Death At the President's Lodging

by Michael Innes

  Appleby had brought out his notebook – not without a certain diffidence over the remains of the Dean’s elegant and unpolicemanly luncheon. Deighton-Clerk, seeming to recognize the diffidence, made a permissive gesture – not unepiscopal in its rotundity – and proceeded.

  “I would put the beginnings of a certain awkwardness about five years ago, after Campbell got his Fellowship. He was a very young man then – I suppose about twenty-three. And that would make him only two or three years younger than our other young man, Rowland Ransome, the research Fellow. Ransome had been working for some time, practically under Umpleby’s direction, when Campbell came to St Anthony’s and the two young men became close friends. Ransome is a clever creature but – well – intermittent: one thing he will do well and indeed brilliantly, and the next carelessly and ill. He is a careless, happy-go-lucky and often obstinate person, with very little thought for his own reputation or success. And presently Campbell got it into his head, rightly or wrongly, that Umpleby was exploiting Ransome. Ransome, he thought, was content to work under Umpleby’s direction to an extent not proper to his status, and Umpleby was profiting by Ransome’s results as a man should not profit from the results of his pupil. And he convinced Ransome himself that this was so.

  “As I said, it is a matter very difficult to judge. Umpleby was printing steadily – and printing without more than occasional reference to Ransome. But you have to remember that Umpleby was organizing and coordinating the work of a number of people with those people’s consent – and a good deal to their advantage. I record here the opinion, Mr Appleby, that Umpleby never appropriated other people’s intellectual property for any good it would do himself in the learned world.”

  This was a dark saying and Appleby, remembering his own incredulity over Haveland’s insinuation of plagiarism, challenged it at once.

  “‘For any good it would do himself’ – will you explain that qualification, please?”

  “You will find, Mr Appleby, that it explains itself presently. To put it briefly, Umpleby came to relish annoying people. And if he himself worked out, say, Solution x, he was capable of working still harder to persuade, say, Colleague A that Solution x was Colleague A’s achievement – simply for the amusement of annoying Colleague A by appearing to steal Solution x from him later on.”

  “I see,” said Appleby. (And what, he was wondering, would Dodd make of this?)

  “I can now take up my thread again,” continued the Dean, “without further emphasis on the fact that Umpleby was not an easy or amiable man. When he heard that Ransome, who had been his pupil since he came up, and whom he regarded as his pupil still, was complaining (behind his back, as he said) in the way I have mentioned he was furious. The situation was exceedingly awkward until Ransome went abroad four years ago. He was away for two years and when he came back the trouble flared up again. There were scenes – incidents, perhaps, is a better word – and finally Umpleby acted in what was generally thought a very high-handed manner. He had in his possession certain valuable documents which had always been understood to be preponderantly Ransome’s. When I say valuable documents you will understand, of course, that I mean valuable in a learned sense: they constituted, in fact, an almost completely worked out key to certain inscriptions which promised to be of the greatest importance – I need not particularize. Umpleby simply hung on to them. When Ransome, he said, was out of the country again he might have them: Ransome’s presence here was offensive to him and that was his only means of getting him away. Well, Ransome went, and has been away ever since. And over this arose my own quarrel with Umpleby – the quarrel to which I referred yesterday evening.”

  Deighton-Clerk was absorbed in his narrative now: the self-consciousness, the orotundity were gone in the intellectual effort to attain the completest clarity. Appleby was listening intently.

  “A few months ago I had a letter from Ransome saying that the documents had not come back to him. And he added some hint that set me making certain inquiries. And presently I found to my great uneasiness that Umpleby was proposing to print matter bearing on the decipherment of the inscriptions in question in a learned journal. I was told this in the greatest confidence by the editor, Sir Theodore Peek, and I at once approached Umpleby privately. I could get no satisfaction from him. And then I considered it my duty to bring the matter up formally at a college meeting. It was not strictly in order to do so, but I did it. And it caused high words. Superficially, it was not a very serious affair – merely an unfortunate dispute between colleagues over a learned matter. But underneath there lay this ugly hint of plagiarism – or theft. Remember, please, that it is not a simple business. I have not the least doubt that Umpleby was capable of work on those inscriptions of a superior order to Ransome’s, and beyond the fact that Umpleby was acting high-handedly and unjustly in retaining another man’s property – or part property – the whole matter is perplexed.”

