Death at the President's Lodging

By Michael Innes

A Scotland Yard inspector holds the key when a college professor is shot behind a series of locked gates in this classic British mystery series opener.

The usually quiet campus of St. Anthony’s College is abuzz with talk of murder. Someone shot Prof. Josiah Umpleby, the college’s president, in his room during the night. Word spreads all the way to London, and Insp. John Appleby of New Scotland Yard is dispatched to consult on the case.

The local authorities are already occupied with a string of burglaries and could use the help with this unusual death. Appleby learns that at night, the campus gates are locked, and a section of the college is shut off from the rest. In other words, someone would need a key to reach the president, and that limits Appleby’s suspects down to seven.

Now Appleby must keep his wits about him as he combs the grounds for clues. The killer is still on the loose, and they need to be taught a lesson . . .

Originally published under the title Seven Suspects

Praise for Michael Innes & Death at the President’s Lodging

“One of the best detective novels.” —The Scotsman

“A brilliant newcomer.” —News Chronicle (UK)

“Quite the most accomplished first crime-novel that I have read.” —C. Day Lewis, Daily Mail

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: May 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781504087919

Book preview

Chapter Two

It had been a quarter past two when the great yellow Bentley swung out of New Scotland Yard; it drew up outside St. Anthony’s just as four o’clock was chiming from a score of bells. Seldom, Inspector John Appleby reflected, had he been so expeditiously dispatched to investigate a case of presumed murder beyond the metropolitan area. And indeed, his arrival in the Yard’s most resplendent vehicle was sign and symbol of august forces having been at work: that morning the Dean of St. Anthony’s had hastily seen the Vice-Chancellor; the Vice-Chancellor had no less hastily telephoned to the Lord Chancellor of England, High Steward of the university; the Lord Chancellor had communicated quite briskly with the Home Secretary. . . . It was not unlikely, Appleby thought as he jumped out of the car, that local authority might feel central authority to have been pitched somewhat abruptly at its head. He was therefore relieved when, on being shown by a frightened parlourmaid into the deceased President’s dining-room, he discovered local authority incarnated in no more formidable shape than that of an old acquaintance, Inspector Dodd.

These two men offered an interesting contrast—the contrast not so much of two generations (although Appleby was by full twenty years the younger) as of two epochs of English life. Dodd, heavy, slow, simply bred, and speaking with such a dialectical purity that a philologist might have named the parish in which he was born, suggested an England fundamentally rural still—and an England in which crime, when it occurred, was clear and brutal, calling less for science and detective skill than for vigorous physical action. He had learned a routine, but he was essentially untrained and unspecialized, relying upon a pithy if uncertain native shrewdness, retaining something strong and individual in his mental, as in his linguistic, idiom. Beside him, Appleby’s personality seemed at first thin, part effaced by some long discipline of study, like a surgeon whose individuality has concentrated itself within the channels of a unique operative technique. For Appleby was the efficient product of a more developed age than Dodd’s; of an age in which our civilization, multiplying its elements by division, has produced, amid innumerable highly-specialized products, the highly-specialized criminal and the highly-specialized detector of crime. Nevertheless, there was something more in Appleby than the intensely taught product of a modern police college. A contemplative habit and a tentative mind, poise as well as force, reserve rather than wariness—these were the tokens perhaps of some underlying, more liberal education. It was a schooled but still free intelligence that was finally formidable in Appleby, just as it was something of tradition and of the soil that was finally formidable in Dodd.

The two men were likely enough to clash; with a little goodwill they were equally likely to combine. And now Dodd, for all his fifteen stone and an uncommon tiredness (he had been working on the case since early morning), sprang up with decent cordiality to welcome his colleague. The detective arrives, he said with a deep chuckle when greetings had been exchanged, and the village policeman hands over the body with all the misunderstood clues to date. As he spoke, Dodd turned towards the table, on which a pile of papers evinced his industry during the day. They were flanked on the one hand by a hastily-made but sufficiently clear ground-plan of the college and on the other by the remains of bread and cheese, and beer in stout academic pewter—refreshments which it had occurred to Dr. Umpleby’s servants, round about three o’clock, that the inspector might stand a little in need of. The St. Anthony’s beer, Dodd said, is a good feature of the case. The village policeman is baffled, but he gets his pint.

