Death At the President's Lodging

by Michael Innes

  Appleby’s thoughts swam up from these speculations to a consciousness of his surroundings. He had been staring unseeingly at a rather scanty shelf of books: Stubb’s Select Charters, Poems of To-day, The Forsyte Saga, Trent’s Last Case…

  He turned round and swung impatiently across the room. A kettle, a commoner’s gown, a football “cap” – its tinsel already tarnished by those vapours that were even now floating round the courts. Kneeling on a window-seat he threw open a window and looked out. It was black, damp, cold. But it was cold too inside, and Appleby was not at all sleepy. Obeying an impulse, he switched off the light, groped his way out to the landing and then softly made his way downstairs. There was a light under one door, and a murmur of voices. Excited undergraduates sitting up over the case, no doubt, and fortifying themselves lawfully within college with some of those pleasant potations denied to the unhappily prowling Gott. But by this time Gott would be comfortably in his bed in Surrey: as Appleby reached the open air there came to him, muffled and solemn, one deep note from a distant bell, followed by fainter chimes from other quarters. One o’clock.

  The Dean’s staircase, where Appleby had his rooms, was in the corner of Bishop’s diagonal to the common-rooms. On the left, over the archway to Surrey, a lamp still burned. But it had been turned low and its light hardly reached across the gravel path to the edge of the lawn which Appleby knew stretched in front of him. The night was starless and obscure. Almost nothing could be seen except an uncertain line separating two contrasting textures of darkness – textures which would reveal themselves at dawn as stone and sky. And yet Appleby had never felt the place more keenly than under this spell of silence and night. He began to pace up and down the near side of the court, cleaving a path through the darkness, absorbed.

  II

  Two o’clock found Appleby still pacing. But the echo of the bells once more made him pause, and in the pause there came to him the second impulse of that night. Behind the screen of buildings in front of him lay Orchard Ground, and in his pocket reposed a key. It was now the only key, with the exception of the problematical tenth, not in the possession of his colleagues. The keys had been collected from their owners that morning (a bold exercise of authority by Dodd); a constable armed with one had stood guard all day; and a relief, similarly armed, was now sitting in the porter’s lodge. Empson, Haveland, Pownall and Titlow, once they had been let into Orchard Ground for the night, were thus virtually prisoners of the police until the morning. As things stood at the moment – and they could hardly so stand for long – no one could get in or out of Orchard Ground without applying to the constable on duty – or to Appleby. The latter’s impulse to use his key now was quite irrational, for in the almost impenetrable darkness nothing certainly could be done. But impulses of the sort he did not think it necessary invariably to resist, and he moved cautiously off to the nearer of the two gates – that between chapel and library. Then suddenly changing his mind, he struck across the lawn, skirting the library and chapel, to reach the western gate instead – that between hall and the President’s Lodging. This was, of course, the gate he had seen when moving to the common-room after dinner, and the gate through which the constable would have admitted the four Orchard Ground men to their rooms.

  He rounded the last of the great south buttresses of the hall and found himself upon gravel – upon the path, that was, that led through the gates and skirted the President’s Lodging before striking into the orchard proper. He walked warily on; the hall on his right, what must still be the common-rooms on his left. He felt for the key in his pocket, keeping his eye meantime on the faint gleam of the path at his feet. In the darkness distance was hard to judge; he put his hand out before him to avoid running full into the gate, and paced steadily on. And then suddenly he was aware of something inexplicable to his right: the hall, close to which he had been walking, had vanished, to be replaced by empty space. At the same time he dimly discerned the path at his feet forking right and left. He was in Orchard Ground. The gate lay behind him.

  A moment earlier Appleby, though walking cautiously through the night, had been almost a disembodied intellectual machine, the emphasis of his attention turned inwards. Now he was a tense mechanism of physical potentiality and sensory awareness. For perhaps thirty seconds he stood rigid, listening. He sank noiselessly down to the ground, crouching with his ear to the earth. There was no suspicion of a sound nearer than the subdued intermittent rumble of the night traffic on Schools Street.

