Greek Coffin Mystery (9 page)

“Well, I’ve got to talk to him,” said the Inspector in a sort of desperation. “Mrs. Sloane, this man is your cousin also, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Inspector. Poor dear Georg. …” Her lips quivered; she seemed about to cry.

“Now, now,” said the Inspector hastily. “Do you know this lingo? I mean, can you talk Greek, or whatever it is he gabbles?”

“Enough to converse with him.”

“Please question him about his movements last Friday night.”

Mrs. Sloane sighed, rose, smoothed her gown and caught the tall, gaunt idiot by the arm, shaking him vigorously. He wheeled slowly, puzzled; he searched her face anxiously; then he smiled and took her hand in his. She said sharply, “Demetrios!” He smiled again, and she began to speak in a foreign tongue, in halting guttural accents. He laughed aloud at this, tightening his powerful grasp on her hand; his reaction was as transparent as a child’s—he was filled with glee at hearing his native language. He replied to her, in the same alien syllables, speaking with a slight lisp; but his voice was deep and grating.

Mrs. Sloane turned to the Inspector. “He says that Georg sent him to bed that night about ten o’clock.”

“His bedroom is off Khalkis’ there?”

“Yes.”

“Ask him if he heard anything from the library here after he went to bed.”

Another interchange of strange sounds. “No, he says he heard nothing. He fell asleep at once and slept soundly all night. He sleeps like a child, Inspector.”

“And he saw no one in the library?”

“But how could he, Inspector, if he was asleep?”

Demmy was peering from his cousin to the Inspector in a pleased, yet confused sort of way. The old man nodded. “Thanks, Mrs. Sloane. That’s all right now.”

The Inspector went to the desk, picked up the dial telephone, and dialed a number. “Hello! Queen speaking. … Listen, Fred, what’s the name of that Greek interpreter who hangs around the Criminal Courts Building? … What? Trikkala? T-r-i-k-k-a-l-a? … Okay. Locate him right away and send him over to Eleven East Fifty-fourth Street. Tell him to ask for me.”

He banged the instrument back on the desk. “Please wait for me here, all of you,” he said, beckoned to Ellery and Pepper, nodded laconically to Sergeant Velie, and strode to the door. Demmy’s staring eyes followed the figures of the three men in a childishly astonished way.

They mounted the carpeted stairs, and at Pepper’s gesture turned to the right. He indicated a door not far from the head of the stairs, and the Inspector knocked. A woman’s voice, fat with tears, gurgled: “Who’s
there?”
in frightened tones.

“Mrs. Simms? This is Inspector Queen. May I come in a minute?”

“Who? Who? Oh, yes! Just a moment, sir, just a moment!” They heard a hasty bed-creak, a rustling accompanied by lusty feminine exhalations of breath, and a weak panting, “Come in, sir. Come in.”

The Inspector sighed, opened the door, and the three men entered the room to find themselves confronted by an awesome apparition. An old shawl was draped about Mrs. Simms’ bulging shoulders. Her grey hair was disheveled—stiff strands stuck out all over her head, so that it faintly resembled the crowned head of the Statue of Liberty. Her face was puffy and red, and blotched with tears, and her matronly bosoms were heaving energetically as she rocked herself in an old-fashioned rocker. Carpet slippers covered her large swollen feet. And at those battered feet reposed an ancient Persian cat—evidently the adventurous Tootsie.

The three men walked in solemnly, and Mrs. Simms looked at them with such affrighted bovine eyes that Ellery gulped.

“How do you feel now, Mrs. Simms?” asked the Inspector amiably.

“Oh, terrible, sir, terrible.” Mrs. Simms rocked faster. “Who
was
that dreadful dead creature in the drawing-room, sir? He—it gave me the unholy creeps!”

“Oh, then you never saw that man before?”

“I?”
she shrieked. “Heavens above! I? Mother of God, no!”

“All right, all right,” said the Inspector hurriedly. “Now, Mrs. Simms, do you recall last Friday night?”

Her damp handkerchief paused at her nose and a saner look came into her eye. “Last Friday night? The night before—before Mr. Khalkis died? I do, sir.”

“That’s very good, Mrs. Simms, very good. I understand you went to bed early—is that correct?”

“Indeed it is, sir. Mr. Khalkis himself told me to.”

“Did he tell you anything else?”

“Why, nothing important, sir, if that’s what you’re driving at.” Mrs. Simms blew her nose. “He just called me into the study and—”

“He
called
you in?”

