The Greek Coffin Mystery

Chapter 12. Facts

Dinner at the Queen menage that evening was a lugubrious affair. The apartment on the third floor of the West Eighty-seventh Street brownstone was a little newer then, the foyer a little haughtier, the living-room not quite so aged in the wood of time; and, with young Djuna, the Queens’ boy-of-all-work, being very young indeed and consequently a little less restrained than he was to become years later, one would have called the apartment cosy and the atmosphere bright. Not so, however; the Inspector’s Weltschmerz hung over the rooms like a pall; he dipped into his snuff-box more frequently and more savagely; he replied to Ellery in fierce monosyllables, ordered a very bewildered Djuna about almost with passion, and trotted from the living-room to the bedroom in an ecstasy of restlessness. Nor did the old man’s temper improve with the arrival of his guests; Ellery had asked them to dinner, and the sight of Pepper’s thoughtful face and District Attorney Sampson’s wearily inquiring eyes did not effect a chemical change in the prevailing indigo mood.

Consequently, Djuna served an appetizing repast in silence, and in silence it was received and consumed. Ellery, alone of the four men, was placid. He ate with his customary relish, complimented Djuna on the quality of the roast, quoted Dickens over the pudding and Voltaire over the coffee . . . .

Sampson had no sooner wiped his lips with his napkin than he said: “Well, Q., the old story. Buffaloed, baffled, and beaten. One of those rotten puzzles. How does it stack up?”

The Inspector raised haggard eyes. “Ask my son here.” He buried his old nose in his coffee-cup. “He seems pleased enough with the way things are going.”

“You take these things too seriously, dad,” said Ellery, puffing comfortably on a cigarette. “The problem has its points, but I shouldn’t say―” he drew a lungful of smoke and expelled it―”I shouldn’t say it’s insoluble.”

“Hey?” All three of them stared at him; the Inspector’s eyes were wide with astonishment.

“Don’t press me, I beg of you,” murmured Ellery. “It’s at moments like these that I become classically antique in my language, and I know Sampson, for one, abhors the practice. Besides, I dislike ratiocination on a full stomach. Djuna, more coffee, like a good boy.”

Sampson said decisively: “But if you know anything, Ellery, spill it! What’s up?”

“

Ellery accepted the mug from Djuna. “Much too premature, Sampson. I’d rather not just now.”

Sampson jumped up and began to pace the rug excitedly. “That’s the way it always is! The old story! “Much too premature”!” He snorted like a stallion, “Pepper, let me in on this thing. What’s the latest dope?”

“Well, Chief,” said Pepper, “Velie found out a lot of things, but none of it does us much good, as I see it. For instance, Honeywell―the sexton of the church―maintains that the graveyard is never locked, but that neither he nor his assistants have seen anything suspicious at any time after the funeral.”

“Doesn’t mean a curse,” growled the Inspector. “The graveyard and court aren’t patrolled. Somebody could have come in and out a dozen times without being seen. Especially at night. Bah!”

“How about the neighbours?”

“More nothing,” replied Pepper. “Velie’s report was complete. You see, all the houses on both the south side of Fifty-fifth and the north side of Fifty-fourth have their rears to the court. On Fifty-fifth Street, east to west, the houses in order are: Number Fourteen, on the corner of Madison Avenue, owned by Mrs. Susan Morse, that daffy old dame who attended the funeral. Number Twelve, Dr. Frost’s house―that’s the physician who took care of Khalkis. Number Ten, the Rectory next to the church, where Reverend Elder lives. On Fifty-fourth Street, east to west, you’ve got: Number Fifteen, corner of Madison Avenue, Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Ganz . . . *

“The retired meat-packer?”

“Yes. And between the Ganz place and the Khalkis house, which is Number Eleven, you’ve got Number Thirteen―an empty house boarded up.”

“Who owns it?”

“Don’t get excited. It’s in the family,” grumbled the Inspector. “It belongs 10 our celebrated multi-millionaire, Mr. James J. Knox, the one Khalkis named executor in that stolen will. Nobody lives there―it’s an old piece of property. Knox used to live there years ago, but he moved uptown a way and the place is standing idle.”

“I looked up the title,” explained Pepper. “It’s free and clear, of course, and not offered for sale. I guess he’s holding on to it for sentimental reasons. It’s a sort of ancestral home―as old as the Khalkis shack―built at the same time.

“Well, anyway, nobody in any of these houses―either owners, servants or in one case guests―could give Velie any information. You see, the court is accessible from the rear of all the houses on both streets; it’s not accessible from Madison Avenue unless you go through the basement of the Morse or Ganz house, the only two on the block; and there are no alleys on Fifty-fourth, Madison, or Fifty-fifth Street leading to the court.”

“In other words,” said Sampson impatiently, “you couldn’t get into the court except through the houses themselves, the church or the graveyard―is that right?”

“Right. As for the graveyard, there are only three ways of getting into it―through the rear of the church itself; through the gate at the western end of the court; and through that single door in the fence―really a high gate―on the Fifty-fourth Street side of the graveyard.”