Appleby smiled. The village policeman has notably mastered his facts, he replied, at least if he’s the same policeman I knew a couple of years ago. The Yard still talks about your check-up on those motor-thieves . . . you remember?

Dodd’s acknowledgment of the compliment in the reminiscence took the form of wasting no time now. Drawing up a chair for Appleby he placed the pile of papers between them. I’ve been going a bit fast today, he said abruptly, and what I’ve got here is limited by going fast. It’s short all round but it gives us bearings. There has been ground enough to cover, and first on the spot must get quickly over all, you’ll agree. I’ve taken dozens of statements in a hasty way. Any one of them might have put me direct on somebody making out of the country. But none of them has. It’s a mystery right enough, Appleby. In other words, it looks like one of your cases, not mine.

Dodd’s handsome speech was sincere but not wholly disinterested. Fortified by the St. Anthony’s ale, he had been spending the last hour thinking, and the more he had thought the less he had liked the results. His mind, indeed, had begun to stray, shying from this case on which he could see no beginning to another case of which he hoped soon to see the end. For some time he had been working on an extensive series of burglaries in the suburbs and this baffling matter of Dr. Umpleby, obviously urgent, had come to interrupt his personal control of a round-up from which he saw himself as likely to gain a good deal of credit. He put his position to Appleby now and it was agreed that the latter should, for the time being, take over the St. Anthony’s mystery as completely as possible. As soon as they had come to an understanding on this, Dodd placed the plan of the college in front of Appleby and proceeded to outline the facts as he knew them.

Dr. Umpleby was shot dead at eleven o’clock last night. That’s the first of several things that make his death something like the story-books. You know the murdered squire’s house in the middle of the snowstorm? And all the fancy changes rung on that—liners on the ocean, submarines, balloons in the air, locked rooms with never a chimney? St. Anthony’s or any other college, you see, is something like that from halt-past nine every night. Here’s your submarine. As he spoke, Dodd took up the ground-plan and ran a large finger aggressively round the perimeter of the St. Anthony’s buildings. But in this college, he went on, there’s more to it than that. This time his finger ran round a lesser circuit. "In this college there’s submarine within submarine. At half-past nine they shut off the college as a whole from the world. And then later, at ten-fifteen, they shut off one bit of the college from the rest. That is almost a pure story-book situation now, isn’t it? Nobody gets in or out of the college after half-past nine that the porter doesn’t know of—with certain exceptions. Nobody got in or out from half-past nine last night to this present moment that we don’t know of—with the same possible exceptions. And after ten-fifteen, nobody can go to and fro between the main body of the college (submarine) and this additionally shut-off Orchard Ground (submarine within submarine) with, again, the same possible exceptions. Only—and here Inspector Dodd suddenly spoke with a vigorous irritation— none of the exceptions appears to be a homicidal lunatic! And therefore the lunatic who did that"—and here Dodd jerked his thumb in the direction of the next room—" ought still to be on the premises. I haven’t found him, Appleby. Every man alive in this college is saner and more blameless than the rest."

Why necessarily look for a lunatic? Appleby asked.

I don’t, responded Dodd soberly. That hanky-panky through there rattled me for a moment, and again he motioned towards the next room. You’ll see what I mean presently, he continued a little grimly, but the point I have to make now is about these exceptions. The exceptions, as you may guess, are certain of the Fellows of the college—not by any means all of them. They have keys—double-purpose keys. They can enter or leave the college with them through this little door on Schools Street. And you see where—if they’re coming in—that lands them. It lands them straight in the submarine within a submarine, Orchard Ground. They can then use the same key to get them out of Orchard Ground into the rest of the college. And when I give you the facts of the case in a minute you’ll see that the murderer of Dr. Umpleby appears to have had one of those keys. Which is no doubt, the inspector added dryly, "why you have been sent for in such a hurry."

I see the suggested situation, anyway, Appleby replied, after a brief scrutiny of the ground-plan. "Whereas in a normal college a nocturnal murder would probably be physically within the power of anyone within the college, this college is so arranged that this murder could apparently be carried out only by quite a few people—people who had, or who could get hold of, a key to this Orchard Ground. For the keys—you are maintaining, are you not?—gave the particular sort of access to Dr. Umpleby that the circumstances seem to require."

Dodd nodded. You’ve got it, he said, and you can understand the perturbation of St. Anthony’s.

There is the obvious fact that keys are treacherous things. They’re easier to steal usually than a cheque-book—and far easier to copy than a signature.

