Greek Coffin Mystery (11 page)

Sloane shook his head. “I don’t recall anything like that. And I was seated right by the desk. I’m sure that if there was something there which didn’t belong to Georg I should have noticed it.”

“Did Khalkis say anything to you about his having had visitors the night before?”

“Not a word, Inspector.”

“All right, Mr. Sloane. Stick around.” Sloane sank into a chair beside his wife with a relieved sigh. The Inspector beckoned familiarly to Joan Brett, a little smile of benevolence on his grey face. “Now, my dear,” he said in a fatherly voice, “you’ve been very helpful thus far—you’re a witness after my own heart. I’m really interested in you. Tell me something about yourself.”

Her blue eyes sparkled. “Inspector, you’re transparent! I assure you I haven’t a
dossier.
I’m just a poor menial, what we call in England ‘lady help.’”

“Dear, dear, and such a nice young lady,” murmured the old man. “Nevertheless—”

“Nevertheless you want to know all about me,” she smiled. “Very well, Inspector Queen.” She arranged her skirt primly over her round knees. “My name is Joan Brett, I worked for Mr. Khalkis for slightly over a year. I am, as perhaps my British accent, now a little blurred by your hideous New Yorkese, has already told you—I am a lady, a
lady,
Inspector!—of English extraction. Shabby gentility, you know. I came to Mr. Khalkis with a recommendation from Sir Arthur Ewing, the British art-dealer and expert, for whom I had worked in London. Sir Arthur knew Mr. Khalkis by reputation and gave me a very nice character indeed. I arrived at an opportune time; Mr. Khalkis required assistance badly; and he engaged me, at a jolly honorarium, I assure you, to act as his confidential secretary. My knowledge of the business swayed him, I fancy.”

“Hmm. That’s not quite what I wanted—”

“Oh! More personal details?” She pursed her lips. “Let me see, now. I’m twenty-two—past the marrying age, you see, Inspector—I have a strawberry on my right hip, I’ve a perfectly
frightful
passion for Ernest Hemingway, I think your politics are stuffy, and I just adore your undergrounds.
Cela suffit?”

“Now, Miss Brett,” said the Inspector in a feeble voice, “you’re taking advantage of an old man. I want to know what happened last Saturday morning. Did
you
notice anything in this room that morning that might have indicated the identity of the previous night’s mysterious visitor?”

She shook her head soberly. “No, Inspector, I did not. Everything seemed quite in order.”

“Tell us just what occurred.”

“Let me see.” She placed her forefinger on her pink lower lip. “I entered the study, as Mr. Sloane has told you, before he and Mr. Khalkis had finished talking. I heard Mr. Sloane remind Mr. Khalkis about the cravats. Mr. Sloane then left and I took Mr. Khalkis’ dictation for about fifteen minutes. When he had finished, I said to him: ‘Mr. Khalkis, shall I telephone Barrett’s and order the new cravats for you?’ He said: ‘No, I’ll do that myself.’ Then he handed me an envelope, sealed and stamped, and asked me to post it at once. I was a bit surprised at this—I generally attended to all his correspondence …”

“A letter?” mused the Inspector. “To whom was it addressed?”

Joan frowned. “I’m so sorry, Inspector. I really don’t know. You see, I didn’t examine it very closely. I do seem to recall that the address was in pen-and-ink, not typewriting—that would be natural, anyway, for there’s no typewriter down here—but …” She shrugged. “At any rate, just as I was leaving the room with the letter, I saw Mr. Khalkis pick up his telephone—he always used the old-fashioned instrument by which the operator gets your number; the dial telephone was for my convenience—and I heard him give the number of Barrett’s, his haberdasher. Then I went out to post the letter.”

“What time was this?”

“I should say a quarter to ten.”

“Did you see Khalkis alive again?”

“No, Inspector. I was upstairs in my own room a half-hour later when I heard some one scream from below. I dashed down and found Mrs. Simms in the study, in a faint, and Mr. Khalkis dead at his desk.”

“Then he died between a quarter to ten and ten-fifteen?”

“I fancy so. Mrs. Vreeland and Mrs. Sloane both rushed downstairs after me, spied the dead body and began to bellow. I tried to bring them to their senses, finally persuaded them to look to poor Simmsy, and at once telephoned Dr. Frost and the Galleries. Weekes came in then from the rear of the house, Dr. Frost appeared in a remarkably short time—just as Dr. Wardes appeared; he’d slept late, I believe—and Dr. Frost pronounced Mr. Khalkis dead. There was really nothing for us to do but drag Mrs. Simms upstairs and revive her.”

