What Happened at Hazelwood?

by Michael Innes

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Very interesting, no doubt. But nobody would think to kill your poor brother over an old affair like that, would they?’

  ‘Of course not. Which shows that the turning up of these Australian relatives is purely coincidental. The truth is that there are a lot of dangerous characters about, and that the police are very far from having the situation in hand. The local police, that is to say.’

  The afterthought was a handsome one. But I don’t know that we showed gratification.

  ‘Only last week old Lady Longer lost a lot of poultry. And the constabulary were helpless, it appears – absolutely helpless. I have promised her to take the matter up with the Chief Constable.’

  The Inspector gave me the sort of quick grave look that would be a wink in another man. ‘Very kind of you, sir, I’m sure. And perhaps you might take up your brother’s death at the same time.’

  This was a nasty one, and I’m bound to say that Sir Bevis reacted with some spirit. ‘In my opinion,’ he said, ‘you ought to be out and about combing the neighbouring pubs for dangerous ruffians. It might be more rewarding than aspersing my family and contriving impertinent witticisms. For the situation is abundantly clear.’

  The Inspector looked relieved. ‘Harold,’ he said, ‘–your notebook. Here is to be light.’

  Sir Bevis went his turkey red. ‘Abundantly clear!’ he repeated in a sudden bellow. ‘There has been a widespread cock-and-bull tale of my brother’s keeping considerable wealth in this study. To the window of this study – which a trellis makes perfectly accessible from ground level – it has been found that a man’s footsteps led through the snow. While sitting with his back to that same window my brother was struck on the head from behind and killed. Outside that window again – and seemingly only seconds later – an unknown lurker was tackled by my beastly – that is to say by my courageous nephew, Mr Cockayne. Unfortunately the intruder got away, and his footsteps could not be traced very far… May I ask if you support me in these statements?’

  ‘Yes, Sir Bevis – I do. But just what these statements in turn support is another matter. I cannot see that attempted robbery such as you suggest would be very likely to transform itself into sudden and savage attack from behind.’

  ‘The mirrors!’ Sir Bevis came out with this a bit too quick. ‘My brother looked up and caught sight of the thief’s reflection. That accounts both for the look of surprise on my poor brother’s features and for the instantaneous attack made upon him.’

  ‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘Not quite for either.’

  The Inspector looked at me gravely. He likes me to speak up at times. But he expects me to have good occasion for doing so. And I must say, my dear Dad, that I felt more than a little nervous at this moment.

  ‘It doesn’t quite account for the surprised look,’ I said boldly. ‘Because, you know, it was a very surprised look. And – again – why should the intruder, even if spotted in the mirror, be prompted to strike to kill? Would it not be because he was known to the late Sir George, and could not save himself from discovery by mere retreat? And as for the dead man’s astounded look – must we not suppose that he saw in the mirror somebody both known to him and totally unexpected? If so, a pot-house ruffian just doesn’t fit, and a good deal of investigation at Hazelwood itself may be justified after all.’

  ‘Do I understand,’ said Sir Bevis, ‘that you are proposing to hold suspect members of my household?’

  This was spoken as grandly as you please – but you may be sure it didn’t cut any ice with the chief. ‘Of course we do,’ he snapped. ‘There were new arrivals, disputes over Dismal Swamp and we don’t know what else, and then a regular rough-and-tumble with trays falling, glasses smashed, bottles flying and people being pitched out of windows. In fact, quite a pot-house in the home. And then Sir George gets murdered at a moment when not a single one of you, with the possible exception of his wife, can give a convincing account of himself. A police officer who went off looking for tramps before carefully sifting every circumstance here at Hazelwood would be gravely failing in that course of duty to which the available evidence pointed him. And now, Sir Bevis, and for the moment, I have only one question more.’

  I must say that even for him this was pretty strong stuff. But then he never gets anybody riled unless he means to. And so I waited with a good deal of curiosity for this one last question.