Dodd shook his head. Yes, but you’ll see presently that there’s more to it than that. The topography of the business really is uncommonly odd.

Both men looked at the plan in silence for a moment. Well, said Appleby at length, here is our stage setting. Now let us have the characters and events.

Chapter Three

I ’ll begin with characters, Dodd said, indeed I’ll begin where I had to begin this morning; with a list of names. As he spoke, the inspector rummaged among his papers as if looking for a memorandum. Then, apparently thinking better of it, he squared his shoulders, wrinkled his brow in concentration and continued with his eyes fixed upon his own large boots.

Here are the Fellows who were dining in college last night. In addition to the President there was the Dean; he’s called the Reverend the Honourable Tracy Deighton-Clerk. (There was an indefinable salt in the inspector’s mode of conveying this information.) And there were Mr. Lambrick, Professor Empson, Mr. Haveland, Mr. Titlow, Dr. Pownall, Dr. Gott, Mr. Campbell, Professor Curtis, Mr. Chalmers-Paton and Dr. Barocho.

Appleby nodded. Deighton-Clerk, he repeated, Lambrick, Empson, Haveland, Titlow, Pownall, Gott, Campbell, Curtis, Chalmers-Paton—and a foreigner who just beats me. Go on.

Barocho, said Dodd. And only one Fellow, as it happens, was absent. He’s called Ransome and at the moment he’s said to be digging up some learned stuff in central Asia. Dodd’s tone again conveyed some hint of the feeling that Dr. Umpleby’s death had landed him among queer fish. Not that I’ve any proof, he continued suspiciously, of where this Ransome is. That’s just what they all say.

Appleby smiled. The submarine seems well officered, he said. If you’re going on to extract a list of a couple of hundred or so undergraduates from those boots of yours I think I’d certainly prefer the baronet’s country house. Or the balloon in the stratosphere—that generally holds about two. But his eyes as he spoke were on the plan in front of him and in a moment he added: But the point seems to be that the undergraduates don’t come in?

I don’t think they do, replied Dodd; "at least it’s likely they don’t, just as it’s likely the college servants and so on don’t—and, as you’ve gathered, for simple topographical reasons. So the list I’ve given you may be important. And now, after the scene and the persons, I suppose, events and times. Here is the time-scheme of the thing as far as I’ve got it into my head.

"Dinner was over by about eight o’clock—as far as the proceedings in hall were concerned. But all the people at the high table—the President, Dean and Fellows, that is—went across in a body as usual to their common-rooms. They sat in the smaller common-room for about half an hour, having a little extra, I gather, in the way of port and dessert. Then at about half-past eight they made another move—still in a body—to the larger common-room next door. They had coffee and cigarettes there—all according to the day’s routine still—and talked till about nine o’clock. Dr. Umpleby was the first to leave: he went off through a door that gives directly into his own house. And if we’re to believe what we’re told, that was the last time any of his colleagues saw him alive.

"Well, the common-room began to break up after that, and by half-past nine everybody was gone. Lambrick, Campbell, Chalmers-Paton are married men and by half-past nine they were off to their homes. The others all went to their rooms about the college. All, that is, with the exception of Gott, who is Junior Proctor and went out patrolling the streets.

"At nine-thirty the locking up began. The porter locked the main gates. That is the moment, you may say, at which the submarine submerged: from that moment to this nobody can have got in or out of St. Anthony’s without observation—unless he had a key."

Appleby shook his head in mild protest. I incline to distrust those keys from the start, he said, and I distrust your submarine. A great rambling building like this may have half a dozen irregular entrances—or exits.

But Dodd’s reply was confident. "The submarine may sound as if I’ve been reading novels, but I believe it’s near the mark. It’s something we have to know in a quiet way—and we could surprise some colleges by pointing out a good many smart dodges. But I’ve overhauled St. Anthony’s today, and it’s watertight."

Appleby nodded his provisional acceptance of the point. Well, he said, the President is in his Lodging, the dons are in their rooms, the undergraduates are in theirs, and the great world is effectively locked out. What next?

More locking out—or in, Dodd promptly replied. The President’s butler locked three doors. He locked the front door of the Lodging giving on Bishop’s Court, he locked the back door giving on St. Ernulphus Lane, and he locked the door between the Lodging and the common-rooms—the one, that is, the President had used a little before. That was about ten o’clock. At ten-fifteen came the final locking-up. The porter locked the gates to Orchard Ground. . . .

