Greek Coffin Mystery (23 page)

“I see.” The Inspector turned to Barney Schick, sitting motionless across the room. “Barney, do you recognize this lady?”

The Odells shifted quickly, and the woman gasped. Her husband’s hairy hand clamped on her arm, and she turned about with a pale effort at composure.

“I sure do,” said Schick. His face was wet with perspiration.

“Where did you see her last?”

“In my place on Forty-fifth Street. Week ago—near two weeks ago. A Wednesday night.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“Huh? Oh. With the guy that was croaked—Grimshaw.”

“Mrs. Odell was quarreling with the dead man?”

“Yep.” Schick guffawed. “On’y he wasn’t dead then, Inspector—not by a long shot.”

“Cut the comedy, Barney. You’re sure this is the woman you saw with Grimshaw?”

“Nothin’ else but.”

The Inspector turned to Mrs. Odell. “And you say you never saw Albert Grimshaw, didn’t know him?”

Her full overripe lips began to quiver. Odell leaned forward, scowling. “If my wife says no,” he growled, “it’s no—get me?”

The Inspector considered that. “Hmm,” he murmured. “There’s something in
that …
Barney, my boy, have you ever seen this fighting Mick here?” He flung his thumb at the Irish giant.

“Nope. Can’t say I have.”

“All right, Barney. Go back to your customers.” Schick creaked to his feet and went out. “Mrs. Odell, what was your maiden name?”

The lip-quivering redoubled. “Morrison.”

“Lily Morrison?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been married to Odell?”

“Two and a half years.”

“So.” The old man again consulted a fictitious
dossier.
“Now listen to me, Mrs. Lily Morrison Odell. I have before me a clear record. Five years ago one Albert Grimshaw was arrested and sent to Sing Sing. At the time he was arrested there is no record of your connection with him—true. But several years before that you were living with him at … What was the address, Sergeant Velie?”

“One-o-four-five Tenth Avenue,” said Velie.

Odell had leaped to his feet, his face surcharged with purple.
“Livin’
with him, was she?” he snarled. “There ain’t a skunk breathin’ can say that about my wife and get away with it! Put up your mitts, you old wind-bag! I’ll knock—”

He was crouching forward, huge fists flailing the air. Then his head jerked backward with a viciousness that almost snapped his vertebras; it had moved in that direction under the iron urging of Sergeant Velie’s fingers, now clamped in the man’s collar. Velie shook Odell twice, as a baby shakes a rattle, and Odell, mouth open, found himself slammed back in his chair.

“Be good, you mug,” said Velie gently. “Don’t you know you’re threatening an officer?” He did not release his grip on Odell’s collar; the man sat choking.

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be good, Thomas,” remarked the Inspector, as if nothing untoward had occurred. “Now, Mrs. Odell, as I was saying—”

The woman, who had watched the manhandling of her leviathan husband with horror-struck eyes, gulped. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never knew a man named Grimshaw. I never saw—”

“A lot of ‘nevers,’ Mrs. Odell. “Why did Grimshaw look you up as soon as he got out of prison two weeks ago?”

“Don’t answer,” gurgled the giant.

“I won’t. I won’t.”

The Inspector turned his sharp eyes on the man. “Do you realize that I can arrest you on a charge of refusing assistance to the police in a murder investigation?”

“Go ahead and try it,” muttered Odell. “I’ve got influence, I have. You’ll never get away with it. I know Ollivant at the Hall …”

“Hear that, Mr. District Attorney? He knows Ollivant at the Hall,” said the Inspector with a sigh. “This man suggests bringing undue influence to bear … Odell, what’s your racket?”

“Got no racket.”

“Oh! You make an honest living. What’s your business?”

“I’m a plumbing contractor.”

“That explains your pull … Where do you live, Irish?”

“Brooklyn—Flatbush section.”

“Anything on this bird, Thomas?”

Sergeant Velie released Odell’s collar. “Clean record, Chief,” he said regretfully.

“How about the woman?”

“Seems to have gone straight.”

“There!” flared Mrs. Odell triumphantly.

“Oh, so you admit you had something to go straight about?”

Her eyes, large as a cow’s, opened wider; but she stubbornly kept silent.

“I suggest,” drawled Ellery from the depths of his chair, “that the omniscient Mr. Bell be summoned.”

The Inspector nodded to Velie, who went out and reappeared almost at once with the night-clerk. “Take a look at this man. Bell,” said the Inspector.

