Death At the President's Lodging

by Michael Innes

  Empson, who was now speaking in his dryest manner, paused for a moment. And Deighton-Clerk managed to exclaim: “Empson, you too are going to tell us–?”

  “That I did what you would have done yourself,” Empson replied, “if you had managed to think of it. Consider my position. I had stumbled by the merest accident upon a very subtle plot in which Haveland and myself – in whatever relation or proportion – were plainly to be incriminated. I had no reason to suppose that by merely giving an alarm at that point I could foil Titlow. And that the police would get to the bottom of an elaborate piece of ingenuity planned by such a man I had very little hope. Nobody, I think, could have predicted the arrival of an officer of Mr Appleby’s perspicacity.

  “Well, I hit on a plan – just the plan which Titlow fathered upon Pownall in the very ingenious story he has just told us. It must be made immediately obvious that Titlow had killed Umpleby: that was the postulate with which I began. And if I could not actually show Titlow murdering Umpleby I could, I thought, show him as avoiding being so shown. I could show him faking an alibi. I relied on his continuing to act normally and making his usual call on Umpleby at eleven o’clock. If I could fake Umpleby’s murder for the moment at which Titlow would be in the hall with the butler and arrange matters so that the fake would then certainly reveal itself I should have achieved my object.

  “And then I remembered an incident that had happened just a year ago today. Titlow had been acting as sub-Dean and had had occasion to purloin certain fireworks from an undergraduate. And these fireworks I had reason to believe were still in a drawer in his room… A couple of seconds after I had realized that my plan was formed.

  “I slipped out of the study, let myself through the gate and into the deserted common-room here: I took a candle-end from one of the candlesticks on this table. And with that I hurried back to my own rooms and, leaving the door open so that I could hear Titlow’s movements opposite, waited. Presently, as I had hoped, he came out: he was plainly going to make a show of visiting Umpleby as usual. As soon as he had passed the turn of the stairs I entered his room and in a moment had found what I wanted: a firework of a simple explosive kind. Then I hurried after Titlow and was back in the study before he could have got as far as the west gate. That gave me about a minute and a half. I went swiftly to the far end of the study, lit my candle, affixed it to the top of a revolving bookcase in one of the bays and hid it behind a few volumes taken hastily from the shelf. Then I simply waited until I heard the butler open the front door, ignited the touch-paper of the squib at the candle – which was later to suggest, of course, some primitive but practicable fuse – laid the squib too behind the books, and hurried as fast as my legs would let me from the room… I do not know that I made any mistake.”

  “Mr Pownall,” said Appleby.

  IV

  “My action on Tuesday night,” said Pownall, “was dictated solely by my knowledge that Haveland had murdered Umpleby and attempted to lay the crime upon me.”

  Deighton-Clerk almost groaned; Barocho gave an approving nod; Curtis woke up and took snuff. And slowly and curiously gently, his head dropped characteristically sideways and his hands lightly clasped, Pownall told his story.

  “Empson, in his appalling mixed-up version of the affair, has mentioned how one can come across something odd without – if one is unsuspecting – thinking much of it. That was how my own adventures on Tuesday night began. As everybody here knows, I have the habit of going to bed exceptionally early – often at about half-past nine. I was a little later than usual on Tuesday: it must have been just on ten o’clock that I stepped out of my room to fetch some hot water from the pantry. As I did so I heard somebody making a telephone call from Haveland’s room opposite. All I heard was a voice saying ‘Is that you, President?’ and then I passed on. But the voice had been Empson’s and I was vaguely surprised that he should be telephoning from Haveland’s room. I suppose I was thirty seconds in the pantry, and I had a view of the lobby all the time. I heard no more on my return, for the door of Haveland’s room had been pushed to. But I saw something that I immediately thought puzzling – that I ought to have realized as very curious indeed. Glancing upstairs as I passed into my room I saw Empson himself. He was making his way to the little landing half-way down – apparently to get a lump of coal from the locker there. I wondered how he could have got back upstairs without my noticing – but I failed to wonder long or vigorously enough to see that his having done so was a physical impossibility.

