Death at the President's Lodging (30 page)

What else fitted? Pownall’s own story, offered to explain away the fatal doctoring of the carpet, had possessed one significant element: it had contrived to point at Haveland even while it cleared Pownall himself. Haveland – such had been the suggestion – killed Umpleby, became aware that he had failed in a scheme to incriminate his neighbour and then by some sudden freak of mind abandoned concealment and virtually signed his own name to the murder by leaving the bones. And two other facts fitted. It was Pownall who along with Empson had known of Haveland’s wishing the President “immured in a grisly sepulchre.” It was Pownall who, in an outburst of his own, had addressed Umpleby as “a most capital murderee.”

And now, what did
not
fit? Here Appleby gave himself a caution. Everything needn’t fit – there lay the difference between his activities and Gott’s. In a sound story everything
worried over
in the course of the narrative must finally cohere. But in life there were always loose ends, minor puzzles that were never cleared up, details that never found their place. And particularly was this so, Appleby had found, of
impressions
: things at one time felt as significant in the course of a case simply faded out. And yet… Appleby liked his smallest detail to fit, his impressions stage by stage to demonstrate themselves as having been in line with the facts.

First among the elements that didn’t fit was Slotwiner’s statement that he had heard the arrival of the bones between a quarter and ten to eleven. That was a little too early if Pownall were to set out only after he was sure of Haveland’s having got back from Deighton-Clerk’s. But on a matter of two or three minutes, too much emphasis must not be laid. Next was this still obscure story of Gott’s pupil. Was it another red herring? If he had it accurately (but it had come to him in too roundabout a way for much confidence as to this) it seemed too closely linked to the case to be something incidental and insignificant. Someone, not a dweller in Little Fellows’, had come out of the study
just before
eleven
. And that somebody possessed a secret means of getting in and out of St Anthony’s. It was an unsettling complication and the sooner young Mr Edwards was interrogated the better.

There was another element that didn’t fit. It was Titlow and not Pownall whom this same undergraduate recollected as having, just a year ago, impounded Boosey Somebody’s fireworks. But there was nothing very significant in this: the whole firework theory was unnecessary, represented indeed no more than an ingenious guess in the dark. There was no real reason to exclude two genuine revolver shots, even two revolvers. The more Appleby reviewed his facts the less substantial opposition did they seem to present to the reconstruction he had just built up. Apart from what might well prove a mere undergraduate joke, there was really
no
solid material objection. It was certain impressions merely, difficult to assign a just weight to, that continued to cause obstinate misgivings. Until these – or the more assertive of these – were fitted into place, the case, although it might
do
, would leave Appleby uneasy.

But often, he reiterated to himself, he had been obliged to discount mere impressions towards the end of an investigation: why was he so reluctant to do so now? And presently he believed himself to have penetrated to the source of his doubts. More vividly than usual, he had been impressed at St Anthony’s by a number of personalities and he was reluctant to lose sight of any of them. The picture of Pownall plotting against Haveland did not, on this plane of impressions, take in nearly enough: it ignored sundry moments in his contacts with this man and that in which he had sensed himself as at the end of
some
thread leading to the heart of the case. Most vividly before him now was that fraction of a second in which Empson had hung mysteriously suspended between a “yes” and “no” – mysteriously, because in a matter in which he had proved to be without power to prevaricate. And there had been similar moments with Titlow – even with Slotwiner… Slotwiner startled by the mention of candles. The spot of grease. The
Deipnosophists
. A length of wire. Something noticed about the revolver… With these things Appleby’s mind had come back to material factors: material factors which, without positively being obstacles, yet did not
fit in
.

He had been pacing the river’s bank in deep abstraction. But something suddenly made him aware of his surroundings – the rhythmical but laborious passage of an eight up the stream. It might, he idly speculated, be the St Anthony’s boat, and in relief from his absorption he gave a critical eye to the oarsmanship. The crew seemed near the end of a longish spell; the boat was rolling slightly; the cox, a shrill and improperly plump little person, was doing his best to hold things together. “Drive…drive…drive;
in
…out,
in
…out,
in
…out…” And the next moment a deeper voice shouted startlingly close to Appleby’s ear; it was the coach darting past on a bicycle. “Eyes in the boat, Two.
Late
, Six.
Late
, Six. One…two…three…four… five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten…
Drop
them, Six!”

Drop them, Six! That was another moment that stood out: Pownall’s curious insistence on beginning his story with an almost detailed account of a dream. How could he feel such a thing significant, if he were innocent? What purpose could it be meant to serve, if he were guilty? If he were guilty… And here Appleby found himself confronted by the real crux. Why should this rather dim ancient historian shoot Umpleby? Why should he commit the unspeakable crime of fastening the deed on an innocent man? Those psychological probabilities which Gott had very properly refused to discuss – they made the really baffling feature of the case. There was only one reasonably probable core to the thing – and the facts would not fit it. Unless…unless a key lay, as he had mockingly hinted to Gott, in De Quincey’s anecdote of Kant – that queer pointer given him by Titlow…

Presently he had left the river and struck into winding country lanes. He liked nothing better than to do his thinking during a lonely ramble. And the thought of his solitude striking him now, he remembered Dodd’s facetious injunction to avoid being hit on the head again in the course of a woodland walk. It hardly seemed a very likely contingency; Appleby’s eye roved whimsically and appreciatively over the peaceful countryside around him. And in doing so it became aware of a succession of interesting circumstances.

The first was an old gentleman pedalling past on a bicycle – not a likely assailant, but an object of some curiosity as soon as Appleby had recognized a Fellow of St Anthony’s. It was the venerable Professor Curtis, looking so absent that Appleby marvelled that he did not pedal placidly into the ditch. Perhaps he was meditating some interesting detail in the curious legend of the bones of Klattau. Conceivably he was pondering the equally curious fact of the bones of Haveland’s aborigines. But if he looked absent he also it occurred to Appleby, looked curiously expectant – a happy expectancy rather like that of a small child going to a party.

