Death at the President's Lodging (29 page)

Ransome’s reply was prompt but disconcerting: “I tried to work out the Euboic talent!”

Heavy breathing from Dodd seemed to indicate a feeling that the majesty of the law was being trifled with. But Appleby was perfectly patient. “The Euboic talent, Mr Ransome?”

“Yes. Quite off my line, of course – but I suddenly got an idea about it in the bus. Boeckh, you remember, puts the ratio to the later Attic talent as 100 to 72, and it struck me that–” But here Ransome broke off doubtfully. “I say, though – I don’t know if you’d really be interested–?”

“I should be interested to know just
where
you indulged in these speculations.”

“Where! Oh, I say – is that important? But, yes, of course it is. I’m most frightfully sorry, but I really don’t remember. I was rather absorbed, you see – so absorbed that I almost forgot all about the burglary business. And that of course was enormously important. I remember I had to run. That shows you it was pretty absorbing, because I was awfully keen to get my stuff back from that old beast… Now I wonder where I could have been?”

“Do you remember, perhaps, any method you adopted in working on your problem; sitting down, for instance, to write?”

Ransome suddenly jumped up in childish glee. “To be sure,” he cried, “a sort of menu-card; I scribbled down figures on that. Yes, I went straight to a tea-shop – that place in Archer Street that is open till midnight. And I was there all the time, right up till about twenty past eleven. Isn’t that splendid? What luck!”

“Do you think they would remember you there?”

“I’m sure they would, whiskers and all. There was a bit of a fuss. They brought me Indian tea… Often in that sort of place they do, you know” – Ransome concluded on a note of warning.

“Well, Mr Ransome, pending the verification of that, I don’t think we need trouble you further. Just one other thing. What put Mr Haveland in your head as the murderer?”

Ransome was distressed. “I say! Don’t think I think Haveland’s the murderer. It seems just to be the gossip going round – because he was once a bit rocky, I suppose.”

“But that was a long time ago?”

“Oh, yes, rather. Though he had a bit of a relapse when I was home last – but it was soon all right. Good chap, Haveland – knows his Arabia.”

“Can you tell me about the relapse you mention?”

“Oh it was a couple of long vacations or so ago. He felt a spot unsteady and went into a sort of rest-home for a bit – place a long way off – a Dr Goffin near Burford – so nobody knew. Nobody except me, as it happened: I visited him there on the quiet. All blew over.”

“I see.”

“But I say, Mr Appleby, there’s something I’m most frightfully anxious about. Can I hang on to my stuff – the stuff, I mean, we lifted from the old beast’s safe?”

“Mr Ransome,” said Appleby gravely – and to the scandal of the attendant Dodd – “I advise you not to discuss the materials in question with the police until the police discuss them with you. Good morning.”

“And your remarks on the text,” Mr Gott declared, “are merely a muddle.”

“Yes, Gott,” said Mike meekly.

“You see, Mike, you haven’t any
brain
really.”

“No, of course not,” said Mike.

“You must just keep to the cackle and write nicely. You write very nicely.”

“Yes,” said Mike dubiously.

“Keep off thinking things out, and you’ll do well. In fact, you’ll go far.”

Mike’s acknowledgments faded into silence and tobacco smoke. The solemn weekly hour that crowns the System was drawing to its close. The essay had been read and faithfully criticized. The remaining ten minutes would be given to pipes and to silence punctuated by desultory conversation…

“It’s the fifth of November today,” Mike presently offered. And his preceptor plainly failing to find this an interesting observation, he added: “Silly asses, letting off rubbishing fireworks and all that.”

“No doubt.”

“Like Chicago during a clean-up. Guns popping.”

“Quite.”

“D’you remember last year, Gott? Titlow acting as sub-Dean while the Dean was away, and Boosey Thompson chucking a Chinese cracker at him, and Titlow wading in and confiscating old Boosey’s stinks and bangs?”

“Very unedifying,” responded Gott absently. And suddenly he looked hard at his pupil. “Mike, who put you up to that?”

“Put me up–?”

“Mike dear, you’re very nice. But as I’ve just had to point out, you have
no
brain. Who’s been stuffing you?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, it was David Edwards that–”

“David Edwards’ suggestion,” said Gott, “will be conveyed to the proper quarter.”

There was silence for some minutes, and then Mike ventured: “There’s something more… David thinks it’s a pity we haven’t been told more of the precise circumstances attending the poor President’s death.”

“What has the poor President’s death got to do with David Edwards?”

“David thinks he might have some useful information – if he only knew, that is, what would
be
useful information?”

“I can hardly believe his logic is as rocky as that. But out with what you’ve been crammed with.”

“I think,” said Mike mildly and respectfully, “that you’re rather rude. But it’s like this. On Tuesday night David was working in the library, quite late. Dr Barocho was there and several other people and David was sitting on top of one of the presses in the north window – you know how people do sit on the presses – and of course it was quite dark outside. But when David was just happening to look out into the darkness there was a sudden beam of light – and he saw somebody.”

Gott had laid down his pipe. “
Recognized
somebody, you mean?”

“Yes, recognized somebody. In the light from the President’s study. The light just showed for a moment as the person came out–”

“Came out!”

“Yes; came out of the French windows of the study – and David just made out who it was. He wondered a little afterwards because he doesn’t know if this person keeps a key to Orchard Ground and he wondered how he was going to get out if he didn’t. But of course it was quite a normal person to be visiting the President, so David didn’t know if it would be the least important. As he says, the circumstances of the poor President’s death have been kept so dark–”

“What time was this?”

“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.

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.”

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.