What Happened at Hazelwood? (18 page)

I tried to catch the chief’s eye – merely to indicate the mild pleasure of a faithful but not uncritical subordinate at observing him get as good as he gave. The lady was by no means to be confused. She was still steadily admitting, or coming forward with, what must inevitably transpire sooner or later, and keeping completely close about anything else. That Hoodless had in fact been there beneath the window, however, was by no means improbable. Sir George had been a brute; he knew it; he was freshly arrived in England. This conception of a former lover as being central in the affair Inspector Cadover had arrived at with a creditable celerity. But then it was only a hypothesis. In five minutes it might vanish never to be heard of again.

And if it was not improbable that Hoodless had been there it did seem improbable that in those three or four minutes of Owdon’s absence Lady Simney had effected a rendezvous with him at the window. If she spoke the truth in saying that
The Times
had given her the first inkling of his being arrived in England then the notion that he might there and then be beneath the study window was quite as lacking in colour as she had averred. If, on the other hand, she had possessed earlier knowledge that he was in the district, this travesty of a
Romeo and Juliet
meeting minutes before her husband was accustomed to come into the room, was about the last thing which it was sensible to imagine. And I could see only one conclusion. When she had sent Owdon for the previous day’s
Times
she had gone direct to her bathroom to try the soothing effect of a shower. And there she had been when her husband was killed – whether by Hoodless or another. That this was how the Inspector saw it I don’t know. He had crossed to the window, thrown up the sash, and was peering out and to the right. There he would see first the window of Lady Simney’s bedroom, then the window of her bathroom, then the blank wall and chimney-shaft which represented the end of the study. He withdrew his head again, closed the window slowly, and looked thoughtfully at the open suitcase which had first brought Hoodless’ name into the discussion. Then he glanced across the room – at some other definite object, but I wasn’t quick enough to see just what. He was looking depressed. More often than not it is knowledge rather than ignorance which has this effect on him. I glanced at Lady Simney and believed that she was puzzled. She was looking puzzled, though not obtrusively so.

‘Lady Simney, I have one more question. You know that it was not Mr Christopher Hoodless who killed your husband?’

She brought a hand to her breast in uncontrollable agitation. It is a gesture one sees in the theatre. But presumably the theatre has copied it from life.

‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘I mean, no in your sense, no. My whole soul tells me he could not do such a thing. He
could
not strike murderously at an unsuspecting man from behind. But how can I give proof that he is innocent?’

‘Ah,’ said the Inspector. ‘How indeed, Lady Simney?’

And he bowed and led me from the room.

It was dusk outside and presently we should have to be getting off to the village. That the Simney Arms would provide any very substantial comfort was something which a brief glimpse had made us doubt. However, we could hardly announce ourselves as yet another influx of uninvited guests at Hazelwood. The Australians had at least been cousins, and not policemen.

Some line on the Australian aspect of the affair was what we went after next. For my own part I would have gone for it from the first. Lady Simney didn’t strike me as homicidal – and secretly, you know, I still pay a good deal of heed to these simple promptings of instinct. Moreover she herself seemed to have no Australian connexions, and far the most striking thing about her husband’s death was the fact that it had followed hard upon certain mysterious disputes which the Australians’ arrival had occasioned. I put this to the chief as we re-entered the study; he nodded absently and went over to the window. He flung up the sash and stuck out his head, twisting his shoulders till he was looking directly upwards. ‘The trellis,’ he said, goes up as far as the next storey.’

‘You mean somebody could have come
down
it?’

I must say that I don’t often play Dr Watson quite so all-out as this, but my mind had been hunting about elsewhere and I was taken by surprise. I was also a good deal disconcerted by the widening possibilities which this simple discovery revealed.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My dear lad – yes. It is not an inference which is very far to seek. Perhaps you would like to comment on it in some way?’

Well, I have to put up with a little sarcasm from time to time. It generally means that he’s not too pleased with the way his own nose is pointing. ‘We mustn’t forget that someone certainly came
up
,’ I said. ‘Nor the tracks in the snow. Nor young Cockayne’s scuffle in the dark.’

