What Happened at Hazelwood?

by Michael Innes

  ‘Quite so. There may well, then, have been a design to rob the safe. The unexpected presence of Sir George–’

  Bevis stirred sharply. ‘Damn it, man, there could have been nothing unexpected about my brother’s presence in this room. He entered it like clockwork every night.’

  ‘That is very good – very good indeed.’ And Cadover turned upon Bevis the same sort of irony that he was wont to direct upon the attendant Harold. ‘In fact, at this point we are carried right away from any unpremeditated homicide. If the safe was to be opened without great trouble, Sir George had to be present, dead or alive. And perhaps preferably dead. The key was in his pocket, and very likely nothing would have persuaded him to take it out.’

  Inspector Cadover again made his slow inspection of the circle of faces around him. The action was coming to give rather the effect of a searchlight.

  ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, what would be in the safe? Family papers, one would say. Perhaps documents about old colonial days. Any one of a number of people might want them. Mr Hippias here, or Mr Gerard. Or the butler, Owdon.’ Cadover made his longest pause yet. ‘Or Timmy Owdon, the butler’s son.’

  2

  ‘We all stirred uneasily – or all except Timmy himself, who stood leaning against the mantelpiece with an expression of fixed calm. Mervyn nudged him. ‘Master Timmy, the butler’s son,’ he murmured. ‘And, oh, what a happy, happy family we are!’

  It was now a friendly joke; Timmy acknowledged it with a faint smile; the Inspector gave an odd, weary sigh and went on.

  ‘But what the safe proved to contain was Mr Deamer’s boots. Well, that is a bit of a surprise. But then we are not the first to be surprised in this affair. Sir George himself was uncommonly surprised – and a split second before his death.’

  Inspector Cadover scratched his chin and of a sudden looked fixedly at Hippias. ‘But that’s not all. The surprises began on Monday night with the arrival of Sir George’s Australian relatives. The butler was surprised – indeed shattered.’

  Mervyn giggled. ‘I would say he did the shattering. At least a dozen wine glasses went at a swoop.’

  ‘And Sir George himself was shaken. Presently there was a row in this study. Put it like this: several angry and bewildered Simneys were faced with a thoroughly awkward situation and couldn’t at all agree on what to do about it. And this is the business that must be cleared up first. I propose to do so here and now. Mr Hippias, perhaps you will be good enough to tell us what your arrival at Hazelwood revealed to you, and what you intended to do about it?’

  ‘He intended to collect a cheque.’

  Everybody stared at me, and I had a moment to wonder what had prompted me to this revelation.

  ‘I eavesdropped,’ I continued. ‘On Tuesday morning I eavesdropped in the park. Bevis made Hippias a proposition. I think it was twenty thousand pounds to keep his mouth shut. Hippias didn’t think much of the amount. Bevis said he thought it was handsome in view of the fact that he had to consider me as well – whatever that might mean. They walked away to beat it out. Bevis was full of fine moral feeling. Hippias was just plain unscrupulous.’

  Joyleen was looking at me round-eyed. Gerard had flushed darkly – and, catching his eye, I am bound to say I felt rather a cad. But I was tired of the Simneys. Within limits, I was all for the truth.

  And at least I had the satisfaction of throwing Inspector Cadover right out of his stride. He was almost as round-eyed as Joyleen. ‘Do I understand,’ he asked me sharply, ‘that – that Sir Bevis appeared to have a large interest – a major economic interest in the suppression of whatever revelation threatened? And that the threat was – was analogous to that constituted by the possibility of your having a male child?’

  ‘Oh, most decidedly.’ Having taken on the role of a treacherous little bitch I played it whole-heartedly enough. ‘Bevis was putting it on grounds of high moral tone and family shame. He is, as it happens, just that sort of humbug. But actually he was dead scared of losing something he didn’t want to lose.’

  ‘And you came in?’ Inspector Cadover’s reiteration appeared positively stupid. ‘You and the revelation both came in?’

  ‘Yes. He stood to lose equally by the revelation – Hippias’ revelation – and by me.’

