Death at the President's Lodging (24 page)

Gott’s denial was again absolute, and this time somewhat surprised.

“Mr Gott, you said just now that the burglary was a foolish proceeding. And the coincidence of the murder was really something rather appalling. What possessed you to persevere in the undertaking the next night?”

“Obstinacy,” replied Gott, “and opportunity.”

“You mean the fact that you still had one key between you?”

“Exactly. The police had collected nine keys, and we had the tenth. I thought, incidentally, that your knowledge that there was a tenth key somewhere might make you keep up a regular staff of guards. But it didn’t… Well, there we were with access to Orchard Ground – and more or less to the study – still. And no one knew. We met yesterday afternoon and arranged the second attempt. It was a perfectly simple plan this time. Ransome had the key and at twelve-fifteen he was to enter Orchard Ground by the wicket. It was risky because, as I say, you might well have had men on guard. But somehow we had got dead keen… He was then to open the west gate on Bishop’s and let me into the orchard. And then we were to do what we could.

“It all went well – at any rate, at first. We broke into the study and got the papers from the safe–”

“You knew about the safe? You knew the combination?”

“I knew where there was something – that was all. I had had a sufficient prowl in Umpleby’s study, long before, to spot that faked shelf. I guessed there might be a safe–”

“And were confident you could get it open? Even in stories that is surely difficult?”

Gott grinned. “I trusted to my wits. That was why I had to be on the burglary myself. Writing thrillers – and perhaps, as you suggest, my bibliographical training – has given me a certain facility… Anyway, it
was
a safe, and I
did
get it open – didn’t I?”

All Gott’s simple pleasure in his narrative had returned. Appleby scrapped his official reserves. “My dear man,” he said, “in heaven’s name
how
? Are you going to tell me you listened with a microphone to the fall of the tumblers – and all that? Perhaps you did. You broke into the study by a next to impossible storybook method – canvas and treacle, heaven preserve us! – and perhaps you got into the safe as absurdly?”

“No,” replied Gott modestly, “I didn’t listen to anything. I just looked.”

“Looked! What at?”

“At the faked shelf – and on evidence of Umpleby’s whimsicality of mind. You won’t remember the particular dummy books represented on the shelf?”

“Long narrow shelf with about fifty volumes of the British essayists,” Appleby responded promptly. His memory was often photographic.

“Exactly. The spines of fifty little volumes all neatly glued on a board. Perhaps you didn’t happen to look at the last ten closely?”

“No, I didn’t!”

Gott beamed. “I did. And they were out of order. Not actual volumes out of order, remember – but dummies
fixed on
out of order. Something like 49, 43, 46, 41, 47, 42, 50, 45, 48, 44. In other words, a handily placed record for Umpleby that the combination of his little safe was 9361720584. Elementary, my dear–”

“–Watson,” concluded Appleby, and knocked out his pipe. “And as you say, a trick displaying your late President as a man of whimsical mind.” He filled his pipe again and pushed across his tobacco tin. He was becoming disposed to a good deal of further conversation with the celebrated Mr Pentreith… “And now,” he prompted presently, “we come to a matter of some little delicacy.”

Gott pointed to the laundry basket that still cumbered the lobby. “It was Ransome done it,” he said, “and you can’t say he hasn’t had tit for tat… If it isn’t an improper thing to say of a colleague, Ransome is a little pig-headed. He would not go straight out of college with his precious papers; he must come to my room for a drink to celebrate our victory – a victory over a dead man, come to think of it. So out we both came into Bishop’s and at the gate he said something about his fixing the lock and my scouting ahead. I went ahead – and gathered afterwards that the silly ass not only left the gate open because it squeaked, but actually left the key in the blasted lock.”

Appleby chuckled. “It was a number one size slip and puzzled me rather. I can see that you wouldn’t have much confidence in Ransome as a single-handed cracksman. Not that he can’t crack a skull with very pretty judgment. But perhaps you were standing by directing?”

“No, I wasn’t. It would never occur to me to hit a man on the head – except in fiction. Much too chancey. In Ransome’s circumstances I think I should simply have given myself up, or thought of a plausible lie. But he seems to have acted pretty smartly. He found his way of escape guarded, hovered around until he got on your tracks – and you lost the key again.”

“I lost a different key.”

“Ah, then he made yet another slip. Not much finesse about Ransome, but good in a tight place.”

“If it’s not a laundry basket,” said Appleby. And then he added, “But why should Ransome be hanging about in the neighbourhood in that fancy disguise today?”

“I put him in the disguise originally myself,” Gott replied. “I’m interested in disguises – how far they can really be made to work and so forth. Ransome had a naïve confidence in the whiskers and when he got a bit scared as a result of having hit a celebrated
agent policier
on top he decided to continue to lie low for a bit where he was. And very comfortable quarters he had taken up – until our young friends found him.”

Gott had risen and was prowling about the room. Coming to the bookcase he found himself confronted, as had Appleby the night before, with
Trent’s Last Case
. He picked up this bible of his craft and, opening it at random, seemed absorbed for a space of minutes. Then he snapped the book shut and spoke.

“And now do you believe all this, I wonder? I
could
, you know, make up several tales to fit the facts, quite as quickly as speaking. Do you happen to believe the tale I’ve told you?”

Appleby puffed at his pipe in silence, pondering.
Appleby’s Greatest Case
…and
Appleby’s
Most Irregular Case
as well. He was prompted to take a risk – but only because some final judgment in himself, a judgment in which he had faith, told him that it was no risk at all.

“I believe your tale,” he said, “
verbatim et litteratim
.”

“And that I’ve kept nothing up my sleeve?”

“And that you’ve kept nothing up your sleeve.”

