Greek Coffin Mystery (34 page)

Ellery chuckled. “But Suiza found the door
closed!
How does this alter the situation? Well, certainly when the bullet was fired the door must have been open, otherwise the bullet would have struck the door, not the rug opposite the door outside the room. Then the door must have been closed
after
the bullet was fired. What does this mean—that Sloane fired the bullet into his own head and then for some ungodly reason went to the door, closed it, returned to the desk and sat down in precisely the same position as when he had pulled the trigger? Ridiculous; not only ridiculous but impossible: for Sloane died instantly, as Dr. Prouty’s autopsy report pointed out. This also banishes the possibility that he shot himself in the gallery and dragged himself back to his office, closing the door as he returned. No! When the revolver was discharged, Sloane died at once, and moreover the door was open. But Suiza found it closed …

“In other words, since the door was found closed by Suiza after Sloane’s instantaneous death, and since the bullet couldn’t have penetrated the door, which we noted in our preliminary investigation is made of steel—the only conclusion we can logically make is that
some one closed the door after Sloane’s death and before Suiza got to it.”

“But, Mr. Queen,” objected Pepper, “isn’t it possible that Suiza wasn’t the only visitor—that somebody was there and went away before he came?”

“Excellent suggestion, Pepper, and that is precisely what I am pointing out: that there was a visitor before Suiza—and that visitor was Sloane’s murderer!”

Sampson massaged his lean cheeks with irritation. “I’ll be hanged! Look here, Ellery, it’s still possible, you know, that Sloane did commit suicide, but that the visitor Pepper postulates might have been an innocent man, like Suiza, who’s too scared to admit he was there.”

Ellery waved his hand airily. “Possible, but deucedly far-fetched to evoke
two
innocent visitors in a limited time. No, Sampson, I don’t believe any of you can deny that we now have sufficient grounds to cast grave doubt upon the theory of suicide and support the theory of murder.”

“It’s true,” said the Inspector in despair. “It’s true.”

But Sampson was tenacious. “All right, let’s say Sloane was murdered, and his murderer closed the door on going out. It seems to me a damned stupid thing for him to do. Didn’t he notice that the bullet had punched a hole clean through Sloane’s head and gone out through the open door?”

“Sampson, Sampson,” said Ellery wearily, “think about it for a moment. Can the human eye follow the course of even a retarded bullet? Naturally, if the murderer had noticed that the bullet had completely penetrated Sloane’s skull he would not have closed the door. The fact that he did close the door, then, proves that he hadn’t noticed it. Please remember that Sloane’s head fell forward on his desk in such a way that its
left
side, the side from which the bullet emerged, was resting on the blotter. This position would have concealed the bullet-outlet entirely and the blood to a great degree. Besides, the murderer was probably in one devil of a hurry; why should he raise the dead man’s head and investigate? After all, he had no reason to
expect
that the bullet would penetrate and emerge. It’s not the usual thing for a bullet to do, you know.”

They were silent for a space, and then the old man grinned wryly at his two visitors. “He’s got us by the short hair, boys. It looks open and shut to me. Sloane was murdered.”

They nodded gloomily.

Ellery spoke again, briskly and without the note of personal triumph which had marked his explanation of the fallacious Khalkis solution. “Very well. Let’s reanalyze. If Sloane was murdered, as we now have excellent reason to believe, Sloane did not kill Grimshaw. It means that the real murderer of Grimshaw killed Sloane and made it appear a suicide, as if Sloane by shooting himself was thereby making tacit confession that he had been in truth Grimshaw’s murderer.

“To return to some original theses. We know from former deductions that the murderer of Grimshaw, in order to have been able to plant the false clews against Khalkis, must have had knowledge of Knox’s possession of the stolen painting; I proved that long ago when I showed that the entire Khalkis solution depended upon the murderer’s assurance that Knox would not come forward.
Alors.
The only outsider who had this knowledge, also as proved in that dreary past, was Grimshaw’s partner. Q.E.D.: Grimshaw’s partner is the murderer; and since Sloane himself was murdered, Sloane could not have been Grimshaw’s partner. Therefore the murderer is still at large and actively engaged in his pretty occupation of plotting. Still at large, I might point out, and in possession of Knox’s story.

