What Happened at Hazelwood? (16 page)

There was no doubt that somebody had climbed the thing the night before: Dr Watson himself could have read the signs unmistakably. There was no doubt that somebody had approached the terrace from the direction of the drive, and one could just distinguish that he had later retreated as he came. There was no doubt that a little way along the terrace somebody else had emerged from the house and made his way to a spot just beneath the study window – and this, of course, must have been the courageous Mervyn Cockayne. There was every sign of some sort of dust-up or flurry, in the snow, so that nothing contradicted his story of a struggle with the intruder. All this could still be read in the snow, and it pointed as plainly as could be to the crime being the work of an intruder. Except, of course, that any member of the household, granted the necessary time, could have left the house unobserved by one of several swept paths on which no tracks would be visible, could have made a detour and approached again through the snow from the drive, could – after breaking away from Cockayne – have regained the house by reversing the manoeuvre.

We went over these facts and appearances carefully enough. Nevertheless I could see that Inspector Cadover’s mind was elsewhere. There was one stretch of territory which irresistibly attracted him. It was that which rounded that whole wing of the house with which we were immediately concerned. In other words, it started under the window of Sir George’s study and ended under the window of Lady Simney’s bathroom. We covered this route hugging the terrace and the wall. We covered it making a wider cast. Snow, of course, had been falling at the time of the crime; and there had been some wind since. I could imagine that every track and trace would by no means remain – and indeed there were here and there appearances in the snow for which I could only account by supposing a stiff wind blowing it into drifts and ridges. But it was and had always been virgin of footprints. There could be no doubt of that.

‘Nothing could cross this,’ the Inspector said disconsolately. ‘And no trellis here, either.’

‘Something like an eighteen-foot drop.’

He shook his head. ‘We’ve a good long way to go yet. Almost a dozen folk who are unknown quantities still. I think we’ll go back inside.’

But where he took me was Lady Simney’s room. I didn’t like it, for I had no reason to suppose that she mightn’t turn up at any time: after all, nobody had clapped her in a police cell yet. Of course,
he
didn’t mind that. We started with the bathroom, which smelt of something pretty special in the way of soap. There was something, it seemed to me, downright indelicate in this. And I know that auntie Flo would agree with me.

Not that it was really a bathroom at all. There was nothing but an elaborate shower in it – all chromium-plated sprays and nozzles and taps, surrounded by yards and yards of oil-silk. I am sorry to say that I found this shower bath a little haunting (if you understand me); more so than if there had been just an ordinary bath. I couldn’t quite get the lady out of my head.

Inspector Cadover didn’t waste much time here, and we went poking into the bedroom and the boudoir. The bedroom was very handsome and curiously neutral, so that here the lady just didn’t come into my head at all. We might have been in a shop. I mean a furniture shop of a tremendously expensive sort, with a whole room faithfully got up for living in. But here nobody really lived.

The boudoir, on the other hand, was quite different; in fact it had a very definite personality stamped on it, and I felt at once that it shouldn’t go by so stupid a name. Into this room Lady Simney had brought her past life with her, and although it didn’t come together in any clear picture the effect was pleasant enough. There were old theatrical prints and hockey sticks and skis; there was a shelf of delicate Chinese pottery and on top of that a shelf of pretty stiff-looking books on drama; on the walls there were half a dozen magnificent photographs of Papuan children caught in the several stages of some intricate game. It was an excellent room for living in. It was also an excellent room for spying and snooping round – and this was our business now. The Inspector prowled about looking sombre – it was just as if he had already spotted something that depressed him and I did the work. It’s commonly like that. He says that my generation has been taught the technique, and that he isn’t going to compete with it. But sometimes 1 suspect that he has preserved from a well-brought up childhood a distaste for poking about in other people’s drawers.

