Greek Coffin Mystery (6 page)

“Ah—yes. Yes indeed. And my analysis leads to an interesting—I might say a
very
interesting—possibility.” Ellery sat up now, smiling. The Inspector took a pinch of snuff; he said nothing. Pepper leaned forward, all ears, regarding Ellery with a dawning personality, as if he had just noticed Ellery’s existence. “Let me go over the facts to date,” continued Ellery briskly. “You will agree that there are two supplementary possibilities: one, that the new will does not exist at this moment; two, that the new will
does
exist at this moment.

“Consider the first. If the will does not now exist, it means that Woodruff lied when he said he saw it in the safe five minutes before the funeral, that the will wasn’t there at that time, that the will had been previously destroyed by person or persons unknown. Or Woodruff told the truth, the will
was
stolen after he saw it, in that five-minute interval, and then destroyed. In this last event, it would have been possible for the thief to have burnt or torn up the will, disposing of the remains by slipping them down a bathroom drain, perhaps; but, as I pointed out an instant ago, the fact that the steel box has not turned up at all points to the improbability of this destruction theory. No remains of the steel box were found; then where is the steel box? Presumably taken away. If the steel box were taken away, then plausibly the will also was taken away, not destroyed. But, you say, under the circumstances, if Woodruff was telling the truth, the box
couldn’t
have been taken away. We have reached an
impasse,
therefore, in our first major possibility. In any event, if it is true that the will was destroyed, there is nothing further to be done.”

“And that,” said Sampson, turning to the Inspector, “that’s a help, that is. My God, man,” he said irascibly, swinging on Ellery, “we know all that. What are you getting at?”

“Inspector dear,” said Ellery mournfully to his father, “do you allow this man to insult your son? Look here, Sampson. You’re anticipating me, and that’s fatal to logic. Having thrown aside the first theory as so much tenuous vapor, we attack the alternative theory—that the will
does
exist at this moment. But what have we?—ah, a most fascinating state of affairs. Lend ear, gentlemen! Every one who left the house to attend the funeral returned to the house. The two people in the house remained in the house—one of them, Weekes, actually in the study, where the safe is, all the time. No one entered the house during the funeral. And at no time was there contact between the people of the house and the cortège with outsiders; for every one in the graveyard to whom the will might have been passed also returned to the house.

“Yet,” he continued rapidly, “the will was not found in the house, on the persons of any one in the house, along the courtyard route, or in the graveyard! I therefore entreat, sue, beg, implore you,” concluded Ellery, his eyes mischievous, “to ask me the enlightening question: What is the only thing which
left
the house during the funeral,
didn’t
come back and
has never been searched
since the will was found to have disappeared?”

Sampson said, “Tommyrot. Everything was searched, and damned thoroughly as you’ve been told. You know that, young man.”

“Why, of course, son,” said the Inspector gently. “Nothing was overlooked—or didn’t you understand that when the facts were related?”

“Oh, my living, breathing soul!” groaned Ellery. “‘None so blind as those that will not see …’” He said softly, “Nothing, my honorable ancestor, nothing but
the coffin itself, with Khalkis’ corpse in it!”

The Inspector blinked at that, Pepper muttered disgustedly in his throat, Cronin guffawed and Sampson smote his forehead a mighty blow. Ellery grinned shamelessly.

Pepper recovered first, and grinned back at him. “That’s smart, Mr. Queen,” he said. “That’s smart.”

Sampson coughed into his handkerchief. “I—well, Q., I take it all back. Go on, young man.”

The Inspector said nothing.

“Well, gentlemen,” drawled Ellery, “it’s gratifying to speak to such an appreciative audience. The argument is arresting. In the excitement of the last-minute preparations for the funeral, it would have been a simple enough matter for the thief to have opened the safe, extracted the small steel box with the will in it and, watching his opportunity in the drawing-room, to have slipped box and will into the coffin beneath the folds of the coffin’s lining, or whatever they call Mr. Khalkis’ cerements.”

“It’s a cinch,” muttered Inspector Queen, “that burying the will with the body would be as effective as destroying it.”

“Precisely, dad. Why destroy the will if by secreting it in the coffin due for immediate burial the thief would achieve the same end? Certainly he had no reason to believe, since Khalkis died a natural death, that the coffin would ever be looked into again this side of the Judgment Day.
Ergo
—the will is removed from mortal ken as completely as if it had been burnt and its ashes consigned to our sewage system.

