Greek Coffin Mystery (43 page)

Ellery frowned thoughtfully. “We now ascend into more acute reasoning. For see! It must be evident that the real criminal, in framing James Knox for the murders and the potential theft, considered James Knox a possibility in the minds of the police! It would be folly to make James Knox appear the criminal if the real murderer knew the police would not accept James Knox as the criminal. Therefore the real murderer could not have known the thousand-dollar-bill story. For had he known it, he would never have framed Mr. Knox. At this point, then, one person could certainly be eliminated as a mathematical possibility, on top of the fact that she was an accredited investigator of the Victoria Museum—which fact, of course, did not necessarily absolve her from suspicion, although it was a tenable presumption of innocence. That was this beautiful young lady, whose blushes I observe are continually deeping—Miss Brett; for she was present when Mr. Knox told me about the thousand-dollar bill, and if she had been the murderer or even the murderer’s accomplice, she would not have framed Mr. Knox or permitted the murderer to frame him.”

Joan sat up straight at this; then she grinned weakly and sank back. Alan Cheney blinked. He was studying the rug at his feet as if it were some precious sample of weaving worthy of a young antiquarian’s strict scrutiny.

“Therefore—a plethora of therefores,” continued Ellery, “of the people who could have typed the second letter, I had eliminated both Mr. Knox and Miss Brett, either as murderer or accomplice in each instance.

“Now, would the only other members of the official household—the servants—have among their number the
murderer himself?
No, because not one of the servants could physically have planted the false clews against Khalkis and Sloane in the Khalkis house—a carefully kept list of all people who visited the Khalkis house does not anywhere reveal any of Mr. Knox’s servants. On the other hand, could one of Mr. Knox’s servants have been an
accomplice
of an outside murderer, being utilized merely because he had access to the Knox typewriter?”

Ellery smiled. “No, as I can prove. The fact that Mr. Knox’s typewriter was employed in the frame-up against him indicates that the use of his typewriter was intended by the murderer from the beginning; for the only concrete evidence the murderer intended to leave against Mr. Knox was that the second letter would be found to have been written on Mr. Knox’s machine; this was the kernel of the frame-up plot. (Please note that even if the plotter did not know in advance the
specific
manner in which he would incriminate Mr. Knox, he at least was intending to use some peculiarity of the typewriter.) Well, then, it certainly would have been to the murderer’s obvious advantage, since he was framing Mr. Knox by means of his typewriter, to have typed
both
letters on that machine. Yet
only the second
was typed on that machine—the first having been written on an Underwood outside of Mr. Knox’s house, Mr. Knox’s Remington being the only machine
in
his house. … If therefore the murderer did not use Mr. Knox’s Remington for the typing of the first letter, it clearly indicates that
he did not have access
to Mr. Knox’s machine for the typing of the first letter. But all the servants
did
have access to Mr. Knox’s machine for the typing of the first letter—they had all been with him, in fact, a minimum of five years. Therefore, one of them could not have been an accomplice of the murderer, or the murderer would have had him type the first letter on the Knox machine.

“But this has eliminated
either as murderer or accomplice
Mr. Knox, Miss Brett, and all the servants of the household! But how is this possible, since the second letter
was
written from the Knox house?”

Ellery flung his cigaret into the fire. “We know now that the writer, though somehow in Mr. Knox’s den to have written the second letter, was not in Mr. Knox’s den—or house—when he wrote the first letter—otherwise he would have used the machine for the first letter also. We know too that no outsider was admitted to the Knox house after the receipt of the first letter—that is, no outsider
except one person.
Now, while it’s true that any one could have written the first letter from outside, only one person could have written the second—the only one who gained access to the house before the receipt of the second letter. And now another point became clear. For why, I asked myself all the time, had that first letter been
necessary at all?
It was garrulous, and it seemed to serve little purpose. Blackmailers generally make their strike the first time they write—they don’t indulge in long-winded, pleasantly cocky correspondence; they don’t
establish
their position as blackmailers in one letter, and then wait for a second to demand money. The explanation here was psychologically perfect: that first letter was
essential
to the murderer; it served some purpose. What purpose? Why, to get him access to the Knox house! Why did he want access to the Knox house? To be in a position to type the
second
letter from Knox’s machine! Everything matched. …

“Now who was the only one who gained access to the house between the receipt of the first letter and the receipt of the second? And strange as it seemed, incredible, extraordinary as I found it, I couldn’t blink the fact that this visitor was our own colleague, our fellow-investigator—in short, Assistant District Attorney Pepper, who had spent several days there (and, as we instantly recall, at his own suggestion) for the ostensible purpose of
waiting
for the second letter!

