The Greek Coffin Mystery

Chapter 25. Leftover

Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn . . . to make it worse, thought Ellery ruefully as he walked through long residential streets under bare Brooklyn trees―Saturday afternoon in Flatbush . . . At that, he thought, as he paused to study a house-number, it was not so bad as quipping vau-devillists painted it. There was something about it, a peace and sobriety―a very peaceful peace and a very sober sobriety . . . . He visualized Mrs. Jeremiah Odell’s voluptuous Broadway figure in these almost bucolic surroundings, and chuckled.

Mrs. Jeremiah Odell, it appeared when he turned into a little stone walk which led by five wooden steps to the porch of a white-frame house, was at home. Her golden eyebrows shot up when she opened the door in answer to his ring; it was apparent that she thought him a house-to-house canvasser, and with the hardened abruptness of the experienced housewife began to retreat, with the obvious intention of shutting the door in his face. Ellery slid his foot over the sill, smiling. It was not until he produced his card that the healthy belligerence faded and something like fear replaced it on her large handsome face.

“Come in, Mr. Queen. Come in―I didn’t recognize you at first.” She wiped her hands nervously on her apron―she was wearing a stiff and flowered housedress―and fluttered before him into a dark cool foyer. A French door stood open at their left; she preceded him into the room beyond. “I―You want to see Jerry―I mean Mr. Odell, too?”

“If you please.”

She went out quickly.

Ellery looked about him with a grin. Marriage had done more for Lily Morrison than alter her name: the connubial state had evidently touched a nascent spring of domesticity in Lily’s large round breast. Ellery stood in a very pleasant, very conventional, very clean room―it would be a “front room”, of course, to the Odells. Fond but unaccustomed feminine fingers had contrived those flaming cushions; a new respectability had dictated the selection of those gaudy prints on the wall―the almost Victorian lamps scattered about. The furniture was heavy with plush and carving; Ellery could close his eyes and see the flushed Lily of Albert Grimshaw’s environment standing beside the solid figure of Jeremiah Odell in a cheap furniture store and selecting the heaviest, richest, most ornate things in sight . . . .

His chuckling reflections were cut short by the entrance of the master of the household―Mr. Jeremiah Odell in person, who had, from the grimy state of his fingers, apparently been scrubbing the inevitable automobile in his private garage somewhere in the rear. The Irish giant did not apologize either for his fingers or his collarless, old-shoey appearance; he waved Ellery into a chair, sat down himself while his spouse elected to stand stiffly by his side, and growled: “What’s up? I thought this damned snooping was over. What’s eatin” you people now?”

The lady, it seemed, was not going to sit down. Ellery remained standing. There were thunderclouds on Odell’s beetling features. “Just a chat. Nothing official, you know,” murmured Ellery. “I merely want to check up―”

“Thought the case was closed!”

“So it is.” Ellery sighed. “I shan’t take more than a few moments . . . For my own satisfaction I am trying to clear up some of the unimportant but still unexplained points. I should like to know―”

“We ain’t got a thing to say.”

“Dear, dear.” Ellery smiled. “I’m sure you have nothing to say which can possibly have an important bearing on the case, Mr. Odell. You see, the important things are completely known to us . . . “

“Say, is this one of them dirty police tricks, or what?”

“Mr. Odell!” Ellery was shocked. “Haven’t you read the papers? Why should we want to trick you? It’s simply that at the time you were questioned by Inspector Queen you were evasive. Well, conditions have altered materially since then. It’s not a question of suspicion any more, Mr. Odell.”

“All right, all right. What’s on your mind?”

“Why did you lie about visiting Grimshaw that Thursday night at the Hotel Benedict?”

“Say―” began Odell in a direful voice. He stopped at the pressure of his wife’s hand on his shoulder. “You keep out of this, Lily.”

“No,” she said in a trembling voice, “no, Jerry. We’re not tackling this the right way. You don’t know the bu―the police. They’ll hound us till they find out . . . Tell Mr. Queen the truth, Jerry.”

“That’s always the wisest course, Mr. Odell,” said Ellery heartily. “If you’ve nothing on your conscience, why should you persist in not talking?”

Their eyes clashed. Then Odell lowered his head, scraping his big black jaw with his hand; sluggishly he mused, taking his time, and Ellery waited.

“Okay,” said the Irishman at last. “Ill talk. But God help you, brother, if you’re pullin” a fast one! Sit down, Lily; you make me nervous.” Obediently she seated herself on the sofa. “I was there, like the Inspector accused me. And I went up to the desk a few minutes after a woman―”

“You were Grimshaw’s fourth visitor, then,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “beyond a doubt. Why did you go, Mr. Odell?”