  When it came it was odd enough. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that this murder was prompted by the fact that dead men tell no tales – or leave no males?’

  The new baronet had already been made very angry. But he was much angrier now. His words came with difficulty. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘–I think you are…a foul devil.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Bevis. And I must apologize for having detained you so long.’

  2

  We were left alone in the study. Inspector Cadover looked at his watch. ‘I hope they’ll send us in some tea,’ he said. ‘Crumpets, perhaps – or even muffins in a big silver dish.’

  He had become cheerful, as sometimes happened when he had found reason to think a little less ill of somebody than he had feared. ‘You don’t think,’ I said, ‘that this man killed his brother before Lady Simney could get going on a family?’

  ‘You saw what happened, Harold; answer for yourself. I led up to the idea as nastily as I could and you may think that his reaction was a little too forthright for a guilty man’s. Besides, does Lady Simney look like starting a family? I don’t think she does.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ I said, ‘that I wouldn’t be very skilful in telling. We never had lectures on that.’

  He smiled grudgingly. ‘I don’t mean that. Of course, if there was actually a baby coming it might have been too late for this action’ – and the chief swung an imaginary blunt instrument in air – ‘to nobble the estates and the baronetcy. I only mean that I scarcely think her of a mind to perpetuate Simneys.’ He shook his head very seriously. ‘I’m afraid it cannot have been a happy marriage.’

  Every now and then (and particularly in his understatements) you can see that it all weighs on him a bit; that the endless semi-tragic messes amid which he moves prompt him to a great deal of concealed moral concern. It makes me feel that I must become wiser as well as nippier if I am to go on at it myself. But I was content to be nippy now.

  ‘I had a word with the boy Timmy,’ I reported. ‘He says that they most of them hated Nicolette, and that Mrs Cockayne – the dead man’s sister Lucy, that is – used to be studying her complexion just as if she were wondering whether there was a baby starting. She hated the idea of anything that might cut down Mervyn’s legacy.’

  The Inspector was lighting a pipe. ‘That’s a queer sort of thing for this Timmy to notice and get the hang of. He must have a watchful eye and be rather exceptionally perceptive for his age.’ He blew out his match. ‘Might the lad perhaps be devoted to Lady Simney? As you’ve observed Harold, she’s an uncommonly beautiful woman.’

  ‘No doubt. But about this Sir Bevis, sir. You wouldn’t go so far as to say that he came out of the interview well?’

  ‘Dear me, no. He finished strongly, that’s all. Foul devil was a great deal better than conjuring up his friends at the Home Office. But he is certainly concerned to conceal something.’ The Inspector sighed. ‘You might have a little rubber stamp, Harold, to save yourself copying that phrase into your notebooks… He’s concerned to conceal something, and he’s apprehensive. But then, perhaps the majority of human beings have something furtive on hand as often as not. And then some accidental spotlight comes creeping towards them and they are terrified. I think we’d better have the butler.’

  I nodded and moved to the bell. ‘He’s certainly apprehensive too.’

  ‘He’s the key to the affair. If he’s telling the truth so far as he knows it, our understanding of the physical framework of the crime is very
substantial. If he’s lying, we’re nowhere. But hold your hand a moment. Before we have him in we’ll do a little stock-taking. And to begin with, my boy, just turn on the lights and slip behind those curtains.’

  I did as I was told. A man could certainly have concealed himself in the window-embrasure; indeed two or three men could have done so, for the space was unencumbered except by a bronze head of a boy set on a marble pedestal. It looked rather good to me – and often my guesses are right about such things – and I was inspecting it more carefully when the Inspector’s voice came through the curtains. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘quick march.’

  I pushed the curtain aside and entered the room. With all those folk round the walls it was rather like coming on the stage of a theatre – and even as I felt this I realized that somebody was really and truly looking at me. In fact what Sir Bevis had said about the mirrors was feasible enough. For the Inspector was sitting at the long table with his back to me, just as the dead man must have been doing. In front of him at the other end of the room was the fireplace, and at some remove from it on the same wall was a sizeable mirror. In this mirror our eyes met.

