The Greek Coffin Mystery

Chapter 18. Testament

Evening found the Inspector, Ellery, and Sergeant Velie standing before the gloomy facade of Number Thirteen.

The empty Knox house was a twin of the Khalkis house next door. Crumbling brownstone streaked with age, large old-fashioned window-spaces blinded with grey boards―a forbidding edifice. There were lights in the Khalkis house at its side, and the restless figures of detectives prowled about it―by comparison the Khalkis house was a cheerful place.

“Have you got the key, Thomas?” Even the Inspector felt the dreary spell, and his voice was subdued.

Velie silently produced a key.

“En avant!” muttered Ellery, and the three men pushed through the creaking gate on the sidewalk.

“Upstairs first?” demanded the sergeant.

“Yes.”

They mounted the chipped stone steps. Velie brought out a large flashlight, tucked it under his arm, and unlocked the front door. They stepped into the crypt of a vestibule; Velie twitched his torch about, located the lock of the inner door, and opened it. The three men marched in in close formation, and found themselves in a black cavern which, on being illuminated by the flickering rays of the sergeant’s flash, revealed itself as an exact replica in shape and size of the Khalkis foyer next door.

“Well, let’s go,” said the Inspector. “This was your idea, Ellery. Lead the way.”

Ellery’s eyes were queerly luminous in the jumping light. He hesitated, looked about, and then made for a dark open doorway up the hall. The Inspector and Velie followed patiently, Velie’s flashlight held high.

The rooms were utterly bare―dismantled, it was clear, by the owner when he had vacated the premises. On the lower floor, at least, there was nothing―literally nothing―to be found. Empty rooms, dust-laden, here and there revealing men’s footprints in the dust where Detective Ritter and his colleagues had tramped in their original search. The walls were yellow, the ceilings cracked, the floors warped and noisy.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” growled the old man, when they had completed a tour of all the rooms on the lower floor. He sneezed violently as he inhaled some dust―choked and gasped and cursed.

“Not yet,” said Ellery. He led the way up the bare wooden stairs. Their footsteps thundered through the empty house.

But―there was nothing to be found on the second floor either. As in the Khalkis house, the second floor contained only bedrooms and bathrooms; but these had neither beds nor carpets to make them habitable, and the old man grew increasingly irritable. Ellery poked about in old wardrobe-closets. It was a labour of love; he found nothing, not so much as a scrap of paper.

“Satisfied yet?”

“No.”

They made their way up groaning stairs to the attic.

Nothing.

“Well, that’s that,” said the Inspector as they descended to the foyer floor. “Now that the nonsense is over, we can go home and have something to eat.”

Ellery did not reply; he was twirling his pince-nez thoughtfully. Then he looked at Sergeant Velie. “Wasn’t something said about a broken-down trunk in the basement, Velie?”

“Yep. Ritter reported that, Mr. Queen.”

Ellery made for the rear of the foyer. Beneath the staircase which led to the upper floors there was a door. He opened it, borrowed Velie’s torch, and flashed its beams downward. A sagging flight of steps sprang up at them.

“Basement,” he said. “Come on.”

They descended the precarious stairs and found themselves in a large chamber which ran the entire length and width of the house. It was a ghostly place, full of shadows called into being by the flashlight; and it was even dustier than the rooms upstairs. Ellery proceeded at once to a spot a dozen feet from the steps. He focused the light of Velie’s torch upon it. A large battered old trunk lay there―a hulking iron-bound cube, its lid down, its shattered lock protruding dismally.

“You won’t find anything in that,” said the Inspector. “Ritter reported looking into it, Ellery.”

“Of course he did,” murmured Ellery, and raised the lid with a gloved hand. He sprayed beams of light about the trunk’s shabby interior. Empty.

As he was about to drop the lid, however, his nostrils contracted, then quivered, and he leaned forward swiftly, sniffing. “Eureka,” he said softly. “Dad, Velie, get a whiff of this perfume.”

The two men sniffed. They straightened, and the Inspector muttered: “By gosh, the same smell we got when the coffin was opened! Only fainter, much fainter.”

“That’s right,” came Velie’s basso profundo.

“Yes.” Ellery released the lid and it crashed back into place. “Yes. We have discovered the first resting-place, so to speak, of Mr. Albert Grimshaw’s corporeal remains.”

