What Happened at Hazelwood? (13 page)

I was tiptoeing about the room now – rather, I suppose, as if George were a light sleeper whom it would be inconsiderate to waken. The Simneys – the other dead Simneys – and those ladies whom George had associated with them looked down at me impassively; the lads quarrelled and were seemingly jostling each other; I could hear Owdon’s footsteps returning heavily up the corridor. There was something peculiarly horrible about this moment; a tall flame suddenly leapt up in the great fireplace, and amid the resulting flickering shadows everything seemed to be moving, so that I had a wild feeling of that splayed-out hand of George’s as something in the act of making a last desperate clutch – perhaps at the leaping flame, perhaps at my throat… And then Willoughby and Mervyn appeared again, decorously enough. I believe that there, and in the very presence of the dead man, they had fallen out over some coveted possession that might now come to one or the other of them: a shot-gun, perhaps, or some little secret collection of smutty books. And now this made them (sincerely enough, I think) all the more gentlemanlike and solicitous for the unhappy widow. And the unhappy widow was calculating in just how many days she would at last be able to leave Hazelwood for good… There is nothing pretty in this chronicle of Sir George Simney’s end. It is all ugly from start to finish. But then if one marries out of some bitter negation of decency – well, what has one to expect?

At least not perhaps murder. But what, other than murder, could this be? I believe that George Simney must be called satanic – I have ample reason to believe it. Had he resolved to commit suicide it was only too likely that his last hours would have been spent in contriving to bequeath posterity the appearance of a murder-mystery. But no man could contrive to stave his own head in like that.

Or could he? By some extreme of ingenuity could he manage just that? Was the expression of inordinate surprise which was to be revealed when the body was turned over occasioned by his pleased knowledge that he had brought off some peculiarly difficult technical feat?

Gentle Readers – you who are skilled in conning chronicles of violence – these questions are yours!

Harold

…Speculations, he says, are useless until you have all the facts. But I’ve noticed often enough that it isn’t like that with him, really. He begins speculating straight away, if you ask me, and his speculations suggest what facts to hunt for next. You know I always do a bit of serious reading at bedtime, as auntie Flo advised? Well, the other night I was reading a book about Darwin, and it said how Darwin’s great strength was in his extraordinary fertility in hypotheses. This just means that he was always guessing. Give him a few facts and he would start guessing at once. He couldn’t peer into a cage at the Zoo without forming a hypothesis, and then he would go hurrying round the other cages trying it out. Most likely there would be nothing in it, and he would discover this before he had got from the lemurs to the spider monkeys. But by then he would have another hypothesis – or guess, that is – and quite soon one of these would look sufficiently promising to be called a theory… Well, you know, it’s very much that way with
him.

But, of course, he says little, and you just can’t tell what the hypothesis of the moment is – or even the theory when one develops into that. Still, I really believe that he is guessing all the time, and that this is what makes him so good a Detective Inspector – far the best at the Yard, as I’ve often said. It’s a bit of luck, isn’t it, to work with a man like that? Tell auntie Flo about Darwin. Anything of that sort always interests her.

If you ask me, he’s wasted no time in beginning a few speculations about this Lady Simney – Nicolette, as she seems to be called by the men folk here. I must say, my dear Dad, that I would like to have seen her when she came out of that bathroom in a towel – a regular Venus, she must have been. But then she’s an actress and famous on the London stage, and no doubt the dead man married her for what the queer kid Mervyn calls her charms. What
she
married
him
for nobody knows; he seems to have been quite as nasty as most of the people who get murdered. Don’t tell auntie Flo that about wanting to see Lady Simney like I said. I told
him
and he was down on me like a ton of bricks. Only ’tecs in American shockers, he said, can afford to have those sort of feelings when on duty. Keep them for the cinema, he said, or for Jane; it’s safer. Well, that’s just like him.

