Death at the President's Lodging (9 page)

This was Professor Curtis, and to Appleby’s ear and mind his perfectly irrelevant interjection had a curious effect. Its innocence – and, in the circumstances, absurdity – threw into sudden clear relief the animus with which the previous play of conversation had somehow been heavy. Pownall’s “
Can you not, Haveland
?” had had it, and now Haveland, ignoring Curtis and the Bohemian legend, squared himself to reply.

“Certainly I can imagine another explanation. There is a concatenation of circumstances that comes to my mind at once. Empson, I think you should give some account of a conversation I had with Umpleby in your presence a month or two ago. You know what I mean. And I don’t think anyone else knows of it.”

“Pownall knows: I told him next day.” Empson had replied impulsively, and seemed to regret it. “I don’t see,” he continued, “that I need give any account of anything here. If you want all that out, out with it yourself.”

The Dean stirred in his seat – half uneasily, half authoritatively. “Haveland,” he said, “is this expedient? If you insist on telling us something, tell us outright.”

“I am going to tell you something outright.” The retort was a neat and venomous imitation of the Dean’s slightly magisterial accents. Haveland was certainly not playing for sympathy: the common-room could be felt to shudder at the impropriety of his tone. But he had controlled himself instantly and now continued unmoved. “I am going to tell you – as Empson seems reluctant to do it – of a certain occasion on which I quarrelled with Umpleby – badly.”

From several quarters there rose protesting murmurs. The Dean, in evident perplexity, half-turned to Appleby. But Appleby seemed lost in absorbed contemplation of the table-edge in front of him. And Haveland continued unchecked.

“It was a matter, of course, of one of Umpleby’s usual thefts.”

If there was anything, Appleby decided, to be discerned in the expressions of the late President’s colleagues at this opening, it was comprehension rather than perplexity. The Dean, however, was moved to some attempt at remonstrance. Haveland – and with a trace of unrestraint – thrust it aside.

“Deighton-Clerk, don’t be a fool. Consider what we are up against. Umpleby, I say, had been stealing again. I needn’t go into it all. Empson was there, and if he were not so uneasy about it could give you a cooler account than I. But I do remember one very definite expression I used.”

Haveland’s fence, Appleby sensed, was full in front of him now. And the whole room seemed to feel the strain that was in the air.

“When I taxed him with it he simply would not meet my point. He talked about his own work among the tombs down the Gulf. And I said I would like to see him immured for good in one of his own grisly sepulchres… That is correct, Empson, is it not?”

Empson made no reply. There was absolute silence. Haveland was impassive still, but even down the candle-lit table Appleby thought he could discern the drops of sweat that stood upon his brow. At length a voice broke the spell.

“
Haveland, what madman’s trick are you suggesting
?”

It was Pownall who spoke. And if there had been silence before, there was utter stillness now. Appleby had the feeling of a sudden horrid sense of understanding, a catastrophic dark enlightenment, running round the table. But Haveland had suddenly got to his feet. He looked directly across at Appleby, and seemed now to address him rather than the room.

“And there you have material for two theories. Titlow said something about ‘incriminating’: you can reflect on that. And Pownall said something about ‘simpler and odder’: you can reflect on that too. Good night.”

And Haveland swung out of the room. For a moment the company sat staring rather blankly at an empty chair. But Deighton-Clerk had whispered to Titlow and Titlow had pressed a bell. Some soothing fragment of ritual was again being resorted to.

The door of the inner common-room was thrown open and the unemotional tones of a servant announced: “Coffee is served!”

The Dean motioned to Appleby and the two of them, together with Titlow, Barocho, and a silent person who had proved to be Dr Gott, passed into the next room – Deighton-Clerk because he was Dean, Appleby because he was the Dean’s guest, Titlow because he was Senior Fellow, Gott because he was at present a proctor and Barocho probably because he had simply forgotten to remain behind. Appleby was helped to coffee by the Dean, and the others helped themselves. Deighton-Clerk made no secret of his distress to Appleby.