Dodd had so far been delivering himself of this scheme of things without book. Now he paused and handed Appleby a sheaf of notes. I’d go over that again, if I were you, he said; it takes a little getting clear.

Appleby went slowly over the notes and observed, with something of the admiration that was intended, that Dodd had apparently let no discrepancy creep into his oral account. He looked up when he had digested the names and times, and Dodd went on to the crisis of his narrative.

When Dr. Umpleby left the common-room he went straight to his study. At half-past ten his butler, Slotwiner, took in some sort of drink—it was the regular routine apparently—and then retired to his pantry off the half. 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 enough from Slotwiner to be along with every man I could muster in ten minutes. Slotwiner and Titlow were in the study still with a porter to help them keep guard. We went through everything on the orchard side of those gates as if we were looking for a black cat. We worked on a cordon basis from one end to the other, ransacked the chapel and the little block of Fellows’ buildings opposite and climbed every tree. Apart from three of the four Fellows (Titlow is the fourth) who live in Orchard Ground and were there undisturbed in their rooms, we found no one. We searched again by daylight, of course, and the gates are guarded still.

Dodd paused for a moment and Appleby asked a question: There is no trace of any sort of robbery?

None at all. Money, watch and so on still on the corpse. There is one point, though, that might conceivably be relevant. Dodd picked up a small object wrapped in tissue paper and tossed it down in front of his colleague. Umpleby’s pocket-diary—and found in his pocket all right. Plenty of entries for you to study—until you come just up to date. The leaf for the last two days, and the leaf for today and tomorrow, have been torn out. . . . And now come along.

Chapter Four

The two men left the dead President’s dining-room and crossed the hall to where, at the end of a narrow corridor, a stalwart constable stood guard over the study door. He stood aside with a salute and a frank provincial stare at Appleby, while Dodd, taking a key from his pocket, unlocked the door and pushed it open with something of a restrained dramatic gesture.

The study was a long, well-proportioned room, with a deep open fireplace opposite the single door and with windows at each end: to the left (and barred like all the ground-floor outer windows of the college), a row of small windows giving on St. Ernulphus Lane; to the right, rather narrow French windows, now heavily curtained, but giving, as Appleby knew, upon Orchard Ground. The sombrely-furnished, book-lined apartment was lit partly by the dull light of the November evening and partly by a single electric standard lamp. Half-way between the French windows and the fireplace, sprawled upon its back, lay the body of a man—tall, spare, dinner-jacketed. So much, and so much only, was visible, for round the head there was swathed, as if in gross burlesque of the common offices of death, the dull black stuff of an academic gown.

But it was not at this sight that Appleby started a little as he entered the room. If Dodd had spoken of a lunatic he now saw why. From the dull dark-oak panels over the fireplace, roughly scrawled in chalk, a couple of grinning death’s heads stared out upon the room. Just beside the President’s grotesquely muffled head lay a human skull. And over the surrounding area of the floor were scattered little piles of human bones.

For a long moment Appleby paused on the spectacle; then he moved over to the French windows and pulled back the curtain. Dusk was falling and the trim college orchard seemed to hold all the mystery of a forest. Only close to him on the right, breaking the illusion, was the grey line of hall and library, stone upon buttressed stone, fading, far above, into the darkness of stained-glass windows. Directly in front, in uncertain silhouette against a lustreless Eastern sky, loomed the boldly arabesqued gables of the Caroline chapel. An exhalation neither wholly mist nor wholly fog was beginning to glide over the immemorial turf, to curl round the trees, to dissolve in insubstantial pageantry the fading lines of archway and wall. And echoing over the college and the city, muted as if in requiem for what lay within, was the age-old melody of vesper bells.

Chapter Five

FOR some minutes Appleby continued to stare out upon the fast thickening shadows. Then, without turning round and almost as if in soliloquy, he began to feel for his own grip on the case.

"At ten-fifteen this court, Orchard Ground, was locked up. After that, anyone who was in it could get out, or who was out could get in, in one of two ways. The one way was by means of the key possessed by certain of the Fellows: with that one could pass either between the orchard and the rest of the college by one of the two gates giving on Bishop’s Court; or between the orchard and the outer world by means of the little gate that gives on Schools Street. The other way was through these French windows, through this study and out by one of the doors in the President’s hall—the front door giving on Bishop’s Court, the common-room door giving indirectly on the same quarter, or the back door giving on St. Ernulphus Lane and, again, the outer world.

