‘Lady Simney, you are a woman of intelligence. It is apparent to you that reticence is pointless upon matters which the testimony of others is bound to declare. There had been, before your marriage, a close friendship between Mr Hoodless and yourself?’
‘We were engaged.’
‘Thank you. Now, Mr Hoodless, you say, has been abroad. That’ – he glanced at the photographs of the playing children on the walls – ‘would be in connexion with his work as a scientist.’
‘As a configurational anthropologist.’
This additional information was no doubt of the kind which the testimony of others would be bound to declare. Even in what must have been a harassing situation Nicolette Simney apparently liked a play of subdued irony. But the Inspector was unheeding. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘that the nature of such work would take him to very distant parts, and that when you say he went abroad some years ago it is to be concluded that he had not been back in England since. Of late, however, you have been expecting his return.’
Lady Simney bowed. ‘It has been increasingly on my mind,’ she said gravely.
‘And yesterday evening you found in The Times an announcement which seemed to suggest that he had just arrived. It was in the form of a reference to something in the issue of the previous day. You sent Owdon for that issue at once, and you were a good deal agitated.’
All this police business is a matter of putting two and two together. And here was at least a patch of the present affair in which he had been doing that pretty rapidly. He had been handed Hoodless’ name. He had known that Hoodless was an anthropologist (mere miscellaneous information can be uncommonly useful: I have often noticed this with auntie) and this had led him to infer a good deal from the photographs. In the one personally furnished room of Lady Simney’s they were an assertion of something valued and held to. That gave, in fact, something very close to lover – and this he connected at once with what the dead man had shouted at her in the park before striking her. Then there was her statement that she had not at the time realized that it might have been Hoodless her husband was referring to. If accepted, this was a startling admission in itself. It made the reading of The Times of that day the likely occasion of her discovering the possibility. Her husband had seen Hoodless presumably here in the neighbourhood of Hazelwood; he had referred coarsely to their former association; he had struck her. And his death followed within a little over twelve hours.
Lady Simney had crossed to the window and was looking out over the snow. I guessed that she was squaring up to the new situation with which Inspector Cadover’s penetrations had confronted her. Presently she turned round. ‘And where,’ she asked, ‘do we go from here?’
‘To the brief interval, Lady Simney, between your glancing first at The Times and the moment when your husband died. At eleven-forty you came out of this room and asked Owdon to fetch you the issue of the day before. Five minutes later he came back, found that you had gone to your bath, left the paper in this room, and proceeded to the study. It was empty and Owdon tidied round as usual, at the same time closing the window from the bottom. Now, we know that at about this time somebody arrived below that window and presently climbed the trellis. We know, too, that at the bottom of it again Mr Cockayne had some sort of struggle with an unidentified man at what can only have been a matter of moments after Sir George was killed. Do you think that this intruder might have been Mr Hoodless?’
There was a fraction of a second’s silence – followed by a cry of horror, or of horror and passionate repudiation. ‘No!’ she gasped. ‘No…it’s impossible!’
‘Moreover the circumstances give you yourself something under five minutes’ freedom to act unobserved. Say three and a half minutes between Owdon’s disappearing in quest of The Times and your slipping into the bathroom just before his return. Did you in that interval go to the study window yourself?’
She stared at him round-eyed and pale. ‘No!’ she cried again. ‘No…why ever should I do such a thing?’
There was silence. The Inspector wrote in his notebook. A coal clicked in the grate. I looked at the Papuan children absorbed in their games, and waited for what he was waiting for too: some further, and rash, word. But Lady Simney said nothing more. She had asked a question and left it at that, expecting an answer.
‘What I have in mind, your ladyship, is no more than one of a great many hypotheses which it would be possible to form. I hope you will understand that it is my duty, in an affair so obscure as this, to think out every possible role that the persons chiefly involved could conceivably play.’
She made a gesture of impatience.
‘Very well. I know nothing of your relationship with Mr Hoodless. I know nothing of his temperament. But very possibly both may be what is termed romantic. Suppose him already a little familiar with Hazelwood. And suppose that during his absence you have occasionally corresponded. He may know that your marriage has been unhappy. He may have urged you to leave your husband. He may have made you a promise.’
She looked at him a little wearily now. ‘A promise?’
‘Something like this: that if on returning to England he found you still with Sir George he would break in on the stroke of midnight and carry you away – carry you away from the cave of the dragon. And into Hazelwood there is one route that any dragon-killer would take – the trellis that leads straight to the study and your part of the house.’
But Lady Simney was now thoroughly nerved to cope with all this. ‘You are talking a deliberate mingling of sense and nonsense,’ she said. ‘It is true about The Times. Yesterday’s copy had something which implied that Mr Hoodless’ return to England had been mentioned in the issue of the day before. And the news did agitate me, rather. We had been engaged, as I said.’
‘You had been expecting his return round about this time?’
She hesitated. ‘Yes, I had. And it did present rather a problem – but not one I want to discuss.’
‘Very possibly not, Lady Simney.’
She flushed. ‘But after that you talk nonsense. Of course I had no reason to suppose that he might have appeared at that very moment beneath George’s study window. No rigmarole about the cave of the dragon can give the slightest colour of probability to such a suggestion. Would you dare to talk such stuff in a law court? Then why waste your time talking it to me?’
