Death At the President's Lodging

Home > Mystery > Death At the President's Lodging > Page 24
Death At the President's Lodging Page 24

by Michael Innes


  “In a moment,” Appleby continued, “I am going to call for a number of statements which will make the facts clear. But I believe you will find these facts less disturbing than they otherwise would be if you will allow me to make one preliminary point.

  “We speak of murder as the most shocking of crimes. It is just that. Nothing stands out more clearly in my sort of experience than the surprising effects upon human behaviour which the shock of murder can have. Faced by the sudden fact of wilful killing, called upon for action and decision, a man will do what he might never think to do were he merely coolly imagining himself in the same circumstances. For murder goes along with fear, and when we are controlled by fear we are controlled by a more primitive self. In such a condition our reason may for a time become a slave – something used merely to give colour to unreasonable things. And should murder suddenly erupt in such a quiet and securely ordered society as yours, this shock may be very severe indeed: it may master a temperamental man not for minutes merely but for hours or even days – and particularly is this so if the fear is substantial and real, the product of a danger which even the rational mind must realize. And on Tuesday night, as you will learn, danger took a strange course through St Anthony’s… But though shock and danger may drive us out of ourselves for a time, sooner or later the normal asserts itself. We test our actions by normal standards – and find perhaps that we have to confess a brief madness. I cannot usefully say more and I will ask for the first statement… Mr Titlow.”

  II

  “I was convinced from the first,” began Titlow, “that Pownall had murdered Umpleby. And very soon I was to believe that, in order to escape the consequences of his guilt, he had attempted to fasten the crime upon myself. But for the horror and, as Mr Appleby has truly put it, fear arising from that second belief I would no doubt more quickly have seen the truth about the first. The truth is that I had almost conclusive evidence of Pownall’s guilt – but only almost. As soon as I realized this – as I did in conversation with Mr Appleby in the early hours of yesterday morning – I realized that I must narrate what I had done. When I dispatched such a narration to him this afternoon I had arrived, he would say, at judging my conduct once more by normal standards.

  “Here is my story. I returned from the common-room on Tuesday night at about half-past nine and settled down to read until it should be time to make my usual call on the President. I became interested in my book to the extent of letting two important things happen: I let my fire get low and I lost an exact sense of time. As a result of the one I felt chilly and got up to close a window on the orchard side; as a result of the other, I vaguely felt myself to have heard ten strike a minute or so before, whereas I must actually have heard half-past. I leaned out of the window for a moment to see if it was raining, wondering if I should need an umbrella to visit the President. And at that moment I became aware of the President himself just coming into the circle of light from the lobby. He was about to enter Little Fellows’ when he was stopped by somebody calling to him from the darkness of the orchard. I was just able to hear; it was Pownall’s voice, speaking urgently but at a low pitch. ‘President,’ he had called out, ‘is that you?’ And Umpleby replied, ‘Yes, I’m going in to see Empson.’ I was startled at the response: ‘Empson is here, President. He has had a fall: will you help?’ At that, Umpleby at once turned round and vanished into the darkness. I was on the point of calling out and hurrying down to assist when it occurred to me that the President and Pownall could do all that was required and that there was nothing that Empson would like less than a fuss. And so I returned to my book. But I retained an uncomfortable impression that the thing was a little odd: it was odd that Empson should have been walking in the darkness of the orchard. And after a time it struck me as disturbing that nobody had come upstairs; I was afraid that Empson was too badly hurt to be brought up to his room. And on that I decided to go and investigate.

  “I stepped out to the landing – and received a distinct shock. Empson was moving about in his room. Nobody, I knew, had come upstairs – and yet I could not be mistaken. Empson has a polished floor with rugs and you will understand that the sound of his footsteps and stick together make a pattern with which I am perfectly familiar. For a moment I stood dumbfounded – and then I realized that Pownall must have made a mistake, calling out prematurely that the injured person he had discovered was Empson. I ran downstairs – and I think the natural thing would have been to knock at Pownall’s door. I do not know what growing sense of strangeness and alarm sent me straight into the orchard, to light upon the body of Umpleby – a revolver lying beside him.

