Jonathan Craig - The Case of the Petticoat Murder

“And that's what the bag we found in Nadine's strongbox was? A reject?” I shook my head. “That's hard to believe.”

“That's because you didn't have a magnifying glass handy. Anyhow, after they cancel the serial number on the list of stuff going out, they add a couple little marks to it on the leather to make sure nobody slips up and sends it out anyway. Then they enter the serial number in another book, and when one of the employees buys the bag, they write his name down beside the number to show exactly where it went.”

“Careful outfit.”

“Too big a reputation to take chances with.”

“Who bought the bag in the first place?”

“Some young guy just learning the trade. Lost Property was talking so fast I muffed his name.” He shrugged. “Doesn't make any difference, anyhow. The point is, he bought this beautiful hunk of alligator hide and gave it to Edna Hardesty as a present.”

“Boy friend?”

“Don't know. Maybe he just figured he was making an investment.”

“When did he give it to her?”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“Lost Property find out anything else about this

“Just that he'd given Edna the bag and she'd turned right around and given him the air.”

“They do any checking on Edna Hardesty herself?”

“No. They said they'd been asked to establish ownership, and they think they've done it. But they also said that if we wanted them to go any farther, just let them know.”

“If they went any farther, they might be taking our jobs away from us, Stan. As Barney Fells would say, from here on in that handbag is our own special meat.”

“Well, well,” Stan said musingly. “Little Miss Fish Eye.”

“I just hope we're not making too much out of it.”

“That'd be pretty difficult, wouldn't it? What're you doing — dumping in the ice cubes again?”

“Not exactly. I was just mulling it around a little.”

“Well, how many ways are there to mull it? How do you mull it?”

“The same way you do. We know that Nadine Ellison kept a very expensive handbag locked up in a strongbox. Why she did it, we don't know. What we do know is that it wasn't her handbag; it was Edna Hardesty's. How it got from Edna to Nadine, we don't know. But we do know Edna works for Dr. Clifford Campbell in his office. What the relationship between Edna and Campbell is, we don't know. What the connection between Edna and the dead girl is, we don't know. But we do know Nadine phoned Dr. Campbell at his home and threatened him.” I paused. “That jibe out with your take on it, Stan?”

“All the way — but I'd go a little farther.”

“How much farther?”

“A couple more things we do know is that Edna Hardesty tried to give us a stall when we wanted to see Dr. Campbell, even though Campbell didn't have any patients and she knew we were cops. Second, when we walked in on Campbell, he tried to stall us with that business about pineal bodies. If we hadn't stopped him, he'd still be talking about brains.”

I looked up at the clock. It was a quarter of seven.

“You feel like having a spot of coffee with a young lady, Stan?”

“You mean Edna Hardesty?”

“Yes.”

“She's young, all right. But a lady?”

“That stall she gave us might have been strictly office procedure around there, Stan. It might not have been anything personal at all.”

“I'm laughing,” he said.

“Did Lost Property give you her address?”

He glanced at his scratch pad. “It's the Misener Apartments, on Fifty-first between Lex and Third.”

“That's less than half a block from Campbell's office building.”

“I noticed that. Very handy.”

“Handy for what?”

“Who knows? Maybe Edna and her boss might want to drop over to her place for a drink or something.” He grinned. “You know I haven't got an evil mind, Pete. Why ask me something like that?”

“I want to hit her before she leaves for work,” I said. “You mind holding things down a while?”

“Not this time, Pete. That Edna Hardesty is one girl you can have all to yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“No sacrifice, believe me.”

I had almost reached the door when the phone rang, and I paused while Stan answered it, listened for a moment, and then replaced the receiver very carefully and shook his head.

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Pickled Lii,” he said. “You're in bad trouble, Pete. She says if you don't arrest her letter carrier by noon today, she'll have the FBI arrest both of you.”

“Well,” I said as I turned to leave, “another day has officially begun.”

EDNA HARDESTY'S apartment at the Misener was on the twenty-first floor. She seemed completely unsurprised to see me and invited me in with no more than a brief nod and a quick glance to see that her housecoat was properly drawn together.

“You'd better sit on the sofa, Mr. Selby,” she said. “I wouldn't trust a man your size in any of the chairs.”

“They do look a little fragile,” I said as I sat down. “Very handsome chairs, though, I'd say.”

“They're hideous,” she said. “And the word isn't 'fragile,' Mr. Selby. It's 'flimsy.'”

With her black hair brushed back in loose waves and her small round face much more softly made up than it had been at Campbell's office, she was almost pretty.

“The management's been promising me new chairs for the last six months,” she said.

I watched her as she sat down on a hassock, folded her arms about her knees, and sat frowning at the chairs, first at one and then another, as if I had arrived by appointment for the express purpose of discussing them. She was, I reflected, using the chairs just as Dr. Campbell, in a similar situation, had seized upon the pineal body in the jar on his desk.

“I take it you expected to see me,” I said. “Why?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I mean, I don't know why you should think Doctor Campbell had anything to do with it.” She paused. “But I knew you would want to talk with me. After all, I was around him more than almost anyone else.”

“Was?”

“I was fired yesterday afternoon.”

“For tuning in the intercom a little too often?”

“I don't think that's amusing,” she said. “No, it certainly wasn't that.”

“But you did tune in on our talk with Dr. and Mrs. Campbell.”

“Yes, I did.”

“What is it you're so sure Dr. Campbell didn't have anything to do with, Miss Hardesty?”

“With what happened to that girl down in Greenwich Village, of course.”

“You know any reason why we should suspect Dr. Campbell?”

“Certainly not.”

“How long had you known her?”

“Known whom?”

“Miss Ellison.”

She looked at me directly for the first time since she'd sat down. “Known her! Why, I'd never even seen her.”

“You're sure of that?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

“You do own a very expensive alligator handbag, though.” I said. “That is, you did own it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We found your bag in Nadine Ellison's apartment.”

“What?”

“Which is one of the reasons I thought you might have known her,” I said. “Another one is—”

“In her apartment?”

“Yes.”

“So that's what happened to it!”

“You had some doubts about it, did you?”

“Well! No wonder she was upset.”

“You're losing me a little, Miss Hardesty.”

“I mean Susan. Mrs. Campbell. She told me she'd lost it in a taxi.”

“Are you telling me it wasn't your bag, or that you lent it to Mrs. Campbell — or what?”