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Death At the President's Lodging

Page 21

by Michael Innes


  Slotwiner considered thoughtfully. “I see what you mean, sir. And I think I have at least a partial alibi. I think I may take it that to follow the President through the study and up the orchard and later to return with – with the body and the bones would take seven or eight minutes?”

  Appleby agreed. Actually, he knew, a longer time would be involved – time to cover a journey back to Little Fellows’ with the bath chair.

  “Well, sir, I was not, I think, alone for so long a period after ten-thirty. Mrs Hugg, the cook, was engaged as it happened upon the elucidation of a puzzle in the kitchen. And she several times ventured upstairs to the pantry to ask my advice. Beasts of seven letters beginning with ‘P’ and that sort of thing, sir. I suggest that you question her closely. But for the period before ten-thirty – supposing, that is, that the President was no longer alive when I affected to take in his refreshment – I fear I am quite uncovered.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Appleby quietly. He was coming to have a good deal of confidence in Slotwiner. “Don’t worry. I know that the President was alive just before ten-thirty: he made a telephone call. You heard nothing of that?”

  Slotwiner unstiffened a little. “I am, if I may say so, sir, distinctly relieved. But I heard nothing of the telephone call: the President’s extension was operating and he could make a call without my being aware of it. He always spoke very quietly into the instrument and in my pantry at the end of the passage the sound would be quite inaudible. Indeed, when working there I am often unconscious of any conversation from this room. But I have to tell you of something which I did hear. It has come back to me since our previous interview. I believe I heard the bones.”

  “Heard the bones?”

  “Yes, sir. Some time before Mr Titlow’s arrival I happened to emerge from my pantry into the hall. And I remember becoming aware of a curious noise from the study. It was not like the President moving books or chairs, and I could not quite place it. May I venture, sir–?” And at Appleby’s nod the dignified Slotwiner bounded into activity. In a moment he had glided over the floor and collected the major portion of the scattered bones. Bundling them into a newspaper, he handed the bundle to Appleby. “Now, sir, if you would be so good–?” And Slotwiner vanished out of the room, shutting the door after him. Appleby was interested and amused. He waited until he heard a distant shout and then, tilting the newspaper, he let the bones tumble to the floor. They made a surprising clatter. And in a moment Slotwiner was back in the study – positively animated. “That, sir,” he said, “was precisely it!”

  Appleby asked the vital question. “Can you time it?”

  “With fair confidence, sir – to within five minutes. It would be between a quarter and ten to eleven.”

  Appleby allowed himself a moment to place the implications of this as exactly as was momentarily possible, and then he turned to a further interrogation of Slotwiner. But the man had heard nothing further, had no further light to throw on the events of the fatal night. And questioned in more general terms as to the relations of Umpleby with the various Fellows of the college, he became reserved. It was an uncomfortable line of inquiry but in a matter of the sort Appleby never allowed the luxury of nice feelings to interfere. And presently his persistence was rewarded. Slotwiner, admitting to a pretty accurate awareness of the disquiets that had troubled St Anthony’s of recent years, came at length to recount one particular scene of which he had been a witness not long before. Umpleby had been holding some sort of meeting in his study with Titlow and Pownall. Whether it had been a protractedly acrimonious meeting Slotwiner could not say. But he had been summoned in the course of it by the President –who was always apparently a punctilious host – to bring in afternoon tea. He had considered the atmosphere strained – although (or perhaps partly because) almost nothing had been said while he was in the room. But opening the door a little later with the intention of replenishing the supply of buttered toast he had heard Pownall speaking with an emphasis which had made him pause. And in the pause he had heard Pownall make a remarkable declaration: “Mr President, you may rejoice that it takes two to make a murder – for you are a most capital murderee!” After which Slotwiner had retired to his pantry – with the buttered toast.

  Appleby wondered if he had eaten it.