  “I went straight to bed and, as my habit is, fell asleep at once. But the curious incident was still on my mind and I believe it entered my dreams. I dreamt of somebody speaking in an odd, unnatural voice, and into the same dream was woven what I now believe to have been the sound of the shot that killed Umpleby. And I dreamt yet further of somebody or something clinging to my wrists. And with that I woke up, knowing, as I have explained to Mr Appleby, that somebody had been in my room.

  “The story we have heard from Titlow I cannot attempt to explain, but the things he has mentioned – the bloodstains and the diary pages – I presently found in my room. And then, hurrying outside, I found the body of the President… You know with what vividness one can sometimes recall a voice? In that moment there came back to me exactly what I had heard earlier that night and I recognized it with complete certainty as being not Empson’s voice but Haveland’s voice imitating Empson’s. Under cover of that disguise, it was clear, Haveland had lured Umpleby over from his study to Orchard Ground. And having lured him there he had shot him and was plotting, by what variety of means I could not tell, to incriminate me.

  “Haveland was a murderer. Upon that, there came to me an illuminating thing that had been told me by Empson. We all heard it the other night. It was the crazy sentiment Haveland had uttered to Umpleby about wishing to see him immured in one of his own grisly sepulchres. That gave me my idea: I saw how I might escape and at the same time see justice done.

  “I ran to Haveland’s rooms. He was out. I secured the bones, ran with them into the storeroom and stowed them at the bottom of the bath chair. Then I pushed the chair into the orchard, hoisted in the body, wrapped Barocho’s gown round the head and retreated with the whole thing into my own sitting-room. I was just in time. A few seconds later I heard Haveland returning. As soon as he had closed his door I was out again and hurrying, chair and all, to the President’s study. The rest you can guess. Within six minutes of finding Umpleby’s body and the plot against myself I had arranged in his study a very tolerable version of what had been his real murderer’s expressed wish when he had talked of grisly sepulchres. I thought it would be conclusive.”

  Again there was silence in the common-room; it was broken by the Dean. “Mr Appleby, what light have you to throw on this mass of contradiction? And where is Haveland? He is not at our meeting.” Automatically, everybody looked towards the foot of the table where Haveland had sat facing Appleby two evenings before. But his place was now occupied by Ransome – who gave an alarmed “Oh, I say!” at the sudden concerted scrutiny… Quietly Appleby took up Deighton-Clerk’s questions.

  “There is no contradiction, Mr Dean. We have heard – as far as each man’s actions are concerned – nothing but the truth. It so happened that on Tuesday night a certain member of the college who chanced to be present in Orchard Ground was witness of a series of transactions which tally exactly with what has been said. It was the information given me by that gentleman which put me in a position to elicit the narratives you have just heard.

  “These, Mr Dean, are the facts. I repeat that everybody has at length told the truth as they knew it. But everybody acted from contradictory beliefs as to what had really happened – contrary beliefs which proceeded first from the design of the murderer and secondly from the first fatal assumption of Mr Titlow… You ask for Mr Haveland. Haveland, the murderer of your President, killed himself while resisting arrest this evening.”

  V

  “Haveland killed Um
pleby,” Appleby continued, “but he was far from intending to set his signature on the deed. That he would not do such a thing Professor Empson was prepared to state with all the authority of his science. But Professor Empson, although passionately concerned at what he conceived as a dastardly plot against Haveland, was unprepared to discuss the question of Haveland’s normality in general terms: such a discussion, he plainly felt, would distract the lay mind from the one piece of scientific knowledge he felt as relevant – Haveland was not the sort who would deliberately give himself away. But that was not after all the basic fact. The basic fact was this: Haveland had that sort of abnormality which never loses at least its tenuous connections with reason. Take his motive. He was, as I learnt from you, Mr Dean, a likely candidate for the Presidency – and so, as I learnt from a remark of Professor Curtis’ passed on to me by Inspector Dodd, is Professor Empson. When Haveland proposed to kill Umpleby and let the blame fall on Empson (for that was the original plot) he was acting with just that combination of moral imbecility and logical sense which characterizes his type.