Bell’s Adam’s-apple joggled prominently. He pointed a trembling finger at the suspicious, glowering face of Jeremiah Odell. “That’s the man! That’s the man!” he cried.

“Ha!” The Inspector was on his feet. “Which one was he, Bell?”

Bell looked blank for an instant. “Gee,” he muttered, “don’t seem to remember exactly—by God, I do! This man came next to last, just before that doctor with the beard!” His voice rose confidently. “He was the Irishman—the big fellow I told you about, Inspector. I remember now.”

“Positive?”

“I’d swear to it.”

“All right, Bell. Go on home now.”

Bell went away. Odell’s mammoth jaw had fallen; there was desperation in his black eyes.

“Well, what about it, Odell?”

He shook his head like a groggy prize-fighter. “About what?”

“Ever see that man who just went out?”

“No!”

“Do you know who he is?”

“No!”

“He’s the night-clerk,” said the Inspector pleasantly, “at the Hotel Benedict. Ever been there?”

“No!”

“He says he saw you there at his desk between ten and ten-thirty on the night of Thursday, September thirtieth.”

“It’s a damn lie!”

“You asked at the desk whether there was an Albert Grimshaw registered.”

“I didn’t!”

“You asked Bell for his room-number and then went up. Room 314, Odell. Remember? It’s an easy number to remember …
Well?”

Odell pulled himself to his feet. “Listen. I’m a taxpayer and an honest citizen. I don’t know what any of you guys are ravin’ about. This ain’t Russia!” he shouted. “I’ve got my rights! Come on, Lily, let’s go—they can’t keep us here!”

The woman rose obediently; Velie stepped behind Odell and for a moment it seemed as if the two men must clash; but the Inspector motioned Velie aside and watched the Odells, slowly at first, and then with ludicrous acceleration, make for the doorway. They sped through it and out of sight.

“Get somebody on them,” said Inspector Queen in the glummest of voices. Velie followed the Odells out.

“Most pig-headed bunch of witnesses I’ve ever seen,” muttered Sampson. “What’s behind all this?”

Ellery murmured: “You heard Mr. Jeremiah Odell, didn’t you, Sampson? It’s Soviet Russia. Some of that good old Red propaganda. Good old Russia! What would our noble citizenry do without it?”

No one paid attention. “It’s something screwy, I’ll tell you that,” said Pepper. “This guy Grimshaw was tangled up in a lot of darned shady affairs.”

The Inspector spread his hands helplessly, and they were silent for a long moment.

But as Pepper and the District Attorney rose to go, Ellery said brightly: “Say with Terence: ‘Whatever chance shall bring, we will bear with equanimity.’”

Until late Monday afternoon the Khalkis case remained in a
status quo
that was drearily persistent. The Inspector went about his business, which was multifarious; and Ellery went about his—which consisted largely in consuming cigarets, wolfing random chunks from a tiny volume of Sapphics in his pocket, and betweenwhiles slumping in the leather chair in his father’s office immersed in furious reflections. It was easier, it appeared, to quote Terence than to follow his advice.

The bomb burst just before Inspector Queen, having concluded his routine work for the day, was about to gather in his son and depart for the scarcely more cheerful destination of the Queen household. The Inspector was already getting into his overcoat, in fact, when Pepper flew into the office, his face crimson with excitement and a strange exultation. He was waving an envelope over his head.

“Inspector! Mr. Queen! Look at this.” He flung the envelope on the desk, began to pace up and down restlessly. “Just arrived in the mail. Addressed to Sampson, as you can see. Chief’s out—his secretary opened it and gave it to me. Too good to keep. Read it!”

Ellery rose quickly and went to his father’s side. Together they stared at the envelope. It was of cheap quality; the address was typewritten; the postmark indicated that it had been canceled through the Grand Central post-office that very morning.

“Well, well, what’s this?” muttered the Inspector. Carefully he drew from the envelope a slip of notepaper as cheap as its container. He flipped it open. It bore a few lines of typewriting—and no date, salutation or signature. The old man read it aloud, slowly:

“The writer (it ran) has found out something hot—good and hot—about the Grimshaw case. The District Attorney ought to be interested.

“Here it is. Look up the ancient history of Albert Grimshaw and you will find that he had a brother. What you may
not
find out, though, is that his brother is actively involved in the investigation. In fact, the name he goes by now is Mr. Gilbert Sloane.”

“What,” cried Pepper, “do you think of
that?”

The Queens regarded each other, and then Pepper. “Interesting, if true,” remarked the Inspector. “It may be just a crank-letter, though.”

