Greek Coffin Mystery (45 page)

“At the time I accused Mr. Knox in his own house, I already had Sergeant Velie—a very reluctant officer, I will confess, since he is so attached to my father that even the thought of treason makes his huge carcass tremble—searching Pepper’s apartment and office on the remote chance that he had secreted the painting in one of the two places. Of course, it wasn’t in either, but I had to be certain. Friday night I saw to it that Pepper was given the painting to take down to the D.A.’s office, where it would be available to him at any time. He naturally lay doggo that night and all day yesterday; but, as you all know now, last night he smuggled the painting out of the official files and proceeded to his hiding-place in the empty Knox house, where we nabbed him with the two—the original and the worthless copy. Of course, Sergeant Velie and his men had been on Pepper’s trail all day, like bloodhounds; and I was getting frequent reports about Pepper’s movements, since we didn’t know where he had the Leonardo concealed.

“The fact that he shot for my heart”—Ellery tenderly patted his shoulder—“and fortunately for posterity merely winged me, proves, I think, that in that agonizing instant of discovery Pepper recognized at last that I had turned the tables.

“And that, I believe, spells
finis.”

They sighed and stirred. Djuna appeared, as if by pre-arrangement, with tea-things. For a few moments the case was forgotten in chatter—in which neither Miss Joan Brett nor Mr. Alan Cheney, it will be noted, took part—and then Sampson said: “I’ve got something that will bear clarification, Ellery. You’ve gone to heaps of trouble in your analysis of the events surrounding the blackmail letters to take into account the possibility of an accomplice. Splendid! But—” he stabbed at the air triumphantly with his forefinger in the approved prosecutor-manner—“how about your original analysis? Remember you said that the first characteristic of the letter-writer was that in order to have planted the false clews against Khalkis in the Khalkis house he must have been the murderer?”

“Yes,” said Ellery, blinking thoughtfully.

“But you didn’t say anything about the possibility that it might have been an
accomplice
of the murderer who planted those clews! How could you assume it was the murderer and discard even the possibility of an accomplice?”

“Don’t excite yourself, Sampson. The explanation is really self-evident. Grimshaw himself had said he had only one partner—right? We showed from other things that this partner had killed Grimshaw—right? Then I said that, the partner having killed Grimshaw, he had the greatest motive for trying to pin the guilt on some one else, in that first case Khalkis—so, I said, the murderer planted the false clews. You ask me why there isn’t the logical possibility that an accomplice planted the false clews? For the simple reason that, in killing Grimshaw, the murderer was
deliberately getting rid of an accomplice.
Would he kill an accomplice and then turn right around and take another one for the purpose of laying a false trail? In addition, the planting of the Khalkis clews was a wholly-voluntary action on the part of the plotter. In other words, he had the world to choose from in selecting an ‘acceptable’ murderer. Then he would certainly choose the most expedient. Having got rid of one accomplice, the taking of another would be a clumsy and unsatisfactory expedient. Therefore, giving the clever criminal credit for his cleverness, I maintained that he had planted the false clews himself.”

“All right, all right,” said Sampson, throwing up his hands.

“How about Mrs. Vreeland, Ellery?” asked the Inspector curiously. “I thought that she and Sloane were lovers. That doesn’t jibe with her story to us about seeing Sloane in the graveyard that night.”

Ellery waved another cigaret. “A detail. From Mrs. Sloane’s description of her visit to the Benedict, trailing Sloane, it was evident that Sloane and Mrs. Vreeland had been conducting an
affaire de coeur.
But I think you will find that, as soon as Sloane realized that the only way he’d ever inherit the Khalkis Galleries would be through his wife, he decided to cast off his paramour and devote himself thereafter to the cultivation to his wife’s good graces. Naturally, Mrs. Vreeland being what she is—and a spurned lady-love at that—reacted in the usual way and attempted to hurt Sloane as much as possible.”

Alan Cheney woke up suddenly. Out of a clear sky—he sedulously avoided looking at Joan—he asked: “And how about this Dr. Wardes, Queen? Where the devil is he? Why did he skip out? Where does he fit into the case, if he fits in at all?”

Joan Brett was examining her hands with interest.

“I think,” said Ellery with a shrug, “that Miss Brett could answer that question. I’ve had a suspicion all along. … Eh, Miss Brett?”

Joan looked up and smiled very sweetly—although she did not look in Alan’s direction. “Dr. Wardes was my confederate. Really! And one of Scotland Yard’s cleverest investigators.”

This was, one felt, excellent news to Mr. Alan Cheney; he coughed his surprise and studied the rug more carefully than before. “You see,” continued Joan, still smiling sweetly, “I didn’t say anything about him to you, Mr. Queen, because he himself forbade me to. He had disappeared to trail the Leonardo out of official sight and interference—he was quite disgusted with the way things had gone.”

“Then of course you wangled him into the Khalkis house by design?” asked Ellery.

“Yes. When I saw I was beyond my depth, I wrote of my helplessness to the Museum, and they went to Scotland Yard, who until then had been ignorant of the theft’—the directors were
very
keen to keep the affair quiet. Dr. Wardes actually has a medical license and has acted as a physician on cases before.”

“He did visit Grimshaw that night in the Benedict, didn’t he?” asked the District Attorney.

“Certainly. That night I was unable to follow Grimshaw myself; but I passed the word along to Dr. Wardes, and he followed the man, saw him join an unidentifiable man …”

“Pepper, of course,” murmured Ellery.

