The Greek Coffin Mystery

Chapter 5. Remains

On Thursday morning, which was the seventh of October, and a singularly cheerless day, District Attorney Sampson called a council of war. It was on this day, then, that El-lery Queen was formally introduced to the perplexing riddle that eventually came to be known as “The Khalkis Case”. It was a younger and cockier Ellery; * and, since his connexion with the policing of New York City was not so firmly established at this time, he was still considered something of an interloper despite his unique position as the son of Inspector Richard Queen. Indeed, it is to be suspected that the good grey Inspector himself had good grey doubts concerning Ellery’s convenanted ability to combine pure reason with practical criminology. The few isolated cases to which Ellery had applied his still formative faculties of deduction, however, had established a precedent which accounted for his cool assumption that he too was meant to be a councilman when District Attorney Sampson sounded the tocsin.

Truth to tell, Ellery had heard nothing whatsoever about Georg Khalkis’s death, and considerably less about the stolen will. Consequently, he disturbed the District Attorney by questions to which every one present, save Ellery himself, knew the answers. The District Attorney, not yet the tolerant colleague he was in later years to become, was distinctly irritated. The Inspector himself was annoyed and said so in no uncertain terms, and Ellery sank back on his spine in one of Sampson’s best leather chairs, a trifle abashed.

They were very solemn. There was Sampson, almost at the outset of his prosecutor’s career, a thin and deceptively sturdy man in his prime―bright-eyed and eager, and not a little upset by this waspish problem that seemed so ridiculous until it was examined closely. There was Pepper, the intelligent Pepper, one of Sampson’s staff of prosecutors, a political appointee, his whole husky healthy body portraying despair. There was old Cronin, Sampson’s First Assistant District Attorney, much more mature in criminal wisdom than his two colleagues; a veteran of the office―red-haired, nervous, springy as a colt and wise as an old roan. There was Inspector Richard Queen, already grey, more bird-like than ever, with his little sharp withered face and thick grey hair and moustache―a slender little old man with a quaint taste in cravats, the potential resiliency of a greyhound and a vast knowledge of orthodox criminalism. He was toying in exasperation with his old brown snuff-box.

Then, of course, there was Ellery himself―Ellery the temporarily chastened. When he made a point, he brandished the winking lenses of his pince-nez eyeglasses. When he smiled, it was with his whole face―a very good face, it has been said, with long delicate lines and the large limpid eyes of the thinker. Otherwise, he was much like other young men whose memories of their Alma Mater are not yet mildewed: tall and spare and square-shouldered and not unathletic. At the moment he was watching District Attorney Sampson, and District Attorney Sampson felt distinctly uncomfortable.

“Well, gentlemen, we’re up against the old story,” muttered Sampson. “Lots of leads, but no goal in sight. Well, Pepper, is there anything else you’ve discovered to confound us?”

“Not a solitary thing of importance,” replied Pepper dolefully. “I naturally tackled this Sloane fellow the first chance I got―alone. He’s the only baby who stood to lose by the new Khalkis will. Well, Sloane shut up like a Blue-point―refused to talk at all yesterday. What could I do? We haven’t any proof.”

“There are ways,” said the Inspector darkly.

“Rot, Q.,” snapped Sampson. “There’s not a shred of evidence against him. You can’t browbeat people like Sloane on mere suspicion because theoretically he had motive. What else, Pepper?”

“Well, Velie and I were sunk, and we knew it We had no earthly right to keep the house segregated from the world, and Velie had to withdraw his two men yesterday. I didn’t feel like giving it up so easily, so I stayed overnight last night on a hunch―I don’t think most of “em even knew I was there.”

“Catch anything?” asked Cronin curiously.

“Well.” Pepper hesitated. “I did see something . . . Not,” he continued hastily, “not that I think it means anything. She’s a swell kid―isn’t capable―”

“Who on earth are you talking about, Pepper?” demanded Sampson.

“Miss Brett. Joan Brett,” replied Pepper reluctantly. “I saw her snooping around Khalkis’s library at one o’clock this morning. She shouldn’t have been there, of course―Velie expressly told them all to keep out . . . “

“The charming amanuensis of our defunct mysterioso, I take it?” inquired Ellery lazily.