Ellery said calmly: “Even if it is true, I fail to see its significance.”

Pepper’s face fell. “Well, darn it!” he said, “Sloane denied ever having seen Grimshaw, didn’t he? That’s significant if they’re brothers, isn’t it?”

Ellery shook his head. “Significant of what, Pepper? Of the fact that Sloane was ashamed to admit his brother was a jail-bird? Especially in the face of his brother’s murder? No, I’m afraid Mr. Sloane’s silence was animated by nothing more sinister than a fear of social degradation.”

“Well, I’m not so sure,” said Pepper doggedly. “I’ll bet the Chief thinks I’m right, too. What are you going to do about it, Inspector?”

“The first thing, after you two spalpeens get through arguing,” remarked the Inspector dryly, “is to see if we can find anything in this letter of internal significance.” He went to his inter-office communicator. “Miss Lambert? Inspector Queen. Come up to my office a minute.” He turned back with a grim smile. “We’ll see what the expert has to say.”

Una Lambert turned out to be a sharp-featured young woman with a sleek dash of grey running through her blackish hair. “What is it, Inspector Queen?”

The old man tossed the letter across the desk. “What do you make of this?”

Unfortunately, she made little of it. Beyond the fact that it had been typed on a well-used Underwood machine of fairly recent model, and that the characters had clearly distinguishable if microscopic defects in certain instances, she was unable to offer much of value. She felt sure, however, that she would be able to identify any other specimen which might be typed on the same machine.

“Well,” grumbled the Inspector, when Una Lambert had been dismissed, “I suppose we can’t expect miracles even from an expert.” He dispatched Sergeant Velie to the police laboratories with the letter for photographing and fingerprint tests.

“I’ll have to locate the D.A.,” said Pepper disconsolately, “and tell him about this letter.”

“Do that,” said Ellery, “and you might inform him at the same time that my father and I are going to go over Number Thirteen East Fifty-fourth Street at once—ourselves.”

The Inspector was as much surprised as Pepper. “What d’ye mean, you idiot? Ritter went over that empty Knox house—you know that. What’s the idea?”

“The idea,” replied Ellery, “is misty, but the purpose surely is self-evident. In a word, I have implicit faith in the honesty of your precious Ritter, but I have vague misgivings about his powers of observation.”

“Sounds like a good hunch,” said Pepper. “After all, there may be something that Ritter missed.”

“Nonsenses,” said the Inspector sharply. “Ritter’s one of my most reliable men.”

“I have been sitting here all the long afternoon,” said Ellery with a bitter sigh, “contemplating, among my sins, the complexities of the ever-snarling problem. It occurred to me with force that, as you say, Your Reverence, Ritter is one of your most reliable men.
Ergo:
my decision to go over the ground myself.”

“You don’t mean to stand there and say you think Ritter is—” The Inspector was shocked.

“By my faith, as the Christians used to say—no,” replied Ellery. “Ritter is honest, trustworthy, valiant, conscientious and a credit to his guild. Except that—henceforth I trust nothing but my own two eyes and the dizzy cerebrum that the Immanent Will, in Its autonomous, aimless, unconscious and indestructible wisdom has seen fit to bestow upon me.”
*

*
Mr. Queen was undoubtedly referring here to the Schopenhauerian conception of God.—The Editor.

E
VENING FOUND THE INSPECTOR
, Ellery and Sergeant Velie standing before the gloomy façade of Number Thirteen.

The empty Knox house was a twin of the Khalkis house next door. Crumbling brownstone streaked with age, large old-fashioned window-spaces blinded with grey boards—a forbidding edifice. There were lights in the Khalkis house at its side, and the restless figures of detectives prowled about it—by comparison the Khalkis house was a cheerful place.

“Have you got the key, Thomas?” Even the Inspector felt the dreary spell, and his voice was subdued.

Velie silently produced a key.

“En avant!”
muttered Ellery, and the three men pushed through the creaking gate on the sidewalk.

“Upstairs first?” demanded the sergeant.

“Yes.”

They mounted the chipped stone steps. Velie brought out a large flashlight, tucked it under his arm, and unlocked the front door. They stepped into the crypt of a vestibule; Velie twitched his torch about, located the lock of the inner door, and opened it. The three men marched in in close formation, and found themselves in a black cavern which, on being illuminated by the flickering rays of the sergeant’s flash, revealed itself as an exact replica in shape and size of the Khalkis foyer next door.