“This Grimshaw rat looked up Lily soon as he came down the river. I didn’t know this―didn’t know Lily’s life before I married her. Not that I’d “a” given a damn, y” understand, but she thought I would, and like a fool she never told me what she’d been before I met her . . . “

“Very unwise, Mrs. Odell,” said Ellery severely. “Always confide in your soul-mate, always. That’s a fundamental of the perfect marital relation, or something.”

Odell grinned for an instant. “Listen to the lad talk . . . Thought I’d run out on you, hey, Lil?” The woman said nothing; she was staring into her lap, pleating her apron. “Anyway, Grimshaw looked “er up―I don’t know how he got a line on her, but he did, the sneaky weasel!―and he forced her to meet him at this Schick guy’s joint. She went, because she was afraid he’d spill the beans to me if she got balky.”

“I understand.”

“He thought she was workin” some new kind o” racket―wouldn’t believe her when she said she’d gone straight and wanted none o” his kind of trash. He was sore―told her to meet him in his room at the Benedict, blast his lousy soul to hell!―and she beat it out, and then she came home an” told me . . . saw it was goin” too far.”

“And you went to the Benedict to have it out with him?”

“That’s the ticket.” Odell looked glumly at his big scarred hands. “Talked turkey to the snake. Warned him to keep his dirty paws off my wife or I’d take it out of his hide. That’s all. Just put the fear o” God into him and walked out.”

“How did Grimshaw react?”

Odell looked embarrassed. “Guess I must’ve scared hell out of him. He went white around the gills when I grabbed him by the neck―”

“Oh! You manhandled him?”

Odell bellowed with laughter. “You call that manhand-lin”, Mr. Queen―grabbin” a guy by the neck. Say, you ought to see how we muss up those big steamfitters in our trade when they get too much ‘smoke” in “em . . . Naw, I just shook him up a little. He was too yellow to pull a rod on me.”

“He had a revolver?”

“Well, maybe not. Didn’t see none. But those birds always do.”

Ellery looked thoughtful. Mrs. Odell said timidly: “So you see, Mr. Queen, Jerry didn’t really do anything wrong.”

“On the other hand, Mrs. Odell, both of you would have saved us a lot of trouble by taking this attitude when you were originally questioned.”

“Didn’t want to run my neck in a noose,” rumbled Odell. “Didn’t want to be collared for killin” the mutt.”

“Mr. Odell, was anybody in Grimshaw’s room when he let you in?”

“Not a breathin” soul but Grimshaw himself.”

“The room itself―did it show signs of a scrap, or whisky-glasses―anything which might have indicated that someone else was there?”

“Wouldn’t notice it if there was. I was pretty riled.”

“Did either of you see Grimshaw after that night?”

They shook their heads at once.

“Very well. I warrant you won’t be disturbed again.”

* * *

Ellery found the subway journey to New York irksome; there was little to think about, and he found no solace in a newspaper he had purchased. When he rang the bell on the third floor of the Queens’ brownstone habitation on West Eighty-seventh Street, he was frowning; not even the sight of Djuna’s sharp Romany face popping out of the doorway erased the frown―and Djuna was normally his spiritual tonic.

Djuna’s crafty little brain sensed the disturbance, and he went about quelling it in his own cunning way. He took Ellery’s hat, coat and stick with a flourish, made a few experimental faces which usually evoked an answering grin―but now did not―darted from the bedroom into the living-room again and set a cigarette between Ellery’s lips, struck a match with ceremony . . .

“Somethin” wrong, Mr. Ellery?” he asked plaintively, at last, when all his efforts proved vain.

Ellery sighed. “Djuna, old son, everything is wrong. That, I suppose, should encourage me. For, “It’s a different song when everything’s wrong”, as Robert W. Service said in unambitious doggerel; on the other hand, I can’t seem, like Service’s little soldier, to pipe the tune of bucking up and chortling. I’m a very unmusical beast.”

To Djuna this was the most arrant nonsense, but Ellery in a quotative mood betokened certain inevitables, and Djuna grinned his encouragement.

“Djuna,” continued Ellery, slumping back on his spine, “attend. Messer Grimshaw had five visitors that hideous night; of the five we have now accounted for three: the late Gilbert Sloane, his worthy helpmeet, and fearsome Jeremiah Odell. Of the two visitors outstanding, so to speak, we are convinced, despite the man’s denial, that Dr. Wardes was one. If we could clear up the Dr. Wardes situation, which might have an innocent enough explanation, that would leave the fascinating remainder of one unknown visitor, never identified; who, if Sloane were our murderer, came second in the quintuple line.”

“Yes, sir,” said Djuna.

“On the other hand, my son,” continued Ellery, “I confess to checkmate. This is rank verbiage. I have discovered nothing yet which so much as casts aspersions on the general validity of the Sloane solution.”

“No, sir,” said Djuna. “I got some coffee in the kitchen―*

“I have some coffee in the kitchen, you ungrammatical little worm,” said Ellery severely.

It was, taking it all in all, a most unsatisfactory day.