“Well, I mean he rang for me. There’s a buzzer on his desk which leads to the kitchen downstairs.”

“What time was this?”

“Time? Let me see.” She puckered her old lips thoughtfully. “I’d say about a quarter to eleven.”

“At night, of course?”

“Well, of all things! Of course. And when I came in he told me to fetch him at once a percolator of water, three cups and saucers, some tea-balls, cream, lemon and sugar. At once, he said.”

“Was he alone when you entered the library?”

“Oh, yes, sir. All alone, the poor creature sitting at his desk so nice and straight. … To think—just to think that—”

“Now, don’t think, Mrs. Simms,” said the Inspector. “And then what happened?”

She dabbed at her eyes. “I brought the tea-things right away and set them down on the taboret by his desk. He asked me if I had brought
everything
he’d ordered—”

“Now, that’s queer,” muttered Ellery.

“Not at all, sir. He couldn’t see, you see. So he said in a sharper voice—he looked a mite nervous, it seemed to me, if you ask, sir, which you didn’t—he said to me, ‘Mrs. Simms, I want you to go to bed at once. Do you understand?’ So I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Khalkis,’ and I went right up to my room and to bed. And that’s all, sir.”

“He said nothing to you about having guests that night?”

“Me, sir? Oh, no, sir.” Mrs. Simms blew her nose again and then thrashed it about vigorously with her handkerchief. “Although I
did
think he might be having company of sorts, considering the three cups and all. But it wasn’t
my
place to ask, you see.”

“Of course not. So you didn’t see any visitors that night?”

“No, sir. I went right up to my room and to bed, as I said. I was that tired, sir, having had a bad day with rheumatics. My rheumatics—”

Tootsie rose, yawned, and began to wash her face.

“Yes, yes. We quite understand. That’s all for now, Mrs. Simms, and thank you very much,” said the Inspector, and they hastily left the room. Ellery was thoughtful as they descended the stairs; Pepper looked at him curiously and said, “You think …”

“My dear Pepper,” said Ellery, “that is the curse of my composition. I’m always thinking. I’m pursued by what Byron in
Childe Harold
—you recall that magnificent first canto?—saw fit to call, ‘The blight of life—the demon Thought.’”

“Well,” said Pepper dubiously, “there’s something in that.”

A
S THEY WERE ABOUT
to reenter the study downstairs, they heard voices from the drawing-room across the hall. The Inspector inquisitively trotted over and opened the door to peer in. His eyes sharpened and he strode inside without ceremony, Pepper and Ellery following meekly. They found Dr. Prouty chewing his cigar and looking out of the window into the graveyard, while another man—a man none of them had seen before—poked about the odorous corpse of Grimshaw. He straightened immediately, looking inquiry at Dr. Prouty. The Assistant Medical Examiner introduced the Queens and Pepper tersely, said: “This is Dr. Frost, Khalkis’ personal physician. Just came in,” and turned back to his window.

Dr. Duncan Frost was a handsome cleanly man, of fifty or more—the typical smart solid society physician with whom upper Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue and the West Side commune for the preservation of their health. He murmured something polite and backed away, looking down at the swollen corpse with keen interest.

“I see you’ve been examining our find,” remarked the Inspector.

“Yes. Very interesting. Very interesting indeed,” replied Dr. Frost, “and quite incomprehensible to me. How on earth did this cadaver ever get into Khalkis’ coffin?”

“If we knew that, Doctor, we’d breathe easier.”

“Well, it’s a cinch it wasn’t in there when Khalkis was buried,” said Pepper dryly.

“Naturally! That’s what makes it so amazing.”

“I believe Dr. Prouty said you were Khalkis’ personal physician?” asked the Inspector abruptly.

“That’s correct, sir.”

“Have you ever seen this man before? Treated him?”

Dr. Frost shook his head. “An absolute stranger to me, Inspector. And I was associated with Khalkis for ever so many years. In fact, I live just across the court back here—on Fifty-fifth Street.”

“How long,” asked Ellery, “has the man been dead?’:

The Assistant Medical Examiner turned his back on the window, smiled glumly, and the two physicians exchanged glances. “Matter of fact,” growled Dr. Prouty, “Frost and I were discussing that just before you men came in. Hard to tell from superficial examination. I’d want to examine the nude cadaver and his insides before I said definitely.”

“A good deal may depend,” said Dr. Frost, “upon where the body was kept before burial in Khalkis’ coffin.”

