Greek Coffin Mystery (24 page)

“Well, let’s go,” said the Inspector. “This was your idea, Ellery. Lead the way.”

Ellery’s eyes were queerly luminous in the jumping light. He hesitated, looked about, and then made for a dark open doorway up the hall. The Inspector and Velie followed patiently, Velie’s flashlight held high.

The rooms were utterly bare—dismantled, it was clear, by the owner when he had vacated the premises. On the lower floor, at least, there was nothing—literally nothing—to be found. Empty rooms, dust-laden, here and there revealing men’s footprints in the dust where Detective Ritter and his colleagues had tramped in their original search. The walls were yellow, the ceilings cracked, the floors warped and noisy.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” growled the old man, when they had completed a tour of all the rooms on the lower floor. He sneezed violently as he inhaled some dust—choked and gasped and cursed.

“Not yet,” said Ellery. He led the way up the bare wooden stairs. Their footsteps thundered through the empty house.

But—there was nothing to be found on the second floor either. As in the Khalkis house, the second floor contained only bedrooms and bathrooms; but these had neither beds nor carpets to make them habitable, and the old man grew increasingly irritable. Ellery poked about in old wardrobe-closets. It was a labor of love; he found nothing, not so much as a scrap of paper. “Satisfied yet?”

“No.”

They made their way up groaning stairs to the attic.

Nothing.

“Well, that’s that,” said the Inspector as they descended to the foyer floor. “Now that the nonsense is over, we can go home and have something to eat.”

Ellery did not reply; he was twirling his
pince-nez
thoughtfully. Then he looked at Sergeant Velie. “Wasn’t something said about a broken-down trunk in the basement, Velie?”

“Yep. Ritter reported that, Mr. Queen.”

Ellery made for the rear of the foyer. Beneath the staircase which led to the upper floors there was a door. He opened it, borrowed Velie’s torch, and flashed its beams downward. A sagging flight of steps sprang up at them.

“Basement,” he said. “Come on.”

They descended the precarious stairs and found themselves in a large chamber which ran the entire length and width of the house. It was a ghostly place, full of shadows called into being by the flashlight; and it was even dustier than the rooms upstairs. Ellery proceeded at once to a spot a dozen feet from the steps. He focused the light of Velie’s torch upon it. A large battered old trunk lay there—a hulking iron-bound cube, its lid down, its shattered lock protruding dismally.

“You won’t find anything in that,” said the Inspector. “Ritter reported looking into it, Ellery.”

“Of course he did,” murmured Ellery, and raised the lid with a gloved hand. He sprayed beams of light about the trunk’s shabby interior. Empty.

As he was about to drop the lid, however, his nostrils contracted, then quivered, and he leaned forward swiftly sniffing. “Eureka,” he said softly. “Dad, Velie, get of a whiff of this perfume.”

The two men sniffed. They straightened, and the Inspector muttered: “By gosh, the same smell we got when the coffin was opened! Only fainter, much fainter.”

“That’s right,” came Velie’s
basso profundo.

“Yes.” Ellery released the lid and it crashed back into place. “Yes. We have discovered the first resting-place, so to speak, of Mr. Albert Grimshaw’s corporeal remains.”

“Thank goodness for something,” said the Inspector piously. “Although how that fool of a Ritter—”

Ellery continued, more to himself than to his companions. “Grimshaw was probably strangled in here, or near here. That was Friday night, late—October the first. His body was crammed into this trunk and left here. I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that there was no primary intention on the part of the murderer to dispose of the body elsewhere. This empty old house would make an ideal hiding-place for a corpse.”

“And then Khalkis died,” mused the old man.

“Exactly. Then Khalkis died—the following day, Saturday the second. The murderer saw a splendid opportunity to provide an even more permanent hiding-place for his victim’s body. He waited for the funeral, therefore, and on the night of Tuesday or Wednesday stole in here, lugged the body out—” Ellery paused and went swiftly to the rear of the dark basement, nodding when he saw a weatherbeaten old door—out through this door into the court, then through the gate into the graveyard. Dug down three feet to the vault … Very simple under cover of darkness, provided you have a complete indifference to such things as cemeteries, dead bodies, grave-smells and the ghost of ghosts. Our murderer must be a gentleman of practical imagination. This means that Grimshaw’s decaying body lay here for four or five days and nights. That should be sufficient,” he said grimly, “to account for the odor of putrefactive mortality.”

