Greek Coffin Mystery (14 page)

Consequently, Djuna served an appetizing repast in silence, and in silence it was received and consumed. Ellery, alone of the four men, was placid. He ate with his customary relish, complimented Djuna on the quality of the roast, quoted Dickens over the pudding and Voltaire over the coffee. …

Sampson had no sooner wiped his lips with his napkin than he said: “Well, Q., the old story. Buffaloed, baffled, and beaten. One of those rotten puzzles. How does it stack up?”

The Inspector raised haggard eyes. “Ask my son here.” He buried his old nose in his coffee-cup. “He seems pleased enough with the way things are going.”

“You take these things too seriously, dad,” said Ellery, puffing comfortably on a cigaret. “The problem has its points, but I shouldn’t say—” he drew a lungful of smoke and expelled it—“I shouldn’t say it’s insoluble.”

“Hey?” All three of them stared at him; the Inspector’s eyes were wide with astonishment.

“Don’t press me, I beg of you,” murmured Ellery. “It’s at moments like these that I become classically antique in my language, and I know Sampson, for one, abhors the practice. Besides, I dislike ratiocination on a full stomach. Djuna, more coffee like a good boy.”

Sampson said decisively: “But if you know anything, Ellery, spill it! What’s up?”

Ellery accepted the mug from Djuna. “Much too premature, Sampson. I’d rather not just now.”

Sampson jumped up and began to pace the rug excitedly. “That’s the way it always is! The old story! ‘Much too premature’!” He snorted like a stallion. “Pepper, let me in on this thing. What’s the latest dope?”

“Well, Chief,” said Pepper, “Velie found out a lot of things, but none of it does us much good, as I see it. For instance, Honeywell—the sexton of the church—maintains that the graveyard is never locked, but that neither he nor his assistants have seen anything suspicious at any time after the funeral.”

“Doesn’t mean a curse,” growled the Inspector. “The graveyard and court aren’t patrolled. Somebody could have come in and out a dozen times “without being seen. Especially at night. Bah!”

“How about the neighbors?”

“More nothing,” replied Pepper. “Velie’s report was complete. You see, all the houses on both the south side of Fifty-fifth and the north side of Fifty-fourth have their rears to the court. On Fifty-fifth Street, east to west, the houses in order are: Number Fourteen, on the corner of Madison Avenue, owned by Mrs. Susan Morse, that daffy old dame who attended the funeral. Number Twelve, Dr. Frost’s house—that’s the physician who took care of Khalkis. Number Ten, the Rectory next to the church, where Reverend Elder lives. On Fifty-fourth Street, east to west, you’ve got: Number Fifteen, corner of Madison Avenue, Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Ganz …”

“The retired meat-packer?”

“Yes. And between the Ganz place and the Khalkis house, which is Number Eleven, you’ve got Number Thirteen—an empty house boarded up.”

“Who owns it?”

“Don’t get excited. It’s in the family,” grumbled the Inspector. “It belongs to our celebrated multi-millionaire, Mr. James J. Knox, the one Khalkis named executor in that stolen will. Nobody lives there—it’s an old piece of property. Knox used to live there years ago, but he moved uptown a way and the place is standing idle.”

“I looked up the title,” explained Pepper. “It’s free and clear, of course, and not offered for sale. I guess he’s holding on to it for sentimental reasons. It’s a sort of ancestral home—as old as the Khalkis shack—built at the same time.

“Well, anyway, nobody in any of these houses—either owners, servants or in one case guests—could give Velie any information. You see, the court is accessible from the rear of all the houses on both streets; it’s not accessible from Madison Avenue unless you go through the basement of the Morse or Ganz house, the only two on the block; and there are no alleys on Fifty-fourth, Madison, or Fifty-fifth Street leading to the court.”

“In other words,” said Sampson impatiently, “you couldn’t get into the court except through the houses themselves, the church or the graveyard—is that right?”

“Right. As for the graveyard, there are only three ways of getting into it—through the rear of the church itself; through the gate at the western end of the court; and through that single door in the fence—really a high gate—on the Fifty-fourth Street side of the graveyard.”

“Still doesn’t mean a thing,” said the Inspector disagreeably. “That’s not the important point. The important point is that everybody questioned by Velie denied visiting the graveyard at night or any other time since Khalkis’ funeral.”

“Except,” put in Ellery gently, “Mrs. Morse, dad. You’ve forgotten her. Remember Velie said she confessed her pleasant habit of wandering over the heads of the dead in the graveyard each afternoon.”

