There were several large cupboards and it was in one of them that I came upon the suitcase – a battered old suitcase with the labels of a dozen steamship companies – Matson and Orient and P & 0 – and of a score of out-of-the-way hotels. Perhaps, I thought, Nicolette in her salad days had done a colonial tour, taking Ophelia to the citizens of Bulawayo or Pago-Pago. And then I opened the thing and there were all those men’s clothes. I’d hardly had time to reflect that Lady Simney’s theatrical career was not likely to have included male impersonations when the Inspector strode forward and ordered the Cinderella’s slipper business which I’ve mentioned already. So off I went across the corridor, more than half suspecting that it was an occupation he had thought up merely to get rid of me. Well, you know the result; those clothes would fit no one at Hazelwood. They were for a man taller and slimmer than any in the house. The Inspector was almost out of temper at this, and I could see that it upset something which was moving obscurely in his mind. Whatever the idea was, he didn’t want me to spot it there and then – which was why he made his joke about Cuvier’s feather. There’s quite a grand library at Hazelwood, though I doubt whether Sir George much used it. Perhaps I’ll slip in presently and look this Cuvier up. I might manage to surprise the chief, that way. And, of course, it’s something to surprise him… But that’s just what was successfully achieved within the next five minutes.
For the door opened – the boudoir door – and in came a handsome youth in ill-fitting dark clothes and a yellow-and-black striped waistcoat. ‘How do you do?’ he said gravely.
The chief isn’t often at a loss, but he blinked at this. ‘What do you mean, How do you do?’ he said. ‘Aren’t you the footman?’
At this the youth shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think I am. But I suppose that you are the policeman – the important one who has just arrived?’ As he asked this question the youth had turned deliberately to me. Then he nodded curtly towards the Inspector. ‘And that this is the man who photographs the body, and that sort of thing? But won’t you both sit down?’
Now with this youth – Timmy Owdon – I had already had a word, as I’ve mentioned. He knew very well who was who. In what he had just said he was simply sailing in, head on, and showing that he was a Simney too. And I’m bound to say that he succeeded. We both sat down.
He crossed to a door communicating with the bedroom. ‘Nicolette?’ he called. And when there was no answer he turned to us again severely. ‘Did Lady Simney,’ he asked, ‘invite you into this room?’
The Inspector looked at him with a severity answering his own. ‘Young man, am I right in thinking that you are Owdon the butler’s son?’
‘I am Mr Owdon’s son.’
‘Master Owdon the butler’s son.’ A new voice spoke from the doorway and we turned to see a slightly older youth, the split image of Timmy, advance into the room. ‘Where other than to Hazelwood,’ the newcomer asked in a high-pitched voice, ‘would one turn in inventing a new form of Happy Families?’ And he turned away from Timmy and bowed to us. ‘Mr and Master Copper, I presume,’ he said. He waved his hand round the boudoir. ‘Picking up tips, no doubt, to assist Mrs and Miss Copper in interior decorating.’ He pulled out a watch. ‘Timmy, my good fellow,’ he continued, ‘something tells me that your services are required for marshalling the cake-stands.’
Timmy shook his head. ‘No, Mervyn,’ he said. ‘My last cake-stand has been marshalled – at Hazelwood or anywhere else.’
Mervyn Cockayne – for, of course, it was he – opened his eyes in surprise. ‘And may I ask, my dear kinsman, what activity you propose instead?’
‘Responsions. I think I can manage it in a year.’
‘God bless my soul! You want to go to Oxford?’
Timmy nodded. ‘I think that is what uncle Bevis will propose.’
‘Uncle Bevis!’ And young Mr Cockayne put a hand in an affected way to his beautiful forehead. ‘You think you will get somewhere with him by taking this sort of line?’
‘I certainly shan’t get anywhere with him by being content to go on marshalling the cake-stand.’
Mervyn sat down. He had the ability to recognize a true word when it was spoken. ‘You interest me,’ he said. ‘And you interest these gentlemen too.’ His expression became ugly. ‘You regard your prospects as happily transformed by the death of my uncle George?’
