Death at the President's Lodging (13 page)

Titlow in fact – it came to Appleby – was dramatizing an inner incoherence in this room. And in addition to the deliberate sounding of major disharmony there had been a scattering of little grace-notes of pure oddity. There was a stuffed dog, oddly reminiscent of Queen Victoria (who would scarcely have felt at home here); there was a small cannon; one of the chairs was simply hollowed out of some porous stone. But Appleby looked chiefly at the
Dance Macabre
and then at the
Sleeping Venus
. And he sipped his whisky and finally murmured to Titlow, with something of the whimsicality that Titlow had been adopting a little before, “
What truth is it that these mountains bound, and is a lie
in the world beyond
?”

There was silence while Titlow’s eye dwelt meditatively on a policeman conversant with Montaigne. Then he smiled, and his smile had great charm. “I wear my heart on my wall?” he asked. “To project one’s own conflicts, to hang them up in simple pictorial terms – it is to be able to step back and contemplate oneself. You understand?”

“The artist’s impulse,” said Appleby.

Titlow shook his head. “I am not an artist – it seems. I am an archaeologist, and perhaps that is not a very healthy thing to be – for me. It is unhealthy to be something that one can be only with a part of oneself. And it is with a very small part of myself, I sometimes think, that I have become what I am. By nature I am an imaginative and perhaps creative man. But it is difficult to become an artist today. One stops off and turns to something else. And if it is something intellectual merely, so that other impulses lack expression, then perhaps one becomes – freakish. Irrational impulses lurk in one, waiting their chance…do you not think, Mr Appleby?”

Odd the abruptly pitched question. And odd the whole man, talking thus under some queer compulsion to a stranger – and a policeman. Appleby’s answer was almost at random: “You think the thwarted artist…unstable?” But it set Titlow off again.

“Artists or scholars, Mr Appleby – we are all unstable here today. It is the spirit of the age, the flux growing, the chaos growing, the end of our time growing nearer hourly! Perhaps one has not to live in imagination much amid the long stabilities of Egypt and Babylon to know that? But it is to the scholars, the men of thought, of contemplation, that the first breath of the whirlwind comes…”

And pacing nervously, convulsively up and down Titlow talked…of the rhythm of history…the rise and fall of cultures…
das Untergang des Abendlands
, Decline of the West. He talked well, with a free, unashamed rhetoric, at once logical and full of bold ellipses. And Appleby listened quietly to the end. Titlow was talking as he was because Umpleby had died as he did.

“You know where we come from here – whence we derive, I mean. We are clerks, medieval clerks leading this mental life that is natural and healthy only to men serving a transcendental idea. But have we that now? And what then does all this thinking, poring, analysing, arguing become – what but so much agony of pent-up and thwarted action? The ceaseless driving of natural physiological energy into narrow channels of mentation and intellection – don’t you think that’s dangerous? Don’t you think we could be a dangerous, unbalanced caste once the purposes have gone and the standards are vanishing? Don’t you think it?”

Titlow had paused; he was perched outlandishly on his outlandish little cannon. What was the compulsion behind this queer talk – talk that was indeed but contemporary commonplace in substance but, in some personal relationship in which the man now stood to it, so decidedly queer? Appleby remembered Deighton-Clerk talking – talking, it had seemed, to convince himself. And somehow – surely – Titlow was doing the same? Again he had concluded on a question, an appeal for corroboration. Again Appleby had to evolve a reply.

“No doubt it is, as you say, the scholars and men of thought who feel the whirlwind coming. But do they really – give way? Is it not they who survive – survive because they are removed from the world? Do they not – well – guard, hand down?”

What, Appleby was wondering as he spoke, would Dodd think of all this as a technique of investigation? But his eyes were as searchingly on Titlow as if his question had related directly to the President’s death. And there was strain, something even of anxiety or alarm lurking in Titlow’s eyes as he replied.

“It should be as you say, Mr Appleby. Indeed, it
is
so – essentially.”