  15

  On the second and last morning of his sojourn in St Anthony’s Appleby was greeted, as on the previous day, by an early visit from Dodd. The burglars were safely under lock and key, having been caught in a masterly ambush in the small hours of the morning. As a consequence, Dodd was in strange and boisterous mood. He affected solicitude for Appleby’s personal safety during the night, searched round the room to see if any of his belongings had been stolen and then, switching to another topic, inquired after the progress of his studies – what the lectures were like, and when he would be taking his degree? And finally he asked, after a great deal of chuckling over all this – who had killed Dr Umpleby?

  Appleby was cautious. “Well,” he said, “it might have been Ransome.”

  “Ransome!”

  “Oh, yes. Ransome has been hovering round us in false whiskers these many days. In fact it was he who downed me t’other night.”

  “There!” said Dodd emphatically, “what did I say about their saying he was in Asia? They’re a deep lot!”

  “On the other hand it might have been Titlow; it might very well have been Titlow, you know.”

  Dodd had heard enough on the previous evening to have his understanding of this. “The pistol-shot being engineered?”

  “Exactly.”

  Dodd stood in front of Appleby’s fire. He seemed to expand. “It’s just possible,” he said, “that we can give a little help.”

  Appleby smiled. “You’ve been doing some more of the rough work, as you put it?”

  “Kellett has. A conscientious fellow, Kellett. He’s been having another hunt round this morning.”

  “Ah! Again while I was still heavily asleep. And what has Kellett found this time?”

  “Kellett,” Dodd replied very seriously, “thought he would have a look at the drains. It’s wonderful how often, one way or another, the drains come in. Well, he was having a poke down some sort of ventilator or such-like in Orchard Ground when he found this.” And Dodd produced from his pocket a twisted length of stiff wire.

  “Kellett found it twisted up like this?”

  Dodd nodded affirmatively and Appleby after a moment took up the unspoken train of thought. “It hardly seems long enough to be useful. I don’t really see–”

  “One can imagine some sort of gadget – weights and so forth–?” Dodd tentatively prompted.

  “One can imagine,” Appleby sceptically responded, “a plumber clearing a pipe or drain.”

  “Leaving it down the drain?”

  “Plumbers are always leaving things,” Appleby replied with rather feeble humour – his thoughts seemed to be far away. But presently he added: “I rather agree that a plumber wouldn’t leave it down a drain – twisted up like this.”

  “What about sending it to Scotland Yard to be photographed?”

  Appleby started, and then chuckled. “I wonder if your sad sergeant will bring us any news? Meantime you and I will go and have a heavy talk with young False Whiskers,”

  “Asia, indeed!” said Inspector Dodd.

  Mr Ransome was found in his regular rooms in Surrey, in the middle of a perplexed telephone conversation with the proprietor of the Three Doves. That he was the guest who had left in such unseemly circumstances the night before; that he was really Mr Ransome of St Anthony’s College; that it was quite all right; that nothing serious had occurred; that it was all a matter of a bet; that he wanted his luggage sent on – this was Ransome’s side of the exchange. But the mention of the momentarily notorious St Anthony’s in conjunction with such a thin story obviously caused alarm at the other end of the line. Ransome was pink and snorting by the time he turned to receive his official visitors. But he calmed himself
at once and spoke up with what seemed an oddly guileless cordiality.

  “Oh, I say, you know, do sit down! I’m most frightfully sorry about the other night – should really have apologized yesterday evening. But honestly that basket-thing was so dashed uncomfortable that I was quite furious – and just before dinner, too! Did I hurt you too terribly? Dreadful thing to have done, I’m afraid. I suppose you will have to prosecute me? Really dreadful – I’m so sorry. But then one has to go all lengths for one’s work, don’t you think? Well, not all lengths – not murdering and things – but when it’s just a matter of knocking a man out – well, don’t you think, really? If you would put yourself in my place, I mean?”

