Death At the President's Lodging

by Michael Innes

  “Oh, just before eleven o’clock.”

  For a minute Gott was lost in speculation. Then he asked: “Who was it he saw?”

  “David won’t say. But we have the matter in hand.”

  “You have the matter in hand!”

  “Yes, Gott – David and Inspector Bucket and I. You see, David thought it might be important. So he investigated. And he discovered one thing about this person whom he had seen. He discovered he had a nice, secret, private way in and out of college–”

  Gott sprang up. “Do you mean in and out of Orchard Ground?”

  “Oh, no. Just in and out of one of the main buildings here.”

  “You young lunatics – why haven’t you been to the police? Where is David Edwards now?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, he’s on the trail. And I think if you’ll excuse me…”

  And before Gott could interpose Mr Michel de Guermantes-Crespigny had gone.

  III

  It was a positively excited bibliographer who accosted Appleby and Dodd in the court a few minutes later to report on the report of his pupil. Dodd was not inclined to scout the suggestion that St Anthony’s was not a submarine after all; with an attitude of mind that was distinctly to his credit he soberly admitted the possibility of an oversight, and suggested an immediate and even more thorough inspection. But Gott had a preliminary problem to advance.

  “Even if it does exist it’s difficult to see how it fits in. For according to this precious Edwards it’s not in Orchard Ground but somewhere here in the main part of the college. And he saw somebody come out of the French windows about whose possession of a key he was doubtful. But he must know that the four men lodging in Little Fellows’ have keys. Somebody other than these four, and somebody who might normally be visiting the President, had therefore to get out of Orchard Ground. How did he do it? The fact of there possibly being a secret exit from somewhere in the main buildings seems irrelevant.”

  “No doubt it’s obscure,” said Dodd a little shortly. He did not approve of co-opting a layman – even a favourite author – as a colleague. “I leave the obscurity to Appleby here and intend to test the truth of that young fellow’s story.”

  “Why not wait,” Appleby asked, “till the enterprising Edwards comes back from the trail?”

  But Dodd would have none of this. And he was just making off in the wake of Gott, who was called away by the demands of the System, when a diversion appeared in the shape of the sad sergeant – in whose dreamy eye some reminiscence of a night in London might still be detected. The sad sergeant had a letter for Appleby and having presented it somewhat hastily withdrew. Appleby poised the official-looking envelope for a moment unopened in his hand. “Well, Dodd – what do you think? There were no fingerprints on my bath chair handle: will they have had better luck with that pop-gun?”

  “No,” replied Dodd stolidly. “They will not.”

  Appleby tore open the letter. There was a moment’s pause and then he spoke quietly.

  “Pownall’s prints.”

  IV

  The sandwich at the Berklay bar, postponed from the previous day, had been duly consumed and Appleby had set out on a solitary walk by the river to think things over. And he began with that formula which he had evolved as he stood mid-way between Pownall’s and Haveland’s rooms the day before:

  He could prove he didn’t do it here and now. He couldn’t prove he didn’t do it there and in twenty minutes’ time – were some indication left that he was guilty.

  There had been a rider to that, he remembered:

  An efficient man: he reloaded and let the revolver be found showing one shot.

  And there had been a query:

  Second bullet?

  Mentally, Appleby deleted the query now and altered the rider:

  No reloading; no second shot; a suitable squib.

  But a moment later an echo of the first rider came back:

  An efficient man: he…let the revolver be found…

  There was the rub. Or there, so to speak, was the absence of the rub – a good brisk rub that would have removed the last traces of fingerprints from the weapon. Pownall was a clumsy man – physically. And here, perhaps, after much ingenuity, had been some answering and fatal clumsiness of mind. It might be that he had done something to obliterate the prints but had not been careful enough. The chemists could almost work magic nowadays: Appleby remembered the authentic report he had given to Deighton-Clerk of the German criminologists who were getting fingerprints through gloves…

