Wilks started to say, “They might come back for it—” But something about the chiefs voice stopped him. He went up the stairs.
The screwdriver was large and strong, but so was the lock. Wilks’s first efforts only dented the metal of the trunk. He kept prying until he worked the wedge of steel well under the clasp. This time, when he bore on it, the lock popped.
Restlin wet his lips. It was another case of breaking and entering, and he started to mention it, but Fellows and Wilks were busy unhooking the side clasps. They threw back the lid and revealed crammed wads of feminine attire, two overcoats, jackets, stadium boots, spring dresses. It was the sort of thing one would expect to find in any woman’s trunk, except the winter clothes were mixed with the summer and the smell of mothballs was mixed with a fainter and less pleasant odor.
They didn’t speak but pitched in. Wilks lifted out an armload of clothes and Fellows spread the sheet for him to put them on. They removed a tray and went after the things underneath. Restlin peered over their shoulder and said, “What’s that funny smell?”
Fellows nudged him aside when he lifted out dresses wadded as no woman ever packed dresses. “Please keep back, Mr. Restlin.”
Restlin didn’t stay back. He went around beside Wilks and tried to get a look. When the sergeant reached the end of the clothes on his side, Restlin peered closer at what lay beneath. “What’s that?” he said.
Fellows’s next armload revealed the rest of the answer, and Restlin shrieked. He said, “Oh my God,” and ran across the cellar up the stairs.
CHAPTER III
Thursday, 12:45-1:25
Dr. James MacFarlane, the Stockford medical examiner, trudged slowly up the cellar steps with his little black bag in his hand. In the kitchen, two ambulance attendants were sitting in their overcoats at the table in the breakfast nook, smoking a cigarette and having a cup of black coffee. They gestured at the living room when he asked for the chief and he went on through, past a policeman who was shoveling the fireplace ashes into a paper bag, toward the chief, who was standing near the front door talking with two reporters.
“It was a body,” Fellows was saying. “White, female, dark hair. That’s all we know.”
“Was she pretty?”
“It’s a truncated torso. Head, arms, and most of the legs cut off.” He turned when MacFarlane came up. “Well, Jim, anything you can add?”
The medical examiner shook his head. “She’s been dead anywhere from three days to a week or even longer. May be pretty hard to determine what the cause of death was. You photographed her yet?”
“Hank Lemmon of the Bulletin took some pictures for me before you got here. You ready to take her away?”
“Yeah. You going to want that sheet spread out in front of the trunk with the clothes on it?”
“You can use it, only don’t get those clothes dirty.”
The doctor nodded. “I’ll work on her over at the hospital. By the way, it looks as if some of the abdominal organs have been removed.”
“Any skill involved?”
“None whatever. Whoever did it knows nothing about anatomy —not so much as a butcher.”
“And she’s been dead at least three days?”
“Probably much longer. She was dead some time before the attempt to dismember her.”
Wilks came down the stairs from the attic. “Nothing up there, Fred. Nothing at all.”
“Set a couple of the boys to work fingerprinting the house. I want every room.”
Wilks went off and MacFarlane went with him. The policeman who’d been cleaning out the fireplace came up with the bag of its contents. The chief said, “That goes to the State Police lab, Henderson. You got it marked?”
“Yes, sir.”
“O.K. Now you get another bag and go down in the basement and collect all the ashes in the furnace. They go to the lab too.” One of the reporters said, “How did you come to find her?”
“The missing leases I told you about. I guessed the only reason for stealing them was to remove a handwriting specimen. People don’t do that for nothing.”
“And the man’s name is John Campbell?”
“That’s what Restlin says. Now I can’t tell you any more, so if you’ll kind of wait outside, so you don’t track anything around in here, I’ll be much obliged.” He ushered them out the front door, down the stone slab in front to the cold dry grass. A screen of trees blocked the view of Old Town Road. The woods on the other side of the drive were dense. Across Highland Road in front were woods, but a hundred yards down, stood a clean white house. One of the reporters pulled out a cigarette, and Fellows said, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t smoke around here, mister. I’ve got five men out back combing the yard and I wouldn’t want them coming around and bringing in one of your butts for a clue. Might confuse us some.”
He left them there and walked down between the ambulance and six cars that filled the drive and lined the road, starting for the house across the way. Midway there, he turned once for a look back at the murder bungalow. It was white, small, unprepossessing and isolated, all features that made it ideal for the purpose. The reporters had got back in their car, probably to smoke and keep warm, and the front yard was deserted. The men in the back were hidden by the cars in the drive and no one was in evidence just then. Fellows turned and continued to the larger white house across the way. A white curtain fell in place behind a first-floor window there and when he got to the porch, a woman opened the door the moment he rang the bell. She was fiftyish, gray and