“Oh,” said Ellery quickly, “then he has been dead more than three days? He died before Tuesday, the day of Khalkis’ funeral?”

“I should say so,” replied Dr. Frost, and Dr. Prouty nodded carelessly. “The external cadaveric changes certainly indicate a minimum period of three days.”

“The
rigor
passed off long ago. Secondary flaccidity marked. Lividity seems to be complete,” said Dr. Prouty in a grumpy voice, “as far as we can tell without taking the clothes off. Anterior surfaces especially so—body was lying face down in the coffin. Points of clothing pressure and parts in contact with certain sharp edges and hard sides have lightened the lividity in spots. But that’s a detail.”

“All of which means—” prompted Ellery.

“The things I’ve mentioned don’t mean much,” replied the Assistant Medical Examiner, “as far as fixing the strict time of death, although the lividity certainly points to putrefaction of at least three days, with a possibility of double that. Can’t tell until I conduct an autopsy. You see, the other things I touched on merely establish certain minima. Passing off of
rigor mortis
in itself indicates a lapse of a day to a day and a half, sometimes two days. Secondary flaccidity is the third stage—normally, immediately after death you have a state of primary flaccidity—everything relaxed. Then
rigor
sets in. When
rigor
passes off secondary flaccidity sets in—a return to relaxation of the muscles.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t—” began the Inspector.

“Of course,” remarked Dr. Frost, “there are other things. For example, the abdomen shows a formative green ‘spot’—one of the first phenomena of putrefaction—and is distended characteristically by gases.”

“That helps to fix the time, all right,” said Dr. Prouty. “But there’s always a raft of things to keep in mind. If the body were kept before burial in the coffin in a dry place comparatively free of air currents, it wouldn’t putrefy as rapidly as it would normally. Three days as a minimum, absolutely, as I said,”

“Well, well,” said the Inspector impatiently, “you dig into his belly, Doc, and let us know as exactly as you can how long he’s been dead.”

“Say,” said Pepper suddenly, “how about Khalkis’ body? Is
that
all right? I mean, there’s nothing funny about Khalkis’ death, is there?”

The Inspector stared at Pepper; then he smote his small thigh and exclaimed, “Bully, Pepper! There’s a real idea. … Dr. Frost, you were the attending physician on Khalkis’ death, weren’t you?”

“I was.”

“You made out the death-certificate, then.”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“Anything queer about his death?”

Dr. Frost stiffened. “My dear sir,” he said coldly, “do you think I would have officially ascribed his death to heart-disease unless it were true?”

“Complications?” growled Dr. Prouty.

“Not at the time of death. But Khalkis had been a very sick man for years; it’s at least twelve years that he’s had a bad case of
compensatory hypertrophy
—enlargement of the heart as a result of a defective mitral valve. Then to make matters worse, about three years ago he contracted some nasty stomach ulcers. His heart condition forbade surgery, and I treated intravenously. But hemorrhages set in, and they brought on his blindness.”

“Is that a common result of such a condition?” asked Ellery curiously.

Dr. Prouty said: “Our much-vaunted medical science knows very little about it, Queen. It isn’t common, but it happens every once in a while after hemorrhages caused by stomach ulcers or stomach cancer. Why, no one can tell you.”

“At any rate,” continued Dr. Frost, nodding, “the specialist I called in, and I, hoped that the blindness would prove only temporary. Sometimes such blindness clears spontaneously, as mysteriously as it comes on. However, the condition remained and Khalkis never regained his sight.”

“That’s all very interesting, I’m sure,” said the Inspector, “but we’re more concerned with the possibility that Khalkis died, not as a result of a bad heart, but—”

“If you entertain any doubt as to the authenticity of the stated cause of death,” snapped Dr. Frost, “you can ask Dr. Wardes, who was present when I officially pronounced Khalkis dead. There was no violence, nothing quite so melodramatic, Inspector Queen. The intravenous-injection treatments for the ulcers, complicated by the rigorous diet he was naturally compelled to follow, taxed his heart. Besides, against my specific instructions, he insisted on continuing the supervision of his Galleries, even if only through the instrumentality of Mr. Sloane and Mr. Suiza. His heart simply collapsed.”

“But—poison?” persisted the Inspector.

“I assure you there wasn’t the slightest evidence of toxication.”

The Inspector beckoned Dr. Prouty. “You’d better perform an autopsy on Khalkis, too,” he said. “I want to be sure. There’s been one murder here—how do we know, with all respect to Dr. Frost, that there weren’t two?”