‘Everybody’s prospects are transformed – including Nicolette’s, I am glad to think.’ As he said this Timmy looked directly first at one and then another of us. ‘Haven’t you thought that out, Mervyn? It means that if we are all to be suspected we do at least so far as motive goes start all square.’ He turned gravely to the Inspector, no longer pretending to suppose that he was the man who had come to do the photographing. ‘Sir George was mostly bad,’ he said. ‘And he loved holding people in a kind of thrall. For instance, me. You see’ – his voice faltered for a moment on this – ‘my mother was a Simney, and for sixteen years he exploited the fact for his own amusement.’
I looked at Timmy with some sympathy. He felt himself to be a gentleman and he had taught himself to talk like one. Or rather he had been prompted never to talk otherwise. The difference is important; it meant that there was nothing synthetic or bogus about him in this. His model, it occurred to me, must have been largely the intolerable Mervyn, and this increased the oddly twin-like effect they gave. And perhaps the main difference between them reduced itself to this: that no mother, or a mother who is only a speculation and a dream, is a good deal better than a thoroughly foolish one. This wasn’t a point I could make to myself at the moment, for I hadn’t yet met Mrs Cockayne – the dead man’s sister Lucy, that is to say. All I could feel was that Timmy Owdon wasn’t so bad; that he showed up his cousin (or whatever he is to be called) Mervyn rather badly; and that there was inevitably a lurking antagonism between these two – but just conceivably other lurking feelings as well.
‘Look here,’ said Mervyn, ‘it’s not very decent to treat the Coppers pére et fils to that sort of thumbnail sketch of uncle George. It’s true that he was constantly having immoral relations with women. But at least it’s less out of the way for a man to seduce his wife’s parlour-maids than for a woman to seduce her kinsman’s butler.’
Timmy Owdon took two strides forward. Mervyn Cockayne (oddly enough, I thought) did the same. Both flushed, they looked into each other’s eyes. Neither the chief nor I interfered – and I really believe that this was because the scene was so oddly beautiful. I remember thinking fleetingly that they ought both to have been stripped – in which case they would have been just like some of those reliefs cut in stone which auntie Flo (rather surprisingly) once took me to see in the British Museum.
‘You know,’ said Mervyn, ‘two nights ago I let myself be pitched out of a window. But last night’ – and he took another step forward – ‘I found out that I could do this sort of thing. Not expertly yet, of course. Still, I think I’m coming on.’ And suddenly he leant forward with a sort of wicked and radiant smile and slapped Timmy’s face. The gesture had an odd effect of clapping on a mask – for there instantly on Timmy’s face was the identical joyous and Satanic expression. A second later they were punching each other about the room. They were also kicking. And I think perhaps they were biting too. In these ways – it’s not unpleasant to record – they just weren’t gentlemen at all.
Inspector Cadover looked on for some moments a shade helplessly. It must be a good many years, I suppose, since he has tackled that sort of thing outside a pub. ‘Stop it!’ he called out. ‘Don’t you realize that your behaviour is disgraceful – here in Lady Simney’s room and within a day of her husband’s death?’
Well, considering that he and I had just been sneaking through Nicolette’s drawers and cupboards there was more than a shade of hypocrisy in this, nor could I feel myself – although it was now a thoroughly dirty fight – that anything disgraceful wa
s going on. I haven’t the Inspector’s brains, and one result is that I get feelings about things from time to time. I was just trying to formulate these particular feelings when I happened to look round, and read them in another person’s eyes.
They were eyes wide-open with surprise, and they belonged to Lady Simney herself who now stood in the doorway. But there was more than surprise as she watched the two young men. At first I thought it was just the look with which women do watch men fighting – which is by no means a look of simple moral disapproval, such as Inspector Cadover could contrive. Then I saw that there was more to it again than this. A sort of dawning relief, as of the first lifting of the corner of a cloud, was on Nicolette Simney’s strained face. ‘Timmy!’ she called out. ‘Mervyn!’ And then – and most unexpectedly – ‘Oh, hit him, Mervyn – hit him!’
