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What Happened At Hazelwood
First published in 1946
© Michael Innes Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1946-2010
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The right of Michael Innes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 075512118X EAN: 9780755121182
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
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About the Author
Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who was born in Edinburgh in 1906. His father was Director of Education and as was fitting the young Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy before going up to Oriel, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in English.
After a short interlude travelling with AJP Taylor in Austria, he embarked on an edition of Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays and also took up a post teaching English at Leeds University.
By 1935 he was married, Professor of English at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and had completed his first detective novel, Death at the President’s Lodging. This was an immediate success and part of a long running series centred on his character Inspector Appleby. A second novel, Hamlet Revenge, soon followed and overall he managed over fifty under the Innes banner during his career.
After returning to the UK in 1946 he took up a post with Queen’s University, Belfast before finally settling as Tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. His writing continued and he published a series of novels under his own name, along with short stories and some major academic contributions, including a major section on modern writers for the Oxford History of English Literature.
Whilst not wanting to leave his beloved Oxford permanently, he managed to fit in to his busy schedule a visiting Professorship at the University of Washington and was also honoured by other Universities in the UK.
His wife Margaret, whom he had met and married whilst at Leeds in 1932, had practised medicine in Australia and later in Oxford, died in 1979. They had five children, one of whom (Angus) is also a writer. Stewart himself died in November 1994 in a nursing home in Surrey.
Part One
Nicolette
1
Nobody could have predicted just what has happened at Hazelwood, and at the moment it appears as if nobody can elucidate it either. That something would occur many have believed – or will afterwards imagine they believed – and indeed the Simneys are eminently the sort of folk of whom one might expect a scandal. Their history, it has to be admitted, is dubious. And their household is dubious too.
George Simney had gone to Australia as a young man and was believed to have engaged in agricultural pursuits there until the baronetcy fell to him. Of course various classes of men may travel with perfect propriety to the antipodes and even sojourn in them for indefinite periods. But this does not hold of the sons of baronets; Victorian fiction established an enduring convention on the point; and everybody realized that Sir George must have been a never-do-well and a bad hat. Very likely he had killed a fellow prospector on the gold diggings or drowned in a billabong some rival in a lewd love; very likely he would be hunted down one day by the vengeance of a gang of bush-ranging associates whom he had betrayed.
Something of the sort would explain the fact that the master of Hazelwood slept with a shot-gun at his side; that he made his domestics go to church but never thought of going himself; that he had brought back to England a one-eyed butler who looked much more like a retired pirate than a respectable upper servant; that there had been a time when he kept mistresses in Hazelwood Hall instead of discreetly in cottages or the local market-town; that he had caused all ordinary baths to be removed from the house as insanitary and had installed showers instead. Yes, it was to be expected that something would happen to Sir George. But who could have guessed what?
His end has been sudden, unaccountable and violent. He himself, moreover, must have found its approaches extremely surprising, since the features of the corpse displayed that expression of astounded and incredulous terror only assumed by persons who see that they are about to be murdered in the most pronouncedly bizarre way.
In fact this bad baronet has died true to the traditions of his kind – mysteriously in his library, at midnight, while a great deal of snow was falling in the park outside.
It may be said then that in his death Sir George Simney has displayed – even if involuntarily – a sense of style. And people are obscurely grateful. This holds not merely of the police, who look to the affair to bring promotion, and of the journalists, who see in it the makings of a first-rate sensation. It holds of the neighbourhood in general, which has dimly hoped for something of the sort and would have been disappointed had Sir George simply taken to his bed, sent for old Dr Humberstone, weakened, rallied, weakened again and passed away under an oxygen tent. The human mind is avid of evidences of artistry in the frame of things, and has constructed a great deal of philosophy and theology as a result.
Nevertheless it is a theologian – I am told – who constitutes the opposition in this matter. Perhaps the only person who altogether disapproves the fact and manner of Sir George’s end is the Reverend Adrian Deamer, the vicar of Hazelwood. This is partly, no doubt, because Mr Deamer believes it to be particularly undesirable that a bad man should very suddenly die. But it is also because Mr Deamer feels that the affair holds depths which he is impelled to fathom. And this distracts him from his proper business of visiting old women, of moderating by various persuasions the incidence of illegitimacy in the parish (his chief occupation), and of preparing a weekly sermon which should pass muster with the more intelligent children in his congregation… What happened at Hazelwood? Mr Deamer feels that he can never really be easy until he knows.