"At ten-thirty Umpleby, according to the butler, was alive. From then until eleven o’clock, according to the butler, no one passed from the study through the hall to Bishop’s Court or St. Ernulphus Lane—or conversely.

"At eleven o’clock, according to the butler and Titlow, there was a shot from the study. They went in at once and found Umpleby dead. They then claim to have had the route through the study under continuous observation until they handed over to you. And you had it under observation until you had searched study, Orchard Ground and all the buildings in Orchard Ground thoroughly.

"Accepting these appearances we have a fairly clear situation. If Umpleby was shot when we think he was and where we think he was and other than by himself, then his assailant was either one of the three people discovered by you during your search or a fourth person having a key. That fourth person, again, might be either another of the persons legitimately possessed of keys or an unknown person in wrongful

Reviews for Death at the President's Lodging

[chrisriesbeck · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Innes's first Appleby mystery is not my favorite by a long shot. It tries to hard to distance itself from detective fiction with elaborate meta-commentary, every character is described in arch pseudo-psychological style, the mystery is a locked room murder but tied up repeatedly in the minute by minute analysis of every suspect's movements, and the solution, while admirably complex, also depends far too much on multiple characters doing actions that later they confess was hard to defend. Also, the repeated mention of how challenging Appleby found this case because of all the suspects were academics and hence more intelligent than the average person is both incredibly elitist and simply untrue. Perhaps that was meant satirically (by the author, not Appleby) but it still left me annoyed.OK for completists and those for whom a cozy British murder novel can do no wrong.

[phyllis2779 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Probably read this when I was in grad school, but I no longer remembered it. Just read it again. It was fun and Innes is a very good writer but this was not nearly as good as the later books in the series. This one was drenched in academicism and the mystery plot was pretty close to ridiculous.

[sarielle-2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is my first book in this series about which I heard a lot of good things and probably not my last one. Very well constructed secret of a locked room.

Before I get to the proper review, I need to make clear one thing. English is not my native language, but I have been reading books in English for years and it doesn't seem too difficult for me. That is why I was surprised when it turned out that this book requires much more of my attention and effort than usual. When I thought about it seriously, I realized that this is probably the oldest book I read in English. I am quite astonished at this. I don't know if it is due to the period in which it was written or the specific writing style of Michael Innes, but the language in which this book was written is a bit complicated. Very beautiful, but not easy for someone who is not a native speaker. It is full of intricate stylistic constructions, archaisms and words very rarely used in modern English. I had to get used to it. And devote more attention to this book than I usually do with other detective stories.

Despite this, I fully appreciate the well-constructed murder mystery that only a very limited number of people could commit. If I have any weakness when it comes to crime stories, I love it when different people tell their version of events one after the other, and these versions are completely unlike. The detective must decide which version is true or closest to the truth. I love this theme. And we have something like this here. Every now and then someone tells his version of the events on the night of the murder and then tells a completely different version as more clues and evidence are found. And the evidences are most of the time revealed intentionally or fabricated. Most of the time nothing makes sense. It's really a well-constructed mystery.

And not without some humor. First of all, we have a group of very characteristic and expressive characters, many of whom have comic features. There are also many funny scenes and dialogues. And even the whole thread that, although it adds nothing to the case, is an amusing interlude. Of course, I am talking about a group of pupils taking their chance in solving the case.

As for the ending, I really like it. It is not completely reliable but it perfectly matches all the events in the book and the relations between the characters. And again we have here the same story told by different people from different perspectives. I had a great time reading these last chapters.

The next book in this series is on my short TBR pile because of one of my reading challenges. I am not sure if I will read it right after this one but I will definitely do it soon. I hope it will be equally good.