He swept the torch about. The floor of the basement, cement in spots and wood in others, was utterly bare except for dust and the trunk. But nearby loomed a monstrous shape, a grisly bulk that towered to the ceiling … The torch flashed frantically, and the monster turned into a large furnace—the central heating-plant of the house. Ellery strode over to it, grappled with the rusty handle of the firedoor, pulled it open and thrust his hand, with the torch, inside. At once he exclaimed: “Something here! Dad, Velie, quickly!”

The three men bent over and peered through the rusty shutter into the interior of the furnace. On its floor, in a corner, nestled a neat little heap of ashes; and protruding from the ashes was a small—a very small—fragment of thickish white paper.

Ellery snatched a glass from the depths of one of his pockets, trained the beams of the torch on the paper, and peered earnestly. “Well?” demanded the Inspector.

“I think,” said Ellery slowly, standing straight again and lowering his glass, “I think we have finally found the last will and testament of Georg Khalkis.”

It took the good sergeant all of ten minutes to solve the problem of how to retrieve the fragment from its inaccessible hiding-place. He was too huge to creep through the ash-pit orifice, and neither the Inspector nor Ellery felt inclined to wriggle their slighter bodies through the accumulated muck of years. Ellery for the solution of
this
problem was useless; and it took the more mechanically minded sergeant to discover the process whereby the scrap might be rescued. He manufactured a makeshift javelin by jamming a needle from Ellery’s pocket-kit into the ferrule of Ellery’s walking-stick; whereupon, on hands and knees, he managed to spear the fragment without great difficulty. He prodded the ashes, but nothing could be made of them—they were thoroughly charred and useless for examination.

The fragment, as Ellery had predicted, seemed indubitably part of Khalkis’ last will. Fortunately, that portion of it which was untouched by fire contained the name of the legatee of the Khalkis Galleries. It was, in a scrawly script which the Inspector at once recognized as Georg Khalkis’, the name:
Albert Grimshaw.

“This corroborates Knox’s story, all right,” said the Inspector. “And clearly shows that Sloane was the one cut out by the new will.”

“So it does,” murmured Ellery. “And very stupid and bungling indeed is the person who burnt this document. … A vexing problem. A very vexing problem.” He rapped his
pince-nez
sharply against his teeth, staring at the char-edged fragment, but he did not explain what the problem was nor why it was vexing.

“One thing is sure,” said the Inspector with satisfaction. “Mr. Sloane has some tall explaining to do, what with that anonymous letter about his being Grimshaw’s brother and this will. All set, son?”

Ellery nodded, sweeping the basement once more with his glance. “Yes. I imagine that’s quite all.”

“Come on, then.” The Inspector tucked the burnt fragment tenderly into a fold of his wallet and led the way to the front door of the basement. Ellery followed, deep in thought; and Velie brought up the rear, not unhurriedly, it should be noted, since not even his broad substantial back was impervious to the deathly blackness pressing upon it.

W
EEKES REPORTED AT ONCE
, as the Queens and Sergeant Velie stood in the foyer of the Khalkis house, that every one in the Khalkis household was at home. The Inspector gruffly commanded the presence of Gilbert Sloane, Weekes hurried away toward the staircase at the rear of the hall, and the three men went into the Khalkis library.

The Inspector immediately proceeded to one of the telephones on the desk, called the District Attorney’s office, and spoke to Pepper briefly, explaining the discovery of what seemed to be the missing Khalkis will. Pepper shouted that he was on his way. The old man then called Police Headquarters, roared a few questions, listened to a few replies, and hung up fuming. “No results on that anonymous letter. No fingerprints at all. Jimmy thinks the writer was damned careful—Come in, Sloane, come in. Want to talk to you.”

Sloane hesitated in the doorway. “Something new, Inspector?”

“Come in, man! I shan’t bite you.”

Sloane walked in and sat down on the edge of a chair, white trim hands folded tensely in his lap. Velie lumbered off to a corner and flung his overcoat on the back of a chair; Ellery lit a cigaret and studied Sloane’s profile through the curling smoke.

“Sloane,” began the Inspector abruptly, “we’ve caught you in a number of downright lies.”