  Would everything fit? First Haveland’s times. Haveland was with Deighton-Clerk from ten-forty to ten-fifty. That would be the period that wouldn’t do (he could prove he didn’t do it here and now). Could Pownall have been certain of Haveland’s leaving the Dean – being without an alibi (he couldn’t prove he didn’t do it…) – by eleven o’clock? Surely there was a way by which he could have been quite certain. To begin with, he might easily know that Haveland had dropped in on the Dean for a short time. Suppose Pownall knew that, and had shot Umpleby in his own room in Little Fellows’ at ten-forty…

  And then Appleby improved on that. Even with traffic nearby no one, surely, would risk a shot right in the building. At ten-forty Pownall had shot Umpleby in Orchard Ground – and had known: Haveland is now with the Dean. He had got the bath chair from the storeroom, put the body in it, stolen Haveland’s bones and put them in the chair too – and wheeled the whole lot into his own room. All perhaps by ten-forty-five. And then he had waited. And while he waited, from Umpleby’s body, head lolling over the side of the chair, he had suddenly become aware of a drip, drip on the carpet… Appleby was striding along obliviously now. Was it going to fit? Next there was Barocho’s gown – if only it could be proved that its owner had left it in Pownall’s room! Pownall would have snatched it up to swathe the head and its little trickling wound. And then, a few minutes after ten-fifty, he had heard Haveland return to his own rooms opposite, had slipped to his door, maybe, to make certain he was unaccompanied – defenceless in the matter of an alibi. A minute later he would set off with his grim cargo on the hazardous journey to Umpleby’s study. And then at once the unloading of bones and body; the “big bang” or whatever the particular pyrotechnic might be let off at the right moment; the swift return with the empty chair to the storeroom; the revolver, too hastily wiped, thrown down where Haveland in his recklessness or unbalance might easily have thrown it.

  What else fitted? Pownall’s own story, offered to explain away the fatal doctoring of the carpet, had possessed one significant element: it had contrived to point at Haveland even while it cleared Pownall himself. Haveland – such had been the suggestion – killed Umpleby, became aware that he had failed in a scheme to incriminate his neighbour and then by some sudden freak of mind abandoned concealment and virtually signed his own name to the murder by leaving the bones. And two other facts fitted. It was Pownall who along with Empson had known of Haveland’s wishing the President “immured in a grisly sepulchre.” It was Pownall who, in an outburst of his own, had addressed Umpleby as “a most capital murderee.”

  And now, what did not fit? Here Appleby gave himself a caution. Everything needn’t fit – there lay the difference between his activities and Gott’s. In a sound story everything worried over in the course of the narrative must finally cohere. But in life there were always loose ends, minor puzzles that were never cleared up, details that never found their place. And particularly was this so, Appleby had found, of impressions: things at one time felt as significant in the course of a case simply faded out. And yet… Appleby liked his smallest detail to fit, his impressions stage by stage to demonstrate themselves as having been in line with the facts.

  First among the elements that didn’t fit was Slotwiner’s statement that he had heard the arrival of the bones between a quarter and ten to eleven. That was a little too early if Pownall were to set out only after he was sure of Haveland’s having got back from Deighton-Clerk’s. But on
a matter of two or three minutes, too much emphasis must not be laid. Next was this still obscure story of Gott’s pupil. Was it another red herring? If he had it accurately (but it had come to him in too roundabout a way for much confidence as to this) it seemed too closely linked to the case to be something incidental and insignificant. Someone, not a dweller in Little Fellows’, had come out of the study just before eleven. And that somebody possessed a secret means of getting in and out of St Anthony’s. It was an unsettling complication and the sooner young Mr Edwards was interrogated the better.

  There was another element that didn’t fit. It was Titlow and not Pownall whom this same undergraduate recollected as having, just a year ago, impounded Boosey Somebody’s fireworks. But there was nothing very significant in this: the whole firework theory was unnecessary, represented indeed no more than an ingenious guess in the dark. There was no real reason to exclude two genuine revolver shots, even two revolvers. The more Appleby reviewed his facts the less substantial opposition did they seem to present to the reconstruction he had just built up. Apart from what might well prove a mere undergraduate joke, there was really no solid material objection. It was certain impressions merely, difficult to assign a just weight to, that continued to cause obstinate misgivings. Until these – or the more assertive of these – were fitted into place, the case, although it might do, would leave Appleby uneasy.