  “The shock, as Mr Appleby has charitably argued, was very great; for a moment after I had distinguished that quite conclusive wound I could only stand and tremble. Then I looked at my watch. It was ten-forty. Actually, that would seem to have been only some eight minutes after the committing of the crime. But I did not realize that: I had believed it to be just after ten when I rose to close my window and in the succeeding interval my sense of time had remained confused. Well, I had only one opinion – certain knowledge rather – from the first. Pownall, under cover of calling Umpleby to Empson’s assistance, had lured him into the orchard and done this unspeakable thing. There came back to me with tremendous force a scene at which I had been present only a few days before, a scene in which Pownall had told Umpleby that he was ‘born to be murdered’ – or some such phrase. And already I was aware of the vital fact. I was the only witness to what had occurred – either in the orchard that night or on the occasion of Pownall’s using the words I have just quoted…

  “Almost without knowing what I was about, I had begun half to drag and half to carry Umpleby’s body towards Little Fellows’. And there, I suppose with some idea of confronting the criminal with his crime, I hauled it direct into Pownall’s sitting-room. The place was in darkness and I switched on the light. I crossed over to the bedroom: if Pownall was there I was going to have him out. And he was there – asleep. It was the horror of that, I think, that finally determined my actions: less than an hour after doing this thing the miscreant was asleep!

  “I stood and thought for what seemed a long time – perhaps it was only sixty seconds all told. Pownall had killed Umpleby, and Pownall had got away with it. On that revolver there would, I knew, be nothing; and for evidence there were only my stories – the story of a sinister phrase spoken, the story of uncertain observations made from an upper window in the dark… And at that moment my eye turned to the body and I was aware that something immensely significant had happened. The wound was bleeding upon the carpet. And the blood represented evidence.”

  The gathering round the long table was listening in a consternation which was turning to horror. Deighton-Clerk voiced the dawning understanding: “You resolved to incriminate Pownall?”

  Titlow continued unheeding. “I referred Mr Appleby to a contention of Kant’s. Kant maintained that in no conceivable circumstance could it be justifiable to lie – not even to mislead an intending murderer as to the whereabouts of his victim. Standing there over Umpleby’s body I seemed to see quite a different imperative. If the cunning of a murderer could only be defeated by a lie, then a lie must be told – or acted. I saw a moral dilemma–”

  For a moment the Dean’s voice rang out in passionate refutation: in the pause that followed the sporadic explosions outside reverberated as from a battle-field. And coldly Titlow continued. “Deighton-Clerk is right. And Mr Appleby too is right: a brief madness, no doubt, was upon me. I saw myself in an utterly strange situation and called on for an instant decision. And what dominated me was this: were I not to act, the thing was over – in the next room was a murderer who could never be touched. But were I to act – act on the plan the blood-stained carpet had suggested to me – then nothing final and irrevocable would have been done. If a shadow of doubt should later come to me, if reflection should dictate it, I could cancel the effect or action by a single word. I did not think I should be afrai
d to do so – nor have I. But that is unimportant. I acted. I tore a couple of pages from Umpleby’s diary and left them, burnt but for a fragment of his writing, in an ashtray. I dragged the body out into the orchard again – that was obviously necessary. And then I returned with the revolver.”

  Titlow paused. And in the pause there was a touch of the histrionic, as if a flash of his ungoverned imaginative sense had come to ease for a moment the situation in which he found himself. “I had remembered a vital fact. During the alarm of fire we had some years ago, Pownall had revealed himself as an exceptionally heavy sleeper. That gave my plan, I thought, a substantial chance. I returned with the revolver, held by the barrel in my handkerchief, and went into the bedroom. Pownall was fast asleep, his arms outside the coverlet. I took his right wrist with infinite caution and lightly pressed the pistol-butt to his thumb. He stirred in his sleep but I had slipped from the room, as I thought, without his being roused. I tossed the revolver into the storeroom, where it would certainly be found, and then retreated upstairs to my own rooms. But that is only half my story. And if I needed confirmation of Pownall’s guilt the other half brought it – and with a shock. For Pownall turned the tables on me.”