“Yes,” said Pepper, “but she denied visiting it at night. At any rate, Chief, all the neighbors are members of the church parish except, of course, Knox. He isn’t properly a neighbor.”

“He’s Catholic,” growled the Inspector. “Belongs to a high-toned cathedral on the West Side.”

“Where is Knox, by the way?” asked the District Attorney.

“Well, he went out of town this morning, I don’t know exactly where,” said the old man. “I’m having Thomas get a search-warrant—we can’t wait for Knox to get back and I’m dead set on looking over that empty house of his next door to the Khalkis place.”

“You see, Chief,” explained Pepper, “the Inspector has an idea that the empty Knox house might have been the place where Grimshaw’s body was hidden until it could be buried in the Khalkis coffin after the funeral.”

“Good hunch, Q.”

“Anyway,” continued Pepper, “Knox’s secretary refused to disclose the mogul’s whereabouts, and we’ve got to have the warrant.”

“It may not be important,” remarked the Inspector, “but blast my soul if I let anything go.”

“An excellent
principio operandi,”
chuckled Ellery.

His father turned on him a very cold and disapproving scowl. “You—you think you’re smart,” he said weakly. “Well. … Look here, gentlemen. As far as that empty house is concerned, we’ve got a problem. We still don’t know exactly when Grimshaw was bumped off—how long he’s been dead. All right, the autopsy ought to show that pretty conclusively. In the meanwhile, we’ve got a basis of figuring. Because if Khalkis died
before
Grimshaw was murdered, it certainly means—considering where we found the body—that burial of Grimshaw in Khalkis’ coffin was pre-planned. Get me? In that case, the empty house would, be a fine place for the murderer to keep Grimshaw’s body until after the Khalkis funeral, when the buried coffin would become available for use.”

“Yes, but look at it the other way, Q.,” objected Sampson. “It’s just as tenable a theory, in the absence of the autopsy-findings, that Khalkis died
after
Grimshaw was murdered. This would mean that the killer couldn’t figure on Khalkis’ unexpected death and the opportunity to bury the victim in Khalkis’ coffin, so that the body must have been hidden wherever the murder took place—and we’ve no reason to expect that the murder took place in that empty house next door. In any event, I don’t see that that line of attack does us any good until we discover how long Grimshaw has been a stiff.”

“You mean,” said Pepper thoughtfully, “that if Grimshaw was strangled before Khalkis died, his body was probably kept wherever he was killed? Then when Khalkis died, the opportunity to bury the body in Khalkis’ coffin flashed on the murderer’s mind, and he lugged the body into the graveyard, probably through the Fifty-fourth Street fence-gate?”

“Exactly,” snapped Sampson. “The chances are ten to one that the house next to Khalkis’ had nothing to do with the crime. I think all this is irrelevant conjecture.”

“Perhaps not so irrelevant,” said Ellery gently. “On the other hand, it seems to my feeble intellect that you gentlemen are cooking a stew before buying your ingredients. Why not wait patiently for the autopsy report?”

“Wait—wait,” grumbled the Inspector. “I’ve grown old waiting.”

Ellery chuckled. “If we are to believe Chaucer, your age is a distinct advantage,
padre.
Remember
The Parlement of Fowles?
‘For oute of olde feldys, as men sey, Comyth al this newe corn from yere to yere.’”

“Anything else, Pepper?” growled Sampson. He ignored Ellery completely.

“The routine stuff. Velie questioned the doorman of the department store across the street from the Khalkis house and graveyard—man stands all day at the Fifty-fourth Street entrance to the store. Quizzed the cop on the beat, too. But neither of them has seen suspicious activity in the daytime since the funeral. The cop on night-duty didn’t see anything either, but he admits the body could have been hauled into the graveyard without his knowledge. And there’s no one on duty at the department store at night who was in a position to observe the graveyard; the nightwatchmen stay inside at all hours. And there you are.”

“I’ll go daffy with this damnable sitting around, sitting around,” muttered the Inspector, plumping his straight little body before the fire in the grate.

“La patience est amère, mais son fruìt est doux,”
murmured Ellery. “I feel in a quotational mood.”

“That’s what I get,” groaned the Inspector, “for having sent my boy to college. He talks down at me. What’s that mean?”

“‘Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,’” grinned Ellery, “and a frog said it.”

“A—what? A
frog?”

“Oh, he’s just trying to be funny,” said Sampson wearily. “I suppose he means a Frenchman. It sounds like Rousseau.”

