Ellery Queen: Greek Coffin Mystery

But Woodruff was not the type of man whose self-assurance can be permanently shaken. He recaptured it immediately upon reentering the library, where the others sat and stood about looking faintly expectant. He rapped questions at them, pouncing on one after the other, and almost snarled with disappointment when he discovered that most of the household knew the combination of the safe.

“All right,” he said. “All right. Somebody here is trying to pull a fast one. Somebody’s lying. But we’ll find out soon enough, soon enough, I’ll promise you that.” He prowled back and forth before them. “I can be as smart as the rest of you. It’s my duty — my duty, you understand,” and everybody nodded, like a battery of dolls, “to search every soul in this house. Right now. At once,” and everybody stopped nodding. “Oh, I know some one here doesn’t like the idea. Do you think I like it? But I’m going to do it anyway. It was stolen right under my nose. My nose.” At this point, despite the seriousness of the situation, Joan Brett giggled; Woodruff’s nose did cover a generous strip of territory.

Nacio Suiza, the immaculate, smiled slightly. “Oh, come now, Woodruff. Isn’t this a bit melodramatic? There’s probably a very simple explanation for the whole thing. You’re dramatizing it.”

“You think so, Suiza, you think so?” Woodruff transferred his glare from Joan to Suiza. “I see you don’t like the idea of a personal search. Why?”

Suiza chuckled. “Am I on trial, Woodruff? Get a hold on yourself, man. You’re acting like a chicken with its head cut off. Perhaps,” he said pointedly, “perhaps you were mistaken when you thought you saw the box in the safe five minutes before the funeral.”

“Mistaken? You think so? You’ll find I wasn’t mistaken when one of you turns out a thief!”

“At any rate,” remarked Suiza, showing his white teeth, “I won’t stand for this high-handed procedure. Try — just try — to search me, old man.”

At this point the inevitable occurred; Woodruff completely lost his temper. He raged, and raved, and shook his heavy fist under Suiza’s sharp cold nose, and spluttered, “By God, I’ll show you! By heaven, I’ll show you what high-handed is!” and concluded by doing what he should have done in the very beginning — he clutched at one of the two telephones on the dead man’s desk, feverishly dialed a number, stuttered at an unseen inquisitor, and replaced the instrument with a bang, saying to Suiza with malevolent finality, “We’ll see whether you’ll be searched or not, my good fellow. Everybody in this house, by order of District Attorney Sampson, is not to stir a foot from the premises until somebody from his office gets here!”

Assistant district attorney pepper was a personable young man. Matters proceeded very smoothly indeed from the moment he stepped into the Khalkis house a half-hour after Woodruff’s telephone call. He possessed the gift of making people talk, for he knew the value of flattery — a talent that Woodruff, a poor trial-lawyer, had never acquired. To Woodruff’s surprise, even he himself felt better after a short talk with Pepper. Nobody minded in the least the presence of a moon-faced, cigar-smoking individual who had accompanied Pepper — a detective named Cohalan attached to the District Attorney’s office; for Cohalan, on Pepper’s warning, merely stood in the doorway to the study and smoked his black weed in complete, self-effacing silence.

Woodruff hurried husky Pepper into a corner and the story of the funeral tumbled out. “Now here’s the situation, Pepper. Five minutes before the funeral procession was formed here in the house I went into Khalkis’ bedroom” — he pointed vaguely to another door leading out of the library — “got hold of Khalkis’ key to his steel box, came back in here, opened the safe, opened the steel box, and there it was, staring me in the face. Now then—”

“There what was?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I must be excited.” Pepper did not say that this was self-evident, and Woodruff swabbed his perspiring face. “Khalkis’ new will! The new one, mind you! No question about the fact that it was the new will in the steel box; I picked it up and there was my own seal on the thing. I put it back into the box, locked the box, locked the safe, left the room...”

“Just a moment, Mr. Woodruff.” From policy Pepper always addressed men from whom he desired information as “Mister.” “Did any one else have a key to the box?”

“Absolutely not, Pepper, absolutely not! That key is the only one to the box, as Khalkis told me himself not long ago; and I found it in Khalkis’ clothes in his bedroom, and after I locked the box and the safe, I put the key into my own pocket. On my own key-ring, in fact. Still have it.” Woodruff fumbled in his hip-pocket and produced a key-wallet; his fingers were trembling as he selected a small key, detached it, and handed it to Pepper. “I’ll swear that it’s been in my pocket all the time. Why, nobody could have stolen it from me!” Pepper nodded gravely. “There was hardly any time. Right after I left the library, the business of the procession came up, and then we had the funeral. When I got back instinct or something, I guess, made me come in here again, open the safe — and, by God, the box with the will in it was gone!”

Pepper clucked sympathetically. “Any idea who took it?”

“Idea?” Woodruff glared about the room. “I’ve got plenty of ideas, but no proof! Now get this, Pepper. Here’s the situation. Number one: every one who was in the house at the time I saw the will in the box is still here; nobody permanently left the house. Number two: all those in the funeral party left the house in a group, went in a group through the court to the graveyard, were accounted for all the time they were there, and had no contact with outsiders except the handful of people they met at the grave. Number three: when the original party returned to the house, even these outsiders returned with them, and they’re also still here.”

Pepper’s eyes were gleaming. “Damned interesting setup. In other words, if some one of the original party had stolen the will, and passed it to one of these outsiders, it will do him no good, because a search of the outsiders will disclose it if it wasn’t hidden somewhere along the route or in the graveyard. Very interesting, Mr. Woodruff. Now who were these outsiders, as you call them?”

Woodruff pointed to the little old lady in the antiquated black bonnet. “There’s one of them. A Mrs. Susan Morse, crazy old loon who lives in one of the six houses surrounding the court. She’s a neighbor.” Pepper nodded, and Woodruff pointed out the sexton, standing trembling behind Reverend Elder. “Then there was Honeywell, the shrinking little fellow — sexton of the church next door; and those two workingmen next to him, the gravediggers, are employees of that fellow over there — Sturgess the undertaker. Now, point number four: while we were in the graveyard, no one entered the house or went out — I established that from some reporters who’ve been hanging about outside. And I myself locked the doors after that, so no one has been able to go out or come in since.”

“You’re making it tougher, Mr. Woodruff,” said Pepper, when an angry voice exploded behind them, and he turned to find young Alan Cheney, more flushed than ever, brandishing a forefinger at Woodruff.

“Who’s this?” asked Pepper.

Alan was crying, “Look here, Off’cer, don’t believe him. He didn’t ask the reporters! Joan Brett did — Miss Brett over here did. Di’n’t you, Joanie?”