  But often, he reiterated to himself, he had been obliged to discount mere impressions towards the end of an investigation: why was he so reluctant to do so now? And presently he believed himself to have penetrated to the source of his doubts. More vividly than usual, he had been impressed at St Anthony’s by a number of personalities and he was reluctant to lose sight of any of them. The picture of Pownall plotting against Haveland did not, on this plane of impressions, take in nearly enough: it ignored sundry moments in his contacts with this man and that in which he had sensed himself as at the end of some thread leading to the heart of the case. Most vividly before him now was that fraction of a second in which Empson had hung mysteriously suspended between a “yes” and “no” – mysteriously, because in a matter in which he had proved to be without power to prevaricate. And there had been similar moments with Titlow – even with Slotwiner… Slotwiner startled by the mention of candles. The spot of grease. The Deipnosophists. A length of wire. Something noticed about the revolver… With these things Appleby’s mind had come back to material factors: material factors which, without positively being obstacles, yet did not fit in.

  He had been pacing the river’s bank in deep abstraction. But something suddenly made him aware of his surroundings – the rhythmical but laborious passage of an eight up the stream. It might, he idly speculated, be the St Anthony’s boat, and in relief from his absorption he gave a critical eye to the oarsmanship. The crew seemed near the end of a longish spell; the boat was rolling slightly; the cox, a shrill and improperly plump little person, was doing his best to hold things together. “Drive…drive…drive; in…out, in…out, in…out…” And the next moment a deeper voice shouted startlingly close to Appleby’s ear; it was the coach darting past on a bicycle. “Eyes in the boat, Two. Late, Six. Late, Six. One…two…three…four… five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten… Drop them, Six!”

  Drop them, Six! That was another moment that stood out: Pownall’s curious insistence on beginning his story with an almost detailed account of a dream. How could he feel such a thing significant, if he were innocent? What purpose could it be meant to serve, if he were guilty? If he were guilty… And here Appleby found himself confronted by the real crux. Why should this rather dim ancient historian shoot Umpleby? Why should he commit the unspeakable crime of fastening the deed on an innocent man? Those psychological probabilities which Gott had very properly refused to discuss – they made the really baffling feature of the case. There was only one reasonably probable core to the thing – and the facts would not fit it. Unless…unless a key lay, as he had mockingly hinted to Gott, in De Quincey’s anecdote of Kant – that queer pointer given him by Titlow…

  Presently he had left the river and struck into winding country lanes. He liked nothing better than to do his thinking during a lonely ramble. And the thought of his solitude striking him now, he remembered Dodd’s facetious injunction to avoid being hit on the head again in the course of a woodland walk. It hardly seemed a very likely contingency; Appleby’s eye roved whimsically and appreciatively over the peaceful countryside around him. And in doing so it became aware of a succession of interesting circumstances.

  The first was an old gentleman pedalling past on a bicycle – not a likely assailant, but an object of some curiosity as soon as Appleby had recognized a Fellow of St Anthony’s. It was the venerable Professor Curtis, looking so absent that Appleby marvelled that he did not pedal placidly into the ditch. Perhaps he was meditating some interesting detail in the curious legend of the bones of Klattau. Conceivably he was pondering the equally curious fact of the bones of Haveland’s aborigines. But if he looked absent he also it occurred to Appleby, looked curiously expectant – a happy expectancy rather like that of a small child going to a party.

  Curtis had pedalled about a hundred yards ahead, oblivious of Appleby, when the latter, happening to glance behind him, observed a car just coming into view round a bend in the lane. Appleby slipped into the hedge to observe, for to a policeman at least there is something singular in a powerful car doing a resolute eight miles an hour. It was a reticently magnificent De Dion; it contained three intent youths of vaguely familiar appearance; and it was keeping laboriously in the wake of the gently bicycling professor. The procession represented, it sufficiently appeared, Gott’s pupil and Gott’s pupil’s friends “on the trail.” It was a trail which Appleby could follow too. Letting the De Dion get a little way ahead, he fell in behind at a brisk walking pace. The November afternoon was chilly, with a light but keen wind blowing: what might be important business and what was certainly beneficial exercise had come conveniently together.

