‘To be sure, Harold, the case. Now, what do you think of it?’
This wasn’t what I wanted. But I came forward with the one thing clear to me. ‘There are two strands to it – and they don’t intertwine. In fact, one of them takes none of the strain at all.’
‘That is very good, Harold, very good indeed.’
‘One can approach it by way of Hoodless, or by way of the Australian cousins. It was the turning up here of one or the other that set matters moving. But between those two turnings up there is no connexion; that they happened virtually simultaneously is mere coincidence. And it follows, I think, that, although each may have some mysterious elements, only one can lead us directly to the death of Sir George. Owdon’s death – if we are still to call him that – is another matter. It is almost certainly part of the Australian story, and not of Lady Simney’s.’
‘That is all very true. But I can’t see, lad, why you should be so aggrieved about it.’
‘I’m not aggrieved.’ I paused on hearing the thorough peevishness in my own voice. ‘Well, sir, it’s like this. The Hazelwood affair is rather too full measure for my taste. Here are two mysteries, so to speak, and one of them is just something in the way, and entirely useless to us.’
The chief chuckled. ‘Not a bit of it. You see, the case… I think you were asking me about the case?’
‘Yes, sir. I was.’
‘Well, the case is closed.’
‘Closed!’
‘Nothing mysterious remains to it. What we are now confronted with is a question of proof. And even if one of the aspects is, as you say, irrelevant, it may be possible to exploit it. In fact, I rather think I see how it can be used to force the issue. But we shall need luck as well as our usual moderate cunning.’
I looked at him dumbfounded. ‘Do I understand,’ I asked, ‘that the whole wretched business has solved itself through the instrumentality of that indifferent old gramophone?’
He smiled cockily. Really, he might have been the youngest constable in the Force. ‘In a way,’ he said. ‘But sister arts are involved.’
There is not much to be done with him when he is like this. We were out on the drive now and trudging towards the village. ‘And may I ask,’ I murmured, ‘what the next step is to be?’
‘Tea. A nice cup of tea, lad, at the Simney Arms. Then a sleep for me, and a couple of hours in which you can go on writing to dad and auntie Flo. And, after that, we can begin to organize the party.’
‘The party?’ This sort of stupid echo was about all that I could contrive.
‘Certainly. We are going to give a party at Hazelwood.’ He chuckled again. ‘And entirely at the expense of Hazelwood’s new baronet.’
Part Three
Nicolette
1
I resume the pen (as a Victorian heroine might say) aware, Gentle Reader, that you now know quite a lot. The Hazelwood mystery is clearing up; it is realized that both George and Denzell Simney died on the premises and that both here and in the appearance of Christopher a good deal of past history is involved.
Right at the beginning I let out that it wasn’t I who killed my husband, and perhaps this has been a bad failure in technique. But then I am an amateur – and doubtless amateur crime-writers are just as painfully incompetent as amateur actors. But at least there was no failure in Inspector Cadover’s technique, and the only criticism I can make of his plan is that we might – some or all of us – have simply refused to play. Clearly when people blow out their brains or have their heads stove in it is necessary to answer the questions of the police. But witnesses are not, I suppose, obliged to forgather in a large family party on the seat of the original crime and there suffer being played off against each other with very considerable ingenuity. It was simple curiosity that Inspector Cadover exploited, or that and the perennial fascination which anything with an element of drama holds. No doubt I ought to have been quite at home with this aspect of the thing. But I can’t really pretend that I enjoyed it. For one thing, Cadover led off with a nasty jolt for myself.
‘My first suspect,’ he said blandly, ‘was, of course, Lady Simney. And this for several reasons. She had for long had much cause to detest and fear her husband. His morals, it appears, were bad and his manners brutal. He had actually struck her in the face on the very day upon which he died, an action altogether out of the way, I must suppose, in the upper reaches of society.’
Inspector Cadover paused on this bit of irony or whatever it is to be called. Deliberately, I don’t doubt. For it was part of his scheme to get us all thoroughly irritable and edgy.