Sloane paled. “What is it now? I’m sure I—”

“You’ve claimed from the beginning that the first time you ever laid eyes on Albert Grimshaw was when Khalkis’ coffin was hauled up in the graveyard outside,” said the Inspector. “You maintained that obviously false stand even after Bell, the night-clerk at the Hotel Benedict, identified you as one of a number of persons who visited Grimshaw on the night of September thirtieth.”

Sloane muttered: “Of course. Of course. It wasn’t true.”

“It wasn’t, eh?” The Inspector leaned forward and rapped him on the knee. “Well, Mr. Gilbert Grimshaw, suppose I tell you that we have found out you were Albert Grimshaw’s brother?”

Sloane was not a pretty sight. His jaw dropped foolishly, his eyes popped, his tongue crept over his lips, beads of perspiration sprang into moist life on his forehead, and his hands twitched uncontrollably. He tried twice to find his tongue, and each time succeeded only in emitting an unintelligible splutter.

“Nipped you that time, eh, Sloane? Now, you come clean, Mister.” The Inspector glowered. “What’s it all about?”

Sloane finally discovered how to coordinate thought with larynx. “How—how on earth did you find out?”

“Never mind how. It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Sloane’s hand went to his brow and came away greasy. “Yes, but I don’t see yet how you—”

“Start talking, Sloane.”

“Albert was—was my brother, as you say. When our mother and father died, many years ago, we were left alone. Albert—he was always in trouble. We quarreled and separated.”

“And you changed your name.”

“Yes. My name was Gilbert Grimshaw, of course.” He gulped; his eyes were watery. “Albert was sent to prison—some petty offense. I—well, I couldn’t stand the shame and notoriety. I took my mother’s maiden name of Sloane and started all over again. I told Albert at the time that I wanted nothing further to do with him …” Sloane squirmed; his words came slowly, pressed out by some inner piston of necessity. “He didn’t know—I didn’t tell him I had changed my name. I got as far away from him as I could. Came to New York, got into business here … But I always kept an eye on him, afraid he’d find out what I was doing, make more trouble, extort money from me, proclaim publicly his relationship … He was my brother, but he was an incorrigible rascal. Our father was a school-teacher—taught drawing, painted himself; we grew up in a refined, a cultural atmosphere. I can’t understand why Albert should have turned out so badly—”

“I don’t want ancient history; I want immediate facts. You did visit Grimshaw that Thursday night at the hotel, didn’t you?”

Sloane sighed. “I suppose it won’t do any good to deny it now … Yes. I had kept an eye on him all during his rotten career, saw him go from bad to worse—although he didn’t know I was watching. I knew he was in Sing Sing, and I waited for his release. When he got out that Tuesday, I found where he was stopping and Thursday night went to the Benedict to talk to him. I didn’t like the idea of having him in New York. I wanted him—well, to go away …”

“He went away, all right,” said the Inspector grimly.

“Just a moment, Mr. Sloane,” interrupted Ellery. Sloane jerked his head sidewise, startled as an owl. “When was the last time you saw your brother before that Thursday night visit to his room?”

“Face to face, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I hadn’t actually met and talked to him during the entire period in which my name has been Sloane.”

“Admirable,” murmured Ellery, applying himself to his cigaret again.

“What happened between you that night?” demanded Inspector Queen.

“Nothing, I swear! I asked him, pleaded with him to leave town. I offered him money. … He was surprised and I could see maliciously glad to see me, as if seeing me were the last thing in the world he had dreamed of, and it wasn’t so unpleasant after all. … I realized at once I’d made a mistake in coming, that I should have been better off to have let sleeping dogs lie. Because he told me himself he hadn’t even
thought
of me for years—had nearly forgotten he had a brother—his exact words, mind you!

“But it was too late. I offered him five thousand dollars to get out of town and stay out. I’d brought the money with me in small bills. He promised, snatched the money, and I left.”

“Did you see him alive after that at any time?”

“No, no! I thought he’d gone away. When the coffin was opened and I saw him there …”

Ellery drawled: “And during your conversation with the ubiquitous. Albert, did you tell him the name you now go by?”

Sloane seemed horrified. “Why, no. Of course not. I was keeping that as a kind of—well, self-protection. I don’t think he even suspected that I wasn’t still calling myself Gilbert Grimshaw. That’s why I’m so surprised—the Inspector saying he had discovered we were brothers—I can’t understand how on earth …”