  Softly he straightened up again and retraced his steps. The north angle of the hall loomed up a few feet away and he progressed slowly, his left hand feeling constantly along the wall until presently he came to the gate. One wing only was open; he had walked unaware straight through the narrow aperture. And now he halted and debated his course of action. To leave the gate unguarded would be inexcusable: here was the chance of a discovery which must be waited for till morning if necessary. He could, of course, shout and rouse somebody. He could even, by advancing only a few paces, command the archway into Surrey, and through that archway the torch he carried might just convey a signal to the constable at the lodge, were he vigilant. But both these courses might warn somebody who, if unalarmed, would walk straight into a trap. Appleby drew up to the wall and waited. He was prepared to wait with unabated vigilance until sunrise.

  His back was against the hall; his left hand was on the cold iron of the open wing of the gate: playing up and down, it touched the lock. His body stiffened. In the lock was the key – the tenth, problematical key!

  He set about exploring the gate thoroughly – or as thoroughly as darkness allowed. The open wing was so hung that it swung to of its own weight, and would then lock automatically. But in the wall of the hall was a catch by which the gate might be held back in the day-time, and this catch had been applied. Out of Appleby’s pocket came a fine tool. He disengaged the key from the lock without touching it with his fingers and stowed it in his pocket-book. Then he stepped through to the Bishop’s side and let the gate swing to behind him. He noticed a faint creak as it closed. All the keys were now in police keeping.

  And now Appleby ran. Silently across the grass, rapidly through the archway and to the lodge. It was the work of a moment to beckon to the constable doing porter’s duty to follow him, and both men were back at the gates within a minute of Appleby’s leaving them. Appleby unlocked the gate and murmured: “Somebody may come – from either side. Get him. And wait till I come back.” Then he slipped once more into the darkness of Orchard Ground.

  He made first for the eastern gate, that between library and chapel. A glide across the grass brought him to it: it was closed and securely locked. And now he set off along the faintly discernible path that led in the direction of Schools Street and at the end of which he would find the wicket that connected St Anthony’s with the outer world. Presently he lost the path and was groping among the apple trees. But still he judged it better not to use his torch, and after a few minutes wandering he touched what he knew was the wall bounding the eastern side of the orchard. The grass ran up to the wall, so that he made his way silently forward. Presently he reached the wicket. It too was locked.

  He turned round now and made off down the orchard, trying to recall to his memory the lie of the paths as he had seen them on Dodd’s sketch-map. But he failed and had to proceed by judgment. Two paths in succession ran off to the right; he bore left till he came to a little crossroads. He guessed where he was now: to the right was Little Fellows’; to the left the west gate where he had left the constable; straight on were the French windows of the President’s study. Appleby went straight on. And presently he knew that something was wrong.

  The French windows, he knew, had been bolted from the inside at top and bottom and locked in the middle. But now the window, like the west gate, swung open. Within was blackness. Appleby listened once more and then slipped inside. The curtains were only partly drawn back; as silently as possible he drew them to behind him and switched
on his torch.

  The body had been removed that evening. But the bones had been left – and the bones were still there, as were the crudely chalked death’s-heads on the wall. He stepped over to the door; it was locked, and he did not doubt that on the other side the seal applied by Dodd on leaving would be still intact. The French windows had simply been forced and the room rifled. Appleby turned on the light now and walked to the far end with a premonition of what he would find. In the bay by the Deipnosophists the dummy shelf swung loose. The concealed safe was open. Some documents lay scattered in it. Something, doubtless, was gone.

