The Greek Coffin Mystery
by Ellery Queen
CHARACTERS
GEORG KHALKIS ART DEALER
GILBERT SLOANE MANAGER, KHALKIS GALLERIES
DELPHINA SLOANE KHALKIS’S SISTER
ALAN CHENEY SON OF DELPHINA SLOANE
DEMMY KHALKIS’S COUSIN
JOAN BRETT KHALKIS’S SECRETARY
JAN VREELAND KHALKIS’S TRAVELING REPRESENTATIVE
LUCY VREELAND VREELAND’S WIFE
NACIO SUIZA DIRECTOR OF KHALKIS’S ART GALLERY
ALBERT GRIM SHAW EX-CONVICT
DR. WARDES ENGLISH EYE SPECIALIST
MILES WOODRUFF KHALKIS’S ATTORNEY
JAMES J. KNOX MILLIONAIRE ART CONNOISSEUR
DR. DUNCAN FROST KHALKIS’S PERSONAL PHYSICIAN
MRS. SUSAN MORSE A NEIGHBOUR
JEREMIAH ODELL PLUMBING CONTRACTOR
LILY ODELL ODELL’S WIFE
REV. JOHN HENRY ELDE
SEXTON HONEYWELL WEEKES KHALKIS’S BUTLER
MRS. SIMMS KHALKIS’S HOUSEKEEPER
PEPPER ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY
SAMPSON DISTRICT ATTORNEY
COHALAN D. A. DETECTIVE
DR. SAMUEL PROUTY ASSISTANT MEDICAL EXAMINER
EDMUND CREWE ARCHITECTURAL EXPERT
UNA LAMBERT HANDWRITING EXPERT
‘JIMMY’ FINGERPRINT EXPERT
TRIKKALA GREEK INTERPRETER
FLINT, HESSE, JOHNSON, PIGGOTT, HAGSTROM, RITTER STAFF DETECTIVES
THOMAS VELIE DETECTIVE SERGEANT
DJUNA
INSPECTOR RICHARD QUEEN
ELLERY QUEEN
FOREWORD
I find the task of prefacing The Greek Coffin Mystery one of especial interest, since its publication was preceded by an extraordinary reluctance on the part of Mr. Ellery Queen to permit its publication at all.
Mr. Queen’s readers will perhaps recall, from Forewords in previous Queen novels, that it was sheerest accident which caused these authentic memoirs of Inspector Richard Queen’s son to be recast in the mould of fiction and given to the public―and then only after the Queens had retired to Italy to rest, as they say, on their laurels. But after I was able to persuade my friend to permit publication of the first one, the initial Queen affair to be put between covers, things went very smoothly indeed and we found no difficulty in cajoling this sometimes difficult young man into further fictionizations of his adventures during his father’s Inspectorship in the Detective Bureau of the New York Police Department.
Why, then, you ask, Mr. Queen’s reluctance with regard to publication of the Khalkis case-history? For an interesting duality of reasons. In the first place, the Khalkis case occurred early in his career as unofficial investigator under the cloak of the Inspector’s authority; Ellery had not yet at that time fully crystallized his famous analytico-deductive method. In the second place―and this I am sure is the more powerful reason of the two―Mr. Ellery Queen until the very last suffered a thoroughly humiliating beating in the Khalkis case. No man, however modest―and Eliery Queen, I think he will be the first to agree, is far from that―cares to flaunt his failures to the world. He was put to shame publicly, and the wound has left its mark. “No,” he said positively, “I don’t relish the notion of castigating myself all over again, even in print.”
It was not until we pointed out to him―his publishers and I―that far from being his worst failure, the Khalkis case (published under the present title of The Greek Coffin Mystery) was his greatest success, that Mr. Queen began to waver―a human reaction which I am glad to point out to those cynical souls who have accused Ellery Queen of being something less than human . . . . Finally, he threw up his hands and gave in.
It is my earnest belief that it was the amazing barriers of the Khalkis case that set Ellery’s feet in the path that was to lead him to such brilliant victories later. Before this case was done, he had been tried by fire, and . . .
But it would be rude to spoil your enjoyment. You may take the word of one who knows the details of every single affair to which―I trust he will forgive my amicable enthusiasm―he applied the singing keenness of his brain, that The Greek Coffin Mystery from many angles is Ellery Queen’s most distinguished adventure.
Happy hunting!
J. J. McC.
February, 1932
“In science, in history, in psychology, in all manner of pursuits which require an application of thought to the appearance of phenomena, things are very often not what they seem. Lowell, the illustrious American thinker, said: “.A wise scepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.” I think precisely the same theorem can be laid down for the student of criminology . . . .
“The human mind is a fearful and tortuous thing. When any part of it is warped―even if it be so lightly that all the instruments of modern psychiatry cannot detect the warping―the result is apt to be confounding. Who can describe a motive? A passion? A mental process?
“My advice, the gruff dictum of one who has been dipping his hands into the unpredictable vapours of the brain for more years than he cares to recall, is this: Use your eyes, use the little grey cells God has given you, but be every wary. There is pattern but no logic in criminality. It is your task to cohere confusion, to bring order out of chaos.”
―Closing Address by Prof. Florenz Bachmann to Class in Applied Criminology at University of Munich (1920)
Chapter 1. Tomb
From the very beginning the Khalkis case struck a sombre note. It began, as was peculiarly harmonious in the light of what was to come, with the death of an old man. The death of this old man wove its way, like a contrapuntal melody, through all the intricate measures of the death march that followed, in which the mournful strain of innocent mortality was conspicuously absent. In the end it swelled into a crescendo of orchestral guilt, a macabre dirge whose echoes rang in the ears of New York long after the last evil note had died away.
It goes without saying that when Georg Khalkis died of heart failure no one, least of all Ellery Queen, suspected that this was the opening motif in a symphony of murder. Indeed, it is to be doubted that Ellery Queen even knew that Georg Khalkis had died until the fact was forcibly brought to his attention three days after the blind old man’s clay had been consigned, in a most proper manner, to what every one had reason to believe was its last resting-place.
What the newspapers failed to make capital of in the first announcement of Khalkis’s death―an obituary tribute which Ellery, a violent non-reader of the public prints, did not catch―was the interesting location of the man’s grave. It gave a curious sidelight on old New Yorkana. Khalkis’s drooping brownstone at 11 East Fifty-fourth Street was situated next to the tradition-mellowed church which fronts Fifth Avenue and consumes half the area of the block between Fifth and Madison Avenues, flanked on the north by Fifty-fifth Street and on the south by Fifty-fourth Street. Between the Khalkis house and the church itself was the church graveyard, one of the oldest private cemeteries in the city. It was in this graveyard that the bones of the dead man were to be interred. The Khalkis family, for almost two hundred years parishioners of this church, were not affected by that article of the Sanitary Code which forbids burial in the heart of the city. Their right to lie in the shadow of Fifth Avenue’s skyscrapers was established by their traditional ownership of one of the subterranean vaults in the church graveyard―vaults not visible to passers-by, since their adits were sunken three feet below the surface, leaving the sod of the graveyard unmarred by tombstones.