  He sprang to his feet, still eyeing me. I saw my part and strode into the room, an arm raised above my head. For a second he watched me still, and then turned round. ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s not a doubt of it, sir. Only you forgot to look uncommonly surprised.’

  ‘So I did. But then, my dear Harold, you were not only a familiar face but an expected one as well.’

  I looked at him rather uneasily. When he says ‘My dear Harold’ just like that it is a sign that something has gone wrong.

  ‘You think,’ he said, ‘that we may have got the hang of it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I could see that somehow I had fallen down on this, but of course I knew it was best not to fox. I’ve stuck with him longer than any other detective sergeant in the Force largely through not pretending at these moments.

  ‘Then you’re wrong, lad. But sit down and spread your notebooks before you. And speak up when I go wrong in my turn.’

  Sitting again where Sir George Simney had sat, Inspector Cadover let his eye travel slowly round the study. ‘It’s an uncommonly bare room,’ he said. ‘It has one window, which is behind me, and one door, which is there’ – and he pointed mid-way down the left-hand wall. ‘Now, listen.

  ‘Two things are very important, in my view. The first is this. Late at night, this study is very much like the courtyard of Buckingham Palace.’

  My eye too went round the study – and took in all those paintings of ladies in their birthday suits. ‘I don’t see it,’ I said.

  ‘But it’s obvious enough. In that courtyard certain events conduct themselves with astronomical regularity. You’ve watched the changing of the Guard?’

  ‘Yes, sir. In fact, my brother is a Guardsman.’

  ‘That’s very good – very good indeed.’

  I knew from this that he was thinking hard. He never likes to be caught thinking, and so he often falls on such occasions into unmeaning remarks. And indeed this whole palaver about Buckingham Palace was no more than that.

  ‘There’s a routine,’ he pursued. ‘This and that happen at a stated time. And so with this dead man in this room round about midnight. There was a sort of ritual and it didn’t often vary. Even with guests in the house and untoward things happening, the final routine of the day remained. Here were dispositions that could be calculated.’

  ‘A crime of calculation,’ I said. ‘Not tramps from pothouses.’

  ‘I don’t say that. So exclusive an inference is quite unjustified, really. I merely note that here are circumstances admitting of calculation. The fact is suggestive – no more than that. And now my second point. Unless the butler is lying – and we’ll have him in presently – the murderer entered by the window.’

  ‘Of course he did!’ I exclaimed. ‘The marks of his climb are there on the trellis; even the local men found them. And the footprints were there in the snow. And he left as he came, and young Mr Cockayne had a fight with him.’

  ‘Well, all that is evidence, of course. And what is the conclusion?’

  ‘That it was an outside crime, after all.’

  ‘Listen, Harold. It looks as if somebody came up the trellis. But it is only if the butler, Owdon, is telling the truth that we can be sure of that. His story seems to be that he was virtually on sentry-duty out there in the corridor. And nobody, he says, could have come into this room by the door. Now, where does that take us? Remember that this sentry-duty of Owdon’s was also part of the routine.’

  ‘You mean Buckingham Palace again?’ I said this rather anxiously, for I felt that it was about time to understand what he was talking about. And then I did see. ‘You mean, sir,’ I went on, ‘that the certainty of the murderer’s having come up the trellis is rather an obtrusive certainty. Owdon’s being out there in the corridor establishes it. And yet it is only somebody inside the house – another servant or a member of the family – who would be very likely to know about the routine and count on it.’

  ‘Just that. And I can’t see that there was much to prevent anyone here from simply slipping outside and making the climb to the window. Sir George was known to be alone at that hour, but nobody could go to him unobserved through the house because of the habitual location of Owdon at the time. Very well. Circumvent this in going by the window, and at the same time so convey the strong impression of a burglar or the like. Any of them might have planned it. They all seem to have been alone and unaccounted for at that late hour. Lady Simney, for example.’