“Still doesn’t mean a thing,” said the Inspector disagreeably. “That’s not the important point. The important point is that everybody questioned by Velie denied visiting the graveyard at night or any other time since Khalkis’s funeral.”

“Except,” put in Ellery gently, “Mrs. Morse, dad. You’ve forgotten her. Remember Velie said she confessed her pleasant habit of wandering over the heads of the dead in the graveyard each afternoon.”

“Yes,” said Pepper, “but she denied visiting it at night. At any rate, Chief, all the neighbours are members of the church parish except, of course, Knox. He isn’t properly a neighbour.”

“He’s Catholic,” growled the Inspector. “Belongs to a high-toned cathedral on the West Side.”

“Where is Knox, by the way?” asked the District Attorney.

“Well, he went out of town this morning, I don’t know exactly where,” said the old man. “I’m having Thomas get a search-warrant―we can’t wait for Knox to get back and I’m dead set on looking over that empty house of his next door to the Khalkis place.”

“You see, Chief,” explained Pepper, ‘the Inspector has an idea that the empty Knox house might have been the place where Grimshaw’s body was hidden until it could be buried in the Khalkis coffin after the funeral.”

“Good hunch, Q.”

“Anyway,” continued Pepper, “Knox’s secretary refused to disclose the mogul’s whereabouts, and we’ve got to have the warrant.”

“It may not be important,” remarked the Inspector, “but blast my soul if I let anything go.”

“An excellent principio operandi” chuckled Ellery.

His father turned on him a very cold and disapproving scowl. “You―you think you’re smart,” he said weakly. “Well . . . . Look here, gentlemen. As far as that empty house is concerned, we’ve got a problem. We still don’t know exactly when Grimshaw was bumped off―how long he’s been dead. All right, the autopsy ought to show that pretty conclusively. In the meanwhile, we’ve got a basis of figuring. Because if Khalkis died before Grimshaw was murdered, it certainly means―considering where we found the body―that burial of Grimshaw in Khalkis’s coffin was pre-planned. Get me? In that case, the empty house would be a fine place for the murderer to keep Grim-shaw’s body until after the Khalkis funeral, when the buried coffin would become available for use.”

“Yes, but look at it the other way, Q.,” objected Sampson. “It’s just as tenable a theory, in the absence of the autopsy-findings, that Khalkis died after Grimshaw was murdered. This would mean that the killer couldn’t figure on Khalkis’s unexpected death and the opportunity to bury the victim in Khalkis’s coffin, so that the body must have been hidden wherever the murder took place―and we’ve no reason to expect that the murder took place in that empty house next door. In any event, I don’t see that the line of attack does us any good until we discover how long Grimshaw has been a stiff.”

“You mean,” said Pepper thoughtfully, ‘that if Grimshaw was strangled before Khalkis died, his body was probably kept wherever he was killed? Then when Khalkis died, the opportunity to bury the body in Khalkis’s coffin flashed on the murderer’s mind, and he lugged the body into the graveyard, probably through the Fifty-fourth Street fence-gate?”

“Exactly,” snapped Sampson. “The chances are ten to one that the house next to Khalkis’s had nothing to do with the crime. I think all this is irrelevant conjecture.”

“Perhaps not so irrelevant,” said Ellery gently. “On the other hand, it seems to my feeble intellect that you gentlemen are cooking a stew before buying your ingredients. Why not wait patiently for the autopsy report?”

“Wait―wait,” grumbled the Inspector. “I’ve grown old waiting.”

Ellery chuckled. “If we are to believe Chaucer, your age is a distinct advantage, padre. Remember The Parlement of Fowles? “For oute of olde feldys, as men sey, Comyth al this newe corn from yere to yere.”

“

“Anything else, Pepper?” growled Sampson. He ignored Ellery completely.

“The routine stuff. Velie questioned the doorman of the department store across the street from the Khalkis house and graveyard. The man stands all day at the Fifty-fourth Street entrance to the store. Quizzed the cop on the beat, too. But neither of them has seen suspicious activity in the daytime since the funeral. The cop on night-duty didn’t see anything either, but he admits the body could have been hauled into the graveyard without his knowledge. And there’s no one on duty at the department store at night who was in a position to observe the graveyard; the nightwatchmen stay inside at all hours. And there you are.”

“I’ll go daffy with this damnable sitting around, sitting around,” muttered the Inspector, plumping his straight little body before the fire in the grate.

“La patience est amere, mais son fruit est doux,” murmured Ellery. “I feel in a quotational mood.”

“That’s what I get,” groaned the Inspector, “for having sent my boy to college. He talks down at me. What’s that mean?”

“

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,”” grinned Ellery, “and a frog said it.”

“A―what? A frog?”

“Oh, he’s just trying to be funny,” said Sampson wearily. “I suppose he means a Frenchman. It sounds like Rousseau.”

“Do you know, Sampson,” said Ellery enthusiastically, ‘sometimes you exhibit positively startling signs of intelligence?”