Fellows pulled a pad over. “Let me have the names of anybody you or your wife might have told, anybody at all. That would be that afternoon or early evening.”
“Just Mrs. Curran, our landlady, and the Motts next door, Mr. and Mrs. Mott. And the Furlows down on the first floor. Those would be the only ones.”
Fellows noted the names and wrote Bunnell’s address beside them. “What do Mr. Mott and Mr. Furlow look like?”
“They’re both elderly. Mr. Mott—”
“How old?”
“Oh, in their sixties, at least I should judge so.”
“Never mind then. You’re sure no one else could have known?”
“Quite sure.”
Fellows thought a moment. “Did you see anyone around when you were looking at the house? In the woods, driving by, anything?”
Mr. Bunnell shook his head. “No. That’s not to say there couldn’t have been someone. But the whole place looked quite desolate and empty.”
Fellows asked a few more brief questions and thanked the man and saw him to the door. Wilks watched the process like an adult observing a child’s game. “And what,” he said when the man had gone, “was the meaning of all that?”
Fellows sat down at the desk again. “Stealing the lease to conceal his handwriting sounds crazy, but it’s really quite plausible when you get down to it. That I can understand. What I’ve never yet been able to figure is why Campbell quit and ran.”
“We talked that over Saturday night.”
“I know. And what it boils down to, of course, is fear of—no, not fear—expectation of discovery. He must have known or thought he would be interrupted.”
Wilks sat against the table with his arms folded and smiled pityingly. “It could equally well be that he decided it was too much trouble and said the hell with it.”
Fellows smiled back. He said, “If I were trying to cover up a murder, I don’t think anything would be too much trouble.”
Wilks shrugged. “A point for the defense. So Campbell thought he was going to be discovered. What makes you pick a possible client for a threat?”
“The fact that I can’t find anything else. I made a trip out there yesterday. I asked Mrs. Banks if she ever smelled anything those nights before he left. She hadn’t. I tried the other neighbors down the road. They didn’t. None of them had showed the slightest interest in Campbell or his house or what went on there. Nobody was going to call on them. I asked about the children in the neighborhood. Had they played around Campbell’s place? They hadn’t. The upshot of it was that no one around there knew anything about Campbell until we found the body. But he quit destroying the body and robbed the real estate office instead. That was Wednesday night. Obviously something was going to happen Thursday. I don’t know what it could be except, possibly, that he knew Bunnell was coming.”
Wilks said, “True, but there could be other reasons you don’t know about.”
“I can only work with what I know.”
“And you know now that Campbell ‘couldn’t possibly have known Bunnell was coming, so where does that leave you?”
“With another bum lead. I’m used to it.”
“It’s that stratosphere stuff, Fred. If you’ll note what’s happened in this case, all the dead ends have come from following up conclusions based on conclusions based on conclusions, not from tracing real evidence.”
Fellows shook his head. “I can’t sell you on anything, can I?”
“Not me, Fred. Not that stratosphere stuff. The only thing that’ll sell me is showing somebody to Watly today and having Watly say, ‘That’s the man,’ only that’s not going to happen, because it’s another one of your conclusions.” He went to the door and said sadly, “I’ll bet all my cribbage losses, double or nothing, that we’re going to finish the job this afternoon and it’s going to be another dead end. I’ll bet you Campbell doesn’t work anywhere near Stockford.”
CHAPTER XXVII
Thursday and Friday, March 12-13
Sergeant Wilks was right, at least on the first half of his bet. From one o’clock on the officers of the Stockford police force began drifting back into headquarters, their questioning assignments completed. Watly had been called out once that morning and breaths were held, but it was another false alarm and after that there was nothing. The last man reported in at five minutes of three, and Fellows, his desk piled high with their reports, was busy sorting and checking, making sure not one place had been overlooked. If he learned nothing about the murder, he learned a lot about the town. His face was solemn as he worked, but not disappointed. Having expected nothing, he had no reason to be.
Wilks came in, looking glum himself. He stared at the chief bent over his papers, and said, “You want some help with that, Fred?”
“No thanks, Sid. I’m sending all the others home. You might as well go home too.”
“There’s the Grafton Tool and Die Company, Fred. I suppose we could check it. They employ a thousand people.”
“It’s kind of far away.”
“It’s not the center of town, but a guy might get to Campbell’s house from there in half an hour if he didn’t buy more than a couple of things at the grocer’s.”
“It’s something to look into, Sid. Maybe I’ll line that up over the weekend.”
“You don’t sound as though it’s the end of the world.”
“There’s still an angle or two left, Sid. We’ll work them out.”
“O.K. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Chief Fellows didn’t show up for muster on Friday, March thirteenth. Sergeant Wilks stood in for him, calling the roll and reading out the day’s assignments. On this day the assignments were all routine, traffic and beats. The murder case was out of it and there were no other problems that needed special attention.
Fellows himself came in at half past eight, half an hour after the force had gone out, and with him was a girl. “This is Jean Sherman,” he said to Wilks, introducing them. “I