“Then there’s a psychological justification for this theory. Woodruff had on his person the only key to the steel box. The thief therefore probably could not open the box in the short five-minute interval before the funeral party left the house. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—carry the box with the will in it around with him; too bulky, too dangerous.
Alors, messieurs,
box and will are possibly in Khalkis’ coffin. If this be information, make the most of it.”

Inspector Queen hopped to his tiny feet. “An immediate disinterment seems in order.”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” Sampson coughed again and stared at the Inspector. “As Ellery—ahem!—Ellery has pointed out, it is not at all certain that the will is there. Maybe Woodruff
was
lying. But we’ve got to open that coffin and make sure. What do you think, Pepper?”

“I think,” Pepper smiled, “that Mr. Queen’s brilliant analysis hit the nail right square on the head.”

“All right. Arrange the disinterment for to-morrow morning. No particular reason for doing it to-day any more.”

Pepper looked doubtful. “There may be a hitch, Chief, in getting it. After all this isn’t a disinterment based on suspicion of homicide. How are we going to justify to the judge—?”

“See Bradley. He’s liberal about these things, and I’ll call him later myself. Won’t be any trouble, Pepper. Hop to it.” Sampson reached for his telephone and called the number of the Khalkis residence. “Cohalan … Cohalan, this is Sampson speaking. Instruct every one in the house to be present for a confab to-morrow morning. … Yes, you can tell ’em that we’re disinterring the body of Khalkis. … Disinterring, you idiot! … Who? All right, let me speak to him.” He burrowed the instrument to his chest and said to the Inspector, “Knox is there—
the
Knox. … Hello! Mr. Knox? This is District Attorney Sampson. … Yes, too bad. Very sad. … Well, something’s come up and it will be necessary for us to disinter the body. … Oh, it must be done, sir. … What? … Naturally I’m sorry about
that,
Mr. Knox. … Well, don’t fret yourself about it. We’ll take care of everything;”

He hung up softly and said: “Complicated situation. Knox was named executor in a non-producible will, and if that will isn’t found and we can’t establish identity of the new beneficiary for the Galleries, there won’t
be
any executor. Khalkis will be considered to have died intestate. … Well, he seems keen about it. We’ll have to see that he’s appointed administrator if the will isn’t found in the coffin to-morrow. Knox is busy right now conferring with Woodruff at the house. Preliminary survey of the estate. Says he’ll be there all day. Damned nice of him at that, to take all this interest.”

“Will he attend the disinterment?” asked Ellery. “I’ve always wanted to meet a multi-millionaire.”

“He says not. He’s got to go out of town again early to-morrow morning.”

“Another childhood ambition shattered,” said Ellery sadly.

*
It should be recalled that
The Greek Coffin Mystery
precedes in point of time those Queen cases which have already been presented to the public. It dates only a short time after Ellery Queen’s graduation from college.—J. J. McC.

I
T WAS ON FRIDAY
the eighth of October, then, that Mr. Ellery Queen was first introduced to the actors in the Khalkis tragedy, the scene of operations and, what he considered more interesting at the moment, the “tightness in the air” sensed a few days before by Miss Joan Brett.

They had all congregated in the drawing-room of the Khalkis house Friday morning—a very subdued and apprehensive company; and while they waited for Assistant District Attorney Pepper and Inspector Queen to arrive, Ellery found himself engaged in conversation with a tall, pink-and-white young Englishwoman of charming mold.

“You’re
the
Miss Brett, I take it?”

“Sir,” she said severely, “you have the advantage of me.” There was a tiny smile behind the potential frost of her very lovely blue eyes.

Ellery grinned. “That’s not literally true, my dear. Don’t you think that if I had the advantage of you my circulatory system would know it?”

“Hmm. And a fresh ’un, too.” She folded her white hands primly in her lap and glanced sidewise at the door, where Woodruff and Sergeant Velie stood talking. “Are you a bobby?”

“The veriest shadow of one. Ellery Queen, scion of the illustrious Inspector Queen.”

“I can’t say you’re a very convincing shadow, Mr. Queen.”

Ellery took in her tallness and straightness and niceness with very masculine eyes. “At any rate,” he said, “that’s one accusation which will never be directed against
you.”

“Mr. Queen!” She sat up very straight, smiling. “Are you jolly well casting aspersions on my figure?”