  “But other people besides Umpleby, Ransome and Campbell were involved?”

  “Yes, indeed; that is what I have to come to. From the first the wretched business seemed to have an unhappy effect on the President. I think he was a wayward man. And when he came to feel that the weight of college opinion was against him in this matter he behaved wilfully. Or so it seems to me – though I would again say that such things are very difficult to disentangle. Umpleby quarrelled with Haveland. It was initially a sort of teasing of Haveland, I believe – a sort of mocking, ‘I’m going to steal your work next.’ Certainly it made Haveland both nervous and furious, and Umpleby came to like that. And finally he evolved for himself what was really a sort of curious intellectual game. He liked, in some queer ironic way, to keep the college guessing about his intellectual honesty. And he started new quarrels. And he made alliances. In particular he allied himself with Pownall against Haveland, and then to make the fight less uneven he jockeyed Titlow into Haveland’s support. And then recently he decided it would be better fun (it is really dreadful to put it so) to fight them single-handed – with the result that he precipitated a violent dispute with Pownall.

  “It was a game with Umpleby and he never actually overstepped certain limits, never, you may say, broke the rules he had invented for himself. He was always formally courteous, and I think that fundamentally he was quite dispassionate – quite detached. He was simply running an intellectual man’s somewhat morbid recreation. But it set a bad tone in the college. And the minor actors were less dispassionate, less detached. Pownall and Titlow in particular I suspect of being somewhat carried away against each other: there is very real dispathy between them, I am afraid. And others have been implicated in one degree or another: Empson, Chalmers-Paton, even Curtis – dear old man! What a setting, Mr Appleby, for this final horrible thing!”

  Deighton-Clerk had come to the end of his narration. And as if in sign of this he threw himself back in his chair and fell for a moment into a gloomy and abstracted inspection of the dusky blue and silver of his ceiling. Appleby made a final note and fell to a no less abstracted study of the Aubusson carpet. And presently the Dean spoke again. “And now if you have any questions to ask arising out of what I have said – or on anything else – ask them.”

  But it was not Appleby’s policy at the moment to worry his host with cross-questioning. He confined himself to a matter which had not been touched on. “This affair of the changing of the keys to Orchard Ground – I wonder if you can throw any light upon that? It was Dr Umpleby’s idea?”

  “Yes. He told us at the last college meeting that he thought it was desirable, and that he would make what arrangements were necessary. Our Bursar died recently and the President took upon himself a good deal of the practical business of the college.”

  “Do you think there was anything behind the resolution to have the keys changed – that Umpleby had the idea of protecting himself in any way, for instance?”

  Deighton-Clerk looked startled. “I hardly think so,” he replied. “Umpleby had the idea that there were unauthor
ized copies of the old keys in existence. That was the motive for the change, and it certainly never occurred to me that he was in any personal trepidation in the matter.”

  “But it was from the Orchard Ground angle, so to speak, that he was vulnerable? His study, for instance, is barred on the Lane side, and the doors to Bishop’s and the common room and the Lane were locked every evening. But from Orchard Ground entry would be easy enough.”

  For a moment Deighton-Clerk’s face brightened. “That would imply,” he said, “that Umpleby was apprehensive of attack by somebody other than an authorized possessor of a key – by some outside person who had got a copy of the old key?”

  Appleby nodded. Deighton-Clerk considered for a moment. And then he shook his head. “No,” he said regretfully, “I don’t think there can be anything in that. I am sure – I am almost sure – that Umpleby’s concern was simply as he declared it to be. He was concerned, and I must admit to an odd degree. But it was genuinely over the reputation of the college. There had been rather an ugly business arising out of an undergraduate escapade, and he was determined to stop illicit egress from St Anthony’s. Umpleby, by the way, had been a poor boy and he had certain rather morbid social anxieties. He liked a particular sort of undergraduate to come to St Anthony’s – and nothing frightens good families away from a college like a vulgar scandal. I think the whole of his perturbation over the affair lay in that. I don’t think he can have been alarmed for his own safety at the hands of an illicit holder of a key.”