  “He had a remarkable power of mimicry: in this room a couple of evenings ago he shocked you by a momentary imitation of Mr Deighton-Clerk – and it was deftly enough done to strike a mind interested in such things… He rang up Umpleby, then, at ten o’clock, in Empson’s voice and using the porter’s manual exchange so that the call would be remarked. Umpleby came over to Little Fellows’ – to keep an appointment with Empson, as he thought – just after half-past ten. Haveland’s plan was perfectly simple. He lurked in the orchard until the appearance of the President and again used the ruse of an assumed voice – Pownall’s this time – to lure him into the darkness. And under cover of the roar of traffic in Schools Street he shot him dead, leaving the revolver beside the body. On that revolver, as I can demonstrate, he had secured and contrived to preserve Empson’s fingerprints. Having done so much he went straight to the Dean, paying him an ordinary visit of some ten minutes. And thereafter he went straight back to his rooms. That concluded his activities. The strength of his plan was, I say, in its complete simplicity.

  “Mr Titlow found the body at ten-forty and unfortunately concluded that Mr Pownall was the murderer. Thereupon he took the extraordinary course he did to ensure that Pownall should not escape. But in doing so he roused Pownall from sleep. And the latter, discovering the murder, concluded first and rightly that Haveland was the perpetrator, and secondly and incorrectly that it was Haveland who had attempted to incriminate him, Pownall. He guessed correctly, that is to say, the implications of the telephone call he had overheard, but he had no suspicion of Titlow’s interposition in the matter. Acting rapidly on the plan he thereupon formed, he had body and bones arranged in the study before ten-fifty – and just in time to be discovered by Professor Empson. And Empson, having seen Titlow hauling the body into Little Fellows’ and alarmed by his discovery of the spurious telephone call, concluded that Titlow had murdered Umpleby and was plotting to involve Haveland, and possibly himself, in ruin. He therefore evolved his plan to reincriminate Titlow – who however on bursting into the President’s study discovered the device of the faked shot in time to obliterate almost every trace of it.

  “And the result of all these subtleties, gentlemen,” Appleby dryly concluded, “has been an investigation of some complexity. The double inquest will reveal the insanity which brought about Dr Umpleby’s death… Nothing more, I think, falls to be said.”

  There was the longest silence that had yet been. Then Deighton-Clerk nodded to Titlow and Titlow pressed a bell. The door of the inner common-room opened.

  “Coffee is served!”

  18

  It was late. The yellow Bentley – dispatched as a gesture of official recognition in response to a brief announcement of success – waited at the gates. Appleby, already overcoated, Dodd, still faintly bewildered, and Gott, largely appreciative, were consuming liqueur brandy from enormous rummers in the latter’s rooms. And Appleby was summing up.

  “Umpleby was murdered pat upon the changing of the Orchard Ground keys – in other words under conditions which made access to him possible only to a small group of people. There were various possible explanations of that obtrusive point. One was that the conditions of access were not as they seemed: that the murderer had some hidden means of access and was utilizing the surface conditions to mislead. Another was that he had arranged things as he did for fun: that he was one of the group indicated by the conditions and was giving us a fair start that way. And yet another was that he was one member of the group wishing to plant the crime on another member and taking a first step by limiting the possible suspects to the group. And the theory of planted murder proved of course to be the key to the case. Everything that turned up fell in with it – only far too much turned up.