“Then,” said Gott blandly as if in reward for this profession of confidence, “then it only remains for us to find the real murderer. And now, if I’m truly not under arrest, I will just slip across and fetch a little beer… Mild or bitter, Appleby?”

“Bitter, Gott.”

The reflections in which Appleby indulged as he sat waiting the return of the St Anthony’s burglar and the St Anthony’s beer were of mingled satisfaction and exasperation. The rat had really been a red herring. Its investigation had resulted in the acquisition possibly of a valuable ally – but was he any farther forward with the case itself? The answer seemed to be that he was, but not so much so as he had hoped.

To begin with there were now certain eliminations. Campbell was out. His alibi at the Chillingworth for the relevant times was absolute. The vision of that eminent mountaineer scaling St Anthony’s in order to murder its President was dispersed. Chalmers-Paton was out: the advanced hour of the murder made his alibi unquestionably hold. Gott was surely out. A man who planned a perfect burglary for midnight would not precede it by an imperfect murder – a murder, that was to say, which on the face of it he might quite easily have committed. Murder before eleven followed by an alibi for twelve made nonsense. And if Dodd or another should say that here was no sufficient ground for counting Gott out – well, Gott would be under pretty close observation.

What held of Gott held, in a way, of Ransome. And yet not altogether so. If Gott had proposed to murder Umpleby the whole burglary plot as he had contrived it would have been pointless – simply a following-up of murder with a risky joke. If Ransome had proposed to murder Umpleby the burglary plot would have had its place in the scheme –
for it had procured Ransome access to Orchard
Ground
. But even so the
inception
of the burglary plot could have had no point for a Ransome projecting murder: it could have become a factor only after the changing of the locks… Appleby permitted himself to record an impression that Ransome would prove to be out, but this time it was an impression to which he could not with confidence attach any weight. Ransome’s movements on the fatal night, his movements in the period before he met Gott with the intelligence of his alleged interrupted reconnaissance at eleven-thirty, would have to be scrutinized. There was no physical reason why Ransome might not have entered the college and murdered Umpleby.

Entered the college… In Ransome’s known ability to do this lay the real progress that had been made through the elucidation of the red herring. Ransome had had the tenth key. And with the tenth key
placed
came the most significant elimination of all. The element of the wholly unknown was now excluded. Umpleby had been murdered by, or through the connivance of one or more of a known group of people. Who?

“Who killed Umpleby?” It was Gott who spoke. Laden with considerable quantities of refreshment, he had just closed the outer door and was negotiating the laundry basket. He appeared innocently to be seeking information.

“Umpleby,” Appleby reiterated aloud, “was murdered by, or through the connivance of one or more of a known group of people. On the face of it, the people who may have murdered him are Deighton-Clerk, Haveland, Empson, Pownall, Ransome, the head porter, yourself. Any one of these might also have connived at his murder – made it possible, I mean, by providing some other person with a key. The people who, without themselves seemingly being in a position to commit the murder, might have conspired towards it in the same way are Titlow and Lambrick. And Slotwiner must be considered.”

“What of Mr X the locksmith?” Gott offered.

“Sufficiently eliminated.”

“Eliminate locksmith. Eliminate, for purposes of useful discussion between you and me, Gott. Eliminate the head porter, who will have an alibi – and who didn’t murder Umpleby anyway, nor connive and conspire. Eliminate Slotwiner; one should always eliminate the servants early, I think. The shadowy suspicious butler is inevitably a bore–”

“But have you any reason for eliminating Slotwiner apart from these dramatic proprieties?”

“Well, in his restrained way Slotwiner was quite devoted to Umpleby and most unlikely to plot his murder. But I don’t see why you say he must be considered. He had no key himself and he doesn’t seem to have had a chance to smuggle a confederate out through the Lodging.”

Appleby nodded. “All right. Say I was wrong to include him among the possibles – on the face of it.”

Gott showed that he was not unaware of the significant reiterated phrase. But for the moment he pursued his own theme. “Eliminate Slotwiner
pro tem
. And that leaves us with seven suspects – quite enough. And a good mystic number at the same time. Come to think of it, not a bad title.
Seven
Suspects
. They need handling, though, when one runs as many as that. And they’re bound some of them to remain a bit dim.”

Gott’s hobby-horsical vein lasted only until he had apportioned the beer and settled himself down opposite Appleby with a pencil and a sheet of foolscap. Murder and mysterious crime were associated in his mind with recreation and amusement: now he seemed to turn to them a mind as serious and concentrated as that which he was accustomed to give to the problems of the sixteenth-century printing-house.

“This business of conspiracy,” he said, “of
A
giving his key to
B
. On the probabilities, that is really a second line of investigation, is it not? Deighton-Clerk here or Lambrick at home handing a key to a hired assassin…?”

Appleby took up the implied unlikelihood. “Yes,” he said. “I agree. It brings in a sort of First Murderer in a very unlikely way. Not that the whole affair is not unlikely enough.”

Gott smiled. “So Deighton-Clerk has impressed on me – and on you too, no doubt. He sees me as the spiritual father of the crime. Like the painter who invents an improbable type of beauty – and sees it appear in the flesh in the next generation… But after all such things
do
happen. There was a most horrid murder in this very college in 1483.”

“A precedent,” said Appleby, “is comforting, no doubt. But to stick to the probabilities of conspiracy: obviously the securing of an alibi for oneself would be as nothing against the risk of plotting with anyone who could be conceived as a ruffian hired for the purpose. But what of a conspiracy between colleagues here, based on the fact that colleague
A
has a key and colleague
B
not? The murder is committed the very day the keys are changed – in other words the keys are deliberately
thrust
into prominence. Say then that
A
gives his key to
B
, who murders Umpleby.
A
has an alibi and we have practically to prove the conspiracy before we can demonstrate that
B
had access to the crime.”