  But for a moment Appleby stuck to his point. And he inserted a pause of his own this time before dropping his next question.

  “By the way, did Ransome have a key?”

  Deighton-Clerk started in his chair. “Yes,” he said, “he did.”

  “But he would not have one of the new keys?”

  “No; I suppose not.”

  “Just how did the President distribute the new keys, can you tell me?”

  “As far as I know he simply walked round the college, handing them over personally.”

  “In what order?”

  Deighton-Clerk looked puzzled. “You mean to whom he went first, second and so on? I have very little idea. Except that he came to me last but one, saying he had only Gott’s to hand over after that.”

  “And this was about noon the day before yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  Once more Appleby was silent. His luncheon had not been unenlightening. Only the light was breaking up again, playing brokenly here and there. That evening he would have to report to Dodd yet again, it might be, that there was too much light…

  The Dean was looking at his watch. “I have a meeting presently, Mr Appleby, and shall have to hurry away. But I wonder if there is any other matter you wish to raise?”

  “There is one thing,” Appleby replied – and he picked up his enigmatical bath chair handle as he spoke. “I am afraid I must have the fingerprints of the Fellows of the college.” The policemanly demand at last: the bouquet of the Dean’s hock and the savour of his excellent rendering of Carême’s masterpiece haunted Appleby’s palate as he spoke.

  Certainly, Deighton-Clerk was slightly taken aback. “Fingerprints!” he exclaimed, “to be sure. But I thought that nowadays malefactors always wore gloves?”

  “So they do often – and then, as far as that goes, we are baffled. Though in Germany they are claiming to have evolved a technique for getting prints through any ordinary glove… Anyway, taking prints – of course with the permission of the persons concerned – is routine work we are required to put through. If there is any objection–”

  “There will certainly not be any objection,” the Dean interrupted firmly. “I agree that it is a most necessary procedure. My – ah – fingers and thumbs are at your disposal to begin with. And with the rest of us it will be the same.”

  Nevertheless, there was a shade of reluctance or misgiving in the Dean’s voice, and Appleby proceeded cautiously. “In that case, Mr Deighton-Clerk, if I may send a sergeant round–”

  The Dean’s face brightened instantly. It had been a point of propriety that was worrying him. That Mr Appleby, who had dined at the St Anthony’s high-table, should go round with a little pad of ink, jabbing scholarly fingers and thumbs upon police record-cards, was disagreeable. A subordinate was necessary.

  “Certainly, Mr Appleby, certainly – a most proper suggestion. It will be – ah – quite a novelty. You have had no prints taken so far?”

  “Only from the corpse,” said Appleby, a little disconcertingly. And, looking at his own watch, he got up and took his leave. The Dean concluded the interview on a note of polite inquiry as to Appleby’s comfort in St Anthony’s. But his eyes were meditatively on the wooden bar that Appleby bore delicately away with him. It was curiously like a symbolical truncheon.

  10

  It is in our universities that the conservative spirit finds its most perfect expression. Long after the reform of our ecclesiastical institutions, medieval habits and conventions survive within these venerable establishments. “The Monks” (as the learned denizens were indignantly described by the sciolistic historian of the Roman Empire) are seldom up-to-date. They loll deep in what economists call a “timelag.” They teach out-moded subjects by exploded methods. They remain obstinately unconvinced of the necessity of the modern amenities either for themselves, their wives or their children. Only recently, indeed, did they discover wives and children. Only yesterday did they discover baths. Only today, despite much undergraduate example, are they beginning to discover the motorcar. It is notorious that the late Master of Dorchester, who died only a few months before Dr Umpleby, maintained to the last that the convenience of a private locomotive was far outweighed by the dangers arising from the proximity of the boiler: himself, he would always travel by rail, and in a carriage towards the rear of the train.