“Mr Appleby, it is a horrible business. Pray heaven you clear it up quickly! I am coming to feel some wretched tone or atmosphere spreading itself around us.”

Little more than an hour before Deighton-Clerk had been elaborately impressing upon Appleby, in direct contradiction to the strongest physical appearances, that Umpleby’s death was the deed of some Unknown who had no part or lot in the life of St Anthony’s. Plainly, he was not a little shaken from that confidence – if genuine confidence it had been – now. He had drawn Appleby into a corner and was continuing with increased distress.

“It was a most improper observation of Pownall’s. Even if Haveland was inviting accusation, it ought not to have been put to him by way of insinuation like that. We were all exceedingly shocked.”

Appleby was in the dark as to the significance of this speech, but in a moment the Dean enlightened him. “I am afraid it is my duty to explain to you, Mr Appleby, though it has much upset me. I had quite forgotten… Did I remark earlier this evening when we were speaking of the bones that they were
mad
whereas we in this college were all demonstrably
sane
? At any rate, I think I implied it. And of course I had forgotten – though I was dimly aware of some sinister thing. I had forgotten the trouble poor Haveland had had. Some years ago, Mr Appleby, he had…a severe nervous breakdown, and behaved for a time very oddly. Actually, he was found behaving very oddly among the sarcophagi in the Museum… Where will this lead us?”

It might lead, Appleby thought, in more directions than one – but it did not look, at present, as if it would lead straight out of St Anthony’s.

“There was never any relapse,” the Dean was continuing. “The whole thing has been long ago overlaid and forgotten – until Haveland and Pownall so deliberately dragged it up. You will realize that it has been so when I tell you that Haveland has been regarded as a not unlikely successor to Umpleby – despite the fact that he is, as you know, uncompromising in certain social matters. Haveland’s attack was regarded at the time as the aftermath of war-time strain, and he is a thoroughly equable person.”

There came back to Appleby upon this his first impression of Haveland, shortly before. Was it exactly of an equable person? He was
even
, yes. But was he even as a result of some constant control? Somewhere in the man there was high pressure – and where there is such pressure there may, conceivably, be chronic latent instability.

A few minutes only had passed since the break-up in the other common-room, and now, after the ritual interval, the other St Anthony’s Fellows (who, while divorced from their seniors, had tonight been without the compensating advantage of an extra moment with the port) came in to coffee. The company split into small groups and Appleby presently found himself taken possession of by Professor Curtis. It seemed likely that he alone was to be privileged to hear in full the curious legend of the Bones of Klattau. But it was something else that the
savant
had in his head.

“May I ask, my dear sir,” he began mildly, “if you have ever condescended to interest yourself in the imaginative literature of your profession?”

Curtis, Appleby reflected, should be approaching Dodd. But he answered that he was not altogether ignorant of the field.

“Then,” said Curtis, blinking amiably over the top of his steel-rimmed glasses, “you may be acquainted with Gott’s diversions? I am not giving away any secret here, I think, when I tell you that Gott is Pentreith, you know. I suppose his stories are now fairly well known in the world?”

Appleby agreed that they were, and looked round with interest for so distinguished a story-teller. But Gott, being a proctor, had departed on his nocturnal disciplinary perambulations of the city.

“It is a curious branch of literature,” Curtis was continuing; “and I must confess, I am afraid, to being an indifferent scholar in it. Would you be inclined to maintain that Wilkie Collins has ever been bettered? Or Poe? Not that Poe is not, I always feel, inconsiderable – how curiously his reputation has been foisted on us from France! You younger men, I suppose, have passed beyond the Symbolists? But
The Purloined Letter
now; don’t you think that is a little –
steep
, as they say?”

Appleby agreed that he thought it was. Curtis was delighted.

