Death At the President's Lodging

by Michael Innes

  He was interrupted by the sudden roar of an engine. The De Dion had dispatched itself like a bullet from a gun in the direction of Burford. The fat constable allowed himself a few moments to incorporate this fact in his reflections. And then light seemed to break on him. “It be them dratted Lunnon gangsters come about these parts at last!” He turned his bicycle round and set off in heavy pursuit.

  The short November twilight was closing into dusk. It was just on lighting-up time. Peering ahead, Mike and David could discover nothing. But Horace in the back with the skip suddenly called out. “Chaps! There’s another pack on the trail – a whacking great Rolls. Open out.”

  It was evidently true. Mike was already driving fast, but only a moment after Horace had spoken a large grey Rolls-Royce loomed up in the dusk almost abreast. Its horn sounded urgently and at the same instant its headlamps flashed into brilliant illumination. Mike swerved to allow free passage – and thrust at his accelerator at the same moment. The Rolls was in a hurry, but not suicidally so. It drew in behind and the cars tore down the road in single file.

  Visibility was poor; it was the uncertain hour at which headlights just fail to help. And suddenly, just ahead, Burford crossroads came into view. And somewhere the telephone must have been at work, for standing across the road were three policemen. And between cars and police was the fugitive, bending low over the handlebars of the purloined bicycle and pedalling furiously. The next minute was one of confusion. The cyclist was up with the policemen, two of the policemen had made a lunge, there were shouts, a stumble – and the fugitive, by swerving wildly, had got safely through the cordon and was shooting over the crossroads to Burford Hill. Another second, and the police were jumping to the side of the road to let the pursuing cars sweep past. But Mike, who was perfectly level-headed when driving a car, had checked for the main road, and by the time the cars were across the bicycle was some way ahead again and just dipping down the steep slope.

  “We’ll get him!” cried Horace.

  “If there’s anything left to get,” said David grimly. “He’s going down a good deal faster than he meant to.”

  It was true. Mike was plunging down the long steep street that is Burford as fast as was safe in a large, perfectly controlled car. But he was scarcely gaining on the cyclist, who had let himself plunge ahead as madly as if death itself were on his tracks. His continued equilibrium seemed a matter of miracle. But in a moment it was all over. The Lamb flashed by on the left, the church on the right; the road levelled and curved to the bridge; the fugitive, by some freak of control, was safely over; the De Dion was up with him and had edged him into the ditch. The quarry was run to earth…

  “It’s not him!” exclaimed Mike, gazing at the dazed, red-headed creature in the ditch. And he was conscious of the quite slender reason there had been to suppose that it was.

  “It’s a looney,” said David gently, looking at the red-headed creature’s vacant eye.

  “It was a looney-bin,” said Horace, looking with his inner vision at the dismal red structure known as White House…

  The grey Rolls-Royce drew up with a swish of brakes. An excited but competent little person of medico-military appearance jumped out. “Is he hurt?” he cried. “Is his lordship hurt – damn him?” And he jumped straight into the ditch and began an examination.

  “His lordship,” murmured Horace sadly. “This is where we step off.”

  The little doctor was out of the ditch again. “Nothing broken. Bit of a bruise – bit of a daze – that’s all. Yates! Davies! Help his lordship into the car. Leave that damn fool postman’s bicycle where it is. Damn these policemen – couldn’t stop a child on a tricycle. Nearly had a neck broken. Rogers! Turn her round. And now, gentlemen.”

  The gentlemen eyed his lordship’s warden warily. They were decidedly uncertain as to where they stood. But it did not occur to the little doctor, seeing three prosperous youths and a more than prosperous car, to see himself confronted by the villains of the piece. “Much obliged to you, gentlemen, for your – ha – intervention and assistance. I think the circumstances will be clear to you. Lord Pucklefield is one of my patients – Dr Goffin of the White House. Nervous fellow – if anything occurs to startle him off he goes. Can’t think what can have done it this time. Gates open too – gossiping postman – won’t happen again – damme. Yates! Davies! Get in!”