There were several large cupboards and it was in one of them that I came upon the suitcase – a battered old suitcase with the labels of a dozen steamship companies – Matson and Orient and P & 0 – and of a score of out-of-the-way hotels. Perhaps, I thought, Nicolette in her salad days had done a colonial tour, taking Ophelia to the citizens of Bulawayo or Pago-Pago. And then I opened the thing and there were all those men’s clothes. I’d hardly had time to reflect that Lady Simney’s theatrical career was not likely to have included male impersonations when the Inspector strode forward and ordered the Cinderella’s slipper business which I’ve mentioned already. So off I went across the corridor, more than half suspecting that it was an occupation he had thought up merely to get rid of me. Well, you know the result; those clothes would fit no one at Hazelwood. They were for a man taller and slimmer than any in the house. The Inspector was almost out of temper at this, and I could see that it upset something which was moving obscurely in his mind. Whatever the idea was, he didn’t want me to spot it there and then – which was why he made his joke about Cuvier’s feather. There’s quite a grand library at Hazelwood, though I doubt whether Sir George much used it. Perhaps I’ll slip in presently and look this Cuvier up. I might manage to surprise the chief, that way. And, of course, it’s something to surprise
him
… But that’s just what was successfully achieved within the next five minutes.

For the door opened – the boudoir door – and in came a handsome youth in ill-fitting dark clothes and a yellow-and-black striped waistcoat. ‘How do you do?’ he said gravely.

The chief isn’t often at a loss, but he blinked at this. ‘What do you mean,
How do you do
?’ he said. ‘Aren’t you the footman?’

At this the youth shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think I am. But I suppose that you are the policeman – the important one who has just arrived?’ As he asked this question the youth had turned deliberately to me. Then he nodded curtly towards the Inspector. ‘And that this is the man who photographs the body, and that sort of thing? But won’t you both sit down?’

Now with this youth – Timmy Owdon – I had already had a word, as I’ve mentioned. He knew very well who was who. In what he had just said he was simply sailing in, head on, and showing that he was a Simney too. And I’m bound to say that he succeeded. We both sat down.

He crossed to a door communicating with the bedroom. ‘Nicolette?’ he called. And when there was no answer he turned to us again severely. ‘Did Lady Simney,’ he asked, ‘invite you into this room?’

The Inspector looked at him with a severity answering his own. ‘Young man, am I right in thinking that you are Owdon the butler’s son?’

‘I am Mr Owdon’s son.’

‘Master Owdon the butler’s son.’ A new voice spoke from the doorway and we turned to see a slightly older youth, the split image of Timmy, advance into the room. ‘Where other than to Hazelwood,’ the newcomer asked in a high-pitched voice, ‘would one turn in inventing a new form of Happy Families?’ And he turned away from Timmy and bowed to us. ‘Mr and Master Copper, I presume,’ he said. He waved his hand round the boudoir. ‘Picking up tips, no doubt, to assist Mrs and Miss Copper in interior decorating.’ He pulled out a watch. ‘Timmy, my good fellow,’ he continued, ‘something tells me that your services are required for marshalling the cake-stands.’

Timmy shook his head. ‘No, Mervyn,’ he said. ‘My last cake-stand has been marshalled – at Hazelwood or anywhere else.’

Mervyn Cockayne – for, of course, it was he – opened his eyes in surprise. ‘And may I ask, my dear kinsman, what activity you propose instead?’

‘Responsions. I think I can manage it in a year.’

‘God bless my soul! You want to go to
Oxford
?’

Timmy nodded. ‘I think that is what uncle Bevis will propose.’

‘
Uncle
Bevis!’ And young Mr Cockayne put a hand in an affected way to his beautiful forehead. ‘You think you will get somewhere with him by taking this sort of line?’

‘I certainly shan’t get anywhere with him by being content to go on marshalling the cake-stand.’

Mervyn sat down. He had the ability to recognize a true word when it was spoken. ‘You interest me,’ he said. ‘And you interest these gentlemen too.’ His expression became ugly. ‘You regard your prospects as happily transformed by the death of my uncle George?’

‘Everybody’s prospects are transformed – including Nicolette’s, I am glad to think.’ As he said this Timmy looked directly first at one and then another of us. ‘Haven’t you thought that out, Mervyn? It means that if we are all to be suspected we do at least so far as motive goes start all square.’ He turned gravely to the Inspector, no longer pretending to suppose that he was the man who had come to do the photographing. ‘Sir George was mostly bad,’ he said. ‘And he loved holding people in a kind of thrall. For instance, me. You see’ – his voice faltered for a moment on this – ‘my mother was a Simney, and for sixteen years he exploited the fact for his own amusement.’

