and shipped it to Hartford. And I fingerprinted the silver for you. You were right on that, Fred. I did get some prints from it. They’re on their way to Hartford too. Cassidy’s taking them up.”
“What about the grocery boy Mrs. Banks saw talking to Campbell? And what about the trunk?”
“Ed is tracking down the trunk business. I’ve got two others canvassing the grocers.”
“And the knife and saw?”
“What about them?”
“I thought you were the ‘fact’ man, Sid. They were bought weren’t they? Somebody sold them to Campbell. It would help if we knew where.”
“O.K., O.K., I get it. You want your seat back.” Wilks crumpled his sandwich wrappings together and stuffed them into the paper bag his lunch had come in. He thrust them into the wastebasket under the desk.
Fellows said, “And, Sid. On the theory side of the ledger, the more you can find out what the man is like, the better chance you have of finding him.”
“You aren’t telling me anything. The trouble is we don’t know what he’s like. Only that he’s got dark hair, is fairly tall, moderately slender, dresses well, has a fair amount of money, and plays around with women. That fits a lot of people, Fred.”
“We know more than that. For instance, we can figure he’s married and I would guess he lives in a neighboring town.”
Wilks showed interest. “How did you dream that bit up and why?”
“We guess he’s married because of the assumed name, of course. But he wouldn’t be living in Stockford, that’s pretty sure. Stockford’s too small a town for a man to change his name and set up a love nest without getting caught at it. On the other hand, he wouldn’t want to travel too far, would he? Besides that, Mrs. Banks had him pegged as coming to the house every night about half past five and then he’d leave and come back later, about eight, and leave again between ten and eleven. Know what that sounds like? He finishes work, picks up some groceries, drives out to the love nest, goes home to wherever he lives for dinner, then comes back to the love nest in the evening.”
“Nice of his wife to be so permissive.”
“He’s got to have an excuse to go out, of course.”
“Go out every night, you mean. That’s stretching an excuse pretty thin.”
Fellows took a chew of tobacco. “I’ve been thinking about that, Sid. He might pretend he has to work.”
“Some job. Long hours and no income.”
“The guy would have to work for himself. That’s the way I see it. He’s got a store or something and pretends he has to go back after supper to catch up on the books.”
“Every night?”
“He only rented the house for a month. He can pretend it’s a busy period. He fell behind at Christmas and is trying to catch up. He’ll be tied up evenings for a month.”
Wilks tilted his chair back and stared absently at the glamour girls on the wall. “And I suppose hopping a train to New York for the weekend is also business. That’s not a wife you’ve got him married to, it’s a door mat.”
Fellows said ruefully, “I guess I forgot that.”
“The trouble with you is you operate too high up in the stratosphere. You ought to reason from the facts and stop reasoning from the reasoning. You’ll end up in outer space.”
“I’ve got to figure this guy out, Sid, and we don’t have many facts to work from.”
“But you’ll probably figure him out wrong. This isn’t a