There was a silence of calculation. It was as if Titlow were feeling his way, testing the ground he would be on were he to abandon some position to which he had trusted – and all this with no reference to how he stood with Appleby. “It is so – really,” he reiterated.

“But you think that a society such as this, in what you see as a disintegrating age, is unstable, erratic?”

Titlow made a gesture almost as of pain. And when he replied it was with an impersonality that plainly revealed the intellectual man’s habit of striving for objectivity, for dispassionate truth. The personal pressure he had contrived for the moment to sink.

“Erratic, yes. But I have been overstating – or oversuggesting – greatly. Any fundamental unbalance there is not. What there is, is – nerves. And personal eccentricity, perhaps some degree of irresponsibility – our modern scholarship, I know, is essentially irresponsible. But basic instability – no. Except perhaps” – softly, firmly Titlow added – “in such a one as myself…” Again he made his little gesture of pain.

“You would not say – regarding the matter untemperamentally – that the spirit of the age, and the rest of it, is likely to incline any of your colleagues to homicide?”

If there was a hint of irony in Appleby’s question it was lost. Standing now before the fire, Titlow weighed it. And replied: “No.”

“You would not think of any of your colleagues, while in his right mind, as remotely likely to murder?”

“Certainly I would not think anything of the sort – spontaneously.”

“Only on proof?” Sitting nibbling Titlow’s biscuits and drinking Titlow’s whisky, Appleby felt he could get no nearer direct inquisition than this.

And Titlow’s response was enigmatic. “What is proof?”

Appleby rose. Of all this there must be more on the morrow, or rather later this same day. Meantime it would be discreet to withdraw from a slightly uncomfortable position. But Titlow had something further to say. His restlessness, the characteristic nervous agitation which had expressed itself in his earlier talk, and which he had by some great effort controlled later, was back again now in full possession of the man. He had paced across the room; now he turned round with a new and tempestuous gesture, as if to say some conclusive, some final thing. But for a moment he seemed to seek delay on a minor theme.

“Who could have told, Mr Appleby, that
you
would come amongst us? Not one of us would have believed there was such a person – outside Gott’s nonsense… Tell me, when were you here before?”

Appleby answered the unexpected question with some reluctance, but truthfully. “Eight years ago.”

“Exactly – obviously! A good head that has had the right training – of course one knows it anywhere. But talk of erratic conduct…! What of erratic walks of life? From our angle, you know, you yourself are the oddest thing in the case.”

“You mean,” said Appleby, remembering a facetious remark of Dodd’s, “that you expected Gott’s other stock figure, the village policeman?”

“I say we should not have been inclined to count–” and suddenly Titlow was off on another tack. “Did you ever read De Quincey’s
Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts
?”

This was not the aimless belletristic habit which had prompted the venerable Professor Curtis to discourse on
The Purloined Letter
. Titlow meant something – was indeed poised again to take his plunge. But for a moment he wavered anew from the issue. “Rather in your line. But poor stuff really – much slack erudition on a thread of feeble humour…” And then he said what he had to say. “It records an anecdote about Kant. You would find that interesting, if only because it deals with an academic attitude to murder. And if you turned it upside down it might even be illuminating.”

Appleby smiled. “Thank you. I will look it up with all speed.” He moved to the door. And when Titlow spoke again it was easily, benignantly, as when he had first invited Appleby to his rooms.

“Well, you ought certainly to be in bed. You can get three or four good hours – and so perhaps can I. Put a notice on your door and the servant won’t disturb you.”

Easy, benignant again – but with a difference. Titlow
was
easy now. It was as if, in giving some hint or pointer through De Quincey’s essays, he had reached a position, or come to a decision on which he could rest. He moved to the door with his guest.

“Later – we shall see,” said Titlow. He gave his agitated little gesture – by way of farewell this time – and turned back into his rooms. Appleby went slowly downstairs. Through the orchard was seeping the first glimmer of dawn.