  An observer would have found Appleby pale at this moment. He had lost a trick – perhaps a decisive trick. He ought to have insisted to Dodd on more surveillance than was represented by the constable at the porter’s lodge. He ought to have had a team of locksmiths up from London, working at that safe all night…

  He set himself to an inspection. Nothing, as far as he could see, had been disturbed. The desk was untampered with. And the safe had not been forced. Whoever had been in the room had known what he wanted, where it lay concealed and how to gain access to it. The safe, the very existence of which appeared to be unknown to the rest of the college, had held, even in the combination that opened it, no secret for this intruder. Who had the intruder been? Appleby turned to the probabilities. One of the four men sleeping in Little Fellows’ next door could have broken in easily enough. He slipped once more through the curtains and examined the window. What had happened was clear. The burglar had made three circles with a diamond and to each of these he had applied a piece of sacking treated with some sticky substance; through this deadening medium he had then smashed the holes which enabled him to get at bolts and key. It was a trick out of fiction rather than out of current burglarious practice, and it was surprising that it had worked as well as it had done. A resounding splintering of the whole great pane ought to have been the result; as it was, the fractures had almost confined themselves to their diamond-scrawled boundaries and the noise would have been insufficient to penetrate either to the quarters of the dead President’s domestic staff or round the corner to Little Fellows’.

  It might have been one of the Little Fellows’ men – but what then was the meaning of the open west gate? The key had been on the orchard side. If the burglary and the open gate were connected, and if one of these four – Empson, Haveland, Pownall, Titlow – was responsible, he had gone on through the gate to one of the other courts – and was there still. Or somebody from outside St Anthony’s had entered with this tenth key through the wicket, committed the burglary, and similarly gone on to the other part of the college.

  But the indications might be deliberately misleading. Why had the key been left in the lock? As a deliberate false trail? Supposing the burglary had been committed not from the orchard side but from the Bishop’s side? The perpetrator might then have left the key on the orchard side to suggest the contrary. But what would that suggestion, logically followed up, imply? It would imply that somebody had passed from Orchard Ground (or perhaps from Schools Street) into the main courts of the college and had then (as a fictitious person could obviously not be discovered there) passed back, leaving the gate open and abandoning the key. The pretence was too thin to have been worth putting up. Almost certainly somebody had passed from Orchard Ground to Bishop’s; and almost certainly that person was there still. For if (as the creak suggested) the gate had been left open to cut down noise pending a return and one final shutting of it, then the key might have been forgotten in the moment that such a procedure was decided upon. But if the person concerned had passed back to Orchard Ground his whole instinct would be to cover his traces: he would almost certainly take the very slight risk of shutting the gate, and would almost certainly repossess himself of the key.

  If this was indeed the situation, if the burglar was now somewhere in the main buildings and had his escape to make through the gates he was virtually in Appleby’s hands. Leaving the gate open, with police possibly prowling round, had been a gross error of judgment; abandoning the key in the lock had been more careless still: both acts implied a sort of mind that Appleby had not hitherto associated with Umpleby’s murderer. If this was the murderer who was operating now the St Anthony’s mystery might be past history within half an hour. It was somehow a disconcerting thought.

  And now Appleby glided into the darkness again and made his way back to the west gate – to find himself looking into the dimly gleaming barrel of a revolver. It was not a weapon with which the sturdy constable holding it was likely to be over-familiar, and Appleby was relieved when his identity was established. At least, this was a vigilant man; he might safely be left on guard alone a little longer. In a whisper Appleby gave directions. He himself was going back to explore Little Fellows’. The constable was to continue to keep watch and to make sure of anybody who came along. By lying low there was a chance of capturing the burglar neatly with his spoils upon him. A general alarm and search might discover somebody who would have difficulty in explaining his presence, but that somebody would be unlikely to have anything incriminating still upon his person. Meantime, a search of Little Fellows’ might discover one of its four occupants missing; and this would be evidence in itself supposing anything were to go amiss with the hoped-for capture by the west gate.