  There was a stir round the common-room – a furtive shifting of limbs, here and there a cough. Dr Barocho was providently rolling himself a stock of cigarettes. Lambrick thought to lower the tension by turning with unconvincing heartiness to throw a log on the fire. Curtis was looking with vague interest at Appleby, as if trying to place an uncertain acquaintance. Titlow continued.

  “I determined that I had better do what I had always done – go over, I mean, at eleven o’clock to visit Umpleby. When he was found to have disappeared from his study I could give something like an alarm – and perhaps manage to direct the search to Pownall’s rooms… So I presented myself on the stroke of the hour at Umpleby’s front door. I had hardly spoken to the butler when we heard the shot from the study. We both rushed in. I could do nothing else, but I knew at once that some devilry was afoot.”

  “That some devilry was afoot!” It was the Dean speaking, a fascinated eye on his colleague.

  “And there the body lay, in the litter of bones. I knew at once that I must have awakened Pownall and that he had contrived some plot. On the face of it it was a plot against Haveland – a plant. But I was wary enough to send Slotwiner to the telephone and hunt feverishly around. There was of course a smell of gun-powder in the room, but there was a smell too of something else – a badly snuffed candle. And then I saw: Pownall had contrived a plot against me… It was fiendishly clever, and if I had not penetrated to the farther end of the room it would have caught me. He had arranged a simple demonstration that I had both killed Umpleby and attempted to incriminate someone else and secure an unshakable alibi for myself. He had reasoned like this. If a shot heard by Slotwiner and myself had killed Umpleby neither Slotwiner nor I could have killed him. From that it followed that if such a shot were heard and then proved to be a fake it must have been faked to provide an alibi for Slotwiner or myself. If in the faking of that shot there were used something that could be identified with me then the case against me would be clear – or clear enough to give me a very bad time. And that was what he contrived. On the top of a revolving bookcase in a bay at the farther end of the study, concealed behind a few books, he had arranged just such an apparatus as I might have used to engineer that shot. It was an arrangement of a candle-stub and a burnt-out squib – just such a one as they are letting off around us now and just such a one as I was known to have impounded from an unruly undergraduate a year ago tonight. With a little practice such an arrangement could have been quite accurately timed by a person wanting to suggest an alibi in that way. And if I had not discovered it you see what would have been said: that I had not had the opportunity on which I had counted for removing the traces of my plot. As it was, I had time to thrust squib and candle into my pocket and the books back on their shelf before Slotwiner returned. My escape had been a very narrow one.”

  Titlow’s extraordinary narrative was concluded. And Appleby allowed no pause. “Professor Empson,” he said crisply.

  III

  “I knew,” Empson began, “that Titlow had murdered Umpleby.”

  The common-room was passing beyond sensation. Deighton-Clerk looked as if he had shot his bolt of indignation; Ransome had plainly taken refuge behind further calculations on the Euboic talent; Curtis was asleep; Titlow himself was immobile in face of the accusation.

  “I knew,” said Empson, “that Titlow had murdered Umpleby and that he had contrived a diabolical plot to incriminate an innocent man. And I knew that I was in some danger myself. The simple knowledge of Titlow’s guilt would not have moved me to act as I did – nor, I believe, would the knowledge of my own peril. But when I saw dastardly advantage taken of another man’s misfortune in order to send that man in his innocence to the gallows, I acted without a qualm. Titlow has always seemed to me unbalanced, and that impression enabled me to get hold of the situation more quickly than I otherwise should have done. For I could not see – and I still cannot see – any rational motive which Titlow could have had for murdering Umpleby and attempting to incriminate Haveland and possibly myself… But that is what I saw him to have planned.