  And Dr Goffin took off his hat very punctiliously (Mike just got in his high-table bow) and jumped into the Rolls. A moment later Lord Pucklefield and his friends had purred smoothly away into the gathering darkness.

  Horace thrummed meditatively on the skip. David took out his pipe. Mike took out his watch. “Quarter to six and ever so far from home. We could just make hall – hurrying.” The suggestion was unenthusiastically made and unenthusiastically received. “And I drop ten bob if we don’t,” the errant bible-clerk added.

  “You’ve dropped five pounds already,” said Horace brutally, and giving the skip another slap. “Another ten bob won’t do you any harm. I think we’d better go and have a decent meal.”

  David’s pipe was alight. “There’s the Three Doves,” he said.

  With one accord the party moved to the car; in a minute they were running down to the Fulbrook crossroads to turn. And as they swept back to take the long hill down whicµh they had recently come their lamps caught for a moment a ponderous figure who had dismounted from a bicycle and was contemplating the bicycle in the ditch. It was the fat constable. He must have missed his colleagues at the top of the hill. He was brooding over an impenetrable mystery.

  II

  The great De Dion, foiled but not ashamed, glided beneath the discreetly flood-lit sign of the Three Doves. In the lounge there was comfort in the great fires, rest in the mellow candle light, refreshment in the preliminary sherry. The fantasy of the day was over – fantasy fortunately untouched by the fatality that had at one moment threatened. David had gone back to Pindar, Horace was lost in reverie, Mike was thinking of the dinner. They were early and the pleasures of anticipation might be enjoyed.

  At the Three Doves things always fall out well. The sherry had been drained, the ode finished, the reverie dispersed, the wine planned; the moment at which anticipation turns to impatience was hovering on the clock – when the waiter hovered at the door and murmured the awaited words. They rose luxuriously, and in a formal sentence Mike dismissed the cares of the day. “You know, chaps, I should have hated really to catch him.”

  They were the first in the long, dim, gleaming coffee room and the smoked salmon was consumed before the next diner arrived. It was the fluffy old party of their luncheon speculations. He was without his book this time, and he ambled over to his table with his fists pressed oddly to his shoulders…

  “Tally-ho-ho!”

  Mike’s cry was unearthly – and it sent the fluffy old party out of the room.

  “Gone a-way-ay!”

  The ensuing scene was unique in the history of a well-ordered hostelry.

  11

  The ability to smell a rat is an important part of the detective’s equipment. Appleby had smelt a rat – in the wrong place. But he was too wary to take it that a rat in the wrong place is necessarily a red herring: it may be a rat with a deceptive fish-like smell – and still a rat.

  To be exact, this rat had been not so much in the wrong place as at the wrong time. Just an hour after the discovery of Umpleby’s dead body two Fellows of St Anthony’s, Gott and Campbell, had converged on one spot up the Luton road. It might have been fortuitous; it might have been by design – but if by design the purpose behind the manoeuvre was obscure. At any rate, there was a field for investigation and Appleby had felt drawn to it when he first announced to Dodd that he wanted to take a walk. He was walking rapidly down Schools Street now and as he walked he concentrated on the first point he had to consider.

  On the night of the crime Campbell had gone to the Chillingworth Club in Stonegate. He claimed to have arrived there before the hour at
which Umpleby was last seen alive and to have remained until within ten minutes of midnight. That, as far as the murder was concerned, was Campbell’s alibi and it would have to be checked anyway. He would begin with it now.

  The entrance to the Chillingworth Club from Stonegate is down a few yards of covered alleyway. This gives upon a meagre little court with a meagre little fountain and fish-pond – the whole about fifteen feet square and known to members as the “garden.”… A subterraneous approach to the Chillingworth, Appleby decided as he traversed this retreat, was impracticable: there was nothing for it but a frontal attack upon the secretary. With this plan in view he rang the bell.

