Greek Coffin Mystery (8 page)

Joan swung one leg reflectively. “He was wearing an overcoat and he kept his bowler on his head all the time, but I can’t even recall the style or color of the coat. And that’s really all I can tell you about your—” she shuddered, “about your awful Mr. Grimshaw.”

The Inspector shook his head; he was distinctly not pleased. “But we’re not talking about Grimshaw now, Miss Brett! Come now. There must be something else about this second man. Didn’t anything happen that night that might be significant—anything at all that would help us to get to that fellow?”

“Oh, heavens.” She laughed and kicked out with her slim feet. “You guardians of law and order are so persistent. Very well—if you consider the incident of Mrs. Simms’ cat significant. …”

Ellery looked interested. “Mrs. Simms’ cat, Miss Brett? There’s a fascinating thought! Yes, it might very well be significant. Give us the gory details, Miss Brett.”

“Well, Mrs. Simms owns a shameless hussy of a cat. Tootsie, she’s called. Tootsie’s always poking her cold little nose into places where good little cats should not be poking their cold little noses. Er—you grasp the idea, Mr. Queen?” She saw an ominous glint in the Inspector’s eye, sighed and said penitently, “Really, Inspector, I’m—I’m not being a silly boor. I’m just—oh, everything’s so higgledy-piggledy.” She was silent then, and they saw something—fear, nervousness, a suspicion of dread—in her charming blue eyes. “It’s my nerves, I suppose,” she said wearily. “And when I’m nervous, I become perverse, and I giggle like a callow baggage. … This is exactly what happened,” she said abruptly. “The unknown man, the man bundled up to the eyes, stepped into the foyer first when I opened the door. Grimshaw was a little behind and to one side of him. Mrs. Simms’ cat, which generally remains in Mrs. Simms’ bedroom upstairs, had, unnoticed by me, promenaded downstairs into the foyer and had lain down directly in the path of the front door. As I opened the door and the mysterious man started to step in, he stopped suddenly with one foot in midair, almost falling in his effort to avoid stepping on the cat, which lay quite cunningly on the rug washing its face, and without making a sound. It wasn’t really until I saw the man’s almost acrobatic effort to avoid stepping on little Tootsie—typically Simmsian name for a cat, don’t you think?—that I noticed Tootsie at all. Then, of course, I prodded her out of the way, Grimshaw stepped in, and he said: ‘Khalkis expects us,’ and I led the way to the library. And
that’s
the incident of Mrs. Simms’ cat.”

“Not intensely productive,” confessed Ellery. “And this bundled man—did he say anything?”

“Do you know, he was the rudest person,” said Joan with a little frown. “Not only didn’t he say one solitary word—after all, he could have seen that I wasn’t a
slavey—
but when I led the way to the library door and was about to knock, he actually jostled me away from the door and opened it himself! He didn’t knock, and he and Grimshaw slipped inside and shut the door in my face. I was so angry I could have chewed a tea-cup.”

“Shocking,” murmured Ellery. “You’re sure, then, that he didn’t utter a word?”

“Positive, Mr. Queen. As I say, I was angry and began to go upstairs.” It was at this moment that Miss Joan Brett betrayed evidences of a very lively temper. Something in what she was about to say touched springs of rancor within her, for her brilliant eyes smoldered and she threw a glance of extreme bitterness in the direction of young Alan Cheney, who slouched against a wall not ten feet away, hands plunged in his pockets. “I heard a key fumbling and scratching against the vestibule door, which is always kept locked. I turned about on the stairs and, lo and behold! whom should I see tottering into the foyer but Mr. Alan Cheney, quite, quite muzzy.”

“Joan!” muttered Alan reproachfully.

“Muzzy?” repeated the Inspector in bewilderment.

Joan nodded emphatically. “Yes, Inspector, muzzy. I might say—squiffy. Or pot-valiant. Or maudlin. Obfuscated. I believe there are some three hundred English colloquialisms for the condition in which I saw Mr. Cheney that night. In a word, drunk as a lord!”

“Is this true, Cheney?” demanded the Inspector.

Alan grinned in a feeble way. “Shouldn’t be surprised, Inspector. When I’m on a bat I generally forget home and country. I don’t remember, but if Joan says it’s so—well, then, it’s so.”

“Oh, it’s true enough, Inspector,” snapped Joan, tossing her head. “He was foully, disgustingly drunk—slobbering all over himself.” She glared at him. “I was afraid that in his despicable condition he would raise a row. Mr. Khalkis had said he wanted no noise, no commotion, so I—well, I had very little choice, don’t you see? Mr. Cheney grinned at me in his characteristically muddled fashion, and I ran down, grasped his arm very firmly, and marched him upstairs before he could rouse the household.”