  “It is remarkable what, in a familiar and secure environment, one can witness without question or alarm. On Tuesday night I actually saw Titlow dragging Umpleby’s body through Orchard Ground – and I suspected nothing. It seems incredible. But it is true – and this is how it happened. About ten-forty I decided to go over to the porter’s lodge in search of a parcel of proofs. They were of my new book and the expectation of them put me in mind of certain passages about which I felt misgiving: the thought of these no doubt served to preoccupy my mind as I went out of Little Fellows’. But I was not so oblivious as not to see Titlow, and not to see what he was doing. He was a little way off in the orchard – not far, because the light behind me was sufficient to illuminate what he was about; he was dragging an inert human body towards Little Fellows’. And, as I say, I thought very little of it. To be exact, my mind distorted the image of what I had seen sufficiently to allow of a facile and quasi-normal explanation. Titlow, I thought, had found somebody almost dead drunk in the orchard and was charitably assisting him to his own rooms. A moment’s reflection shows that that would be surprising in itself and the fact of my inventing and accepting such an interpretation rather than let myself be arrested by something positively disconcerting makes an interesting, but by no means extraordinary scientific observation. I half resolved to look in and see if I could help on my return. And then I simply walked on to the porter’s lodge, my mind wholly given to those sections of my book about which I was dubious.

  “What occurred next has, I think, real scientific interest. The porter, who as you know is a most accurate man, happened to imply that I had recently put through a telephone call to the President – which was not the case. Normally, I would simply have assumed that he had made a mistake: I might have taken the trouble to trace the source of the error; more probably, being sufficiently absorbed in a train of thought of my own, I should have let the matter slide. But on this occasion I was instantly alarmed – almost wildly alarmed. It was an extraordinary reaction. And a moment’s – I suppose professional – introspection enabled me to connect my alarm with what I had just seen in Orchard Ground. Two slightly disturbing facts had made contact – and produced not disturbance but extreme agitation. And at once that distorted image of what I had seen corrected itself. I saw Titlow as doing what he really had been doing: furtively dragging a dead body through the orchard. And instantly an equal impression of the sinister communicated itself to the odd business of the telephone. A blind instinct of caution prompted me to offer no denial to the porter. I hurried out of the lodge with my head in a whirl. It had come to me overpoweringly that in this quiet college, in which I had spent the greater part of an uneventful life, danger was suddenly lurking. It was a
fantastic notion. But its fantasticality was something of which I was merely intellectually aware; its reality was immediate and overpowering – something felt like ice in the veins.

  “It would be hard to say what made me do as I then did. I suppose I had recognized whom Titlow was dragging, and that the recognition had sunk instantly into the subconscious. Be that as it may, in making my way back mechanically to Little Fellows’ I tapped at the President’s French windows – and looked in. And there my eyes met substantial horror enough. Umpleby was lying on the floor, his head queerly muffled in a gown. I went straight to him and felt his heart: he was dead. And as I straightened up I became aware of the grim scrawls of chalk, and of the bones…

  “Such a situation would make a dull man’s brain move fast. I thought it out, I suppose, in something under thirty seconds. Titlow with Umpleby’s body; no alarm; this tableau with what I knew to be Haveland’s bones – the series could mean only one thing. Titlow was attempting to incriminate Haveland. He was turning a weakness of Haveland’s – long all but forgotten – to what was well-nigh the foulest use conceivable by man. But he had acted in psychological ignorance. I knew as a fact of science that Haveland could never murder Umpleby and deliberately give himself away after that fashion. Even had I not detected Titlow in the midst of his crime I could not have been deceived… But facts of science are too often not facts at law.

  “And then my mind came back to the false telephone call – as it now obviously was. That too could have only one meaning: I was implicated in some manner myself. And I realized just how urgent the danger was. If a man of Titlow’s ability had contrived such a crazy thing he would have contrived it well. What further hidden strokes he had planned, what other crushing evidence he had contrived, I had no means of knowing. I knew only that discovery might be a matter of minutes. Within those minutes I had to act. And a moment’s reflection showed me that there was only one certain way of escape. The crime must be brought convincingly home to the wretch who had committed it.”

 

‹ Prev