  ‘If you had a son he would lose the baronetcy?’

  At this point the young man called Harold exclaimed. Not articulately. What he produced was a sort of startled yelp.

  Inspector Cadover’s face was a study. One reads of people being dumbfounded. One seldom meets it in the flesh.

  But Timmy’s face was a study too. It was lit by a sort of quiet irony. Not for the first time, I was aware that he was the subtlest of the Simneys.

  ‘I had it utterly upside down.’ The Inspector’s eye, still startled, circled us all. ‘Had I not, Mr Bevis?’

  Bevis’ brow darkened. ‘What the devil–’

  ‘And you, madam’ – he had turned to me – ‘may I ask if you have greatly prized your position as Lady Simney?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, Inspector Cadover, I don’t think I have.’

  ‘It is just as well. For you have never been so. Nor will Mr Bevis ever be a baronet. In fact–’

  ‘In fact,’ said Timmy gravely, ‘since my father Sir George took his own life in his pantry six hours ago I have been Sir Timothy Simney. I welcome you all to Hazelwood.’

  Viewed as a coup de théâtre nothing could well have been more effective than this. It was Timmy who now stood before the fireplace, turning over a little sheaf of papers which he had drawn from his pocket. ‘I am going to read you my father’s last letter,’ he said. ‘The ink was hardly dry on it when he shot himself, and I found it when I ran into the room.’ Timmy paused and looked at Cadover. ‘But it appears you knew that his real name was not Alfred Owdon; that he was in fact a Simney too?’

  ‘I did.’ The police inspector had hardly yet recovered himself. ‘And I supposed him to be Denzell Simney, Sir George’s younger brother. But in that case Mr Bevis would have suffered no material loss by the revelation. That his younger brother Denzell was still alive would not have prevented the baronetcy coming to him should Lady Simney have no son. But if Mr Bevis was willing to pay twenty thousand pounds for silence there can be only one explanation. The secret about Owdon is very different from what I have supposed. He was not Denzell but Sir George – and a Sir George already possessed of a legitimate heir. And that heir, we must agree, has very effectively declared himself.’

  Timmy smiled faintly. ‘You had certainly got it mixed – which was not, perhaps, a very difficult thing to do. Uncle Bevis’ – and Timmy wheeled round on his kinsman – ‘is it with your permission that I read this letter?’

  There was no reply. Bevis’ florid face had turned pale. Timmy paused for a few moments more and then in a quiet voice read the document through. To those of us who knew nothing of that long-distant blackbirding and its consequences every sentence was illuminating. But here I need give only the latter part of the letter.

  …We were both wild, but it was Denzell who had the very devil in him. Only the mind of a devil could have leapt, as his did, at the chance of dispossessing me – and of amusing himself by keeping me where I have been kept so long.

  At first his ambition had stretched no further, I suppose, than contriving to get remittances from England. As Denzell he was dead, since to emerge would be to court a prison sentence for attempting the life of that anthropologist. After our escape we had of course separated; it seemed the safest thing to do. And when he somehow heard that I wasn’t venturing to go under my own name either, and was content to pick up a living as I could, he saw his chance of continued easy money. He simply cabled home as George Simney, hinting that he had been in trouble and obliged to break with his previous Australian connexions, and that his regular remittance should be sent to him in suc
h and such a way.

  It was a queer situation. I – the real George Simney – was known to be alive; the Australian Simneys knew it; and indeed I stopped with them for a time under my own name and did myself a little good over Dismal Swamp. But mostly I was wandering about after gold, and calling myself anything that came into my head. This had its conveniences. If Brown got on the wrong side of the law (and I got on the wrong side of such law as there was on the diggings often enough) he simply disappeared and Jones took his place. And meantime Denzell, whom nobody thought of as alive, was taking advantage of the fact that somewhere there ought to be a George Simney, to live the life of a remittance man comfortably enough. Mostly, I believe, he lived in Perth and was, increasingly without danger of question, George Simney to a few reputable folk – bankers and the like. A certain amount of forgery and perjury was involved, and there were various chances of detection to risk every day. But on the whole it was simple enough. We had always been fairly like each other, nobody in England was interested, and the chance of exposure receded year by year.