“Thank goodness for something,” said the Inspector piously. “Although how that fool of a Ritter―”

Ellery continued, more to himself than to his companions. “Grimshaw was probably strangled in here, or near here. That was Friday night, late―October the first. His body was crammed into this trunk and left here. I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that there was no primary intention on the part of the murderer to dispose of the body elsewhere. This empty old house would make an ideal hiding-place for a corpse.”

“And then Khalkis died,” mused the old man.

“Exactly. Then Khalkis died―the following day, Saturday the second. The murderer saw a splendid opportunity to provide an even more permanent hiding-place for his victim’s body. He waited for the funeral, therefore, and on the night of Tuesday or Wednesday stole in here lugged the body out―” Ellery paused and went swiftly to the rear of the dark basement, nodding when he saw a weatherbeat-en old door―”out through this door into the court, then through the gate into the graveyard. Dug down three feet to the vault . . . Very simple under cover of darkness, provided you have a complete indifference to such things as cemeteries, dead bodies, grave-smells, and the ghost of ghosts. Our murderer must be a gentleman of practical imagination. This means that Grimshaw’s decaying body lay here for four or five days and nights. That should be sufficient,” he said grimly, ‘to account for the odour of putrefactive mortality.”

He swept the torch about. The floor of the basement, cement in spots and wood in others, was utterly bare except for dust and the trunk. But nearby loomed a monstrous shape, a grisly bulk that towered to the ceiling . . . The torch flashed frantically, and the monster turned into a large furnace―the central heating-plant of the house. Ellery strode over to it, grappled with the rusty handle of the firedoor, pulled it open and thrust his hand, with the torch, inside. At once he exclaimed: “Something here! Dad, Velie, quickly!”

The three men bent over and peered through the rusty shutter into the interior of the furnace. On its floor, in a corner, nestled a neat little heap of ashes; and protruding from the ashes was a small―a very small―fragment of thickish white paper.

Ellery snatched a glass from the depths of one of his pockets, trained the beams of the torch on the paper, and peered earnestly. “Well?” demanded the Inspector.

“I think,” said Ellery slowly, standing straight again and lowering his glass, “I think we have finally found the last will and testament of Georg Khalkis.”

* * *

It took the good sergeant all of ten minutes to solve the problem of how to retrieve the fragment from its inaccessible hiding-place. He was too huge to creep through the ash-pit orifice, and neither the Inspector nor Ellery felt inclined to wriggle their slighter bodies through the accumulated muck of years. Ellery for the solution of this problem was useless; and it took the more mechanically minded sergeant to discover the process whereby the scrap might be rescued. He manufactured a makeshift javelin by jamming a needle from Ellery’s pocket-kit into the ferrule of Ellery’s walking-stick; whereupon, on hands and knees, he managed to spear the fragment without great difficulty. He prodded the ashes, but nothing could be made of them―they were thoroughly charred and useless for examination.

The fragment, as Ellery had predicted, seemed indubitably part of Khalkis’s last will. Fortunately, that portion of it which was untouched by fire contained the name of the legatee of the Khalkis Galleries. It was, in a scrawly script which the Inspector at once recognized as Georg Khalkis’s, the name: Albert Grimshaw.

“This corroborates Knox’s story, all right,” said the Inspector. “And clearly shows that Sloane was the one cut out by the new will.”

“So it does,” murmured Ellery. “And very stupid and bungling indeed is the person who burnt this document . . . . A vexing problem. A very vexing problem.” He rapped his pince-nez sharply against his teeth, staring at the char-edged fragment, but he did not explain what the problem was nor why it was vexing.

“One thing is sure,” said the Inspector with satisfaction. “Mr. Sloane has some tall explaining to do, what with that anonymous letter about his being Grimshaw’s brother and this will. All set, son?”

Ellery nodded, sweeping the basement once more with his glance. “Yes. I imagine that’s quite all.”

“Come on, then.” The Inspector tucked the burnt fragment tenderly into a fold of his wallet and led the way to the front door of the basement. Ellery followed, deep in thought; and Velie brought up the rear, not unhurriedly, it should be noted, since not even his broad substantial back was impervious to the deathly blackness pressing upon it.