  But the walk was scarcely stretching. In something over a mile Appleby came up with the car, abandoned by the side of the road. Proceeding some fifty yards further, he came upon a cottage standing some way back from the lane in the seclusion of a sizeable, trimly hedged garden. Moving to the gate, Appleby could see Curtis’ bicycle standing by the front door and Curtis’ trackers crouching picture-squely by one of the windows. But even as this sight presented itself to him the young men scrambled up and began to beat a retreat – not precipitately as if they had been discovered, but rapidly nevertheless as if in some discomfiture. Reaching the gate they fairly bolted into Appleby’s arms. Mr Bucket exclaimed distractedly: “It’s the detective!” The detective’s eye ran critically over the trio and singled out his man. “Mr Edwards?” he asked crisply.

  “I’m Edwards.” The young man as he replied edged a little further away from the garden gate.

  Appleby went straight the point. “Mr Edwards, do you assert that you saw Professor Curtis leave Dr Umpleby’s study about eleven o’clock on Tuesday night?”

  Mr Edwards answered readily, as on a resolution taken long ago. “Yes, I did.”

  “You are certain?”

  Again Mr Edwards was ready – and intelligent. “Quite certain. It was long chances seeing anything and very long recognizing. But I did.”

  “And now what is happening here?” Appleby’s gesture indicated the cottage.

  But this time Mr Edwards, like his companions, was uncommonly confused. “Something that I’m awfully afraid is none of our business… As a matter of fact, sir, I think it’s what might be called the lady in the case.”

  Appleby, without superfluous delicacy, strode up the garden path to the window. It gave upon a scene of domestic felicity. Professor Curtis was consuming tea before a large fire; perched on the arm of his chair and plying him with muffins was a youthfully mature lady – the sole glimpse of femininity that the St Anthony’s mystery affords.

  V


  “It was quite true,” Dodd greeted Appleby on the latter’s return to college, “it was quite true; I should have spotted it.”

  “Spotted Curtis’ bolt-hole?”

  Dodd stared. “You’ve found out?”

  “I know who was the owner, but not quite what he owned: tell me.”

  “Well,” said Dodd, “it was pretty tricky, but I oughtn’t to have guaranteed St Anthony’s as watertight all the same. Curtis’ rooms look out on a little blind alley off St Ernulphus Lane. His windows are barred like all the rest – but if you go out there you’ll find, just next door to them, a sort of coal-hole in the wall. It’s quite firmly bolted on the inside. And then when you come into the court to investigate you find that the cellar is the breadth of the building, and that the door to the court is securely locked. The porter has the key. But when I thought that there was an end to the matter I didn’t reckon with the queer way these places are often built. What has Curtis, whose rooms are next door, got, if you please, but a door of his own opening straight into the cellar – so that he can help himself, no doubt, to a lump of coal when he wants it? Not that there is any coal kept there now, incidentally; it’s just a nice, clean, empty space. And all that old reprobate had to do was to slip in there, unbolt the outer door, and amble quietly away.”

  Appleby laughed. “I don’t know yet that he’s exactly an old reprobate – but I suspect he has some interesting information to give.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “I came across him in the course of my walk. He was a bit occupied, but I’ve arranged to see him in his rooms presently. Any further news here?”

  Dodd nodded. “Gott’s out.” He spoke half-regretfully, as if the drama of having the celebrated Pentreith really implicated in a murder were something to be abandoned with reluctance. “A perfectly flat and simple piece of routine work has ousted him. A certain Mrs Preston cleans the proctors’ office, usually between seven and nine in the morning. But her daughter was to be married on Wednesday, so she did some of the cleaning late on Tuesday night instead – taking care not to be seen by the gentlemen. But she saw them. And she was aware of Gott off and on from the time he arrived till the time he went out again after the return of the Senior Proctor.”