And it must have been just a guess (or a hypothesis) that those clothes were not Sir George’s. For if you find a suitcase in a married lady’s room with a complete outfit of men’s garments you would naturally take them to be her husband’s, wouldn’t you? But no sooner had I opened the thing than his eyes narrowed on them the way they do. ‘Harold,’ he said, ‘take them across the passage and measure them against some of Sir George’s. And I did, and they were nowhere near the same. Then he made me snoop all over the house (and a huge great place it is – I think the most aristocratic I’ve been in yet) and measure the things against everybody’s – all the men, I mean, who live here. And they were nowhere near a match anywhere. It was like going round with Cinderella’s slipper in a pantomime with four times as many ugly sisters as usual. ‘So what do you think of that?’ he asked. And I said it looked suspicious. ‘Suspicious?’ he said; ‘well, it may be a straw in the wind – or a feather.’ ‘A feather?’ I asked. ‘Just that,’ he said; ‘Cuvier’s feather.’ ‘Cuvier?’ I asked. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I see you haven’t got to the chapter on Cuvier.’ I think this was some sort of joke – his sort of joke – on my reading a book about Darwin. I’ll find out one day soon. That’s one thing about him. He always explains his little mystifications later on.

But now I had better go back. I’m afraid my first notes were a bit disjointed. The truth is, I haven’t been brought out before on so big an affair, and I was a bit worked up. Besides, there was Lady Simney; it did seem a shame that such a woman should be mixed up in a dirty affair like this – blacksmith’s daughters, and that sort of thing. I felt I would like to take her right away – to New Zealand, or somewhere like that. When I first saw her I said to myself: ‘There’s a woman who has had enough’ – and for a time I couldn’t get anything else into my head. But I wouldn’t like to tell
him
that – or auntie Flo.

We got here just before luncheon, which means about twelve hours after the commission of the crime: an attack
a
tergo
with a blunt instrument upon a well-nourished middle-aged man (upper class). That’s how it goes in my notebook. It’s difficult to get rid sometimes of the awful bosh they taught us in the lectures. And practical work is miles better, I must say. Lady Simney –

But that’s wandering. We got here at lunchtime, and I could tell by the pace at which he let me push the Bentley along (the yellow one, you know, that poor Inspector Appleby had before his marriage) that he felt there was something out of the common in front of us. We were met by local men and shown in on somebody called Sir Bevis – who talked as if he was a chief constable or even a lord lieutenant.
He
let him talk until he had talked himself thoroughly uneasy, and then we could see that this Sir Bevis was hiding something. But then they all are, and we can’t even be sure that it is the same thing. It looks as if the investigation might be quite a long affair. However, I rather look forward to settling in. This CID business, you know, has turned out almost as
peripatetic
(just ask auntie that one) as being on the beat. So here’s a change, anyway.

They all have something to hide – and they all have something to gain. This Sir Bevis has got a title and a fair-sized estate. His son, Mr Willoughby Simney, has got one step nearer to the same. Lady Simney has got rid of an awful beast of a husband. Young Mr Mervyn Cockayne is believed to have come into a considerable legacy, and this may also benefit his mother. As for the relations from Australia, it appears that the deceased and Mr Hippias had quarrelled, that Mrs Gerard – the girl called Joyleen – had let the dead man seduce her and may have been terrified of being given away, and that therefore her husband (if he knew) had a very sufficient motive himself. Finally, of course, there are the servants – as he says there always are. Well, when I say that the butler, Owdon, once had an illegitimate son by one of the ladies of the family, and that the son is here on the spot as a sort of footman, you will see that the menservants, at least, can’t quite be counted out. In fact, the only person who seems to have no interest from a police point of view is Miss Grace Simney, the unmarried sister of the dead man. But he says he’s not so sure. It isn’t often he says so much. He says that it’s very classical – and looking out of the window at the yellow Bentley he murmured something about What would Appleby have done? From what I’ve heard of him I’d say the answer is Talked Greek and swopped tags out of Shakespeare. Whereas I bet he will get straight on with the job. We’ve got to find out what happened at Hazelwood. And the thing may have been done by any of them, I should say – I mean just reckoning by the sort of people they appear to be. I can’t be sure that Nicolette even – Lady Simney, that is – is
nice
. I’m sure she’s
been
nice. But there’s something rather hard about her, and perhaps a woman can go a bit bad when she’s had enough and she’s through… And now to throw in the clutch.