Delphina Sloane was sitting very haughtily on the edge of her chair, looking from her son to Joan. “Really, Miss Brett,” she said icily, “I see no excuse for this disgraceful …”

“Please!” The Inspector focused his sharp eyes on Mrs. Sloane and she promptly shut her mouth. “Go on, Miss Brett.” Alan, against the wall, seemed to be praying for the floor to give way and remove him peremptorily from the scene.

Joan twisted the fabric of her skirt. “Perhaps,” she said in a less impassioned voice, “I shouldn’t have. … At any rate,” she continued, raising her head and looking defiantly at the Inspector, “I took Mr. Cheney upstairs to his room and—and saw to it that he went to bed.”

“Joan Brett!” gasped Mrs. Sloane in an outraged whimper. “Alan Cheney! Do you two mean to admit—”

“I didn’t
undress
him, Mrs. Sloane,” said Joan coldly, “if that’s what you’re insinuating. I just scolded him”—her tone implied that this was more properly the province of a mother than of a mere secretary—“and he quieted down, to be sure, almost at once. He quieted down, that is to say, only to become—become very nastily sick after I tucked him in …”

“You’re straying from the point,” said the Inspector sharply. “Did you see anything more of the two visitors?”

Her voice was low now; she seemed absorbed in studying the design of the rug at her feet. “No. I went downstairs to fetch some—some raw eggs; I thought they might jog Mr. Cheney up a bit. On my way to the kitchen, I had to pass by the study here, and I noticed that there was no light from the crack under the door. I assumed that the visitors had left while I’d been upstairs and that Mr. Khalkis had gone to bed.”

“When you passed the door, as you say—how long a period had elapsed from the time when you admitted the two men?”

“Difficult to judge, Inspector. Perhaps a half hour or more.”

“And you didn’t see the two men again?”

“No, Inspector.”

“And you’re certain this was last Friday night—that is, the night before Khalkis died?”

“Yes, Inspector Queen.”

There was complete silence then of an increasingly embarrassing depth. Joan sat biting her red lips, looking at no one. Alan Cheney, from the expression on his face, was in agony. Mrs. Sloane, her slight figure stiff as the Red Queen’s, tightened her faded unattractive features. Nacio Suiza, sprawled in a chair across the room, sighed with
ennui;
his dark Vandyke pointed accusingly at the floor. Gilbert Sloane sniffed his salts. Mrs. Vreeland stared Medusa-like at her husband’s rosy old cheeks. The atmosphere was anything but cheerful; and Dr. Wardes, buried in a study as deep and brown as his beard, seemed affected by the general moroseness. Even Woodruff looked depressed.

Ellery’s cool voice brought their eyes up. “Miss Brett, exactly who was in this house last Friday night?”

“I really can’t say, Mr. Queen. The two maids, of course, had been sent to bed, Mrs. Simms had retired, and Weekes was out—his night off, apparently. Aside from Mr.—Mr. Cheney, I can’t account for any one else.”

“Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” grunted the Inspector. “Mr. Sloane!” He raised his voice, and Sloane almost let the tiny colored bottle slip from his startled fingers. “Where were you last Friday night?”

“Oh, at the Galleries,” Sloane replied hastily. “Working late. I work there very often into the small hours.”

“Anybody with you?”

“No, no! I was quite alone!”

“Hmm.” The old man explored his snuff-box. “And what time did you get into the house?”

“Oh, long past midnight.”

“Did
you
know anything about Khalkis’ two visitors?”

“I? Certainly not.”

“That’s funny,” said the Inspector, putting his snuff-box away. “Mr. Georg Khalkis seems to have been a sort of mysterious character himself. And you, Mrs. Sloane—where were
you
last Friday night?”

She licked her faded lips, blinking rapidly. “I? I was upstairs asleep. I know nothing about my brother’s visitors—nothing.”

“Asleep at what hour?”

“I retired about ten o’clock. I—I had a headache.”

“A headache. Hmm.” The Inspector whirled on Mrs. Vreeland. “And you, Mrs. Vreeland? Where and how did you spend last Friday evening?”

Mrs. Vreeland reared her large, full-curved body and smiled coquettishly. “At the opera, Inspector—at the op-era.”

Ellery felt an irresistible urge to snap, “What opera?” but caught himself up sternly. There was a scent of perfume about this specimen of the fairer sex—expensive perfume, to be sure, but sprayed on with a hand that knew no restraint.

“Alone?”

