Death at the President's Lodging Read Online Free PDF Page B

then I saw Dr Humpleby ’imself and gave him the ten keys as required. And from the moment I set file to them to the moment I ’anded them hover every one of them keys ’ad been treated like a bag of golden sovereigns. And they’re not a thing you often see nowadays,” Mr Tapp concluded somewhat irrelevantly.
    A little questioning substantiated the fact that the new locks and keys had been prepared under completely thief-proof conditions. Appleby’s problem of “provenance” was proving very simple indeed. He turned to the point in Tapp’s statement which had particularly arrested his interest. “You say that Dr Umpleby appeared anxious about the keys and gave you a reason – something about an undergraduate? Just how anxious was he? Would you describe him as agitated – really worried about the matter?”
    Tapp answered at once. “Hagitated, sir, I wouldn’t nor couldn’t rightly say. But he was in a nurry and a flurry – and that I do say.”
    Appleby was patient. “Not really agitated, but flurried. I wonder if you can make that a little clearer? Agitation and flurry seem to me very much the same thing. Perhaps you can give me a clearer idea of what you mean by flurry?”
    Tapp reflected for a moment. “Well, you see, sir,” he said at length, “by flurry I wouldn’t quite mean scurry, and by scurry I would mean hagitation. I ’ope that’s clear. And certainly Dr Humpleby was in a nurry .”
    This was as much information as was to be obtained from the locksmith and, after he had signed a correctly aspirated version of it prepared by the lugubrious sergeant he was dismissed.
    “Just how odd is it,” asked Appleby, “that Umpleby should give the excellent Tapp reasons for changing the locks and keys? I don’t see that, Dodd, do you? It strikes me as just a shade queer. It’s a queerness that may be nothing more than a minute queerness of character. I may be noticing only a minute way in which Umpleby’s behaviour has differed from the dead normal behaviour of a dead average Head of a House – or I may be noticing something much more significant. And the same thing applies to the other interesting point – that Umpleby was in what our friend called a flurry about the business; that he was within some recognizable distance, measured by flurries and scurries, of being agitated.”
    “There’s something strikes me as more significant than that.” Dodd was very stolid. “There was an extra key.”
    Appleby gave his second whistle of the afternoon. “Your point again! The Dean, Empson, Gott, Haveland, Lambrick, Pownall, Titlow, one for the head porter… Hullo! That’s only eight. Surely there were two extra keys?”
    Dodd shook his head. “The head porter got one for his ring and another went as a spare in the safe in his lodge. But one key does remain to be accounted for. And an awkward complication it makes.”
    “Umpleby himself perhaps kept a key?”
    Dodd again made a negative gesture. “I don’t think so. At least he never, according to the Dean, used to. He had no need of one. He could walk out of his own Lodging into either Orchard Ground or the main courts. And similarly his own back-door let him out on the street. And, of course, we’ve found no key in his belongings.”
    “A missing key,” murmured Appleby. “Do you know, I’m rather pleased about the missing key. It represents a screw loose somewhere – and so far your submarine has been screwed down uncomfortably tight.” But he was speaking absently, and pacing about as he spoke. Then, with a sudden gesture of impatience, he led the way back to the study.

III
    The black gown which had been found swathed round the President’s head, and which had been replaced there, following police routine, after the police-surgeon had certified life to be extinct, Appleby now carefully removed. It was caked with blood, but only slightly, and Appleby laid it on a chair. He gazed with some curiosity at the dead President. Umpleby’s