Sleep Long, My Love

a slide? He was wearing a brown hat and a tan overcoat and he went up to the door, and Mrs. Campbell let him in. Well, they were in there for about twenty minutes and suddenly he and she come to the front door again and he doesn’t have his coat or hat on and he’s in his shirt sleeves. He closes the door and jumps back into the car and drives into the drive. Then, when he was coming around to the front of the house, the grocer boy drove up. That was the only time I ever saw the grocer make a delivery there. He had a bag of groceries and Mr. Campbell took it and paid for it and then he went back inside. He was in there for at least an hour and a half, because I saw the car there that long and then, a few minutes later, I saw that his car was gone. That was around four-thirty or quarter of five, Inspector, and then he came back at five-thirty, because my husband was home and I was telling him about it when I saw the lights of Mr. Campbell’s car and this time he went right into the drive and in the house and he didn’t go right out again like he usually did. This time he was there all evening until after we went to bed, but he was gone again the next morning.”

Fellows had his notebook out and was jotting down the pertinent items. He looked up. “You remember exactly what day that was?”

“Friday the thirteenth.”

“What did Mr. Campbell look like?”

“He was pretty far away, Inspector, and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. Tall, I would call him, but I couldn’t say more than that.” She leaned forward. “He’s done something terrible, hasn’t he?”

“We think he hasn’t been behaving himself very well. What color hair did he have? You saw him without a hat.”

“Oh, dark hair. Tall and dark and slender. I couldn’t tell anything about his face.”

Fellows nodded and made notations. “Now, Mrs. Banks, can you tell me the last time you saw Mrs. Campbell?”

Mrs. Banks hesitated. “Well, I can’t say. I’d judge a week or more ago.” She covered the lapse by saying, “Of course I’m not nosey and I don’t pry and she might have been around a lot when I wasn’t looking.”

“But at least a week ago is the last time?”

“Far’s I remember.”

“Did you recognize the grocery boy? Do you know what store he delivers for?”

“Oh my, no. I don’t know anything about those delivery boys. My husband takes me shopping.” She peered past his shoulder. “My, look at all the cars. They’re blocking the whole road.”

Chief Fellows turned and saw. The word had been spread and now a horde of sight-seers was descending on the quiet of Highland Road. He thanked the woman and took a hasty leave.

CHAPTER IV

Thursday, 1:25-2:15

Fellows went back to the murder house and ordered the sight-seers who were congregating in the front yard back into their cars, “Move on. There’s nothing to see. Keep moving.” Then he went inside and ordered two policemen to chase away the cars of anybody not authorized to be there and to set up a road block at the corner. “I don’t want anybody coming down this road who doesn’t have business here.” After that, he hunted up Wilks, who was busy fingerprinting the house.

“It’s useless,” the detective sergeant told him. “Looks like the guy wiped everything with a towel, door frames, doors, everything. The best we’ve got are a couple of smudges that aren’t any good.”

“You inventorying the place?”

“As we go along.”

“Got anybody you can spare?”

“They’re all busy, why?”

“We’re going to have to do some checking of grocery stores. Well, we can let that go until I come back. I want to get down to the real estate office.”

Wilks said, “Give Restlin my love.”

Frank Restlin, however, was not at the office. “He went home,” Watly explained. “He was feeling sick. It was really a murder?”

“There was a body. We don’t know yet how she died.” Fellows pulled off his gloves and cap and unzipped his jacket. “Restlin was telling me you’re the one who handled the rent. You want to tell me about it?”

Watly wet his lips. He got out cigarettes and offered one to Fellows, who shook his head and resorted to his chewing tobacco instead. “I wish I hadn’t handled it now, believe me,” the real estate agent said. “Mr. Restlin blames me for what happened— the pipes freezing, especially. He’s feeling pretty bad about that.”

“Worse than about the body, I’ll bet.”

Watly smiled, but not happily. “You probably aren’t kidding. He’d take it out of my pay, I’ll bet, if he thought I could afford it, but certainly, I couldn’t see anything wrong with the man.”

Fellows sat down in a chair by the desk and fumbled for his notebook. “Tell me the whole story now, clear as you can remember, dates and times and what was said and any peculiarities the man might have had, anything you can remember about his looks and manner.”

Watly, taking Restlin’s seat behind the desk, pulled his lip and dragged on the cigarette. “It was an afternoon. Twenty-third of January. I can tell you that because when Mr. Restlin came back all pale and white and told me what you found, I immediately looked up Campbell’s application. That was the day he came in, the twenty-third of January around the middle of the afternoon. Mr. Restlin was out with a prospect showing him some properties. This fellow Campbell came in. He was in his thirties, I’d guess, maybe thirty-seven or -eight, and he had dark hair, a moderate build, and stood about two inches shorter than me. He was about five-ten, I’d say. He told me he was interested,—”

“What about his clothes?”

“Clothes?” Watly thought about that. “No hat. A tan overcoat with a plaid scarf. Red plaid. Dark trousers as I