“Clever! It was devilishly ingenious.

“My first reaction was natural—I could not bring myself to believe it. It seemed impossible. But staggering as this revelation was to me, particularly since it was the first time I had even considered Pepper a possibility,” continued Ellery, “the course was clear. I could not reject a suspect—now no longer a suspect, but from logic the criminal—merely because imagination refused to credit the result of reason. I was forced to check. I went over the whole case from the beginning to see if, and how, Pepper matched the facts.

“Well, Pepper himself had identified Grimshaw as a man he had defended five years before; naturally, as the criminal, he would do this to forestall cleverly the possible chance discovery of this former connection between him and the victim after he had had the opportunity of recognizing the victim and had refrained from doing so. A small point, and not at all conclusive, but significant nevertheless. In all likelihood this connection began at least five years ago in a lawyer-client relationship, with Grimshaw coming to Pepper after he stole the painting from the Victoria Museum, asking him perhaps to keep an eye on things while he, Grimshaw, was in prison, and during the period when the painting, still unpaid for, was in Khalkis’ possession. As soon as Grimshaw was released from prison, he naturally would have gone to Khalkis to collect. Undoubtedly it was Pepper who was the man behind the scenes, behind all the events that followed, keeping himself always unidentified and in the background. This business of Grimshaw and Pepper being connected may possibly be clarified by Jordan, Pepper’s former law-partner, although Jordan is probably an entirely innocent man.”

“We’re looking him up,” said Sampson. “He’s a reputable attorney.”

“No doubt,” said Ellery dryly. “Pepper wouldn’t ally himself openly with a crook—not Pepper. … But we are looking for confirmation. How does the matter of motive emerge in a consideration of Pepper as Grimshaw’s strangler? …

“After the meeting of Grimshaw, Mr. Knox and Khalkis that Friday night, and after Grimshaw received the promissory note payable to bearer, Mr. Knox left with Grimshaw, went away, and meanwhile Grimshaw remained standing before the house. Why? Possibly to meet his confederate—a not fanciful conclusion from Grimshaw’s own statements about his ‘single partner.’ Pepper, then, must have been waiting for Grimshaw in the vicinity. They must have withdrawn into the shadows and Grimshaw must have told Pepper everything that had transpired in the house. Pepper, realizing that he no longer needed Grimshaw, that Grimshaw was even a danger to him, that with Grimshaw out of the way he could collect from Mr. Knox without having to divide the spoils—must then have decided to kill his partner. The promissory note would have provided an additional motive, for, made out to bearer, and with Khalkis still alive, remember, it represented a potential half-million dollars to the holder of it; and there too was Mr. James J. Knox still in the background as another source of blackmail later on. Undoubtedly Pepper killed Grimshaw either in the shadows of the basement entrance to the empty Knox house next door, or in the basement itself, for which he must already have provided himself with a duplicate key. At any rate, having Grimshaw’s dead body in the basement, he searched the corpse, appropriated the promissory note and Grimshaw’s watch (with the notion perhaps of using it later somewhere as a plant), and the five thousand dollars Sloane had bribed Grimshaw with the night before to get out of the city. At the time he choked Grimshaw to death, he must have had some plan in mind for the disposal of the body; or perhaps he intended to leave it permanently in the basement. But when the very next morning Khalkis unexpectedly died, Pepper must have realized instantly that here was an unexampled opportunity to bury Grimshaw’s body in Khalkis’ coffin. He then played in luck; for on the day of Khalkis’ burial, Woodruff himself called the District Attorney’s office for assistance, and Pepper asked—you mentioned that yourself, Sampson, once when you were chiding Pepper about being too interested in Miss Brett—to be put in charge of the will-search. Here, then, was another psychological indication to Mr. Pepper.