  Appleby was on the point of turning back into the orchard when he became aware that during this prolonged night prowl he had grown exceedingly cold. And in front of him, after he had searched Little Fellows’, lay what might be a long vigil beside his colleague. Just across the lawn, at the foot of the Dean’s staircase, was hanging his overcoat, and as his course to it would be untouched by the dim light over the Surrey archway he decided he could cross once more without any appreciable risk of giving alarm.

  With a word of his intentions to the constable he set off and in a moment was round the corner of the hall and making for his staircase with fair certainty. He came upon the gravel path again just by his doorway and slipped inside. He groped his way forward to where he knew the coat hung. His hand had gone out to it when he sensed a movement in the darkness behind him. And before he could turn there came a smashing concussion. He crumpled up on the floor.

  6

  In something under half an hour Appleby regained consciousness. His head was throbbing and he felt sick. Nevertheless he had barely become aware of these circumstances before he was aware too that his brain was beginning to work clearly. Almost his first reflection was that he had by no means been made the victim of a murderous attack: he had merely been neatly and not unmercifully stunned. It required little thinking to tell why. His pockets, he discovered on passing a hand over himself, had been rifled and his key to Orchard Ground was gone. But not the key which he had found: that was safely in his pocket-book still – with whatever tell-tale fingerprints it might conceivably bear. The assailant had been content with securing a key: beyond that he had not stopped to think. And this was Appleby’s second indication that night that something less than a perfectly efficient mind was at work.

  The unknown had been content to secure a key; there was little doubt to what purpose. The west gate was guarded but the east gate was not; as long as all the keys had been in police custody there had been no need for that, for whoever was lurking in these courts could get out only by the open west gate where the constable stood. But now Appleby’s assailant was as good as a free man. All he had to do was to hurry down the east side of Bishop’s, down the passage between library and chapel – all this being remote from the hearing or observation of the constable across the court – and let himself into Orchard Ground by the alternative route. Then if he were Empson, Pownall, Haveland or Titlow he could go straight to bed; if he were an outsider he could let himself through the wicket and vanish.

  Appleby got painfully to his feet. The movement started a trickle of blood from the wound on his scalp; as he bent forward it ran down his forehead and dropped suddenly and sickeningly into his eyes. Impati
ently he made a rough bandage with his handkerchief, and wrapped his now shivery body in the coat which had been the cause of his downfall. For it was a downfall. Twice he had been outwitted that night: first in suffering the burglary of the President’s study to happen, and now again in this closer and somehow more personal duel. For the second time he had the mortification of vain regrets. If only he had gone to Little Fellows’ before consulting his comfort in the matter of the overcoat, what might he not now know! Something that he would not be given the chance, perhaps, to learn again.

  At least he could go to Little Fellows’ now. Bracing himself to hold at bay the giddiness and nausea that were upon him he stepped out into the court. It had been cold in the little stone lobby but it was colder in the open. The extra chill, numbing as it was, steadied him and he crossed the lawn confidently enough.

  The constable had done the right thing: as long as Appleby was absent he had stuck to his post. But as time passed he had been in considerable perplexity and now he was anxious to know that he had committed no error of judgment. Appleby reassured him and dismissed him to an easier vigil in the President’s study. To guard the gate any longer would serve no useful purpose: the bird had flown… Appleby made his way once more into Orchard Ground. He looked at the luminous dial of his watch as he did so: it was a quarter to four – and impenetrably dark.

  That anything would come of this final reconnoitre he had little hope. But it was preferable to going back to his room to think when his brain was too tired to think at its best And if he went back he would, he knew, attempt to think: sleep immediately after defeat was impossible to him. So he rounded the corner of the President’s Lodging and presently became aware of the bulk of Little Fellows’ a few paces ahead. He would do a little burglarizing on his own. If one of the four occupants had been his assailant there was just a chance that some tiny indication of the fact might be discoverable. And if he were detected rummaging about the rooms of one of his St Anthony’s hosts at four o’clock in the morning it might not be altogether unfortunate. A bare feeling that the police were uncompromisingly at work on a trail is a thing often surprisingly productive in criminal investigation.