I looked at Timmy with some sympathy. He felt himself to be a gentleman and he had taught himself to talk like one. Or rather he had been prompted never to talk otherwise. The difference is important; it meant that there was nothing synthetic or bogus about him in this. His model, it occurred to me, must have been largely the intolerable Mervyn, and this increased the oddly twin-like effect they gave. And perhaps the main difference between them reduced itself to this: that no mother, or a mother who is only a speculation and a dream, is a good deal better than a thoroughly foolish one. This wasn’t a point I could make to myself at the moment, for I hadn’t yet met Mrs Cockayne – the dead man’s sister Lucy, that is to say. All I could feel was that Timmy Owdon wasn’t so bad; that he showed up his cousin (or whatever he is to be called) Mervyn rather badly; and that there was inevitably a lurking antagonism between these two – but just conceivably other lurking feelings as well.

‘Look here,’ said Mervyn, ‘it’s not very decent to treat the Coppers
pére et fils
to that sort of thumbnail sketch of uncle George. It’s true that he was constantly having immoral relations with women. But at least it’s less out of the way for a man to seduce his wife’s parlour-maids than for a woman to seduce her kinsman’s butler.’

Timmy Owdon took two strides forward. Mervyn Cockayne (oddly enough, I thought) did the same. Both flushed, they looked into each other’s eyes. Neither the chief nor I interfered – and I really believe that this was because the scene was so oddly beautiful. I remember thinking fleetingly that they ought both to have been stripped – in which case they would have been just like some of those reliefs cut in stone which auntie Flo (rather surprisingly) once took me to see in the British Museum.

‘You know,’ said Mervyn, ‘two nights ago I let myself be pitched out of a window. But last night’ – and he took another step forward – ‘I found out that I could do this sort of thing. Not expertly yet, of course. Still, I think I’m coming on.’ And suddenly he leant forward with a sort of wicked and radiant smile and slapped Timmy’s face. The gesture had an odd effect of clapping on a mask – for there instantly on Timmy’s face was the identical joyous and Satanic expression. A second later they were punching each other about the room. They were also kicking. And I think perhaps they were biting too. In these ways – it’s not unpleasant to record – they just weren’t gentlemen at all.

Inspector Cadover looked on for some moments a shade helplessly. It must be a good many years, I suppose, since he has tackled that sort of thing outside a pub. ‘Stop it!’ he called out. ‘Don’t you realize that your behaviour is disgraceful – here in Lady Simney’s room and within a day of her husband’s death?’

Well, considering that he and I had just been sneaking through Nicolette’s drawers and cupboards there was more than a shade of hypocrisy in this, nor could I feel myself – although it was now a thoroughly dirty fight – that anything disgraceful was going on. I haven’t the Inspector’s brains, and one result is that I get feelings about things from time to time. I was just trying to formulate these particular feelings when I happened to look round, and read them in another person’s eyes.

They were eyes wide-open with surprise, and they belonged to Lady Simney herself who now stood in the doorway. But there was more than surprise as she watched the two young men. At first I thought it was just the look with which women do watch men fighting – which is by no means a look of simple moral disapproval, such as Inspector Cadover could contrive. Then I saw that there was more to it again than this. A sort of dawning relief, as of the first lifting of the corner of a cloud, was on Nicolette Simney’s strained face. ‘Timmy!’ she called out. ‘Mervyn!’ And then – and most unexpectedly – ‘Oh, hit him, Mervyn –
hit
him!’

But it was Timmy Owdon who was inspired by that; with a big effort he broke free and jabbed his opponent under the jaw. And Mervyn Cockayne – whose nose was already bleeding on Lady Simney’s pale ivory carpet – went down like a sack.

Timmy had turned in a flash, his face flushed the darkest red. ‘How dare you!’ he cried. ‘You are my friend. How dare you back the conceited, foul-mouthed little milk-sop.’ And Timmy paused to give the prostrate Mervyn a vicious kick on the behind.

And at this shockingly unsportsmanlike action Lady Simney laughed aloud – which the Inspector, I think, didn’t like at all. She stepped forward and ruffled Timmy’s already disordered hair; she knelt down and gave Mervyn her handkerchief. He looked at her in comical woe and she kissed him on the forehead. ‘But you admire him,’ she flung back at Timmy. ‘And he’s not a milksop; he’s taken to roughhouses every day. Of course I backed him. You’re younger, it’s true. But in your time you’ve fought every stable-lad in the county.’ She mocked him charmingly. ‘I just don’t know what the gentry are in for with their new recruit.’