“I see. Hold up a moment, Miss Brett.” The Inspector drew Pepper and Ellery aside.

“What do you think, boys?” asked the Inspector guardedly.

“I think we’re going somewhere,” murmured Ellery.

“How do you figure that out?”

Ellery looked at the old ceiling. Pepper scratched his head. “I’m blamed if I can see anything in what we’ve learned so far,” he said. “I got all these facts about what happened Saturday long ago, when we were digging into that will business, but
I
couldn’t see …”

“Well, Pepper,” chuckled Ellery, “perhaps, being American, you’re classed in the last category of the Chinese adage which Burton in his
Anatomy of Melancholy
mentions: to wit, ‘The Chinese say that we Europeans have one eye, they themselves two, all the world else is blind.’”

“Quit being fancy,” growled the Inspector. “Listen, you two.” He said something very decisive. Pepper lost a little of his color, looked uncomfortable, but squared his shoulders and made, to judge from his expression, a mental decision. Joan, perched on the edge of the desk, waited patiently. If she knew what was coming, she gave no sign. Alan Cheney grew tense.

“We’ll see,” concluded the Inspector aloud. He turned back to the others and said to Joan, dryly, “Miss Brett, let me ask you a peculiar question. Exactly what were your movements this past Wednesday night—two nights ago?”

A veritable silence of the tomb descended on the study. Even Suiza, long legs sprawled to their full length along the rug, cocked his ears. A jury of eyes sat in judgment on Joan as she hesitated. At the instant of Queen’s question, her slim leg ceased its pendulum movement, and she grew very still indeed. Then it resumed its swing, and she replied in a casual tone: “Really, Inspector, it’s
not
a peculiar question at all. The events of the preceding few days—Mr. Khalkis’ death, the confusion in the house, the details of the funeral and the funeral itself—had left me rather worn out. Wednesday afternoon I ambled about Central Park for a breath of air, had an early dinner and retired immediately after. I read in bed for an hour or so, and turned in at about ten o’clock. That’s quite all.”

“Are you a sound sleeper, Miss Brett?”

She said with a little laugh: “Oh, very.”

“And you slept soundly all that night?”

“Of course.”

The Inspector placed his hand on Pepper’s rigid arm and said: “Then how do you account for the fact, Miss Brett, that at one o’clock in the morning—an hour after Wednesday midnight—Mr. Pepper saw you prowling about this room, and tampering with Khalkis’ safe?”

If the silence had been thunderous before, it was earth-shaking now. For a long moment no one drew a normal breath. Cheney was staring wildly from Joan to the Inspector; he blinked and then focused an unholy glare on Pepper’s white face. Dr. Wardes had allowed a paperknife, with which he had been playing, to slip from his fingers; and his fingers remained in a clutching position.

Joan herself seemed the least disturbed of them all. She smiled and addressed Pepper directly. “You saw
me
prowling about the study, Mr. Pepper—you saw
me
poking in the safe? Are you sure?”

“My dear Miss Brett,” said Inspector Queen, patting her shoulder, “it won’t do you the slightest good to stall for time. And don’t place, Mr. Pepper in the embarrassing position of calling you a liar. What were you doing down here at that hour? What were you looking for?”

Joan shook her head with a bewildered little grin. “But, my dear Inspector, I don’t know what either of you is talking about, really!”

The Inspector eyed Pepper slyly. “Only I was talking, Miss Brett. … Well, Pepper, were you seeing a ghost or was it the young lady here?”

Pepper kicked the rug. “It was Miss Brett, all right,” he muttered.

“You see, my dear,” continued the Inspector genially, “Mr. Pepper seems to know what he’s talking about. Pepper, what was Miss Brett wearing, do you recall?”

“I certainly do. Pajamas and a
negligée.”

“What color was the
negligee?”

“Black. I was sitting, dozing, in the big chair there, across the room; I suppose I wasn’t visible. Miss Brett stole in, very cautiously, closed the door and turned the switch on that small lamp on the desk. It gave me light enough to see what she was wearing and what she did. She rifled the safe. She went through every paper there.” The last sentence came out in a torrent, as if Pepper were very glad indeed to get his recital over.

The girl had grown perceptibly paler which each successive word. She sat biting her lip with vexation; tears had sprung into her eyes.

“Is that true, Miss Brett?” asked the Inspector evenly.

“I—I—no, it isn’t!” she cried, and covering her face with her hand, she began to weep convulsively. With a strangled oath young Alan sprang forward and laid muscular hands on Pepper’s clean collar. “Why, you rotten liar!” he shouted, “implicating an innocent girl—!” Pepper, his face crimson, shook himself out of Cheney’s grip; Sergeant Velie, for all his bulk, was at Cheney’s side in a flash and had grasped that young man’s arm so sternly as to make him wince.