  But the motorcar does gain ground. For one thing, unlike the train (another institution that won but tardy acceptance and distant sufferance), it can change its mind. And there is something in the mental constitution of the retiring scholar to which this is a grateful circumstance. How delightful to set off of a morning in pursuit of the high dry air of the British Museum – to end the day instead in Beaconsfield churchyard, meditatively scanning the epitaph of the poet Waller, inter poetas sui temporis facile princeps! And earlier on this same road – many miles indeed before one reaches Aylesbury – there is a spot especially associated with such changes of plan. A by-road branches off – perhaps in the direction of Bicester, perhaps in the direction of Tring – and brings the initiated truant after a few miles to a most excellent – indeed a most Chestertonian – inn. Here one may lunch, here one may dine well: there is bortsch not inferior to that once known at the –, and a simple schnitzel that would have won the commendations of the eminent Sacher himself. There is a good straight claret; there is a genuine Tokay; there is a curious Dalmatian liqueur. The garden is erudite, remarkable in summer and winter alike. If you are lucky, you will find no similarly knowing colleague there; only an alien and abstracted savant from the academic deserts of Birmingham or Hull, come to meditate in solitude the remoter implications of the quartic curve, or a London novelist of the quieter and more prosperous sort, giving a lazy week to the ruinous correction of page-proofs. Only one disturbing presence there may be: that of undergraduates – for undergraduates too, with a sad inevitability, have discovered this earthly paradise. But even undergraduates become more urbane, less restless, in the milieu of the Three Doves.

  It was an undergraduate party that was in possession of the Three Doves now. Mr Edwards, Mr de Guermantes-Crespigny and Mr Bucket were sitting over the remains of luncheon, engaging in quiet and ingenious obscenities at the expense of the only other occupant of the coffee-room, a fluffily-bearded old party who was consuming soup noisily in a corner while sitting huddled over an obviously learned volume. Not the novelist from London; quite possibly the Birmingham mathematician in retreat; almost certainly not the m
aster of esoteric misbehaviours elaborated by the gentlemen from St Anthony’s. But presently a look somewhat askance from the fluffy party, suggesting an awareness of comment which St Anthony’s good manners did not intend, coupled with the necessity of lighting pipes (a thing forbidden by custom in the coffee-room of the Three Doves), took the trio to another room. And presently they had settled down to discuss the formal business of the day.

  “I had a shot at Gott this morning,” Mike announced, “but he was pretty close. I asked him who he thought had done it. Or rather I asked him who had done it. He said the murderer was almost certainly the Chief Constable – or just possibly the President’s demented grandmother, who was kept in an attic and made scratching noises in the night. So then I tried the ‘But-seriously-now’ note and he said he stuck to fiction. And he asked my advice about his new book.”

  “Asked your advice!” exclaimed Horace incredulously. “You mean tried bits out on you as a pretty average specimen of the dumb public?”

  “No. Asked my advice. About an epigraph.”

  “A what?”

  “Epigraph. As in The Waste Land, you know. Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego–”

  “Silly ass! He didn’t ask you for a Latin tag for his pre-adult fictions?”

  “Not Latin. And not a tag exactly. You see he makes up excerpts from imaginary learned textbooks and sticks them at the beginnings of his chapters. Scientific touch. This one was all about taking slices of criminals’ brains and looking at them with gamma-rays or something.”

  “What foul fatuity. And where did you come in?”

  “I provided a title. ‘Statistical Researches into Twelve Types of Homicidal Algolagnia – by Professor Umplestein of the University of Göteborg’ – that’s in Sweden, you know. Gott accepted the title, but vetoed Umplestein. Quite right, no doubt. It was, as they say, not in Good Taste.”

  “And therefore not suitable for one of Gott’s lucubrations,” said Horace with heavy irony. “What, I ask, is the university coming to? We shall be hearing of Deighton-Clerk doing advertisement copy-writing on the quiet next.”