But it was Timmy Owdon who was inspired by that; with a big effort he broke free and jabbed his opponent under the jaw. And Mervyn Cockayne – whose nose was already bleeding on Lady Simney’s pale ivory carpet – went down like a sack.
Timmy had turned in a flash, his face flushed the darkest red. ‘How dare you!’ he cried. ‘You are my friend. How dare you back the conceited, foul-mouthed little milk-sop.’ And Timmy paused to give the prostrate Mervyn a vicious kick on the behind.
And at this shockingly unsportsmanlike action Lady Simney laughed aloud – which the Inspector, I think, didn’t like at all. She stepped forward and ruffled Timmy’s already disordered hair; she knelt down and gave Mervyn her handkerchief. He looked at her in comical woe and she kissed him on the forehead. ‘But you admire him,’ she flung back at Timmy. ‘And he’s not a milksop; he’s taken to roughhouses every day. Of course I backed him. You’re younger, it’s true. But in your time you’ve fought every stable-lad in the county.’ She mocked him charmingly. ‘I just don’t know what the gentry are in for with their new recruit.’
Timmy looked sheepish. So did Mervyn, who was now scrambling to his feet. The two lads eyed each other and I could see that they had made some largely satisfactory discovery. ‘Gentry?’ said Mervyn, his voice at its highest pitch. ‘The little thug is poor uncle George’s house-boy. And he says he won’t get us any tea.’ The high voice rose to a wail. ‘No tea – and it’s after half past four!’
I heard the Inspector breathing rather heavily beside me – a habit he has when overhauling a situation which has got a bit ahead of him. ‘Lady Simney–’ he began.
But Nicolette was dusting Timmy down. She tugged at his ridiculous waistcoat and it came in two in her hand. They were all three quite still for a second and I guessed that they read it as a symbol – as a sort of sartorial token of the disruption of an old order at Hazelwood. For that was the fact. Sir George Simney was dead – and the place was becoming more wholesome hourly. Somebody was surely going to be morally infinitely the worse for what had happened. But a number of people were going to have at least the appearance of being a good deal better.
‘Mervyn,’ Lady Simney said – and she glanced from the one lad to the other – ‘surely your flannels would fit?’
Timmy’s late antagonist hesitated, and I supposed that he was fleetingly wondering about the attitude to all this of his uncle Bevis. ‘Why, yes,’ he answered. ‘Let’s go and see.’
They went out like brothers. ‘Whereas,’ said the Inspector as the door closed on them, ‘these would not fit.’ And he pointed to the suitcase we had discovered. ‘They fit nobody in this house.’
5
There are times when I hate him, and this was one of them. Hounding people about is a disgusting trade. I wish it wasn’t so fascinating.
Lady Simney paled when she saw the suitcase and I could see that this particular triumph of our nosey-parkering was a real shock to her. She sat down. ‘I didn’t kill my husband,’ she said. ‘Nor do I know who did.’
The Inspector crossed the room and stood beside her – a little too close up, so that he was almost standing over her. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘that’s a very extraordinary remark to make. Nobody has breathed a word of such a suspicion, and you start off like that. It sets one wondering at once.’
But he got no change with this. ‘There’s nothing extraordinary about it,’ she said. ‘I’m simply not beating about the bush – and I expect the same of you. Poke among my private possessions if you like. But don’t waste time on making your approaches cunning and foxy. Of course I’m suspected.’
‘Since you’re so sure of that, Lady Simney, perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us why?’
She gave a sort of quick, severe smile. She had the trick of expressions and gestures which were at once beautiful in themselves and unrelated to any clear conception of her character which you could form. And so, although she was frank and direct enough, and gave herself no airs of mystery, there was a point at which you came to feel that she was a perfect walking Mona Lisa. (But can one conceive Mona Lisa as having legs and going for a stroll round that landscape? I’m talking about a picture. Show this bit to auntie Flo.)