‘Again, Mr Hoodless, to whom her ladyship had at one time been engaged, was newly returned to England, and it was not impossible, despite certain indications to the contrary, that she had already known this for some days. Now, the mere fact of a former lover’s returning in this way might well be sufficient to precipitate a crisis in a woman of emotional temperament. And Lady Simney, being as I understand an actress of some talent, was endowed with such a temperament as likely as not.’
There was another brief silence. I can’t deny that this manner of speech got me riled at the start. As for Christopher, I could see his knuckles going white on the arms of his chair. He didn’t like the good Inspector’s little testimonial to my acting at all.
‘There was another very obvious point. A telephone call had been sent to Mr Deamer’ – and here Inspector Cadover turned to glance at our vicar, who sat fidgeting nervously in a chair near the window – ‘and the effect of this call was to procure the appearance of certain evidences very misleading in the case. Mr Deamer is convinced that the speaker was Miss Grace Simney, but this suggestion Miss Grace denies. Lady Simney is the likeliest person successfully to imitate another woman’s voice.
‘More important than all this was the fact that Lady Simney appeared to have a conclusive alibi. We are always inclined, you know, to hold suspect anything obtrusive of that sort. The butler – if we are to believe him – found this room empty. He came out and thereafter had the door continuously under observation. Sir George passed him and entered. Sir George was killed. The butler rushed in, and on coming out again met Lady Simney emerging from her bathroom. Now, you may say that it might have been possible for her to slip out of the room while the butler was occupied with the body. But assuredly she had no means of slipping into it – of slipping into it, that is to say, by the door. Could she, then, have got out of the bathroom window and along the terrace? The state of the snow negatived this, or appeared to do so until I observed a significant fact. I think, Lady Simney, that you go in for winter sports?’
And Inspector Cadover looked at me sharply. This was the nasty jolt. And yet I couldn’t see that it was so very effective. ‘You mean,’ I asked, ‘that you found my skis?’
‘Just that. I even found in the snow the suggestion of such tracks as I supposed skis might leave. But inquiry convinced me that these were a mere fortuitous effect of the wind. In point of fact skis could not be used to obviate footprints. Their tracks would be unmistakable, it seems.
‘One possibility remained. If Lady Simney could not have gone down from her bathroom she might have gone up, climbing to the next storey and then descending to the study window by the trellis. But I found that while anyone, once on the upper storey, could get down to the study easily enough, the ascent from the bathroom was impracticable without tackle which it would have been impossible rapidly to clear away.
‘Well, every obtrusive alibi is not a bogus one. So much, I said, for Lady Simney. It is necessary to step back and take an altogether broader view of the case.’
It was clear that we were expected to settle in for a substantial evening’s instruction. A fire had been lit in the study – I can’t think by whom, for it is my impression that by now pretty nearly all the servants had quit. It flickered on the Simneys, animate and inanimate, ra
nged round the room; it cast a soft palpating warmth over the relaxed limbs of Danae and Pasiphae on each side of the window and threw into a darker shade Caravaggio’s lurking Venus above. Bevis had planted himself before the hearth as if to indicate that, however intrusive policemen might comport themselves, authority at Hazelwood now centred in himself. I wished him joy of it heartily, and was not without a moment’s speculation as to which fashionable portrait painter might most effectively add his heavy features to the collection of baronets about us. Perhaps Willoughby might manage it, and add a self-portrait later. But at the moment Willoughby’s eye was fixed on myself and I felt fairly sure that he was speculating on what plastic properties I might present with or without a bath towel. I turned my attention back to Inspector Cadover, who also had his mind on theoretical issues.
‘From the first it appeared certain that Sir George had been taken unawares from behind and deliberately killed without any sort of struggle. In other words, we were dealing with the crime of murder. It is a murderer, ladies and gentlemen, whom we have to find – and I am very sure that we have to find that murderer in this room.’