‘Very true.’ He looked at me unsmilingly. ‘And conceivably one person came from above and another from below. This room may have been quite a rendezvous. Anyway, the lie of the land upstairs is worth studying. But as for what you say of Lady Simney,’ – he shut down the window – ‘you must think again. It may not be quite true that she has no Australian connexions.’

Auntie Flo will be glad to know I tumbled to this. ‘Hoodless,’ I said.

‘Exactly. He is an anthropologist who may well have taken Australian blacks in his stride.’

‘But it doesn’t seem likely that Australian blacks have anything to do with Sir George’s death.’

‘
Something
Australian has – or so, in our darkness, it is useful to guess. There has been some Australian mystery, and Hoodless very possibly knows Australia. I’m saying no more than that. And now let us have an Australian in.’ The Inspector glanced about the study and paused. ‘But wait a bit. Wasn’t there something about a safe?’

I looked through Sergeant Laffer’s notes. ‘A wall-safe,’ I said, ‘behind the damaged portrait of Sir George Simney. It was found locked and has not yet been examined.’ I turned the pages. ‘A bunch of keys was among the articles found on the dead man.’

He had already crossed the room and given the dead man’s portrait a tug. It swung on hinges – and there, sure enough, was a small safe let into the wall. ‘Yes,’ he called, ‘it’s a key, not a combination. Better get the bunch. But what about fingerprints?’

I shook my head. ‘They’ve made a full record, of course, and it’s all available for analysis. But I doubt if anything’s going to appear.’

He grunted. ‘If fingers only left legible prints as often as they’re supposed to… Come on, lad. Hurry up with the key.’

Without resentment, I hurried up. It appeared that he set store by the possibilities of this safe. And, indeed, he paused before it now almost dramatically. ‘Do you see any reason to suppose,’ he asked, ‘that the secret of the affair lies here?’

‘Well, sir – yes, in a way. It seems that when there was this rough house the other night the picture got smashed and the safe was revealed as a result. Everybody must have become aware of it, including the Australians. Now, there’s an Australian secret, as we’ve said. And secrets – or the material witness to them – are frequently kept in safes.’

‘So they are, lad.’ He was quite genial now, and I could see that he really did regard this concealed repository with something of the confidence of a conjuror before a silk hat. ‘Well, here goes. Got a torch? Just give us a little extra light.’

I shone my torch. He turned the key. The little steel shutter slid back. There can be no doubt about what we expected – about what, that is to say, the reasonable expectation was. Documents, some yellow with age, were the proper thing for this safe to hold. But what it did hold was a pair of men’s boots, fairly new. There was nothing else.

This sort of thing is popularly supposed to be quite in a policeman’s ordinary line of business. And, of course, we are always running up against the unexpected. But not quite like this. Those black boots appeared positively to grin at us, delighted at the effect of utter inconsequence they had achieved. I looked cautiously at the Inspector. ‘Perhaps,’ I asked, ‘you would like me to take them round the household and see whom they fit, as I did with the things in the suitcase?’

‘Of course you must do that.’ Now he was looking not at the boots at all but into some speculative vacancy. ‘And, of course, apply all your detective talent to them. You may find that they were worn by a swarthy man, fond of music and with a slight cast in the left eye, who has recently made a proposal of marriage.’

Just for a moment I didn’t realize that he was merely making fun of me. Then I took them carefully from the safe. ‘All right, sir,’ I said, ‘I’ll have a go at it.’ And I inspected them carefully. ‘They are the property of someone who played football as a boy, is disregardful of both personal appearance and comfort, rides a badly neglected bicycle and is fond of gardening.’ I paused. ‘Moreover, I think the owner is probably left-handed.’

‘Let me have a look.’ He glanced at me suspiciously before taking the boots. ‘Appearance and comfort, yes – they’re kinked at the toes and wrinkled up inside. And the gardening’s clear enough too; they’ve plainly been used to drive in a fork or spade – and with the
left
foot, which at least suggests left-handedness. But as for the bicycle–’ He frowned. ‘Yes, scratches just over the right ankle-bone such as might certainly be made by a chain – and a rusty chain rather than a well-oiled one. But the football as a boy appears to me pure fantasy.’

‘It’s just the way they’re tied loosely together by the ends of their laces. It reminds me of what we used to do with football boots before slinging them round the neck.’