“Now,” continued Ellery, “to reinterpret the clews against Sloane—clews which, since Sloane was murdered and was therefore innocent, can only have been additional plants manufactured and left by the real murderer.

“In the first place, since Sloane was innocent, we can no longer question the validity of his statement as to what happened on the night he visited Grimshaw at the Benedict. For while as a suspect his testimony was open to suspicion, as an innocent man he must perforce be believed. Therefore Sloane’s statement that he was the
second
visitor that night is probably true; the unknown actually did precede him, Sloane said; the unknown must therefore have been Grimshaw’s companion, the man who walked into the lobby by Grimshaw’s side, the man who accompanied Grimshaw into Room 314, as the elevator-boy testified. The sequence of visitors then is: the unknown—the bundled man; after whom came Sloane, then Mrs. Sloane, then Jeremiah Odell, then Dr. Wardes.”

Ellery brandished a lean forefinger. “Let me show you how logic and the exercise of the brain provide an interesting deduction. You will recall that Sloane said he was the
only
person in the world who knew that he, as Gilbert
Sloane,
was Grimshaw’s brother; not even Grimshaw knowing his brother’s changed name. Yet whoever wrote the anonymous letter did know this fact—the fact that Sloane, as Sloane, was Grimshaw’s brother. Who wrote the letter? Grimshaw, not having known the name of his brother, couldn’t have told any one; Sloane by his own now reputable testimony never told any one; therefore the only person who could have discovered this fact is some one who
saw them together,
heard that they were brothers, and already knew or later discovered by meeting Sloane and remembering his voice and face, that Grimshaw’s brother was Gilbert Sloane. But here’s an amazing thing! Sloane himself said that the night he went to Grimshaw’s room at the Benedict was the
only
occasion since he had changed his name—a matter of many years—on which the two brothers were face to face!

“In other words, whoever discovered the fact that Gilbert
Sloane
was Albert Grimshaw’s brother, must have been present, in the flesh, that night of Sloane’s visit to Grimshaw’s room. But Sloane himself told us that Grimshaw was alone when they were talking. How, then, could some one have been present? Very simply. If Sloane did not
see
this person, and this person still was present, it means that he was merely not visible to Sloane. In other words, hiding somewhere in the room; either in a clothes-closet or in the bathroom. Remember that Sloane did not see any one emerge from Room 314, despite the fact that Grimshaw’s companion had entered with Grimshaw only a few moments before. Remember too that Sloane said he knocked on the door, and his brother opened it
after a few moments
—Sloane’s own words. We may presume then that when Sloane knocked Grimshaw’s companion was still in 314, but that, wishing to avoid being seen, he slipped either into the closet or the bathroom with Grimshaw’s permission.

“Now,” continued Ellery, “visualize the situation. Sloane and Grimshaw talk, and our unknown mysterioso is listening, all ears, from his place of concealment. He hears, during the conversation, Grimshaw say maliciously that he’d nearly forgotten
he had a brother.
The concealed gentleman, therefore, knew that Grimshaw and his visitor were brothers. Did he recognize Sloane’s voice and know that he was hearing
Gilbert Sloane?
Perhaps he could even see—did he recognize Sloane’s face? Or did he later meet Sloane and recognize his voice, putting two and two together and inducing what Sloane thought only he himself in all the world knew? We have no way of telling, but one thing is certain: the unknown must have been in Grimshaw’s room that night, must have overheard the conversation, must have learned by induction that Gilbert Sloane and Albert Grimshaw were flesh-and-blood relations. For this is the only line of reasoning which explains how some one discovered the apparently unknowable fact.”

“Well, at least this is getting somewhere,” said Sampson. “Go on, Ellery. What else do you see with that necromantic brain of yours?”

“Logic, not necromancy, Sampson, although it is true I am anticipating future events by a sort of consultation with the dead. … I see this, clearly: the unknown, hidden in the room, being the one who accompanied Grimshaw directly before Sloane came in, was Grimshaw’s partner—the ‘partner’ Grimshaw himself specifically referred to the next night in Khalkis’ library. And this unknown, Grimshaw’s partner and murderer—as proved before—was the only one who could have written the anonymous letter to the police revealing the Sloane-Grimshaw brothership.”

“Sounds right,” muttered the Inspector.