“Shades of Astarte!” murmured Ellery. He examined her body critically, and she blushed. “As a matter of fact, I hadn’t even noticed it.”

They laughed together at that, and she said, “I’m a shade of a different kind, Mr. Queen. I’m really very psychic.”

And that was how Ellery learned, most unexpectedly, about the tightness in the air on the day of the funeral. There was a new tightness, too, as he excused himself and rose a moment later to greet his father and Pepper; for young Alan Cheney was glaring at him with homicidal savagery.

Hard on the heels of Pepper and the Inspector came Detective Flint, towing a tubby little old fellow who was perspiring copiously.

“Who’s this?” growled Velie, barring entrance to the drawing-room.

“Says he belongs here,” said Flint, grasping the tubby one’s fat little arm. “What’ll I do with him?”

The Inspector strode forward, hurling his coat and hat on a chair. “Who are you, sir?”

The newcomer was bewildered. He was small and portly and Dutch, with billowy white hair and almost artificially rosy cheeks. He puffed them out now, and the expression on his face became more harassed than ever. Gilbert Sloane said, from across the room, “That’s all right, Inspector. This is Mr. Jan Vreeland, our scout.” His voice was flat and curiously dry.

“Oh!” Queen eyed him shrewdly. “Mr. Vreeland, eh?”

“Yes, yes,” panted Vreeland. “That’s my name. What’s the trouble here, Sloane? Who are all these people? I thought Khalkis was … Where’s Mrs. Vreeland?”

“Here I am, darling,” came a floating sugary voice, and Mrs. Vreeland posed in the doorway. The little man trotted to her side, kissed her hastily on the forehead—she was compelled to stoop, and anger flashed for a moment from her bold eyes—handed his hat and coat to Weekes, and then stood stock still, looking about him with amazement.

The Inspector said, “How is it you’ve only just got back, Mr. Vreeland?”

“Returned to my hotel in Quebec last night,” said Vreeland in a series of rapid little wheezes. “Found the telegram. Didn’t know a word about Khalkis dying. Shocking. What’s the congregation for?”

“We’re disinterring Mr. Khalkis’ body this morning, Mr. Vreeland.”

“So?” The little man looked distressed. “And I missed the funeral.
Tch, tch!
But why a disinterment? Is—?”

“Don’t you think,” said Pepper fretfully, “we ought to get started, Inspector?”

They found Sexton Honeywell fidgeting in the graveyard, prancing up and down before a raw rectangle in the sod where the earth had been turned up during the burial of Khalkis. Honeywell indicated the boundaries, and two men spat on their hands, lifted their spades and began to dig with energy.

No one said a word. The women had been left in the house; only Sloane, Vreeland and Woodruff of the men connected with the case were present; Suiza had professed a distaste for the spectacle, Dr. Wardes had shrugged, and Alan Cheney had doggedly stayed at the trim skirts of Joan Brett. The Queens, Sergeant Velie and a newcomer with a tall lank figure, black jowls, a hideous ropy cigar clenched in his teeth and a black bag at his feet, stood nearby watching the mighty heavings of the gravediggers. Reporters lined the iron fence on Fifty-fourth Street, cameras poised. Police prevented a crowd from massing in the street. Weekes the butler peeped cautiously from behind the courtyard fence. Detectives leaned against the fence. Heads poked out of windows facing the court, necks craning.

At a depth of three feet the men’s spades clanked against iron. They scraped vigorously and, like pirate henchmen digging for buried treasure, cleaned the horizontal surface of the iron door leading to the vault beneath almost with enthusiasm. Their labors completed, they leaped from the shallow pit and leaned against their spades.

The iron door was hauled open. Almost at once the large nostrils of the tall lank cigar-chewing man oscillated rapidly, and he muttered something cryptic beneath his breath. He stepped forward, under the puzzled glances of his audience, fell to his knees and leaned far over, sniffing. He raised his hand, scrambled to his feet and snapped at the Inspector: “Something fishy here!”

“What’s the matter?”

Now the tall lank cigar-chewing man was not given to alarums and excursions, as Inspector Queen knew from devious experience. He was Dr. Samuel Prouty, assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner of New York County, and he was a very canny gentleman. Ellery found his pulse quickening, and Honeywell looked positively petrified. Dr. Prouty did not reply; he merely said to the gravediggers: “Get in there and pull out that new coffin, so we can hoist it up here.”