Of course, a number of other people feel the same – and with more evident reason. In a community, mysterious homicide is a sensation, and, perhaps, an intellectual irritant inviting the more active-minded to scratch. But within a
household such a calamity is felt chiefly in terms of suspense. It is like the presence of illness of an unknown degree of dangerousness – and there is the same badgering of authority to make pronouncements more definite than authority cares to make. The Hazelwood household wants to know what has happened. The police – local constables at first, but now grey-haired men like family solicitors – are extremely close and discreet. They rather resemble those eminent physicians, called down from London at several guineas a mile, who eventually pronounce that unless the patient goes on much as before he is almost sure to get either better or worse. In point of emotional reassurance (which is the relevant point) the local doctor proves the better bargain, after all. And at Hazelwood there are several who already regret the homely Sergeant Laffer, who confidently opined that the vagrant responsible for the deed would before long be picked up in a casual-ward or asleep under a haystack.
And, indeed, does it not look like that? At any one of a dozen kitchen doors in the district the merest tramp might learn of fabled riches in Sir George Simney’s study; he might mark the window and note the feasible climb. The light had been low, and therefore very probably indistinguishable through the curtain; so might he not have broken in, expecting the place to himself – and when surprised have killed his challenger in just this way? For Sir George was hit on the head with a blunt instrument – such is the undeniable truth of the matter – and an assault so little refined seems to match with a passing tramp well enough. But then again – and here is the trouble – it matches with certain Simneys too; you have only to look at some of them to see not only that they could readily scale a trellised wall but also that a blunt instrument would be their choice every time. There is, of course, the fact that Sir George was hit from behind, whereas if you visualize yourself being bludgeoned by a Simney your mind’s eye will certainly discern him as coming at you from straight ahead. But this is a point probably too refined for a policeman, even one who looked like a solicitor; and thus the reputation for violence which Simneys in general bear, and of which by and at large they are rather proud, now has its distinctly embarrassing side.
But there is more than this to the fact that Sir George was taken from the rear. There is a prior point – and one so obvious that it was even spotted immediately by Sir George’s butler, the retired pirate. One is obliged to say ‘even’ because this worthy, Alfred Owdon by name, is widely reputed to be devoid of anything distinguishing the human intelligence, and to equate indeed with the equine rather than the canine in mental rating… However this may be, Owdon it was who pointed out that a man suddenly hit on the head from behind ought not to look as Sir George looked.
Theoretically it is no doubt possible that the last confused scurryings of sensation about the stricken brain of a murdered man may fortuitously imprint upon the features an expression conventionally associated with almost any emotional state. He may, for instance, simply look enormously pleased. But with no one does this abstract view survive the concrete reality of a glance at the dead man as he now lies in his coffin awaiting the pompous oblivion of the Simney family vault. Sir George, one knows, saw something ranging between the extraordinary and the preternatural; and then he was immediately hit on the head – from behind.
There seems to be very little sense in that. But even at this one is not done with the bothersomeness of the blow having come from the back. Such an approach – the grey-haired police detectives call it the a tergo approach, so evidently they are learned men – such an approach almost rules out the notion that the assailant struck out hastily upon being surprised. The direction of the stroke powerfully suggests a deliberate assault upon an unsuspecting man. And yet (once more) there is his expression…
It has become clear that the police like the case. It gives them something to chew on. They show no signs of going home. If they were asked to describe what has happened their answer – it is possible to suspect – would be Quite a lot. And, somehow, nobody relishes this. The notion that operating that single definite impact upon a human skull has been, so to speak, an engine or contrivance in which revolved wheels within wheels proves altogether disagreeable. Of course one knows whether one has, or has not, committed a specific crime of violence. And yet as the investigation becomes complicated – and it has become that – it is difficult for any of those concerned to abide confidently even in this absolute security. The complications are like so many hazards on a pin-table. The ball – obscurely visioned as the future verdict of a judge and jury – comes rattling down. And the Simneys, however their individual knowledge and conscience stand, all feel like so many final goals, holes or pockets which may at any moment feel the fatal plop.
I know, because I am one of them. I did not kill George. Indeed – and unlike most members of the family – I don’t believe I ever even wanted to do so. But I feel like one of those pockets, all the same. Perhaps it is to ease a little of the tension that I am writing these notes.
2
I am glad I have an alibi.