Curtis had pedalled about a hundred yards ahead, oblivious of Appleby, when the latter, happening to glance behind him, observed a car just coming into view round a bend in the lane. Appleby slipped into the hedge to observe, for to a policeman at least there is something singular in a powerful car doing a resolute eight miles an hour. It was a reticently magnificent De Dion; it contained three intent youths of vaguely familiar appearance; and it was keeping laboriously in the wake of the gently bicycling professor. The procession represented, it sufficiently appeared, Gott’s pupil and Gott’s pupil’s friends “on the trail.” It was a trail which Appleby could follow too. Letting the De Dion get a little way ahead, he fell in behind at a brisk walking pace. The November afternoon was chilly, with a light but keen wind blowing: what might be important business and what was certainly beneficial exercise had come conveniently together.

But the walk was scarcely stretching. In something over a mile Appleby came up with the car, abandoned by the side of the road. Proceeding some fifty yards further, he came upon a cottage standing some way back from the lane in the seclusion of a sizeable, trimly hedged garden. Moving to the gate, Appleby could see Curtis’ bicycle standing by the front door and Curtis’ trackers crouching picture-squely by one of the windows. But even as this sight presented itself to him the young men scrambled up and began to beat a retreat – not precipitately as if they had been discovered, but rapidly nevertheless as if in some discomfiture. Reaching the gate they fairly bolted into Appleby’s arms. Mr Bucket exclaimed distractedly: “It’s the detective!” The detective’s eye ran critically over the trio and singled out his man. “Mr Edwards?” he asked crisply.

“I’m Edwards.” The young man as he replied edged a little further away from the garden gate.

Appleby went straight the point. “Mr Edwards, do you assert that you saw Professor Curtis leave Dr Umpleby’s study about eleven o’clock on Tuesday night?”

Mr Edwards answered readily, as on a resolution taken long ago. “Yes, I did.”

“You are certain?”

Again Mr Edwards was ready – and intelligent. “Quite certain. It was long chances seeing anything and very long recognizing. But I did.”

“And now what is happening here?” Appleby’s gesture indicated the cottage.

But this time Mr Edwards, like his companions, was uncommonly confused. “Something that I’m awfully afraid is none of our business… As a matter of fact, sir, I think it’s what might be called the lady in the case.”

Appleby, without superfluous delicacy, strode up the garden path to the window. It gave upon a scene of domestic felicity. Professor Curtis was consuming tea before a large fire; perched on the arm of his chair and plying him with muffins was a youthfully mature lady – the sole glimpse of femininity that the St Anthony’s mystery affords.

“It was quite true,” Dodd greeted Appleby on the latter’s return to college, “it was quite true; I should have spotted it.”

“Spotted Curtis’ bolt-hole?”

Dodd stared. “You’ve found out?”

“I know who was the owner, but not quite what he owned: tell me.”

“Well,” said Dodd, “it was pretty tricky, but I oughtn’t to have guaranteed St Anthony’s as watertight all the same. Curtis’ rooms look out on a little blind alley off St Ernulphus Lane. His windows are barred like all the rest – but if you go out there you’ll find, just next door to them, a sort of coal-hole in the wall. It’s quite firmly bolted on the inside. And then when you come into the court to investigate you find that the cellar is the breadth of the building, and that the door to the court is securely locked. The porter has the key. But when I thought that there was an end to the matter I didn’t reckon with the queer way these places are often built. What has Curtis, whose rooms are next door, got, if you please, but a door of his own opening straight into the cellar – so that he can help himself, no doubt, to a lump of coal when he wants it? Not that there is any coal kept there now, incidentally; it’s just a nice, clean, empty space. And all that old reprobate had to do was to slip in there, unbolt the outer door, and amble quietly away.”

Appleby laughed. “I don’t know yet that he’s exactly an old reprobate – but I suspect he has some interesting information to give.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“I came across him in the course of my walk. He was a bit occupied, but I’ve arranged to see him in his rooms presently. Any further news here?”

Dodd nodded. “Gott’s out.” He spoke half-regretfully, as if the drama of having the celebrated Pentreith really implicated in a murder were something to be abandoned with reluctance. “A perfectly flat and simple piece of routine work has ousted him. A certain Mrs Preston cleans the proctors’ office, usually between seven and nine in the morning. But her daughter was to be married on Wednesday, so she did some of the cleaning late on Tuesday night instead – taking care not to be seen by the gentlemen. But
she
saw
them
. And she was aware of Gott off and on from the time he arrived till the time he went out again after the return of the Senior Proctor.”

“Unexciting but conclusive,” Appleby agreed. “And Ransome?”

“Ransome was in the bun-shop all right. Made a great fuss, it seems, about his tea – and forgot to drink it when he got it. He sat scribbling until a bit after a quarter past eleven and then suddenly rushed out as if he had remembered something. It all squares. And now, what’s to be done next?”

“Done next, Dodd? Nothing more – except a chat with Curtis and a lot of thinking. We shan’t get any more evidence, you know.”

“No more evidence?”

“I think not. As I see it, I don’t know what further evidence – Curtis apart – there can be.”

“Well,” said Dodd doubtfully, “as long, of course, as you
see
it–”

At this moment there came a knock at the door and a junior porter brought in a telegram. Appleby tore it open – and for Dodd his expression became a gratifying study.

“The revolver,” he said. “It has Empson’s prints too.”

“It has always appeared to me,” began Professor Curtis, “that on retiring from my Fellowship here I could not do better than settle down. Actually, as you see, my marriage, although it is of recent date, has preceded that retirement.”