  I stared at him in surprise – and perhaps with an obscure feeling of indignation too. ‘Lady Simney was in her bath,’ I said. ‘It’s scarcely reasonable to expect that she should have had an observer attached to her to provide an alibi.’

  He frowned. ‘She may actually prove to have one, anyway. And she needs it. But she and this fellow Owdon are the only people who were pretty well hard up against the thing here when it happened. Their stories interlock and may be a put-up job.’

  ‘Well, as you’ve said, sir, if the butler is lying, or deceiving himself, we are pretty well nowhere, and Lady Simney is not necessarily more involved than anyone else.’

  ‘Perfectly true, my lad… Is there going to be more snow in the next twenty minutes?’

  I looked at him in surprise. ‘Almost certainly not.’

  ‘Then we may defer the one vital inquiry about your beautiful Nicolette until we have got Owdon’s story a little more precisely than we have it in the notes of the local men. Ring the bell.’

  I didn’t much like him speaking of Lady Simney in this way. But policemen, I suppose, are bound to get a bit coarse in the grain. I rang for Owdon.

  3

  He was no beauty – and today probably less of one than commonly. That the late Sir George Simney’s butler had got any sleep since his master’s death I didn’t believe. His hand trembled. He had cut what remained of his face while shaving.

  ‘I think, Mr Owdon, that the late Sir George had fairly regular habits late at night?’

  ‘That is so.’

  The man’s distress didn’t get into his voice. But something else did – which I sensed as important but couldn’t at all place. That’s what’s so fascinating about this detective investigation I’ve managed to win my way to. At a bound, as it were, you feel yourself almost at the heart of the maze, so that a single further turn would take you there. And then in next to no time you have followed the wrong track and are back near the perimeter.

  ‘Perhaps, Mr Owdon, you would be good enough to run over that routine again?’ The chief consulted a notebook. ‘Round about eleven-thirty would appear to be a convenient start.’

  ‘Very good, sir. It is about that hour that I commonly come to this part of the house. I always did some little
valeting for Sir George, and I would go to his bedroom and see to one or two things there. Then I would come out to the corridor. You will have noticed that it is a straight corridor running directly away from the door of this room, and that it has Sir George’s apartments on the one side and Lady Simney’s on the other. You may also have noticed that outside Sir George’s bedroom there is quite an elaborate arrangement of wardrobes and cupboards. I get through a number of jobs there, and when I come out of Sir George’s bedroom I am commonly engaged there for some five or ten minutes. Just before a quarter to twelve I am in the habit of boiling an electric kettle and taking it along to the study for the making of Sir George’s final toddy. I set it down on the table, stir the fire, tidy round, and close the window. At this hour, you will understand, the study is empty.’

  Inspector Cadover looked about him. ‘You close the window?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The curtains are, of course, drawn to, but I step behind them and close the window from the bottom. It is a sash window and the upper part remains open.’

  ‘I see. And it would therefore be perfectly possible to push the lower part up again from the outside and enter?’

  Owdon hesitated. ‘Really, I have no idea.’

  The Inspector frowned. ‘Chilly nights,’ he said. ‘But no doubt your master was an open-air man and wouldn’t want the place shut up altogether.’

  I felt a tingling in my spine. For this purposeless speech meant something. It was an example of that sort of camouflage I have mentioned. The chief’s mind was leaping at something, and he was concerned not to give away the fact. I had a very queer feeling that my own mind had leapt at it too not very long before – and just failed to effect a lodgement.

  But now the Inspector was speaking briskly again. ‘You tidy round and close the window. And then?’

  ‘I leave the study and return to my pantry – for it is really that – in the corridor. I have some ten or fifteen minutes to fill in, and I employ them on accounts, the cellarbook, and matters of that sort.’