“Now, having perfect access to the Khalkis premises, he saw how simple matters would be for him. On the Wednesday night after the funeral, he took Grimshaw’s body out of the empty Knox basement, where he had crammed it in the old trunk, carried the body through the dark court into the darker graveyard, dug up the earth above the vault, opened the horizontal door of the vault, leaped in and opened Khalkis’ coffin—and immediately found the will in the steel box; until then it is probable that he himself did not know where the will had gone. Knowing that the will might come in handy later for the purpose of blackmailing still another figure in the tragedy, Sloane—Sloane being the only one who had motive for the theft of the will in the first place and its insertion in the coffin before the funeral—Pepper then must have appropriated the will, another potential instrument of blackmail. He crammed Grimshaw’s body into the coffin, put back the lid of the coffin, climbed out, dropped the door of the vault, refilled the shallow pit, took away what tools he had used plus the will and the steel box, and left the graveyard. Incidentally, here is another tiny confirmation of the Pepper solution. For Pepper himself told us that it was on this night—Wednesday night, in the wee hours—that he saw Miss Brett on her marauding expedition in the study. Then Pepper by his own admission was up late that night; and it is not far-fetched to assume that he went through the ghastly business of the burial after Miss Brett left the study.

“Now we can fit in Mrs. Vreeland’s story of having seen Sloane entering the graveyard that night. Sloane must have become aware of suspicious activity on Pepper’s part in the house, followed him, seen everything Pepper did—including the burial of the body and the appropriation of the will—and realized that Pepper was a murderer … of whom, however, at that time, in the darkness, Sloane probably did not know.”

Joan shuddered. “That—that nice young man. It’s incredible.”

Ellery said severely, “This should teach you a stern lesson, Miss Brett. Stick to those you’re sure of. … Where was I? Yes! Now, Pepper felt perfectly safe; the body was buried, and no one would have any reason to look for it. But when the next day I announced the possibility of the will having been slipped into the coffin and suggested a disinterment, Pepper must have thought very rapidly indeed. He could not now prevent the murder from being discovered without going back to the graveyard and taking the body out again; in this case he would have the problem of disposing of it all over again; a risky business all around. On the other hand, he might be able to make capital of the discovery of the murder. So, having the run of the Khalkis house, he left clews about which would point to the dead man—Khalkis, I mean—as the murderer. He had had a sample of my particular brand of reasoning, and deliberately toyed with me—leaving not obvious clews but subtle ones which he felt sure I would see. There were two reasons why he probably selected Khalkis as the ‘murderer’: the first, it would be just such a solution as would appeal to my imagination; second, Khalkis was dead and could not deny anything that Pepper suggested by his plants. And, to make it perfect—if the solution were accepted, no one alive would suffer; for remember that Pepper was not a habitual murderer, hardened to killings.

“Now, as I pointed out in the beginning, Pepper could not have planted those false clews against Khalkis unless he
knew
that Mr. Knox, possessing the stolen painting, must perforce keep quiet and not admit having been the third man that night—part of Pepper’s false trail to Khalkis being the fact that only two men were involved in the negotiations at the house that night. But, to have known that Mr. Knox possessed the painting, he must have been Grimshaw’s partner, as shown many times before; must therefore have been the unknown who accompanied Grimshaw to his hotel room the night of the multiplicity of visitors.

“When Miss Brett inadvertently burst the Khalkis bubble by recalling and pointing out the discrepancy in the tea-cups, Pepper must have felt very badly. But at the same time he would have assured himself that it was no fault of his plotting—there had always been the off-chance that some one would notice the condition of the cups before he had had the opportunity to tinker with them. On the other hand, when Mr. Knox unexpectedly told
his
story, revealing himself as the third man, Pepper realized that all his work was undone, and moreover that I now knew the clews to have been deliberate falsifications left to be found. So Pepper, in the admirable position of knowing at all times everything
I
knew—how he must have chuckled to himself when I was being smug, oratorical and, in a word, myself!—Pepper decided then and there to make capital of his unique position by arranging succeeding events to bear out my own expressed theories. Khalkis being dead, the promissory note he held, Pepper knew, was valueless to him. What other source of revenue was open? He could not blackmail Mr. Knox with regard to possession of the painting, because Mr. Knox had unexpectedly balked him by telling his story to the police. True, Mr. Knox had said the painting was comparatively valueless, a copy, but Pepper chose not to believe that, feeling that Mr. Knox was merely cleverly covering himself up—as indeed you were, sir; there Pepper shrewdly guessed that you were lying.”