  The secretary was an elderly youth of great discretion. Appleby’s credentials produced his assurance that the club would render all proper assistance with all possible expedition. Nevertheless, in a matter involving an inquisition into the movements of a member while on the premises, he was afraid he could not act without the sanction of the chairman. Could the chairman be consulted forthwith? Unfortunately not. Lord Pucklefield was in delicate health, and for some time his physicians had forbidden business matters being referred to him. An acting chairman? Well, yes; no doubt Dr Crummles’ authority might suffice. Ring up Dr Crummles? The Inspector would realize that it was scarcely a matter to confide to a telephone conversation…

  Appleby was accustomed to getting over difficulties of this kind and in something over an hour he had obtained from a succession of club servants almost all the information he required. And his requirements, as far as Campbell’s movements were concerned, were minute. Campbell had arrived at ten-fifteen. Just before half-past ten he had been served with a drink in the smoke-room. A few minutes later he had entered the card-room, with this drink still in his hand, and had cut in upon a four at bridge. The game lasted till half-past eleven, and for ten minutes after that Campbell had remained talking to another of the players. But at exactly a quarter to twelve he had collected his hat and coat and gone out. Of the precise time of his leaving the servant concerned was convinced: just before getting up Campbell had looked at his watch, and this had had the effect of making the man glance at the clock. Moreover, something else had occurred to fix the matter in his mind. Campbell had gone out by way of the little court. But he had evidently forgotten something in the club, for a minute later he was seen in the building again. And then almost immediately he had finally left – this time by the side entrance that gave directly on Stonegate somewhat farther north.

  This seemed detailed enough and Appleby did not feel disappointed when, on certain minute points on which he inquired, he did not succeed in getting a clearer picture. It was remarkable that of the casual movements of a member some nights before so much had been noted and remembered. Appleby was now almost certain that he was on the trail of something. Thoughtfully he emerged on Stonegate – as Campbell had done – and turned left for the Luton road. His next call was to be on Sir Theodore Peek – and on Sir Theodore’s neighbour, the Green Horse. For in this topographical fact lay the germ of Appleby’s present proceedings. Dodd’s street map had shown him that the Green Horse must be almost in the stables, so to speak, of the eminent scholar. And the exact topography, he hoped, would be finally illuminating.

  It was. The entrance to the Green Horse Inn was from the inn yard. And the yard, which opened on one side to the high road, opened on the other to a secluded suburban avenue. And the nearest house was Berwick Lodge, Sir Theodore’s home. Appleby spent a moment conjuring up the whole venue in the dark. Then he ran up the steps of Berwick Lodge and knocked at the door.

  II

  The city abounds in venerable men. Particularly are its suburbs thronged with scholars of enormous age. The fact is not immediately observable – because once having abandoned their colleges they never go out. But hidden there in that humdrum Ruskinian villa is a greybeard who remembers the publication of Lachmann’s Lucretius; over the way, behind that imitation Tudor timbering, is the historian who quarrelled with Grote; down the road is an ancient whose infant head was patted by the great Niebuhr himself… Moreover there is something special about the generation of these primigenius savants. They are themselves the sons and grandsons of scholars who, having given a long working life to the furtherance of humane knowledge, and feeling, round about ninety or so, the first mists of senescence begin to gather about their minds, have retired from their intellectual pursuits to the solaces of matrimony and procreation. It thus comes about that the man who remembers Lachmann remembers too his father’s anecdotes of Porson, and that he who received the blessing of Niebuhr preserves the liveliest family anecdotes of Bentley and Heinsius and Voss – the sense of personal contact scarcely growing dim until it disappears with Politian and Erasmus into the twilight of the fifteenth century. This is the tradition of the true University Worthies – and of all living University Worthies Sir Theodore Peek was the oldest and the dimmest, the most sunk in the long and foggy history of scholarship – and the most truly bathed, perhaps, in the remote and golden sunlight of Greece and Rome.

  Appleby found him in a small and gloomy room, piled round with an indescribable confusion of books and manuscripts – and asleep. Or sometimes asleep and sometimes awake – for every now and then the eyes of this well-nigh ante-mundane man would open – and every now and then they would close. But when they opened, they opened to decipher a fragment of papyrus on his desk – and then, the deciphering done, a frail hand would make a note before the eyes closed once more. It was like being in the presence of some animated symbol of learning.