Cadover’s eye was fixed on the carpet as he said this, and I think we must all have waited breathlessly to see whether he would deliberately raise them to one or other of us. And he did deliberately raise them, but only to meet the glance of his assistant, a harmless youth called Harold, much given to offering me heartening glances on the sly.
‘Perhaps the majority of you had the opportunity to commit this deed, since it turned out that nothing was required except the ability to gain an empty room and climb down a trellis. It seemed to me best, therefore, to pass at least provisionally to the field of motives. But here again there proved to be much scope for speculation.
‘A murder may be deliberately planned, or it may emerge as a sudden necessity imposed by some slip or miscalculation in the prosecution of a lesser crime. Take the possibilities of this latter situation first.
‘What possible crime might make it thus suddenly necessary to kill Sir George? One line of thought is fairly obvious. This room is full of valuable pictures – imported, as I understand, by a whim of Sir George’s, to take their place beside family portraits of somewhat lesser consideration. But would anybody, apart from a professional thief with a very specialized clientele, think to steal such pictures? Would any of you here present think to do so?’
There was a couple of second’s pause during which we became aware that this was not a rhetorical question. Cadover, like a resolute teacher before his class, was determined to have an answer.
Willoughby broke the silence. ‘Well, I suppose aunt Grace might. She regards this ghastly room as a sort of brothel, and I have no doubt that she would like to get at these nudes with a hatchet. I know the feeling. I have it myself at Burlington House every year.’
The feelings of Willoughby on this subject might, I suppose, be called doctrinaire. But in what he said about Grace there was a queer grain of truth – and this it was that moved me to protest.
‘Willoughby’s,’ I said, ‘is surely a most unnecessary and frivolous speculation. Even supposing Grace to have quite fanatical feelings on the matter–’
‘Oh, to be sure!’ And Willoughby insufferably laughed. ‘Of course aunt Grace would have gone about it in quite a different way, calling upon the world to witness her righteous purge. But now, what about myself? If I–’
‘Precisely so!’ It was Cadover who again took the floor. ‘The way in which Mr Willoughby has just dragged in his aunt suggests a temperament somewhat on the sardonic and savage side. Suppose Sir George’s boorish joke’ – and the Inspector made a sweeping gesture at the walls – ‘had come really to irritate him supremely. He respects art, I understand; and at the same time had no great respect for his uncle. He has a taste for rather violent gestures – such as pitching sherry, for example, at his relations. So he might well have decided to do something drastic about the pictures. Perhaps he proposed to purloin the Caravaggio. It would be a sort of knight-errantry to rescue the lady’ – and Cadover glanced upward at the Venus – ‘from among her shady Simney companions. So Mr Willoughby arranged a little mystification and on Tuesday night climbed down to the study by the trellis. But his uncle was in the room, and as Mr Willoughby came through the curtains their eyes met in that mirror’ – the Inspector pointed – ‘and Mr Willoughby realized that he was detected. He relied a good deal on his uncle’s favour, and for a moment he lost his head and struck out blindly–’
Willoughby sat back and laughed again. Then he looked at his watch. ‘And may I ask,’ he said, ‘if there is to be this sort of tale of a cock and a bull about each of us in turn? It will take rather a long time.’ He paused. ‘Mind you, it would have given me a great deal of pleasure to make off with the Caravaggio, and I can almost see myself engineering something of the sort. But however should I contrive a telephone call in aunt Grace’s voice? And nobody strikes out blindly when detected in a prank. Or’ – and Willoughby glanced at Mervyn – ‘no grown-up does.’
‘I quite agree that we are wasting time.’ Bevis spoke in his most authoritative voice. But I noticed that he had moved away from the fireplace and sat himself down quite unobtrusively in a corner. There was no doubt that the police-inspector dominated the room. ‘Incidentally, if Willoughby or anyone else struck out blindly he must have had something to strike out with. Are we to suppose that he came on this picture-stealing escapade armed with a bludgeon?’