Inspector Dodd walked down Schools Street in stolid satisfaction. The business of the burglaries was going well. In his pocket nestled a sheaf of notes for his London colleague that witnessed to the efficiency of his department. The morning was cold but pleasant, with gleams of sunshine filtering down the street, gilding St Baldred’s tower, playing hide and seek in the odd little temples in front of Cudworth, exploring the dusty intricacies of the ornate and incongruous portals of the Museum, straying across the way to Ridley in an effort to brighten up the heavy-featured effigies of Jacobean divines. A group of undergraduates passed in riding-kit: a solitary and exquisite youth, in the most beautiful scarlet slippers, was crossing the street with the evident purpose of breakfasting with a friend in Joseph’s; occasionally a female student, capped and gowned, bicycled hurriedly past in that zealous pursuit of early morning instruction proper to her kind. A small boy was sitting innocently on the doorstep of the Warden of Dorset, selling an occasional newspaper to unenthusiastic purchasers. No one could have guessed that the same boy had been dashing wildly up and down Schools Street the evening before, waving the
Evening Standard
and bawling of the death of Dr Umpleby… The Master of St Timothy’s, venerable, bearded and magnificent, swept down the street on his morning perambulation as he had done every morning these forty years – plainly untroubled either by the decease of his colleague or by the reflection that St Timothy’s rather than St Anthony’s might have been the seat of the crime. It suddenly occurred to Dodd to rejoice that he was not a policeman in Chicago or Sydney or Cardiff. Praising heaven for his lot, he turned down St Ernulphus Lane.

Mr Appleby was to be found in Six-four. Meditating on this unorthodox way of conducting police investigation, Dodd found Six – which was a staircase – passed Six-two with its unacceptable announcement, “The Rev. the Hon. Tracy Deighton-Clerk: Dean,” found Appleby’s temporary quarters and knocked loudly. There was no reply, so Dodd walked in. A big fire was burning ruddily. Appleby’s table was laid for breakfast; Appleby’s coffee was keeping warm on the one side of the fire; a covered dish that was certainly Appleby’s bacon and eggs was keeping warm on the other. But of Appleby himself there was no sign – until Dodd’s eye lighted on a sheet of paper pinned to the inner door. Its message was short and to the point: “Breakfast at nine – J. A.” Dodd looked at his watch. It was just nine-ten. “Well I’m damned!” said Dodd, and was just about to penetrate into the bedroom when Appleby emerged.

“Morning, Dodd,” he said. “Have some coffee? I expect there’s plenty, and fairly warm still.” And then, noticing his colleague’s doubtful glance at his still-bandaged head, he chuckled. “Yes, I’ve been in a rough house all right. Nocturnal rioting in St Anthony’s. The police attacked with sandbags, lead pipes and the butt-ends of heavy revolvers… But I think this picturesque touch might come off now.” And Appleby disposed of the bandage before proceeding to fall upon his coffee and bacon and eggs.

Dodd looked at him wonderingly. “You’ve really been knocked out?”

Appleby nodded. “Knocked out, gently but firmly – and on the very verge of solving the St Anthony’s mystery. I’m in disgrace.” He took a large gulp of coffee and nodded again in solemn assurance. “One of your henchmen will be going home this morning with a sadly diminished respect for the conception of the metropolitan sleuth.”

“Who was it attacked you?”

“I don’t know. But he – or perhaps she? – was the possessor of the tenth key. At least he was, and then I was, and then we did a bit of an exchange. I’ve got his tenth and he’s got my ninth, so to speak. He took it from me after hitting me on the head.”

“Took it from you! And where did you take the tenth from?”

“The lock, Dodd; I found it in the lock. Natural place for a key, no doubt.”

Dodd groaned.

“And, by the way, Dodd, Umpleby’s safe has been burgled – very successfully. Not a thing in it now – to interest us.”

Dodd fairly started to his feet. “Burgled? Who in heaven’s name can have done that? Someone in college?”

“I don’t know.”

The local inspector looked at his colleague for a moment with what might have been positive mistrust. “Have you had
any
light on it – on the whole affair, I mean?”