“That's when Nadine's neighbor, Judy Bowman, said she heard Nadine tell somebody named Clifford that he was going to be the sorriest son of a bitch that ever lived.”
“Hell, it's the same guy, Pete. Why make things any tougher than they are?”
“Just thinking out loud,” I said. “You say this Dr. Campbell's pretty well thought of?”
“I asked a couple of the does in the M.E.'s office about him. They both said he was one of the best.” He lit a cigarette and leaned forward to drop the match in the wastebasket. “And besides, Pete, Buchanan Memorial is the place where the doctors go. Everybody knows that.”
“I hate to think of tearing you away from that typewriter.”
“I'll live,” Stan said. “You want me to phone him first?”
“No,” I said as I pushed back my chair. “It's always better when you hit them cold.”
Chapter Nine
EVERYTHING in Dr. Clifford Campbell's air-conditioned outer office — the unframed abstractions on the walls, the softly playing hi-fi console opposite the row of gold-brocaded chairs, and the carefully groomed brunette receptionist — told you the moment you stepped through the door that this was no place to bring either a minor ailment or a minor bankroll.
“Well, it sure ain't no rabbit hutch,” Stan said as we crossed to the desk. “It looks like brain surgery pays off.”
The receptionist had hair like fresh-washed coal and a tiny, almost perfectly round face with almost no chin at all. She started to smile, then took a closer look at us and apparently decided we weren't worth it.
“Yes?” she said.
I took out my folder and showed her my badge. “Police officers,” I said. “We'd like to talk to Dr. Campbell.”
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.”