Death At the President's Lodging

by Michael Innes

  “I wondered if I might trouble you–?” As Appleby spoke, Empson set a chair; the action was markedly courteous – but it had not the air of being an extra politeness shown to an anomalous policeman. Interviews in St Anthony’s, Appleby felt once more, could be very difficult. And casting round for a suitable opening he decided to take the only matter in which Empson had a demonstrable concern. “I believe that some years ago you were in the habit of using an invalid chair?”

  “That is so. The trouble from which, as you see, I suffer” – and Empson lightly tapped the handle of his stick – “was temporarily aggravated and I was obliged to change rooms for a while with Pownall below. For some months I had to be wheeled to lectures, into hall and so forth.”

  “You know that the chair is kept in a storeroom in this building?”

  Empson shook his head. “I know only that it is somewhere in college. May I ask if it has assumed some significance for your investigations?”

  “It was used on the night of the President’s murder. I believe it was used for the conveyance of the body.”

  For a moment Empson deliberated – the universal academic deliberation of St Anthony’s. Then he spoke. “The conveyance of the dead body? You have concluded, then, that the President was shot elsewhere than in his study?”

  “Yes.”

  Again Empson deliberated; but he might merely have been pausing to take in this new view of things. There was something guarded in his next question. “You have proof of that?”

  Appleby was prompted to admit the truth. “Only the fact of the chair’s having been used. But I think it almost conclusive.” And suddenly Appleby found himself being searched: it was as if Empson’s every atom of professional expertness were turned upon the endeavour to assess the reliability of what he had heard. But when the psychologist spoke it was without emphasis. “I see,” he said. And the eyes that had a moment before been essaying to pierce Appleby’s mind turned away to stare thoughtfully into the fire.

  It was the consciousness of Empson’s vocation that prompted Appleby’s next approach. “There is a matter,” he said, “on which I wish to ask your opinion – for your opinion, you will understand, as distinct from your knowledge of facts. And it is, of course, not at all necessary that you should answer me. But it is a matter you are peculiarly qualified to speak of – a matter of human behaviour–”

  Abruptly, Empson interrupted – and it was a thing so much against both his deliberative habit and his courteous manner that Appleby was almost startled.

  “The science of human behaviour is yet in its infancy. We are still far better trusting to the prompting of our experience. And yet experience too will betray us. Science will say of a man, ‘It is infinitely unlikely that he should do this’: experience will add, ‘It is impossible that he should do it’ – and then he will do it.”

  In Empson there was always the undertone of bitterness. But in the colour rather than in the wording of this speech Appleby sensed something different, a quality of response coming not from a set habit but from something like a fresh revelation. Empson was speaking not from an attitude long since adopted; he was speaking, surely, from a sense of recent shock – almost of recent outrage. Was it himself, or was it another, who had violated expectation?

  “It is infinitely unlikely – it is impossible,” Appleby boldly prompted, “that Umpleby should be murdered here?” and at Empson’s nod he continued quietly, “Mr Haveland has been at one time subject to some form of mental disturbance. Do you feel you can properly say anything about that? To be frank, would you connect it with homicidal tendencies? The matter, of the bones–”

  And once more Empson interrupted. “Haveland did not kill Umpleby. The bones you speak of are an abominable imposture.” He spoke quietly, but with an extraordinary intensity in the face of which Appleby’s next question seemed almost impertinent. But it was a question which had to be asked.

  “Is that the fallible voice of science, or the almost equally fallible voice of experience?”

  There was only one reply by which Empson could preserve a fully logical position. Would he make it? Would he say that he spoke neither with the voice of science nor with the voice of experience, but with the voice of knowledge? Somewhere in the room a clock ticked out the moments of silence.

  “Science is fallible, but it is not nothing. And it will tell you with great authority that the bones are a damnable plant – a plant by someone ignorant of abnormal psychology. I earnestly entreat you, before rushing into a trap, to have Haveland quietly examined by eminent physicians I can name to you. They will substantiate what I say.”

  “That Haveland did not murder Umpleby?”

  Empson deliberated. And it seemed to Appleby that when he spoke again he spoke as one determined against personal impulse to follow the dry light of knowledge merely. “Science would be very fallible if it claimed to tell you that. Science can only tell you that Haveland did not murder Umpleby and then broadcast the crime by scattering bones. That, I suppose, is conclusive. And to it I add my conviction that Haveland is innocent.”

  “Your conviction – the voice of experience?”

  “Just that. Again something fallible but of some authority.”

  “Haveland, then, is mentally…normal?” It was a new question, and Appleby’s subtle attempt to introduce it as a tail-piece to what had just been said was a failure. Empson drew back just as Gott had done.

  “It is my duty, Mr Appleby, to declare my personal and professional conviction that the circumstances of the President’s death are incompatible with what I believe to be Haveland’s mental constitution. But I should do very wrong to go on to discuss his or any other colleague’s mental constitution at large. You will have little difficulty in finding psychologists willing to discover something crazy in the whole lot of us.” Empson was considerate; the jest softened the rebuke.