“Uh-huh. Well,” and Pepper seemed to have difficulty with his usually ready tongue, “well, she messed about the safe a bit―”

“Ha!” said the Inspector.

“ . . . but I guess she didn’t find anything, because she sort of stood still in the centre of the study for a moment, looking very pretty in a neglige, then she stamped her foot and beat it.”

“Did you question her?” asked Sampson querulously.

“No, I didn’t. You see, I don’t really think there’s anything wrong in that direction,” began Pepper, spreading his hand, when Sampson said dryly, “You’ll have to get over that predilection for pretty faces, Pepper. I’ll see that she’s questioned, and I’ll see that she talks, too, damn it all!”

“You’ll learn, Pepper,” chuckled Cronin. “I remember once when a dame threw her nice softy baby arms around my neck, and―”

Sampson frowned. Pepper started to say something, reddened behind the ears, and decided not to say anything after all.

“Anything else?”

“Just routine stuff. Cohalan’s still on duty at the Khalkis house, and so is Velie’s matron. They keep on searching every one that goes out of the house. Cohalan’s been keeping a list,” said Pepper, fumbling in his breast pocket and producing a ragged slip of paper most unprofessionally scribbled over in smudgy pencil, “a list of every one from outside who’s visited the house since we left it Tuesday. Complete up to last night.”

Sampson snatched the scrap and read it aloud. “Reverend Elder. Mrs. Morse―that’s the old nut, isn’t it? James J. Knox―so he’s back. Clintock, Eilers, Jackson, the reporters. And who are these, Pepper?―these two people, Robert Petrie and Mrs. Duke?”

“Two wealthy old clients of the dead man. Called to pay their respects.”

Sampson crumpled the list absently. “Well, Pepper, it’s your funeral. When the call came in from Woodruff about the lost will you asked for the case and I gave you your chance. I don’t want to rub it in, but I’ll simply have to switch you if you let considerations like Miss Brett’s no doubt gorgeous map sway you from your duty . . . . Well, enough of that. How does it line up to you? Any ideas?”

Pepper swallowed hard. “Don’t want to fall down . . . Well, one idea, Chief. Offhand, the facts make an utterly impossible case. The will must be in the house, and yet it isn’t. Poppycock!” He slapped Sampson’s desk. “Now there’s one fact that makes all the other facts look impossible. And that is―that Woodruff saw the will in the safe five minutes before the funeral. Well, sir―we’ve got only his word for that fact! You get what I mean.”

“You mean,” said the Inspector thoughtfully, ‘that Woodruff was lying when he said he saw the will at that time? In other words, that the will could have been stolen much before that five-minute period, and the person who stole it could have disposed of it outside the house at a time when his movements didn’t have to be accounted for?”

“That’s the ticket, Inspector. Listen―we have to go by logic, don’t we? The will didn’t disappear into thin air, did it?”

“How do you know,” objected Sampson, ‘that the will wasn’t taken out during that five-minute interval, as Woodruff said, and then burned, or was torn up or something?”

“But Sampson,” said Ellery mildly, “you can’t very well burn or tear up a steel box, can you?”

“That’s right, too,” muttered the District Attorney. “Where on earth is that box?”

“That’s why I say,” said Pepper triumphantly, ‘that Woodruff’s lying. That will, and the steel box, too, never was in the safe when he said he saw it there!”

“But, heavens,” exclaimed the Inspector, “why? Why should he lie?”

Pepper shrugged. Ellery said with amusement “Gentlemen, none of you is tackling this problem in the proper manner. This is just such a problem as must be analysed, and every possibility taken into consideration.”

You’ve analysed it, I suppose?” said Sampson sourly.

“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 vapour, 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! Everyone 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 cortege with outsiders; for everyone 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 anyone 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 enlighting 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 honourable ancestor, nothing but the coffin itself, with Khalkis’s 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’s 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 Judgement 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’s 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?”

T 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 everyone 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 hell 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 tomorrow morning.”

“Another childhood ambition shattered,” said Ellery sadly.