“… and dallied about the lobby of the hotel when Grimshaw and this Pepper person took the lift. He saw Sloane go up, and Mrs. Sloane, and Odell—and finally he went up himself, although he did not enter Grimshaw’s room, merely reconnoitered about. He saw them all leave, excepting the first man. Naturally, he couldn’t tell you these things without disclosing his identity, and he was unwilling to do that. … Discovering nothing, Dr. Wardes returned to the Khalkis house. The night after, when Grimshaw and Mr. Knox called—although we didn’t know it was Mr. Knox then—Dr. Wardes was unfortunately out with Mrs. Vreeland, whose acquaintance he was cultivating on a—a—what shall I say?—a hunch!”

“Where’s he now, I wonder?” said Alan Cheney indifferently, addressing the design on the rug.

“I do believe,” said Joan to the smoke-filled air, “that Dr. Wardes is now on the high seas, homeward bound.”

“Ah,” said Alan, as if that were a highly satisfactory reply.

When Knox and Sampson had gone, the Inspector sighed, took Joan’s hand in a fatherly way, patted Alan’s shoulder, and departed on some errand of his own—presumably to face a horde of hungry journalists and, what was even more agreeable, some very superior superiors who had experienced a marked deflation of spirits with the lightning zigzags of the Grimshaw-Sloane-Pepper case.

Left alone with his guests, Ellery began to pay scrupulous attention to the dressings of his wounded shoulder. He was a most ungentlemanly host; Joan and Alan, in fact, rose and rather stiffly attempted to take their leave.

“What! You’re not going already?” Ellery exclaimed mercifully, at last. He crawled off the sofa and smiled idiotically at them; Joan’s ivory nostrils were quivering ever so slightly, and Alan was now engaged in tracing a complex pattern with one scuffing toe on the rug in which he had been so completely absorbed for an hour. “Well! Don’t go just yet. Wait. I have something that you especially will be interested in, Miss Brett.”

Ellery hurried mysteriously out of the living-room. No word was spoken during his absence; they stood like two belligerent babies, furtively looking each other over. They sighed together as Ellery emerged from the bedroom, a large roll of canvas tucked under his right arm.

“This,” he said to Joan with gravity, “is the thingamajig that has caused all the fuss. We no longer require the sadly abused Leonardo—Pepper being dead, there will be no trial. …”

“You’re not—you’re not giving it to—” Joan began slowly. Alan Cheney stared.

“Precisely. You’re going back to London, aren’t you? So allow me to offer you the honor you’ve earned, Lieutenant Brett—the privilege of taking the Leonardo back to the Museum yourself.”

“Oh!” Her rosy mouth framed the ellipse, a little tremulously; and it did not seem with too much enthusiasm. She accepted the roll of canvas and passed it from her right hand to her left and back again, quite as if she did not know exactly what to do with it—this hoary daub over which three men had lost their lives.

Ellery went to a sideboard and produced a bottle. It was a brown old bottle with a nice wink and gleam to it; he spoke in a low voice to Djuna and that priceless supernumerary bustled into his kitchen, to return shortly with syphon and soda and other implements of the bibulous art. “A Scotch-and-soda, Miss Brett?” asked Ellery gayly.

“Oh,
no!”

“Perhaps a cocktail?”

“You’re very kind, but
I
don’t indulge, Mr. Queen.” Confusion had been superseded; Miss Brett was her old frosty self again, for no logical reason apparent to the less subtle male eye.

Alan Cheney was regarding the bottle thirstily. Ellery busied himself with glasses and things. Soon he had an amber effervescent fluid bubbling in a tall glass; and he offered it to Alan with the air of one man of the world to another.

“Really excellent,” murmured Ellery. “I know you have a fancy for these things … What, you—?” Ellery managed to exhibit an enormous astonishment.

For Mr. Alan Cheney, under the judiciously stern eye of Miss Joan Brett—Mr. Alan Cheney, the confirmed toper—was actually refusing this aromatic concoction! “No,” he muttered doggedly. “No, thanks, Queen. I’ve quit the stuff. Can’t tempt me.”

A ray of warm light seemed to touch the features of Miss Joan Brett; one with a poor sense of word-values might say that she was beaming; the truth was that the frost melted magically away, and again for no logical reason she blushed, and looked down at the floor, and her toe too began a scuffing movement; and the Leonardo, which was catalogued at one million dollars, began to slip from under her arm, ignored as completely as if it had been a gaudy calendar.

“Pshaw!” said Ellery. “And I thought—Well!” He shrugged with unconvincing disappointment. “You know, Miss Brett,” he said, “this is quite like one of those old stock-company melodramas. Hero leaps to the upper deck of the water-wagon—turns over a new leaf at the end of the third act, and all that sort of thing. In fact, I hear that Mr. Cheney has consented to supervise the business end of his mother’s now considerable estate—eh, Cheney?” Alan nodded breathlessly. “And he’ll probably manage the Khalkis Galleries too when this legal flurry blows over.”

He babbled on. And then he stopped, because neither of his guests was listening. Joan had turned on shocking impulse to Alan; intelligence—or whatever it is called—bridged the gap between their eyes, and Joan blushed again and turned to Ellery, who was regarding them ruefully. “I don’t think,” said Joan, “that I shall be going back to London after all. It’s—It was nice of you. …”

And Ellery, when the door had closed upon them, surveyed the prostrate canvas on his floor—to which it had slipped from Miss Joan Brett’s soft underarm—and sighed, and under the slightly disapproving gaze of young Djuna, who even at that tender age exhibited stern evidences of teetotalism, sipped his Scotch-and-soda all by himself … a not unpleasant ritual, if one should judge by the oxlike contentment which spread over his lean face.

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Copyright © 1932 by Ellery Queen

cover design by Jim Tierney

978-1-4532-8940-2

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