  “One must be one’s own judge of duty,” said Appleby. And for the third time Empson interrupted – and this time in some queer flare of passion.

  “The most difficult thing in the world!”

  II

  Appleby had turned to a fresh topic. “You came back here from the common-room at half-past nine, and went out again something over an hour later – at ten-forty to be exact – to collect a parcel from the porter’s lodge. That took you eight or ten minutes and thereafter you did not leave your room until the police reached Little Fellows’. I believe that covers your movements?”

  Empson inclined his head.

  “Did you meet anyone on your way either to or from the porter’s lodge?”

  “I saw Titlow.”

  “Will you tell me about that, please – just where you saw him and when? And whether he saw you?”

  “I do not think he saw me. He was entering his rooms just as I came out of mine. He had apparently come upstairs and was just turning into his lobby when I opened the door there” – and Empson nodded towards his own sitting-room door – “and noticed him.”

  “That would be about ten-forty – just, that is to say, when you were setting off to the porter’s lodge?”

  “Exactly so.”

  “I must tell you that Mr Titlow has declared himself not to have stirred from his room until ten-fifty-five. And then he went downstairs and straight to the President’s front door.” And Empson declining to take advantage of Appleby’s pause on this the latter added: “There is discrepancy, is there not?”

  “Titlow has forgotten – or Titlow is not telling the truth.” Deliberately Empson seemed to speak without emphasis; there was suppression even of the customary dryness in his tone. There followed a little silence.

  “There was nothing remarkable about your glimpse of him?”

  “He seemed to have come upstairs rapidly: I had the momentary but convinced impression that he was panting for breath.”

  “And that he was agitated?”

  “I saw him for a second only, and in that second I had the impression – again the momentary bu
t convinced impression – that he was very much agitated.”

  With just such damning lack of emphasis, reflected Appleby, might a judge set some fatal point clearly before a jury. And the image prompted him to try the effect of sudden violence – the advocate’s jump to the vital point. “You think Titlow guilty?”

  No change, he reflected ruthfully a moment later, was to be got from Empson that way. A blank silence sufficiently indicated the latter’s sense that his guest had asked an impossible question. But at length he spoke. “I should be glad to see justice done, but I am far from able to accuse Titlow.” And then he continued, with something of the air of taking up a subsidiary point in order to rescue Appleby from an embarrassing situation: “There was, for instance, what actually happened – the shot, whether fatal or not, heard while Titlow was in the presence of the butler Slotwiner.”

  “That,” said Appleby, “might have been contrived.”

  “I suppose it might.” Empson stared once more thoughtfully into the fire. “Have you discovered – have you considered how? Is there, I mean, any sign of such a thing?”

  Appleby was evasive. “The plan would defeat itself if any sign remained.” And abruptly he turned to another matter. “Why, Mr Empson, did you go over to the porter’s lodge at all? You have a telephone here; why did you not ring up to inquire if your parcel had come, and get them to send it across?”

  “We do not unnecessarily trouble college servants. It did me no harm to walk.”

  The reply was not exactly a snub, but it was conclusive. And Appleby felt he had only one more set of questions to ask. “And throughout the rest of the evening – from nine-thirty to ten-forty and then from ten-fifty onwards – you were here and quite undisturbed?”

  “Quite undisturbed.”

  “No one called?”

  “No one.”

  “And no one rang up?”

  “No one.”

  Vain persistence, thought Appleby, and was rising to take his leave when something, the echo perhaps of a faintly perceptible tension in the last word spoken, prompted him to add one last query.

  “And you yourself rang up no one?”

  The pause ensuing was but a fraction of a second; the increased pressure of the fingers on the ivory stick might have been something fancied rather than actual. And yet Appleby had a sudden impulse of overwhelming excitement. In the mind with which he was grappling he sensed, in this moment, calculation more intense than he had hitherto had any feeling of. Empson was debating his reply: Yes or No. And the moment, Appleby’s temporarily ungoverned intuition asserted, was the cardinal moment in the St Anthony’s case…

  Empson spoke quietly as ever. “I rang up Umpleby a little after ten. The matter was of no consequence.”

  III

  Tantripp, the head porter, had been in the service of St Anthony’s since a boy. He was an intelligent man and appeared to realize that he must give all the help he could. But the feeling that with policemen ferreting about among the Fellows of the college the end of the world had come was plainly strong upon him. And so Appleby began with an impersonal point. “I should like you,” he said, “to explain the telephone system of the college.”