[steller0707 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very British. A intellectual inspector from Scotland Yard is called on to solve a murder at his alma mater, a college patterned on Oxford or Cambridge. The case is complicated because of the cerebral bent of the suspects. If you like Inspector Morse, you'll like Inspector Appleby, who pre-dates him.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am always intrigued to see how some books age more markedly than others from the same genre and of similar vintage. I have also always been a great fan of the ‘Locked Room’ class of murder mysteries. Such stories have almost become a sort of cliché, with murders occurring amidst settings such as the remote country mansion, cut off from the neighbourhood by an impenetrable snowstorm, or an island that has temporarily been isolated because of the collapse of a bridge, or the onset of a storm forcing all ships to seek a safe haven on the mainland. Perhaps the classic example is The Hollow Man, by John Dickson Carr, in which the sleuth Dr Fell actually breaks off his investigations to offer an exegesis on the nature of the locked room mystery.In Death at the President’s Lodging, Michael Innes (who in everyday life was the noted literary academic, J. I. M. Stewart) introduced John Appleby, a Detective Inspector from the Metropolitan Police, who, like Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn, comes from higher reaches of society than is the norm for police officers, and is also blessed with a strong academic hinterland. Appleby is called upon to investigate the murder in his own study of Doctor Umpleby, President of St Anthony’s College. The topography of the College is such that only a limited number of people, all of whom are Fellows of St Anthony’s, could have had access to the room in which the murder body was found. Needless to say, we soon discover that nearly all of them had, at some recent point, expressed their dislike of, or anger towards, their deceased colleague, and motives of varying degrees abound.Unfortunately, the tone of the writing now seems inordinately self-satisfied, and all of the characters, Appleby included, are steeped in smugness as in garment of triple steel. The plot is, it must be said, watertight, and very cleverly constructed, but by the eventual denouement, my surprise at the identity of the killers was far subservient to my relief at reaching the end of what had developed into an ordeal.

[fictionalblonde · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was an okay read for me. The plot was well written and the premise was one that I enjoyed. There is nothing like a good old fashioned mystery and that was exactly what this book was.

[crypto3willobie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Tedious. Characterization very thin.

[datrappert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While reading this, I was sometimes convinced that Michael Innes was writing primarily for his own amusement. This tale, which takes place in a cloistered university setting, such as those he was intimately familiar with, takes time to introduce us to all sorts of esoteric knowledge and the somewhat inexplicable, but always very peculiar, behavior of the all-male cast of characters at its center, who include the various members of the faculty under suspicion for the murder of the college President, three clever students playing as amateur sleuths, the well-educated police inspector sent from Scotland Yard (Innes’ long-running character, Appleby), the not so highly-educated, but undoubtedly clever local police representative, his staff who perform several useful parts of the investigation, various employees of the college, and the occasional pubkeeper or postman. The lack of females is so notable that Innes goes out of his way to point out the only appearance of a woman in the book!To someone of the author’s intellect and cultural and educational background, this book is probably highly amusing, perhaps even side-splitting. For a more ordinary American reader of the 21st century, rather than 1936, when the book was first published, it is still mostly enjoyable, but occasionally too British for even a semi-Anglophile to decipher all the references and some of the language (being a classical scholar would help). And there is a LOT of language. Conversations go on for pages, and the characters use words I have never even seen before—good words, however, and reading on a Kindle puts their meaning close at hand. Nevertheless, the book is seriously over-verbose.As for the mystery, we are taken through Appleby’s (and the three student sleuths’) attempts to unravel it in great detail. Clues collected by the police are described in detail as they arrive. Elaborate timetables are constructed and discussed (yes, at length). The final solution, complex though it may be, makes sense. If you are seriously interested in solving it yourself, you should keep a notebook, as Appleby does, noting the tiems and places from the various players’ accounts and the police reports. But be warned: Innes is devious.As part of his fun here, one of the faculty is also (under a pseudonym) a well known crime author. This gives Innes the opportunity to, in a fictional setting, talk about the differences between how crimes are solved in real life (lots of loose ends go unresolved) and how they are solved in detective novels (everything is neatly tied up). Appleby, though he considers himself to be a fictional character, nevertheless prefers the detective story approach, as if he were in a novel. This is the type of game Innes likes to play with the reader, but again, I think he is mainly amusing himself. I would have bee more amused if the book were ¾ its length.

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A complicated (one might say a bit too convoluted) academic murder mystery, the first appearance of Inspector Appleby. I'll be interested to see how the character develops; I enjoyed the humor and wit of this one, and will certainly read more from the series.

[judy_aa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the first of the marvelous John Appleby series by Michael Innes. The Appleby books are soothingly literary and often comic. This particular mystery sets the tone for Innes' educated and pragmatic detective. Unfortunately, the solution to the mystery is beyond contrived and convoluted. I am a huge fan of Innes' work but by the end I didn't care "whodunit."