“With a friend.” She smiled sweetly. “We then had a late supper at the Barbizon and I returned home about one o’clock in the morning.”

“Did you notice a light in Khalkis’ study when you came in?”

“I don’t believe I did.”

“Did you see any one at all downstairs here?”

“It was dark as the grave. I didn’t even see a ghost, Inspector.” She gurgled far in the recesses of her throat, but no one echoed her laugh. Mrs. Sloane sat up even more stiffly; it was apparent that she considered the jest ill-advised, ill-advised.

The Inspector tugged at his mustache thoughtfully; then he looked up to find Dr. Wardes’ bright brown eyes fixed on him. “Ah, yes. Dr. Wardes,” he said pleasantly. “And you?”

Dr. Wardes played with his beard. “I spent the evening at the theater, Inspector.”

“The theater. Quite so. You came in, then, before midnight?”

“No, Inspector. I took a turn about one or two places of entertainment after the theater. Really, I didn’t get back until well after midnight.”

“You spent the evening alone?”

“Quite.”

The old man’s shrewd little eyes glistened over his fingers as he took another pinch of snuff. Mrs. Vreeland was sitting with a frozen smile, her eyes wide open, too wide open. All the others were mildly bored. Now Inspector Queen had questioned thousands of people in his professional career, and he had developed a special policeman’s sense—an instinct for detecting falsehood. Something in Dr. Wardes’ too smooth replies, in Mrs. Vreeland’s strained pose. …

“I don’t believe you’re telling the truth, Doctor,” he said easily. “Of course, I understand your scruples. … You were with Mrs. Vreeland last Friday night, weren’t you?”

The woman gasped, and Dr. Wardes elevated his hairy eyebrows. Jan Vreeland was peering from the physician to his wife in bewilderment, his fat little face puckered with hurt and worry.

Dr. Wardes chuckled suddenly. “An excellent surmise, Inspector. And very true.” He bowed lightly to Mrs. Vreeland. “You will permit me, Mrs. Vreeland?” She tossed her head like a nervous mare. “You see, Inspector, I didn’t care to put the lady’s action in an embarrassing light. Actually, I did escort Mrs. Vreeland to the Metropolitan and later to the Barbizon—”

“See here! I don’t think—” interrupted Vreeland in a little flurry of protest.

“My dear Mr. Vreeland. It was the most innocent evening imaginable. And a very delightful one, too, I’m sure.” Dr. Wardes studied the old Dutchman’s discomforted countenance. “Mrs. Vreeland was much alone because of your protracted absences, sir; I myself have no friends in New York—it was natural for us to drift together, don’t you know.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” said Vreeland childishly. “I don’t like it at all, Lucy.” He waddled over to his wife and shook his fat little forefinger in her face, pouting. She looked faint, clutched the arms of her chair. The Inspector abruptly commanded Vreeland to keep silent, and Mrs. Vreeland sank back, shutting her eyes in mortification. Dr. Wardes shook his broad shoulders lightly. From the other side of the room Gilbert Sloane drew a sharp breath, and Mrs. Sloane’s wooden face showed a fleeting animation. The Inspector darted bright glances from one to another. His eyes fixed on the shambling figure of Demetrios Khalkis. …

Demmy was, except for his vacant idiotic expression, an ugly, gaunt, sproutlike counterpart of his cousin Georg Khalkis. His large blank eyes were set in a perpetual stare; his bulging lower lip hung heavily, the back of his head was almost flat, and his skull was huge and misshapen. He had been wandering noiselessly about, speaking to no one, peering myopically into the faces of the room’s occupants, his enormous hands clenching and unclenching with weird regularity.

“Here—you, Mr. Khalkis!” called the Inspector. Demmy continued his shambling circumambulation of the study. “Is he deaf?” asked the old man irritably, of no one in particular.

Joan Brett said: “No, Inspector. He just doesn’t understand English. He’s a Greek, you know.”

“Khalkis’ cousin, isn’t he?”

“That’s right,” said Alan Cheney unexpectedly. “But he’s shy up here.” He touched his own well-shaped head significantly. “Mentally, he rates as an idiot.”

“That’s extremely interesting,” said Ellery Queen mildly. “For the word ‘idiot’ is of Greek derivation, and etymologically indicated merely a private ignorant person in the Hellenic social organization—
idiotes
in Greek. Not an imbecile at all.”

“Well,
he’s
an idiot in the modern English sense,” said Alan wearily. “Uncle brought him over from Athens about ten years ago—he was the last of the family strain over there. Most of the Khalkis family have been American for at least six generations. Demmy never could grasp the English language—mother says he’s illiterate even in Greek.”