Death at the President's Lodging Read Online Free PDF

– when attempting to answer the question of which Dodd was perhaps insufficiently aware: Why had Umpleby met his death like a baronet in a snowstorm? There were two tentative answers: (1)because, for some reason, it was useful that way; (2) because it was intellectually amusing that way… Intelligence, after all, had its morbid manifestations.
    Appleby caught himself up. He was trying somewhat wildly, he saw, to find an approach to his problem on a human or psychological plane. He knew it to be at once his strength and his weakness as a detective that he was happier on that plane than on the plane of doors and windows and purloined keys. The materials of the criminologist, he used to declare in theoretical moments to colleagues at Scotland Yard, are not fingerprints and cigarette ends but the human mind as exposed for study in human behaviour. And of human behaviour he had as yet had nothing in the present case. He had been met, so far, not with human actors, but with a set of circumstances – once more the storybook approach, he told himself.
    With an odd effect of thought-reading Dodd spoke. “You’ll be beginning to look for some of the livestock.” And as Appleby, startled by the odd ring of the phrase in the presence of what had been Josiah Umpleby, turned back from the window through which he had been staring, his colleague crossed the room to ring the bell. “We’ll have in a witness,” he said. And the two men adjourned again to the dining-room.

II
    Mr Harold Tapp had been waiting for half an hour to be interviewed in connection with a murder, but he was not in the least nervous as a result. He was a sharp, confident little person; he had all the appearance of being reliable and, according to Dodd, he enjoyed the reputation of being an excellent locksmith. Very little prompting was necessary to get him to give a tolerably connected account of his recent dealings with St Anthony’s. His statement was impressively recorded by a sad and portly sergeant summoned for the purpose.
    “The late Dr Humpleby,” said Mr Tapp, “sent for me a week ago today. To be exack – which is what you want, you know – the late Dr Humpleby gave me a ring-hup.”
    “To be more exact still,” said Appleby, “did Dr Umpleby ring through to you direct, can you tell, or did somebody else make the call before Dr Umpleby spoke?”
    The question found Tapp decided – the only point it was designed to test. Umpleby himself had summoned the locksmith, who had immediately presented himself at the President’s Lodging. “You see,” said Tapp, “the late Dr Humpleby was in a flurry. He was in a nurry and a flurry about them locks. I don’t think flurry’s too strong to describe his ’urry: he was hanxious for the change. He explained the why and wherefore of it too – a nundergrad having been getting hout and all. Hanxious was the late Dr Humpleby.”
    Appleby was regarding Mr Tapp with more interest than he had expected to feel.
    “Well, you see,” continued the locksmith, “it weren’t what you’d call a big job nor it weren’t rightly what you’d call a little ’un. So I fixed yesterday morning for fitting, and the late Doctor said it would serve so. Very interested he was in the way of the work too, and particular over the keys. Very proper notions over keys had the late Doctor. Ten keys there were to be and all going to him direck. And ten he got yesterday morning as soon as the locks were fitted and tested by myself.”
    “Just how did he get them,” asked Dodd; “and just how safe had you been keeping them?”
    “Well, you see, I’d been on them all week myself and done all the assembling and finishing. And the drawing was in the safe, and the locks and keys in the safe, as often as they weren’t in my ’ands. All that’s a nabit, you see, with a nigh-class locksmith. Not that all my business is ’igh-class, you know. Still, this was – and treated accordingly. I fitted the locks yesterday morning and