[paradiseporch · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the first in Innes’ Inspector Appleby series and was published in 1936. I expected perhaps something akin to Agatha Christie but Innes is very different. Or perhaps I only think so because this particular mystery was set in an Oxford/Cambridge-based university and I have no understanding whatever of dons/underdons/proctors and so on and found it difficult to wade through all of those issues (which are pertinent to the crime). The mystery was solid but although I may read more Innes, given the number of untried mystery series out there, I doubt that it will be soon.Read this if: you like a really ‘academic’ mystery, British, straight-up; or, like I did, you need an “I” author for an A-Z Reading Challenge. 3 stars

[majkia · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An enjoyable mystery with a great main character. I thought the mystery a bit too complicated to believe, and otherwise would have scored this higher. But I'll continue the series and watch Inspector Appleby grow!

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very much a classic, not least in its status as Stewart's first book as "Michael Innes". The characterisation of the college fellows is both entertaining and believable, and the trouble Innes has gone to to create a plausible third Ancient University in the neighbourhood of Bletchley (the railway junction where passengers from Oxford to Cambridge used to have to change trains) is very impressive. All it takes are a few names of streets, pubs and colleges thrown in as though we know exactly where they are. There are quite a few little throwaway literary references, though nothing too obscure: one clue or bit of misdirection hinges on the only bit of Kant most of us are likely to be aware of. At one point Appleby finds himself co-operating with a don who writes crime novels in his spare time. Some literature graduates may raise a weary smile of recognition on spotting a character called Empson in a story in which both ambiguity and the number seven play a significant role, although Innes takes care to make E. an elderly scholar in the field of psychology (the real William Empson was thirty and teaching in Asia in 1936).There aren't any characters apart from the dons, Appleby, a couple of local policemen, and three rather generic silly undergraduates. No women with speaking parts at all, and no love-interest of any kind, just a ridiculous number of conflicting alibis, red herrings, and a crazy obsession with precise timings. A lot of method and opportunity, but not much real examination of motive. The premise seems to be that the Head of a college is ipso facto fair game, no additional motive being required. It's a straightforward single murder, but the solution is almost absurdly complicated. Entertaining, but a bit trying.

[pnorman4345 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is an old fashioned English detective story, but more so.

[themulhern · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this, his first mystery, Innes had not quite realized his individual voice. There are odd echoes of Ngaio Marsh's Alleyne and Fox in the interaction between Appleby and the local inspector. Innes' undergraduate characters are generally caricatures; in this novel they are obtrusively and painfully so. By contrast, the dons are described with a certain amount of psychological insight and are a quite enjoyable bunch. The actual resolution of the crime is uninteresting; but since it occurs just a few pages short of the end and the story is so enjoyable this is not a serious flaw.

[smik_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was not only the first in the Appleby series which was to continue very successfully, with 35 titles, till 1986, but it was also Michael Innes' (John Innes Mackintosh Stewart) debut novel.The murder has a very limited number of suspects (the alternative title for the book was SEVEN SUSPECTS) and they try to move suspicion from themselves to each other, to the point of even moving the body, destroying evidence, and leaving "red herring" clues with the body. There is an elaborate setup with keys to the college grounds of the college, being changed on the day before the murder, and with the description of the college as being like a "submarine": once locked up no-one can get in, and keys are needed to get out.As the publisher's blurb says, this was "donnish" detective fiction, with an academic feel to it. The text is littered with references to current detective fiction that Innes either did or didn't like, and rather obviously tries to appeal to an "intellectual" audience. Just by-the-by Innes seems also to be trying to establish that writing detective fiction, as he is, or reading it, as his readers are, is a "worthwhile" intellectual activity.There are times when you just wish the action would happen faster, that Innes/Appleby would just "get on with it". A lot of time is spent with suspects explaining where they were at the time the murder must have happened, and why they thought someone else had perpetrated the crime. Innes is obviously trying to engage his readers with logic puzzles which involve timing and placement. I couldn't help wondering if the original publication included a map.I suspect the language hasn't really weathered time very well and will have limited appeal to modern readers.However the narrator Stephen Hogan provides a good audio version.

[figgles_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable piece of classic British crime, intelligently written and set in an Oxford-like college. Gets a little ridiculous in denouement but still an enjoyable read.