  But the day came when Fortune – ironic jade – brought us face to face. From Coolgardie I had drifted to Perth and there on the beach at Cotesloe, with nothing better to do than watch a group of bathing girls, was my brother Denzell. He had gone pretty soft and one could tell his manner of life at a glance; he was just a remittance man of the more prosperous sort. For a time he foxed with me, but presently the truth came out. Denzell had stepped into my shoes and was George Simney every time he collected his money. It didn’t worry me much; indeed at the time I didn’t give a damn. We were neither of us much more than rubbish on the scrap heap of society, and it seemed no matter to me which called himself what. It wasn’t much of a reunion. We had seen wild times together and been as thick as thieves, in a way. But always there had been a deep hostility between us, and at that meeting on Costesloe beach I think I had an inkling of the queer implacable hatred Denzell bore me. But it didn’t seem important. England was behind us for good and no ties need ever bind us again. On that sunny beach I nodded good-bye to my brother – as I thought for ever – and left him to be George Simney and draw his monthly pittance if he cared. It didn’t occur to me to reflect how near George Simney stood to fortune and a title, after all. I had two elder brothers, you know, and our father was a man as hale and hearty as myself.

  Denzell was not so careless and although I said goodbye to him that day he must have been far from saying goodbye to me. I believe that in the wild years which followed he must have trailed me himself, and that somehow he must have possessed himself of sufficient money to keep others on the job as well. In Coolgardie and Broome and Wyndham he got a great deal of information. But what he really wanted he got in Sharks Bay.

  Those tawny, scrawny sandhills, my dear boy, you will never see. They mark the beginnings of Australian history, for here Dampier came, searching for water, in 1692. And they nearly marked the end of Australian history for me. It is a story ugly even for those wild parts, where a gun, or a knife, or a spoonful of powdered bamboo in the porridge has often settled the possession of a little pile of honey-coloured pearls destined to be smuggled overseas in cakes of soap for the pleasure of Hindu or Chinese ladies. I need not tell it all now. Let it be sufficient that it was here, in a tumbledown pearling-pit, that I fought through half a pitch-black night with a ruffian whom I had no doubt greatly wronged. It is of this nightmare encounter, my dear lad, and not of the blackbirding affair, that my face bears such terrible evidences today. In those times, and on the fringes of that vast and empty continent, such things were hushed up often enough. And so I thought it was with this fatal fight. But Denzell knew. And not only did he know – he had collected (by what wiles and chances I need not detail) documentary evidences which would have sent me to gaol for life.

  The time came when I heard of the accident – of the terrible railway smash, that is to say, in which my father and two elder brothers lost their lives. Utterly against all calculation I had entered into a fortune and become Sir George Simney. It didn’t occur to me that I was up against any difficulty, for my identity could be easily established despite all the masquerading that Denzell had done. Besides, if he was inclined to kick, did I not possess the uncomfortable secret of that revolver-shot on the lugger long ago?

  But it was a case of Greek meeting Greek! When I confronted Denzell and told him I was going home to claim the title, he laid upon the table that formidable criminal dossier which he had compiled against me. ‘You want to go home as master?’ he said. ‘By God, you shall go home as man!’ It was a wild notion, but perfectly feasible. I was unrecognizable, and after all those years not even our brother Bevis would be likely to realize that the man returning as George was really Denzell. And, in the end, it happened like that. Denzell held the stronger cards, for if it had come to exposing each other mine would have been far the heavier debt to pay. But – more important – I acknowledge that his was the stronger will; behind this queer and evil caprice of compelling his elder brother to servitude was a savage and inflexible power which, in the end, I could not resist. I wanted freedom – even of a sort – and I bought it by becoming Alfred Owdon and returning to Hazelwood as an overseer of port and claret, dustpans and brooms. And so I have lived, except for a brief break-away eighteen years ago.