Inspector Cadover walked over to the window recess and lightly touched its only ornament, a boy’s bronze head set on a marble pedestal. ‘This,’ he said soberly, ‘was the weapon. It was given a wipe and replaced almost immediately, but the experts tell me that there can be no doubt about the fact. And, of course, I am bringing no accusation against Mr Willoughby. I am merely, you will remember, reviewing the possible motives behind one reading of the murder, whereby we are to suppose it the sudden action of a wrong-doer detected at something else. You will all see that the point about the bludgeon is a substantial one. The fact that the weapon was simply something snatched up for the purpose powerfully suggests this reading. But it is not, of course, conclusive evidence. The criminal might, after all, be one who had deliberately formed the design of murder, and who relied upon a known object which he knew would mislead by suggesting the contrary supposition.
‘Have we now exhausted the picture as a motive or magnet? Not quite. Mr Deamer, we may believe, had very much the same feeling about them as Miss Grace. Might he not have been prompted by some fanatical iconoclastic urge to destroy them? He has told a strange story of being lured here to prevent an – um – ungodly encounter, and of climbing to this room and then going away again. But what if the facts were quite otherwise, and what if he received no telephone-call at all?’
‘Fiddle-faddle!’ Hippias, who had been pacing nervously at the far end of the room, turned impatiently round upon Cadover. ‘Never heard such bally rot. If this parson fellow had come in on George and started arguing about his mistresses and dirty pictures and what-not the thing might be possible enough. George could he deuced irritating, and might prompt any fellow to hit out. I know’ – and here Hippias laughed uneasily – ‘because I pitched a bottle at him myself. Didn’t find its mark, of course. Damaged his bally portrait instead. But the point is this: there’s no reason whatever to suppose that the most iconoclastic clergyman would creep up behind George and bat him on the head. It isn’t as if George had been a plaster saint, you know.’ And Hippias glanced round the room as if calling upon us to take notice of this little joke – which was certainly a better one than he commonly contrived. ‘Hasn’t anyone thought to bring in a damned spot?’
Mervyn Cockayne, clinging close as he now constantly did to Timmy, giggled shrilly. ‘Out, out, damned spot,’ he said, ‘not in, in.’ He glanced round expecting applause, much as Hippias had done. But nobody thought Mervyn funny. ‘
Mama–’ he began – and seemed to recall that these antics now belonged to a past phase of his development. ‘If you mean whiskey,’ he said gloomily, ‘there’s some by the door.’
Silently Gerard crossed the room and poured his father’s spot. Since my encounter with him in the orangery we had scarcely spoken, and I had the impression that he was being equally taciturn with everybody else. There was some pressure of thought on his forehead. It was as if he were making a final attempt to work out something that had long puzzled him. But now he did speak. ‘Get on,’ he said curtly to Inspector Cadover. ‘Come to something, for heaven’s sake, and let this damned futile curtain-raising be. Let’s find out why those two men died and hang someone for it and be through with the matter.’
I must say I felt it to be a sensible speech. But it showed yet another member of the family who was considerably on edge.
‘Very well.’ Inspector Cadover, who sat at the centre of the long study table, took another speculative glance around us. ‘We will eliminate as a motive any proposal to steal or destroy pictures. Can we find anything else which might have been the criminal’s main object, and so retain the hypothesis that the killing of Sir George was unpremeditated and incidental?’
‘The safe,’ I said. For here again, it seemed to me, the Inspector did not design a merely rhetorical question.
‘The safe, undoubtedly.’ He bowed to me with a certain formal courtesy. ‘And there is, of course, one special circumstance here. The safe is concealed behind Sir George’s own portrait, and to some of you its very existence may have been revealed only as a consequence of the–’
‘The rough house, officer.’ It was Hippias who again interrupted, and with an affectation of bluffness horridly false. ‘Happened when I threw the bally bottle.’
What Happened at Hazelwood? Page 22