“Now, now, my boy,” said the Inspector in a gentle voice, “control yourself. This isn’t—”

“It’s a frame-up!” yelled Allen, twisting in Velie’s hand.

“Sit down, you young whelp!” thundered the Inspector. “Thomas, you park that hellion in a corner and stand over him.” Velie grunted with as close an expression of joy as he ever exhibited, and herded Alan effortlessly into a chair on the farther side of the room. Cheney subsided, muttering.

“Alan, don’t.” Joan’s words, low and choked, startled them. “Mr. Pepper is telling the truth.” Her voice caught on a little sob. “I—I
was
in the study late Wednesday night.”

“That’s more sensible, my dear,” said the Inspector cheerfully. “Always tell the truth. Now, what were you looking for?”

She spoke rapidly, without raising her voice. “I—I thought it might be difficult to explain if I admitted … It
is
difficult. I—oh, I awoke at one o’clock and suddenly remembered that Mr. Knox, the executor or whatever he is, would probably want an itemization of certain—well, bonds that Mr. Khalkis owned. So I—I went downstairs to list them and—”

“At one o’clock in the morning, Miss Brett?” asked the old man dryly.

“Yes, yes. But when I saw them in the safe I realized, yes, I realized how foolish it was to do that at such an unearthly hour, so I put them back and went upstairs to bed again. That’s it, Inspector.” Rosy blotches appeared in her cheeks; she kept her eyes steadfastly on the rug. Cheney stared at her with horror; Pepper sighed.

The Inspector found Ellery at his elbow, tugging at his arm. “Well, son?” he asked in a low tone.

But Ellery spoke aloud, a little smile on his lips. “That sounds reasonable enough,” he said heartily.

His father stood very still for an instant. “Yes,” he said, “so it does. Ah—Miss Brett, you’re a trifle upset; you need a little diversion. Suppose you go upstairs and ask Mrs. Simms to come down at once?”

“I’ll be—very glad to,” replied Joan in the tiniest voice imaginable. She slid off the edge of the desk, flashed a damply grateful look at Ellery, and hurried out of the library.

Dr. Wardes was examining Ellery’s face in a very pensive way.

Mrs. Simms appeared in state, attired in a shrieking wrapper, Tootsie padding at her worn heels. Joan slipped into a chair near the door—and near young Alan, who did not look at her but studied the grey corona of Mrs. Simms’ head with fierce concentration.

“Ah, Mrs. Simms. Come in. Have a seat,” exclaimed the Inspector. She nodded regally and flounced into a chair. “Now, Mrs. Simms, do you remember the events of last Saturday morning, the morning Mr. Khalkis died?”

“I do,” she said, with a shudder that set in motion a vast number of fleshy ripples. “I do, sir, and I’ll remember them to my dying day.”

“I’m sure of that. Now, Mrs. Simms, tell us what happened that morning.”

Mrs. Simms raised and lowered her beefy shoulders several times, like an old rooster mustering the energy for a rousing cockadoodle-doo. “I came into this room at a quarter past ten, sir, to clean up, take away the tea-things of the night before, and so on—my usual morning chores, sir. As I came through the door—”

“Er—Mrs. Simms.” Ellery’s voice was gently deferential; a little smile immediately wreathed her puffy lips.
This
was a nice young man! “You’ve been doing the chores
yourself?”
His tone implied incredulity that such an important person as Mrs. Simms should be required to do menial labor.

“Only in Mr. Khalkis’ private rooms, sir,” she hastened to explain. “You see, Mr. Khalkis had a holy horror of young maids—snippy young idiots, he used to call them. He always insisted that I straighten out his personal quarters myself.”

“Oh, then you usually put Mr. Khalkis’ bedroom in order also?”

“Yes, sir, and Mr. Demmy’s too. So I meant to be doing these chores last Saturday morning. But when I came in I—” her bosoms heaved like the sea—“I saw poor Mr. Khalkis a-lying on his desk; which is to say, sir, his
head
was a-lying on the desk. I thought he was asleep. So—God have mercy on me!—I touched his poor hand, and it was cold, so cold, and I tried to shake him, and then I screamed and that’s all I remember, sir, on the Book.” She regarded Ellery anxiously, as if he doubted the facts as she had stated them. “The very next thing I knew, there was Weekes here and one of the maids a-slapping and a-pummeling my face and giving me smelling-salts and what-not, and I saw I was upstairs in my very own bed.”