  It was then that I married your mother, Kathleen Taylor, in the parish of Medley, Shropshire. Had she lived I believe I would have found resolution (for perhaps it required no more than that) to defy Denzell for good. But your mother died when you were born, and with that all spirit left me. I returned to Hazelwood under threat of exposure, and your early years were spent with a foster mother in a cottage on the estate. Denzell, I suppose, was concerned not to lose sight of one who might be eleventh baronet one day.

  For there was one irony in the situation which he himself, I don’t doubt, appreciated to the full. The power he held over me could by no means reach beyond the grave; I had ample means of proving the truth as soon as I could afford to do so; and that moment could come when I was on my death-bed. Denzell had the strongest interest in my continuing to cling to life and judge it tolerable, and the hazards he ran in this must have been one of the pleasures of his strangely twisted nature.

  The Australians came. It was a sufficient shock in itself – and then, looking out from the dining-room, I saw how Hippias’ glance lit momentarily upon the supposed Sir George and then immediately passed on in search of explanation. He had recognized at once that he was in the presence of Denzell – Denzell whom he had supposed perished in that blackbirding foray so many years before. The English members of the family, you must remember, had known Denzell and myself only as boys, but Hippias had known us as young men. And later in the evening a word he spoke to me outside the study showed that he had arrived at the whole truth. For the time, I was completely unnerved. The past had claimed us and at last the truth must be told. At least, my dear Timothy, it would benefit you and bring you into your own. But for me it meant either flight or suicide. My mind was very confused. I prepared for either.

  Bevis must have been told at once, and I suppose Willoughby too, and they must have learnt or conjectured your own legitimacy. There was puzzle and panic and quarrelling at Hazelwood that night. The false Sir George faced exposure; I faced exposure; Bevis and Willoughby faced the loss of the title and the estate. Only Denzell, I think, got a queer enjoyment out of knowing himself cornered. And Hippias was probably hoping to do a little by way of blackmail.

  Then came this inexplicable murder. It is utterly mysterious to me – as it must be to you – and to the police I believe I have told nothing but truth in the matter, although of much I have naturally spoken not at all. Who killed Denzell, the false Sir George? No answer comes to me. Regard our strange story from whatever angle I can, I find no one whom this savage deed could benefit. I am constrained to think that it was some other of Denzell’s sins that so dramatically found him out
, and that only coincidence is responsible for his death’s occurring at the very crisis of our particular affairs. And here I cannot do other than think of the return of Hoodless, and of his known relationship with the poor girl who has been accustomed to call herself Lady Simney.

  What has happened to the documents which Denzell so long held over me I do not know. But of this I am very certain: you, my dear boy, will never be Sir Timothy until the full truth is known – and that truth, even after all these years, must mean my being dragged to Australia to stand my trial for what was done at Sharks Bay on that inky night. I am too old and too tired a man for that. There is one alternative before me, as there has always been. After what manner I have embraced it you will know before this letter reaches your hand.

  Sir Timothy Simney, Bart., Your unhappy Father,

  Hazelwood Hall. George Simney

  When Timmy had finished reading this extraordinary document there was a long silence. Bevis – Sir Bevis as he had appeared to be only a few minutes before – sat biting his nails, a picture of uneasy rage. Willoughby had withdrawn into the reassuring world offered by Caravaggio. Lucy, Grace and Joyleen were looking about equally bewildered; and Joyleen was alarmed as well. Hippias appeared decidedly crestfallen, perhaps because he had now lost all chance of his cheque; and Gerard, for whom I felt decidedly sorry, was staring at him in a sort of horrified astonishment. Christopher was impassive, Mr Deamer struggled with some private pandemonium, and Mervyn was still standing beside Timmy as if to offer him support. Timmy himself was very pale. And in this I don’t doubt that I matched him. For one thing, it was decidedly odd to know that I had been married not to George but Denzell Simney, and that even if the marriage had been legally valid I had been plain Mrs Simney all the time.

  Silence prolonged itself in that horrible study, and round the walls Simneys dead and gone appeared to sit in futile judgement upon what had been revealed. Inspector Cadover advanced before the fire-place; his expression was at once weary and severe; when he spoke his voice held a new and sombre note.