  It turned out to be a subject on which Tantripp was inclined to enlarge. The telephone had arrived in St Anthony’s long after he had, and the innovation was one of which he was disposed to be critical. Moreover, there had recently been innovation upon innovation – and of this he was very critical indeed. There was a telephone in the outer lodge for undergraduates, a telephone in the manciple’s office and another in the kitchens, a telephone in the President’s Lodging with an extension to his study, and a telephone in the rooms of each Fellow of the college. Originally all calls had gone through a switchboard in the porter’s lodge. This system had worked well enough, but putting through calls had required the fairly constant attention of the porter on duty. Recently, therefore, a dialling system had been introduced with the object of rendering automatic all calls within the college. To send a call out of college the caller must dial the porter’s lodge; but any instrument within the college could be rung from any other by dialling the appropriate symbol. Unfortunately, when first put into operation, the dialling system had not proved thoroughly efficient and as a result it had not immediately, as Tantripp put it, “caught on.” Partly owing to this reason, partly to academic conservatism and partly to academic absent-mindedness, Fellows of the college were still liable to put their intra-college calls through the manual switchboard in the lodge.

  “Did Professor Empson,” Appleby boldly asked, “put his call through that way on the night of the President’s murder?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Tantripp – uncomfortably but not unreadily – “he did. He rang through here about ten o’clock.”

  “You remember what he said?”

  “He said, ‘Put me through to the President, Tantripp, please.’”

  “And he could have got through automatically?”

  “Certainly. He had only to dial 01. But he’s one that never would use the automatic.”

  “You are certain it was Professor Empson? You are certain the call came from his room?”

  Tantripp appeared perplexed. “Well, sir, I expect it came from his room. I know at once by the switchboard lights, of course, if so happen I think of it. But usually I’m only conscious of the connection wanted. It was Professor Empson’s voice but, come to think of it, he might have been speaking from anywhere – anywhere else in college, I mean. And it was him all right, because I mentioned the call to him afterwards.”

  “Mentioned it?”

  “Yes, sir. His parcel had been here all evening and when he came across for it at a quarter to eleven it struck me I ought to have mentioned its arrival when he rang up earlier. So I said I was sorry I hadn’t told him about it when he rang through to the President.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He just waved his hand and said, ‘All right, Tantripp’ – or something of the sort – and went out.”

  “What other calls went through your switchboard that night, can you remember?”

  “Only two, sir. The President put through an outside call. Of course, I don’t know to whom: I just connected him with the city exchange.”

  “What time was that – can you be certain?”

  “Just before half-past ten.”

  “And the other call?”

  “That was from the Dean, sir, about some gentlemen who had been gated. And I remember that he finished speaking to me just as my clock there was on five minutes to eleven.”

  For a few minutes Appleby interrogated Tantripp as to his own movements. Gott had been right about his having an alibi: Tantripp would have no difficulty in proving that he had been in his lodge during the period of the murder. And the Dean was now certainly out. But it was of Empson that Appleby was still thinking – and of whom he continued to think as he strolled through the dark courts a few minutes later. It was abundantly clear why Empson had not been able to deny having telephoned to Umpleby. Not only had he used the manual exchange, thus making himself known to the porter – he had tacitly admitted to the call when Tantripp had chanced to mention it later. And yet for a split second he had meditated denying it to Appleby, meditated a denial which would be inevitably exposed. And this though Empson’s brain was not the sort to meditate even for a split second a course merely foolish… But could there, after all, have been anything sinister about the whole incident? For a sinister telephone call why not the secrecy of the dialling apparatus? And yet Appleby could not rid himself of the prejudice that he had arrived somehow at the heart of the case…

  It was after eleven o’clock and he had turned automatically towards his rooms for the night, the second night of his sojourn in the college. But the thought of his rooms suggested Gott and with the thought of Gott came Gott’s whimsical recommendation to lose no time in eliminating the servants. The head porter he had just disposed of… Once more Appleby let himself through t
he west gate into Orchard Ground.

  The violated windows of the President’s study had been secured by a padlock to which he had a key; he let himself in, drew the curtains and turned on the light. The gloomy room, the litter of bones, the dead ashes in the hearth and, above, the grotesquely chalked emblems of mortality: it was all ugly, dreary rather than eerie now, flat, stale, absurd – but mysterious still. Appleby wasted no time. He turned out the main lights, turned on the single standard lamp, settled himself in Umpleby’s armchair and rang the bell. Within half a minute Slotwiner had appeared, as normally, as imperturbably as if his master were still alive to summon him. But this time he made Appleby a bow as to one whose status within the college had been recognized. He was, Appleby reflected, a cool card – certainly not one to be rattled by hearing a bell ring in a dead man’s room. And Appleby decided to try a disconcerting opening. “Slotwiner,” he said, “we have had to consider you as a suspect.”

  “You must explore every avenue, sir.”

  “It has become obvious that the shot heard by Mr Titlow and yourself was a fake.”

  “Yes, sir. I have always had that possibility in mind.”

  “Indeed! In that case you must understand the reason for which the fake might have been arranged?”

  “I can imagine more than one, sir. But one would be to provide an alibi for Mr Titlow or myself – presuming one of us guilty. I trust the whole matter will be gone into with minute exactness.”

  Slotwiner, his colloquial style apart, came well out of these exchanges. Appleby proceeded to a frank statement. “If the President was not killed by the shot which you and Mr Titlow heard he must have been killed not in this study but some way up Orchard Ground, where the noise of traffic might drown the report. I have to calculate times on that basis. Now, can you tell me anything helpful about yourself?”