‘Yes, I can,’ she said. ‘I can tell you in a dozen words. My marriage was bad. It began in disillusion – which means sin – and ended downright squalid. My husband’s infidelities were tiresome. But his fidelity was intolerable.’
Well, it sounded straight talk. And again the Inspector was breathing heavily. This was the sort of thing he was accustomed to bully out of the commonalty, or to worm out of their superiors by an elaborate bedside manner. You mustn’t have any pretty fancies about this job of ours.
‘Moreover, yesterday was a sort of crisis. A number of things happened. The young Australian who has arrived here started making love to me in a hothouse. One of my sisters-in-law disapproved. Then George did rather more than start on the same lines with this young man’s wife – and incidentally in what must have been pretty well an icehouse. I came upon them, more or less. He shouted something about having seen my lover – he must somehow have got wind of the hothouse business – and then he struck me. And, of course, before that, life has been hopelessly disordered: quarrels and smashings and fights.’
‘It does appear, Lady Simney, that folk here about are a bit free with their hands.’ He fished out a notebook and affected to consult it. ‘For example, I understand that only a few minutes after the discovery of Sir George’s death there was some sort of quarrel between the young man who has just left us – Mr Cockayne, is it not? – and Mr Willoughby Simney?’
‘I believe there was. They went to have a look at the window through which the attacker had fled, and they seemed to fall into some sort of dispute about I couldn’t hear what. But then, they have never been on very good terms, and they were considerably overwrought.’
‘That, as far as I understand the matter, would apply to several members of the household. And now, will you please explain this suitcase?’
‘Explain it, Inspector Cadover?’ Lady Simney had flushed with sudden anger. ‘And perhaps I am to be required to explain, too, the books on my shelves and the pictures on my walls?’
He looked slowly about the room. ‘It might be useful,’ he said.
And at that she looked startled. ‘It is Owdon,’ she snapped, ‘who has suitcases to explain. Go and ask him.’
‘Will you please explain that? I don’t follow you.’
She hesitated. This was something she had not meant to come out with – or not now. She had simply made a grab at it – so I judged – in order to gain time to think something out. ‘I met him in the park yesterday morning,’ she said. ‘He was hurrying along with two suitcases in an unmistakably furtive way. I have the impression that he was proposing to hide them near the high road. Is Owdon, I wonder, still here? It wouldn’t at all surprise me if he had made a bolt for it.’
I could see she was speaking truthfully – whatever calculations there may have been behind her truthfulness. And I expected the chief to be a bit ta
ken aback. For it was on Owdon’s evidence that our present grasp of the affair, such as it was, turned. And preparations for a bolt made early the previous day surely argued some degree of foreknowledge and complicity which must make his whole statement worthless. But the Inspector, whatever he thought of the importance of this piece of information, was not to be drawn aside to it now. ‘What we were speaking of,’ he said drily. ‘is this suitcase here.’
‘To be sure it was.’ She smiled at him. ‘It belongs to a friend, a Mr Hoodless, who happened to abandon it when going abroad some years ago. I – I am keeping it for him.’
‘Not Christopher Hoodless?’
She looked at him I thought with a glint of fear. But she answered steadily enough. ‘Yes, Christopher Hoodless.’
‘So the pictures on your walls – those charming black children – do after all, link up with the suitcase? Mr Hoodless gave them to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now, Lady Simney, when Sir George shouted at you yesterday morning something about having seen your lover, might it have been Mr Hoodless that he meant?’
She caught her breath. But he gave her no time to reply. His mind had made one of its queer spurts and the result was one of the best bits of his high-speed technique.
‘Yesterday’s Times, Lady Simney. There was something in it that suddenly made you very much want the issue of the day before. That, I think, was something to do with Mr Hoodless?’
‘I had no notion’ – she went back to his earlier question – ‘that George could be referring to Christopher.’
It was her instinct not to tell fibs. For my own part I was pleased at this, because I admired her. But it annoyed the Inspector. If a witness has something to hide (and it was difficult to feel that Nicolette Simney had not a secret of some sort) truth, skilfully deployed, is his best weapon.
What Happened at Hazelwood? Page 13