Death at the President's Lodging Read Free Page B

then retired to his pantry off the hall. Slotwiner more or less had his eye on the hall during the next half-hour and nobody, he says, entered the study that way, and nobody came out. In other words, there was only one way into – or out of – the study during that period – by way of the French windows that give on Orchard Ground.”
    “The so-securely locked Orchard Ground,” murmured Appleby.
    Dodd took up the implications of the other’s tone perceptively enough. “Exactly. I suppose our first clue is just that – that we have to deal, from the outset, with so obviously artificial a situation. But here meantime is this butler, Slotwiner, in his pantry. The pantry is a mere nook of a place and normally he would have gone downstairs to where he has a room of his own beside the kitchens. But apparently on this night of the week, Mr Titlow – that’s the senior Fellow – has been in the habit of calling on the President for a short talk on college business. He comes regularly just on eleven – pretty late, it seems to me, for a call, but the idea was that each could get in a couple of hours’ work after the usual common-room convivialities were over. I believe, you know, that these folk do quite an amount of work in their own way. Well, Slotwiner waited upstairs to let Titlow in. He had to unlock the front door – this one opening on Bishop’s Court – because, as you remember, he had locked it along with the other two doors at ten o’clock, following the rule in Umpleby’s household. Titlow turned up as usual on the stroke of eleven and he and Slotwiner were just exchanging a word in the hall when they heard the shot.”
    “The shot coming, no doubt,” said Appleby, “from the study where Umpleby was supposed to be sitting solus ?”
    “Exactly so. And he was solus – or rather his corpse was – when Titlow and Slotwiner rushed into the room. Umpleby was shot; there was – if we are to believe these two – no weapon; but the French windows giving on Orchard Ground were ajar. Well, Titlow and Slotwiner (or one of them – I don’t know which) tumbled to the situation surprisingly quickly. They saw it was murder and they saw the significance of Orchard Ground. If the murderer had escaped that way he was there still, unless – what didn’t occur to them – he had the key to those gates.”
    The inspector picked up a pencil this time and ran it over the plan. Very laboriously, once more, he made his cardinal point. “You’ll see how certain that is,” he said, “when you get out there. On these three sides Orchard Ground is bounded either by an exceedingly high wall or by an arrangement of combined wall and railings that is higher still. The fourth side has the President’s Lodging here at one end and the college chapel at the other, with the hall and library in between. These make a line of buildings that separated Orchard Ground from Bishop’s Court, and there are just two passages through: one between chapel and library and the other between hall and President’s Lodging. The only other exit from Orchard Ground is by a little wicket gate opening on Schools Street. And all three exits were, of course, locked. Escape from Orchard Ground without the key was impossible.
    “So you see Titlow and Slotwiner decided they’d got the murderer safe. They didn’t think he could get out because they didn’t think he could have the key to those three gates. And they didn’t think he could have a key because it didn’t occur to them to think of a Fellow of the college.
    “I suspect Slotwiner of taking the initiative. He’s an old soldier and would be up to an emergency, whereas Titlow seems a dreamy soul enough. But Titlow’s got guts. The look of that room was pretty surprising, but he stuck there guarding the window while Slotwiner ran to the telephone in the hall and got the porters across, called a doctor and got on to us. I was at the station late working at reports of my own case and I got