‘Sir Bevis,’ he said after he’d bided his time, ‘I understand that on Monday night there was a family quarrel in this room?’

The new baronet didn’t like it. ‘I don’t think it should be called that,’ he said. ‘No doubt there was a little heat.’

‘And the heat resulted in the throwing of a bottle and the smashing of that picture?’ He pointed to the portrait of the late Sir George in his hunting-coat. ‘In fact there was attempted violence?’

Sir Bevis frowned. ‘Mr Hippias undoubtedly – ah – tossed the bottle. Sportfully, no doubt. Colonial manners are a little bluff.’

‘Sir Bevis, are you disposed to a little bluff yourself?’

That got him. He went as red as a turkey-cock and made much the same gobbling sort of noise. ‘Perfectly scandalous!’ he said. ‘And I may mention that a particular friend of mine at the Home Office–’

‘Quite so, sir. That is what everybody says – when caught speeding, for instance, or anything of that sort. But in thirty years’ experience of police work I’ve never known it to cut any ice yet. So we’ll spare your influential connexions, if you don’t mind. But my question should have been more precise. Have you not, so far, concealed information which it is your duty to divulge?’

Well, that’s the straight way to talk to a baronet. And perhaps in a year or two I shall have picked it up. And this one wilted a little. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

‘Thank you. That, in my opinion, is one of the most significant replies a police officer can receive. It invariably indicates deception.’ And he turned to me. ‘Harold,’ he said, ‘write it down. The words were
I don’t know what you mean
.’

In America they’re said to use wearing-down tactics – which must take a lot of time considering the hurry folk are in there.
He
uses sudden little unnerving bits like this. And – sure enough – our grand Sir Bevis begins to babble, and has a lot to say about some unpleasantness over a place called Dismal Swamp.

He listened to this for a while. And when he spoke again it was with a sort of relaxed tension as if the air had been cleared a good bit. Well, I’ve got to know a number of his tricks in the last few months, and I knew this one.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Very interesting, no doubt. But nobody would think to kill your poor brother over an old affair like that, would they?’

‘Of course not. Which shows that the turning up of these Australian relatives is purely coincidental. The truth is that there are a lot of dangerous characters about, and that the police are very far from having the situation in hand. The local police, that is to say.’

The afterthought was a handsome one. But I don’t know that we showed gratification.

‘Only last week old Lady Longer lost a lot of poultry. And the constabulary were helpless, it appears – absolutely helpless. I have promised her to take the matter up with the Chief Constable.’

The Inspector gave me the sort of quick grave look that would be a wink in another man. ‘Very kind of you, sir, I’m sure. And perhaps you might take up your brother’s death at the same time.’

This was a nasty one, and I’m bound to say that Sir Bevis reacted with some spirit. ‘In my opinion,’ he said, ‘you ought to be out and about combing the neighbouring pubs for dangerous ruffians. It might be more rewarding than aspersing my family and contriving impertinent witticisms. For the situation is abundantly clear.’

The Inspector looked relieved. ‘Harold,’ he said, ‘–your notebook. Here is to be light.’

Sir Bevis went his turkey red. ‘Abundantly clear!’ he repeated in a sudden bellow. ‘There has been a widespread cock-and-bull tale of my brother’s keeping considerable wealth in this study. To the window of this study – which a trellis makes perfectly accessible from ground level – it has been found that a man’s footsteps led through the snow. While sitting with his back to that same window my brother was struck on the head from behind and killed. Outside that window again – and seemingly only seconds later – an unknown lurker was tackled by my beastly – that is to say by my courageous nephew, Mr Cockayne. Unfortunately the intruder got away, and his footsteps could not be traced very far… May I ask if you support me in these statements?’

‘Yes, Sir Bevis – I do. But just what these statements in turn support is another matter. I cannot see that attempted robbery such as you suggest would be very likely to transform itself into sudden and savage attack from behind.’

‘The mirrors!’ Sir Bevis came out with this a bit too quick. ‘My brother looked up and caught sight of the thief’s reflection. That accounts both for the look of surprise on my poor brother’s features and for the instantaneous attack made upon him.’