“I am glad to have my amateur’s opinion – so to speak – professionally endorsed. Yes, I think I should have spotted the letter myself – almost at once. But I wonder if it was Poe’s idea? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the basis of it was as old as the hills, would you? There is an interesting story they relate in the Basque country… But I will tell you that another time, if you will let me. What Poe put it in my mind to say was that these bones we hear of might
neither
be meant to incriminate somebody
nor
be evidence of any sort of mental unbalance. Not of mental unbalance in the strict sense, I mean. They might be – how shall I put it? – some perfectly sane man’s idea of the humorously grotesque… Do you know Goya’s sketches? In the – dear me, what are they called? Barocho, those war-things of Goya’s…”

And Professor Curtis wandered away.

Looking round the room, Appleby now saw standing conveniently in one group three members of the common-room of whom he as yet knew nothing: Lambrick, Campbell and Chalmers-Paton. He was particularly interested in Lambrick, the married member of the college who retained a key to the fatal gates. And something about Campbell was familiar. Feeling that he might usefully pile up a little more in the way of impressions before retiring to sort them out, he approached this group and was presently sitting smoking and talking with them. Nothing could well have been more irregular. But St Anthony’s had enough of its own conventions to care very little, it seemed, for those of the world. The college was taking it for granted that it should treat a detective-officer come up to investigate a murder just as it would treat an architect come up to design it a new kitchen or an Academician making watercolours of its courts. It was an attitude that made a superior technique of investigation possible, and Appleby was not going to quarrel with it.

The conversation was running on the proctorial activities of Gott. The walk from hall to common-room had revealed a raw, unpleasant night, cold and with a lurking vapour that caught at the throat. And to Appleby’s companions, comfortably smoking cigarettes in large leather chairs, with a leaping fire, more generous even than in the outer common-room, pleasantly warming their legs, the thought of their colleague pacing round the streets at the head of a little bevy of university police appeared to be particularly gratifying.

“Think of it,” Lambrick, a large dreamy mathematician with a primitive sense of the humorous, was saying; “in he goes to the Case is Altered – two men drinking egg-hot – men duly proctorized and out goes Gott into the night, thinking of egg-hot. He goes across the way to the Mucky Duck (good pub that) – two men playing shove-halfpenny over a little rum shrub – proctorized – and out comes Gott thinking both of rum shrub and shove-halfpenny (capital hand he is, too). Over he goes to that flash place at the Berklay – half a dozen smart men having a little quick champagne. Old Gott half hoping for a rough house. ‘Your name and college, sir?’ – all answer like lambs. Then out again to prowl around that college next my tailor’s (never can remember its name) until the Hammer and Sickle Club is out and safely tucked away in bed. What a life!”

“Did you ever hear,” asked Campbell, who was a dark and supple Scot, “did you ever hear how Curtis when he was Senior Proctor proctorized the Archbishop of York?”

It was an excellent anecdote, but over-elaborate for Lambrick, who vanished suddenly as he sat into some impalpable mathematical world. But Chalmers-Paton kept the theme going by remembering an exploit of Campbell’s. “I say, Campbell, do you remember your climb up St Baldred’s Tower after that pot?” And despite something approaching positive displeasure on Campbell’s part Chalmers-Paton told the story. It represented Campbell as a daring, even reckless man – and as a skilled climber. And then Appleby remembered.

“You went high, didn’t you,” he quietly asked the Scot, “in the Himalaya in ’twenty-six?”

Campbell flushed and seemed for a moment almost disconcerted. “I was there,” he said at length. “Didn’t you and I once do the Pillar Rock together when I hit your party in Wasdale?”

Appleby in his turn admitted to this – much as he might have admitted to Mr Bradman that they had once played rounders together at a Sunday School picnic. But a subject had been started, and for a few minutes there was climbers’ talk. Then Appleby dropped a casual question.

“Is there any roof-climbing in St Anthony’s in these days?”

“I believe not,” replied Chalmers-Paton. “A few years ago there was a club, but undergraduates come and go, and I believe it has lapsed.”