  This ingenuous, haphazard appeal seemed to come genuinely from Ransome. He was a sandy, egg-headed, prematurely-bald young man, given to gestures as vague and rambling as his speech. That such an absent person had hit Appleby on the head with just the right amount of force must have been the merest luck, and he was certainly not one to engineer an efficient burglary on his own. A very pretty specimen of the remote and temperamental scholar in the making, consciously capitalizing, perhaps, the advantages of being a “character” – such was Ransome. Or such, Appleby cautiously put it to himself, was the appearance which Ransome presented to the world. And now, feeling that Dodd was about to offer some minatory speech in this matter of an assault upon a colleague, he quickly interposed.

  “We needn’t discuss the minor incident now, Mr Ransome. Our concern is with the death of Dr Umpleby. I am sure you realize that your position is unfortunate. You were confessedly in the vicinity of the college secretly and in disguise, at the time of the murder. And you were on anything but friendly terms with the murdered man.”

  Ransome looked his dismay. “But hasn’t Gott told you all about it – our burglary, and the alibis and the rest of it? And isn’t it all square and above board – or above the board you say you’re concerned with, so to speak – what?”

  “The situation is quite simple, Mr Ransome. You have to account for your movements between half-past ten and eleven o’clock on Tuesday night if you are to be absolved from the possibility of suspicion. And so has Mr Gott – and everybody else.”

  “Bless me!” exclaimed Ransome with what seemed all but impossible ingenuousness, “I thought it was clear it was going to be poor old Haveland, scattering bones and what-not–?”

  “You must endeavour to satisfy us about your movements – or, at least, it will be prudent and reasonable for you to do so. Inspector Dodd here will take down any statement you may think proper to offer. And I have to tell you that any statement you may make can legally be used as evidence against you.”

  “Oh, I say! I must have time to recollect, mustn’t I?” Ransome looked round the room in a distracted but still easily vague manner. “Don’t you think you or your colleague might just ask questions? Way of sticking to the point, you know?”

  “Very well. You came in from the Three Doves, I take it, on Tuesday night?”

  “Oh, yes, rather. After dinner. Bus from the lane-end – got in just on half-past ten.”

  “And what did you do in the succeeding hour, before you attempted to reconnoitre the college at eleven-thirty?”

  Ransome’s reply was prompt but disconcerting: “I tried to work out the Euboic talent!”

  Heavy breathing from Dodd seemed to indicate a feeling that the majesty of the law was being trifled with. But Appleby was perfectly patient. “The Euboic talent, Mr Ransome?”

  “Yes. Quite off my line, of course – but I suddenly got an idea about it in the bus. Boeckh, you remember, puts the ratio to the later Attic talent as 100 to 72, and it struck me that–” But here Ransome broke off doubtfully. “I say, though – I don’t know if you’d really be interested–?”

  “I should be interested to know just where you indulged in these speculations.”

  “Where! Oh, I say – is that important? But, yes, of course it is. I’m most frightfully sorry, but I really don’t remember. I was rather absorbed, you see – so absorbed that I almost forgot all about the burglary business. And that of course was enormously important. I remember I had to run. That shows you it was pretty absorbing, because I was awfully keen to get my stuff back from that old beast… Now I wonder where I could have been?”

  “Do you remember, perhaps, any method you adopted in working on your problem; sitting down, for instance, to write?”

  Ransome suddenly jumped up in childish glee. “To be sure,” he cried, “a sort of menu-card; I scribbled down figures on that. Yes, I went straight to a tea-shop – that place in Archer Street that is open till midnight. And I was there all the time, right up till about twenty past eleven. Isn’t that splendid? What luck!”

  “Do you think they would remember you there?”

  “I’m sure they would, whiskers and all. There was a bit of a fuss. They brought me Indian tea… Often in that sort of place they do, you know” – Ransome concluded on a note of warning.

  “Well, Mr Ransome, pending the verification of that, I don’t think we need trouble you further. Just one other thing. What put Mr Haveland in your head as the murderer?”