This is rational enough. But I am also glad that almost nobody else has, and here there is no possibility of defending myself. To harbour such a sentiment is thoroughly base. But then we are the most ghastly people: that had better be got clear at once. If the eminent Victorian who closed Dowden’s Life of Shelley murmuring What a set! had only lived to make the acquaintance of the Simneys, he would infallibly have exclaimed What a god-awful crowd! Whether he would also have thought of any of us as an ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain (which is, I rather fancy, how Mervyn sees himself), I don’t at all know. But anyway Matthew Arnold died in 1888 while chasing a bus, and it was left to the grey-haired police detectives to weigh in with a verdict.
I have no doubt as to what their verdict on us has been, nor that the detectives are thoroughly satisfied to arrive at it. They had only to size us up – the whole lot of us, from Lucy to Owdon – to see that the affair was a sleuth’s dream come true. And not only because of the baronetcy and the snow and the library and the midnight hour – though the coming together of all these (and, of course, of the blunt instrument, which I would have you remember) must have been very pleasing too. Chiefly their satisfaction must have lain in the observation that we were all so patently ghastly. It might have been any of them was what they doubtless whispered together. And – once more – they liked it. They could settle in and get down to a nice, thorough job on each of us in turn.
I fancy the life of the higher constabulary is rather nomadic. They are called in; they glance round; and their superior science and intelligence instantly penetrate whatever uncouth mystification has been practised. One thinks of battleships which bear in their bowels machines solving at lightning speed the most intricate problems of gunnery. The calculation is made, the annihilating broadside fired, and the great ship lumbers on. So with these higher elucidators of crime: a single comprehensive deductive operation and the next case calls them forward. But it is different with the show we are putting up. And they quite like settling down for a change to a bit of steady blockade.
I daresay that if you want to get on with the business of Sir George you find all this about Shelley and battleships pretty intolerable. But artistry, I assure you, is at work. Here is simply a bit of the atmosphere of the Simneys being laid on right at the start. Here is one facet – the showing-off facet. Gerard (so recently arrived from Australia) calls it their fondness for showing their grudge. The Simneys are grudgy. A most extraordinary phrase, but not inexpressive: what is implied is showing off not with the simple aim of gratifying one’s own vanity but with some deliberate intention of irritating. And I can think of another epithet that fits. When I was at Oxford carefully spoken undergraduates, I discovered, used the word bloody (so omnibus a word with the world at large) in a very precise way. To call a man bloody, it seemed, was to ascribe to him a very specific quality of intolerableness – one not easy to define but perfectly well understood in that society. We
ll, in this sense the Simneys are bloody. Are they – or is one of them – bloody in another sense?
Now does he feel
His secret murders sticking on his hands…
Is one of them like that? Those grey-haired men propose to find out.
And now I ought to give you first a genealogical account of the Simneys (illustrated by one of those family trees that Galsworthy popularized among novelists) and second a chronological and topographical description of the actual fatality (with a regular crime-story plan: x marks the Spot).
Somehow or other all this will have to come, but it seems to me that I had better begin with at least a short scene of greater animation. For I want to gain your interest in this George Simney affair. It interests me.
So consider dinnertime on the Monday. There is a natural starting place there. And if you will unpack your bag, so to speak, for a week’s visit to Hazelwood beginning on that day you will have a reasonable opportunity of getting acquainted with us before the thing actually happens and a chance of receiving the final solution just as the car comes round to take you to the station on the following Sunday evening. I don’t say that you will find this week at Hazelwood wholly edifying or exactly comfortable. Some rather improper things will happen, numerous meals will be completely upset and it is likely that on several mornings the agitated servants will quite neglect to bring you your hot water or your tea. Still, it will be tolerably lively most of the time.
Moreover you won’t be the only visitor. For that was what happened at dinnertime on the Monday. Another couple of Simneys turned up, and one of them brought a wife as well. They turned up without warning from twelve thousand miles away, loudly declaring that George had in some way cheated or defrauded them. This, of course, was likely enough. But we felt that they might well have left these business issues till next morning – particularly as in brief inarticulate intervals they put away so much of that dinner that there was very little left for anybody else. No doubt this was just their rude colonial health. They looked healthy – and Joyleen excessively so: she has the physical perfection that comes of living in sun and surf and idleness. She is also sexy in a thoroughly vulgar way, like the girls in advertisements for swimsuits. She caught George’s eye from the first.
What Happened at Hazelwood? Page 1