“Aw, nuts,” said Velie.
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?”