  Sir Theodore was finally aware of Appleby, but scarcely aware of him in his character as a policeman. Rather he seemed to think of him as a young scholar who, having just taken a creditable First in Schools, had come to consult authority on matters of post graduate study. It was only with difficulty that he was headed off from a discussion of the Aristarchic recension of Homer to a consideration of the reiterated name “Campbell.”

  “Campbell,” said Appleby firmly. “Campbell of St Anthony’s!”

  Sir Theodore nodded, and then shook his head. “Able,” he murmured, “able, no doubt – but we are scarcely interested – are we? – in his field. Umpleby is the only man at St Anthony’s. I advise you to see Umpleby. What a pity that he too has taken to these anthropological fantasies! You know him on Harpocration?”

  “Did…Campbell…visit…you…on…Tuesday…night…?” asked Appleby.

  “Indeed, you might consider Harpocration,” Sir Theodore went on. “He preserves, as you know, a number of passages from the Atthidographers Hellanicus, Androtion, Phanodemus, Philochorus and Istrus – to say nothing of such historians as Hecataeus, Ephorus and Theopompus, Anaximenes, Marsyas, Craterus–”

  Appleby tried again.

  “Yes,” he said emphatically, “yes; Harpocration. Was…it…about… Harpocration…that…Campbell…was…talking…here…on…Tuesday…night?”

  Dimly, remotely, Sir Theodore looked surprised. “Dear me, no,” he said. “Campbell knows nothing about it, I am afraid. He simply brought a manuscript for the Journal – we don’t object to giving a little space to that sort of thing. He was here only a few moments. And now, if you should want introductions when you go abroad…”

  Sir Theodore Peek was venerable, but exhausting. Respectfully, Appleby withdrew – and betook himself, for more purposes than one, to the Green Horse.

  III

  Appleby got back to his rooms in St Anthony’s at half-past eight. The visit to the Green Horse had not finished the day’s ferreting. There had been interviews with surprised and uncertain clerks; telephone messages to the Senior Proctor, to the Vice-Chancellor; minute interrogation of pugilistic-looking persons clutching bowler hats. …But the evening had ended pleasantly in supper with Inspector Dodd, and in restfully irrelevant talk which would have been prolonged had not that excellent officer had to take himself hurriedly off. The very crisis of his operations against the burglars was approaching. Now Appleby, refreshed, was se
eking the solitude of his room for a spell of hard thinking on the material available after the day’s investigations. But he stopped as he opened the door. Sitting waiting by the fire, much as he had waited by Pownall’s fire that morning, was Mr Giles Gott.

  Mike’s enthusiasm for his tutor was understandable. Gott began well by being, in repose, quite beautiful. When he moved, he was graceful, when he spoke, he was charming; when he spoke for long, he was interesting. Above all, he was disarming. “Plainly” – he seemed to say – “I am a creature whose life is more fortunate, more elevated, more effortlessly athletic and accomplished than yours, but – observe! – you are not in the least irritated as a result; in fact, you are quite delighted.”

  Mr Gott rose gracefully now – and said nothing at all. But he looked at Appleby with a whimsical, tentative familiarity such as few men, being total strangers, could have achieved without some hint of impertinence. In this creature, it was most engaging.

  Appleby saw no present need to decline the atmosphere suggested. Quite silently he sat down at the other side of the fire and filled his pipe. And when he spoke his opening remark seemed obligingly calculated to the slight oddity of the encounter.

  “And so,” he said, “you are a bibliographer?”

  Gott was filling his own pipe, and he merely chuckled.

  “You are,” Appleby pursued didactically, “professionally a bibliographer – which is as good as being a detective. You make a science of the physical constituents of books and you are able, by means of the most complex correlations of the minutest fragments of evidence, to detect forgery, theft, plagiarism, the hand of this man or of that man in a text, an interpolation here, a corruption there – perhaps hundreds of years ago. By pure detective work, for instance, you have found out things about Shakespeare’s plays that Shakespeare never stopped to learn…”