  Ransome was distressed. “I say! Don’t think I think Haveland’s the murderer. It seems just to be the gossip going round – because he was once a bit rocky, I suppose.”

  “But that was a long time ago?”

  “Oh, yes, rather. Though he had a bit of a relapse when I was home last – but it was soon all right. Good chap, Haveland – knows his Arabia.”

  “Can you tell me about the relapse you mention?”

  “Oh it was a couple of long vacations or so ago. He felt a spot unsteady and went into a sort of rest-home for a bit – place a long way off – a Dr Goffin near Burford – so nobody knew. Nobody except me, as it happened: I visited him there on the quiet. All blew over.”

  “I see.”

  “But I say, Mr Appleby, there’s something I’m most frightfully anxious about. Can I hang on to my stuff – the stuff, I mean, we lifted from the old beast’s safe?”

  “Mr Ransome,” said Appleby gravely – and to the scandal of the attendant Dodd – “I advise you not to discuss the materials in question with the police until the police discuss them with you. Good morning.”

  II

  “And your remarks on the text,” Mr Gott declared, “are merely a muddle.”

  “Yes, Gott,” said Mike meekly.

  “You see, Mike, you haven’t any brain really.”

  “No, of course not,” said Mike.

  “You must just keep to the cackle and write nicely. You write very nicely.”

  “Yes,” said Mike dubiously.

  “Keep off thinking things out, and you’ll do well. In fact, you’ll go far.”

  Mike’s acknowledgments faded into silence and tobacco smoke. The solemn weekly hour that crowns the System was drawing to its close. The essay had been read and faithfully criticized. The remaining ten minutes would be given to pipes and to silence punctuated by desultory conversation…

  “It’s the fifth of November today,” Mike presently offered. And his preceptor plainly failing to find this an interesting observation, he added: “Silly asses, letting off rubbishing fireworks and all that.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Like Chicago during a clean-up. Guns popping.”

  “Quite.”

  “D’you remember last year, Gott? Titlow acting as sub-Dean while the Dean was away, and Boosey Thompson chucking a Chinese cracker at him, and Titlow wading in and confiscating old Boosey’s stinks and bangs?”

  “Very unedifying,” responded Gott absently. And suddenly he looked hard at his pupil. “Mike, who put you up to that?”

  “Put me up–?”

  “Mike dear, you’re very nice. But as I’ve just had to point out, you have no brain. Who’s been stuffing you?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, it was David Edwards that–”

  “David Edwards’ suggestion,” said Gott,
“will be conveyed to the proper quarter.”

  There was silence for some minutes, and then Mike ventured: “There’s something more… David thinks it’s a pity we haven’t been told more of the precise circumstances attending the poor President’s death.”

  “What has the poor President’s death got to do with David Edwards?”

  “David thinks he might have some useful information – if he only knew, that is, what would be useful information?”

  “I can hardly believe his logic is as rocky as that. But out with what you’ve been crammed with.”

  “I think,” said Mike mildly and respectfully, “that you’re rather rude. But it’s like this. On Tuesday night David was working in the library, quite late. Dr Barocho was there and several other people and David was sitting on top of one of the presses in the north window – you know how people do sit on the presses – and of course it was quite dark outside. But when David was just happening to look out into the darkness there was a sudden beam of light – and he saw somebody.”

  Gott had laid down his pipe. “Recognized somebody, you mean?”

  “Yes, recognized somebody. In the light from the President’s study. The light just showed for a moment as the person came out–”

  “Came out!”

  “Yes; came out of the French windows of the study – and David just made out who it was. He wondered a little afterwards because he doesn’t know if this person keeps a key to Orchard Ground and he wondered how he was going to get out if he didn’t. But of course it was quite a normal person to be visiting the President, so David didn’t know if it would be the least important. As he says, the circumstances of the poor President’s death have been kept so dark–”

  “What time was this?”

 

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