“So it would seem.” Ellery folded his hands behind his neck. “Where are we? The letter was, therefore, one of the planted clews against Sloane to frame him as the murderer, with this distinction from those that had gone before—that is, it was not manufactured, but the truth. Nothing directly incriminating, of course, but a choice tidbit for the police when combined with other and more direct evidence. Now, this brothership clew having been planted, it is reasonable to assume that the basement key we found in Sloane’s humidor was also a plant; and Grimshaw’s watch in Sloane’s safe, too. Only Grimshaw’s murderer could have had that watch; Sloane having been innocent, Grimshaw’s murderer placed the watch where it would be immediately found after Sloane’s apparent suicide. The remains of the burnt Khalkis will must also have been a plant to implicate Sloane, for while it is probable that Sloane stole the will and put it into the coffin in the first place, thinking to be rid of it forever, it was indubitably the murderer who found it in the coffin while burying Grimshaw, and took it out and away with him on the excellent assumption that he might be able to make use of it later—as he did, observe, in the plot against Sloane after the Khalkis solution failed.”

Pepper and Sampson nodded.

“Now as to motive,” Ellery went on. “Why was Sloane selected to be framed as Grimshaw’s murderer? This has interesting facets. Of course, Sloane having been Grimshaw’s brother, having changed his name because of the family disgrace brought on by Grimshaw’s criminal career, having stolen the will and hidden it in the Khalkis coffin, being a member of the household and a physical possibility on all counts for the planting of the Khalkis clews—all these circumstances would give the murderer admirable reason for selecting Sloane as an ‘acceptable’ criminal to the police.

“Yet, if Mrs. Vreeland’s story is true that Sloane was in the graveyard on that Wednesday night when Grimshaw’s body must have been buried in Khalkis’ coffin, Sloane must have been there for some reason not connected with the burial of the body, since he hadn’t killed the man in the first place—Don’t forget that Mrs. Vreeland didn’t see him carrying anything. … Very well. Why was Sloane skulking about the court and graveyard that Wednesday night?” Ellery stared reflectively into the fire. “I have had an arresting thought. For if Sloane that night had observed some suspicious activity, had followed the murderer unseen into the graveyard, had actually witnessed the burial and seen the murderer appropriate the steel will-box. … Do you see where we tend? On the basis of these not fanciful assumptions, we can infer what Sloane would do later. He knew the murderer, had seen him burying Grimshaw. Why didn’t he reveal this information to the police? Excellent reason!—the murderer had in his possession the will which cut off Sloane as a legatee. Is it farfetched to reason that Sloane later approached the murderer with a proposition: that he would keep silent about the murderer’s identity, provided the murderer returned to Sloane, or destroyed on the spot, the pestiferous new testament? This would provide the murderer with an additional motive: for now he would have all the more reason to choose Sloane as the ‘acceptable’ criminal, killing him and making him appear a suicide, and thereby obliterating the only person alive who knew the murderer’s identity.”

“But it seems to me,” objected Sampson, “that the murderer in this event, when Sloane approached him, would be forced to give Sloane the will. And that doesn’t jibe with the facts, because we found the will burnt in the next-door basement furnace, and you claim
the murderer
left it there for us to find.”

Ellery yawned. “Sampson, Sampson, when will you ever learn to use the grey matter in your noodle? Do you think that our gentle homicidal maniac is a fool? All he had to do was to threaten Sloane. He would say: ‘If you tell the police I killed Grimshaw, I’ll give the police this will. No, Mr. Sloane, I’ll keep the will to make sure
you
keep your mouth shut.’ And Sloane would have no recourse but to accept the compromise. As it is, the moment he went to friend murderer he sealed his own fate, Poor Sloane! I’m afraid he wasn’t very smart.”

What followed was swift, painful and annoying. The Inspector, much against his will, was forced to communicate Suiza’s story and its implications to the newspaper reporters. The Sunday papers touched on the matter, the Monday papers blazed with the news—Monday being an extraordinarily weak day for news in the journalistic profession—and the whole of New York City knew directly thereafter that the much-maligned Gilbert Sloane had been not a murderer-suicide after all but, the police now felt, an innocent victim of a clever murderer—diabolical was the word the tabloids used. The police, they went on to inform the public, were therefore still searching for the real murderer, who now had two killings on his bloody conscience, where before he had had only one.