“Do you know, Sampson,” said Ellery enthusiastically, “sometimes you exhibit positively startling signs of intelligence?”

T
HE NEXT MORNING, SATURDAY
—a day of brilliant October sunshine—found Inspector Queen’s sagging spirits considerably bolstered. The immediate cause of his spiritual elevation was the delivery in person by Dr. Samuel Prouty of the autopsy-findings on both Khalkis and the murdered man.

District Attorney Sampson, chained to his office by a case which demanded his personal attention, had sent his lieutenant Pepper to the Inspector’s office at Police Headquarters. “When Dr. Prouty slouched in, chewing his first cigar of the day, he found the Inspector, Pepper, Sergeant Velie and a curiously expectant Ellery awaiting him.

“Well, Doc? Well, well?” cried the Inspector. “What’s the news?”

Dr. Prouty jack-knifed his lank length into the most comfortable chair in the room, with sardonic deliberation. “S’pose you want to be sure about the Khalkis stiff? Everything’s jake in that direction. Dr. Frost’s certificate told the exact truth. No indications of foul play. He was a rotten cardiac and his pumper gave out on him.”

“Not a sign of poison, eh?”

“Nary a pinpoint. All okay. Now, as to the second stiff.” Dr. Prouty champed his teeth vigorously. “All the signs point to death prior to Khalkis’. It’s a long story.” He grinned. “There are a raft of conditions which make a definite finding risky. Loss of body heat in this case doesn’t get us very far. But we got something from cadaveric muscular changes and that business of complete lividity. Green spot on surface and in middle of abdomen, due to chemical-bacterial action, well developed; number and position of livid putrefactive patches internally as well as externally check for about a seven-day period up to last night. Gas pressure, forced mucous discharge from mouth and nostrils, internal decay of the windpipe, certain signs in the stomach, intestines and spleen—all check for the period I’ve mentioned. Skin tense, but beginning to loosen in area of most distention—abdomen; odorous gases, specific gravity down—yep, I’d say that Mr. Albert Grimshaw was killed six and a half days before the disinterment yesterday morning.”

“In other words,” said the Inspector, “Grimshaw was strangled somewhere in the wee hours—late last Friday night or early last Saturday morning.”

“That’s right. I’d say, everything considered, that there was a slight retardation of the natural process of putrefaction. Shouldn’t be surprised if you find that the body was kept in a dry, fairly airless place before burial in Khalkis’ coffin.”

Ellery looked uncomfortable. “Not a very pleasant business. Our immortal souls seem to be housed in very treacherous bodies.”

“Why, because decay sets in so rapidly?” Dr. Prouty looked amused. “Well, I’ll offer a word of consolation. The uterus of a woman sometimes remains intact for seven months after death.”

“If that’s your idea of consolation—”

The Inspector said hurriedly, “There’s no question, Doc, but that Grimshaw died of strangulation?”

“Nope. Some one choked him with bare hands. The marks of the fingers are very pronounced.”

“Doctor.” Ellery sat well back in his chair, smoking lazily. “What did you find in that sample of stale water I gave you?”

“Oh, that!” The Assistant Medical Examiner looked bored. “You see, there are certain salts—calcium salts chiefly—present in all hard water. Our drinking water’s hard, y’know. Well, boiling precipitates these salts. It’s easy to make a chemical analysis and by the precipitated content determine whether the water was boiled or not. I’d say absolutely that the sample you gave me from the stale water you found in that percolator indicates boiling, and moreover that no unboiled water had been added after the original water was heated.”

“Blessings on your scientific head, Doctor,” murmured Ellery.

“Pipe down. Anything else?”

“No, and thanks a lot, Doc,” said the Inspector.

Dr. Prouty uncoiled himself like a cobra and smoked his way out of the Inspector’s office.

“Now, let’s see where we stand,” began the old man, briskly rubbing his hands. He consulted a memorandum. “This Vreeland chap. His Quebec trip substantiated by train officials, ticket-stub, hotel records, time of departure, etcetera. Hmm … Demetrios Khalkis. Spent the whole day in the office of Dr. Bellows—that’s last Saturday … Fingerprint report on Khalkis house—nothing doing; Grimshaw’s prints found on the desk in the library with a bunch of others. Probably everybody in the house had his hands on that desk at some time or other, especially during that preliminary search for the will. Prints on the coffin—nothing either; a lot of smudges and clear prints, but every one in the house was around the coffin as it lay in the drawing-room, and the presence of any specific prints would not incriminate their owners … Thomas, what did Piggott find out at Barrett’s?”