Jonathan Craig - The Case of the Petticoat Murder

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.”