  “First came the strong suggestions of a plant against Haveland. And soon I came to couple with that idea the name of Pownall. Pownall was concerned to point at Haveland: he had pointed at Haveland during a scene which subsequently turned out to have made manifest the pattern of the whole affair; and he pointed at Haveland later when putting up a story to explain his own strange conduct. It seemed reasonable to suspect that in that story Pownall was ingeniously turning the facts upside down. According to his version, Haveland had murdered Umpleby and attempted to plant the murder on him, only setting his own signature to it with the bones in a fit of craziness after his plan had been foiled. In reality (I conjectured), Pownall had murdered Umpleby and planted the crime on Haveland. When it became apparent that both the time and place of the murder had been fudged I was able to see a likely motive for both deceptions. By fudging the time Pownall was making sure of Haveland’s having no alibi; by fudging the place he was contriving a particularly striking fulfilment of the rash wish that Haveland had once expressed.

  “I allowed this more or less simple case against Pownall a long run. But it didn’t seem good enough. For one thing the revolver had significantly given itself the trouble to turn up and I had been prepared to find it faked in some way to represent another link in the chain against Haveland. On the contrary it had Pownall’s prints; if Pownall had shot Umpleby with it he seemed to have been almost unbelievably careless. Again, I had a very distinct impression about the interview I had had with Pownall – the impression that his story had been a complicated mixture of truth and falsehood. This complication, and much else that I felt as having a place in the case, my theory so far failed to cover.

  “I was, for instance, convinced that in some way or another both Titlow and Empson came in. With both these I had had what I felt were significant interviews. Titlow, an erratic person it appeared at all times, was strung up to believe some specific person guilty. He had it all curiously involved with a philosophy of history – was obviously in a state of unwonted intellectual confusion – but it came down to this: if there was anything incredible about the idea of X having murdered Umpleby then he, Titlow, had some duty before him… And then he gave me the strange reference to Kant: I was to turn upside down the contention that the duty of truthfulness overrides the duty to protect society from murder.

  “There was something here which any theory of the crime must elucidate and incorporate. And that consideration held also of the results of my interview with Empson. Empson too had an X in his mind; was shocked that, contrary to the expectations of science and experience, X should have murdered Umpleby – that, at least, was what I read into his attitude. And his X was, of course, not Haveland; there was something like passion in his assertion of Haveland’s innocence. And there were two other points. When the possibility came up that the shot heard from the study might have been faked he was anxious to know if any trace of a contrivance for effecting such a fake had been discovered: he was inquiring, in fact, for what would be evidence against Titlow. The last point was his hesitation over the telephone call. That was enigmatical until the revolver was revealed as bearing Empson’s prints as well as Pownall’s. That revelation brou
ght, of course, the suggestion of a plant against Empson and a faked telephone call fell into place as another attempted piece of evidence against him. Why had Empson almost denied making that call, when he knew the porter would seem to expose such a denial? And the answer came: because he knew such a call had been planted on him and he had been on the verge of taking the line of saying so… At the same time I saw how Empson’s fingerprints at least might have been got on the revolver. I remembered that the revolver had tried to tell me something, so to speak, the moment I saw it. It was a slight little weapon with a slim curved ivory handle – uncommonly like the handle of Empson’s stick. I could imagine it tied to some actual stick and thrust into Empson’s hand for a moment in one of those dark lobbies before being withdrawn with an apology for the mistake. The result, almost certainly, would be the slightest and most imperfect of prints – more imperfect even than the prints cautiously got by Titlow from the sleeping Pownall. But very poor prints – the impress of quite a dry finger on an indifferent surface – can be made susceptible of identification nowadays. Here we had an instance of a technical advance in criminology being exploited not once but twice in the same case. Which is as good as a word of warning, perhaps, in the field of ‘scientific’ detection.

  “Then came the twisted wire found by Kellett thrust down a drain. You might have guessed that, Dodd. It was the crumpled cousin to the wire contraption you had seen me make to protect possible fingerprints on the revolver! Enclosed in a little cage like that, the revolver could be handled and fired readily enough without obliterating or marring previous prints.