‘I see. Well, nothing much of all this seems to fit the dead man. And I doubt if the boots will either. But why should he keep a pair of men’s boots, whether his own or somebody else’s in a concealed safe? If they had been women’s shoes, now, there would be nothing odd about it at all. There’s nothing commoner than the treasuring of such things as erotic symbols. They told you that in lectures, I don’t doubt.’

Sometimes he likes to show that he’s up in all the latest. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘nothing in the way of women’s attire would surprise us in the least, of course. But these don’t look like erotic symbols, by a long way.’

‘Would you say they look like red herrings – something planted here with a deliberate meaninglessness and incongruity, the way you get things in those surrealist pictures people fancy nowadays?’

I hadn’t imagined he followed art. ‘No,’ I replied after some thought. ‘No – somehow I don’t.’

‘It’s curious about modern painting. No understanding much of it, if you ask me.’

As you know, I try to keep wide awake when he starts talking like that. Otherwise I just get left at the post.

And I got left at the post now. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘apart from his being disregardful of comfort and appearance, you haven’t told me much about this fellow’s temperament.’

‘I’ve told you,’ I said warily, ‘as much as I can infer.’

He held the boots up under my nose. ‘Can’t you see,’ he asked, ‘that he’s a man of an uncommonly mistrustful nature? Make not a bad policeman, if you ask me.’ He swung round, for there was the sound of somebody entering the study behind us. ‘Good evening,’ he said to the newcomer. ‘Are you in the habit of wearing boots?’

It was Mr Hippias Simney. His glance had gone to the open safe – rather swiftly, it appeared to me – but now he halted and looked at us by no means pleasantly. ‘Boots!’ he said. ‘What the deuce do you mean, sir?’

Inspector Cadover held out our latest discovery. ‘We are interested in these,’ he explained. ‘They were among the objects which we found in the late Sir George’s safe here. Not perhaps the most interesting objects, but certainly the oddest.’

It’s wonderful with what aplomb he can tell these shocking lies – and all on the spur of the moment, too. And Hippias, I think, was disconcerted; at least he took time off to think. ‘Dam’ disagreeable thing, this,’ he said. ‘Policemen never much in my line. Don’t like them pawing round a gentleman’s house.’

‘Sir George’s death, Mr Simney, is certainly a disagreeable sequel to your arrival at Hazelwood. You must greatly regret now that what were virtually to be your kinsman’s last hours should have been darkened by what appear to have been serious – even violent – disputes with yourself.’

‘I certainly threw a bottle at him.’ And Hippias laughed with the boisterousness of an inwardly uncertain man. ‘Or perhaps I threw it at his reflection in one of those ballyfool mirrors. Missed him, anyway. Was in liquor rather, I’m afraid. Port that’s actually seen Oporto treacherous, you know, after our harmless colonial brews.’ He paused and gave us a calculating glance. ‘Find anything in that safe about a place called Dismal Swamp? Not important, I may say, but the occasion of what little heat there was between poor old George and ourselves. He did us down in Australia a great many years ago.’

‘We shall want particulars of that. And did the man Owdon do you down there too?’

Hippias looked rapidly round the study – rather as if seeking counsel from his ancestors upon the walls. ‘Owdon?’ he said nervously. ‘Dear me, nothing of the sort. Excellent man, I believe. Most reliable. Unimpeachable and all that. Bevis most eager to keep him on.’

‘I rather doubt, Mr Simney, whether Owdon is eager to keep himself on. There is some evidence that he has been proposing to make an unobtrusive departure from Hazelwood.’

Well, at that this bluff colonial gentleman visibly paled before our eyes. ‘Impossible!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dear fellow is held in greatest regard by us all.’

This was an odd way to speak of a man he could have known nothing of for at least sixteen years. And the Inspector took up the point at once. ‘Mr Simney, there seems to have been something a good deal out of the way between Sir George and this butler of his. Moreover it is reported in the household that he was much agitated by your arrival. Can you throw any light on these matters?’

‘None whatever.’

‘Let me suggest certain possibilities. Owdon had some sort of hold over his late employer, possibly as a result of knowing something gravely to his discredit in Australia.’