I tried to catch the chief’s eye – merely to indicate the mild pleasure of a faithful but not uncritical subordinate at observing him get as good as he gave. The lady was by no means to be confused. She was still steadily admitting, or coming forward with, what must inevitably transpire sooner or later, and keeping completely close about anything else. That Hoodless had in fact been there beneath the window, however, was by no means improbable. Sir George had been a brute; he knew it; he was freshly arrived in England. This conception of a former lover as being central in the affair Inspector Cadover had arrived at with a creditable celerity. But then it was only a hypothesis. In five minutes it might vanish never to be heard of again.
And if it was not improbable that Hoodless had been there it did seem improbable that in those three or four minutes of Owdon’s absence Lady Simney had effected a rendezvous with him at the window. If she spoke the truth in saying that The Times had given her the first inkling of his being arrived in England then the notion that he might there and then be beneath the study window was quite as lacking in colour as she had averred. If, on the other hand, she had possessed earlier knowledge that he was in the district, this travesty of a Romeo and Juliet meeting minutes before her husband was accustomed to come into the room, was about the last thing which it was sensible to imagine. And I could see only one conclusion. When she had sent Owdon for the previous day’s Times she had gone direct to her bathroom to try the soothing effect of a shower. And there she had been when her husband was killed – whether by Hoodless or another. That this was how the
Inspector saw it I don’t know. He had crossed to the window, thrown up the sash, and was peering out and to the right. There he would see first the window of Lady Simney’s bedroom, then the window of her bathroom, then the blank wall and chimney-shaft which represented the end of the study. He withdrew his head again, closed the window slowly, and looked thoughtfully at the open suitcase which had first brought Hoodless’ name into the discussion. Then he glanced across the room – at some other definite object, but I wasn’t quick enough to see just what. He was looking depressed. More often than not it is knowledge rather than ignorance which has this effect on him. I glanced at Lady Simney and believed that she was puzzled. She was looking puzzled, though not obtrusively so.
‘Lady Simney, I have one more question. You know that it was not Mr Christopher Hoodless who killed your husband?’
She brought a hand to her breast in uncontrollable agitation. It is a gesture one sees in the theatre. But presumably the theatre has copied it from life.
‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘I mean, no in your sense, no. My whole soul tells me he could not do such a thing. He could not strike murderously at an unsuspecting man from behind. But how can I give proof that he is innocent?’
‘Ah,’ said the Inspector. ‘How indeed, Lady Simney?’
And he bowed and led me from the room.
6
It was dusk outside and presently we should have to be getting off to the village. That the Simney Arms would provide any very substantial comfort was something which a brief glimpse had made us doubt. However, we could hardly announce ourselves as yet another influx of uninvited guests at Hazelwood. The Australians had at least been cousins, and not policemen.
Some line on the Australian aspect of the affair was what we went after next. For my own part I would have gone for it from the first. Lady Simney didn’t strike me as homicidal – and secretly, you know, I still pay a good deal of heed to these simple promptings of instinct. Moreover she herself seemed to have no Australian connexions, and far the most striking thing about her husband’s death was the fact that it had followed hard upon certain mysterious disputes which the Australians’ arrival had occasioned. I put this to the chief as we re-entered the study; he nodded absently and went over to the window. He flung up the sash and stuck out his head, twisting his shoulders till he was looking directly upwards. ‘The trellis,’ he said, goes up as far as the next storey.’
‘You mean somebody could have come down it?’
I must say that I don’t often play Dr Watson quite so all-out as this, but my mind had been hunting about elsewhere and I was taken by surprise. I was also a good deal disconcerted by the widening possibilities which this simple discovery revealed.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My dear lad – yes. It is not an inference which is very far to seek. Perhaps you would like to comment on it in some way?’
Well, I have to put up with a little sarcasm from time to time. It generally means that he’s not too pleased with the way his own nose is pointing. ‘We mustn’t forget that someone certainly came up,’ I said. ‘Nor the tracks in the snow. Nor young Cockayne’s scuffle in the dark.’
‘Very true.’ He looked at me unsmilingly. ‘And conceivably one person came from above and another from below. This room may have been quite a rendezvous. Anyway, the lie of the land upstairs is worth studying. But as for what you say of Lady Simney,’ – he shut down the window – ‘you must think again. It may not be quite true that she has no Australian connexions.’
Auntie Flo will be glad to know I tumbled to this. ‘Hoodless,’ I said.
‘Exactly. He is an anthropologist who may well have taken Australian blacks in his stride.’
‘But it doesn’t seem likely that Australian blacks have anything to do with Sir George’s death.’
‘Something Australian has – or so, in our darkness, it is useful to guess. There has been some Australian mystery, and Hoodless very possibly knows Australia. I’m saying no more than that. And now let us have an Australian in.’ The Inspector glanced about the study and paused. ‘But wait a bit. Wasn’t there something about a safe?’
I looked through Sergeant Laffer’s notes. ‘A wall-safe,’ I said, ‘behind the damaged portrait of Sir George Simney. It was found locked and has not yet been examined.’ I turned the pages. ‘A bunch of keys was among the articles found on the dead man.’
He had already crossed the room and given the dead man’s portrait a tug. It swung on hinges – and there, sure enough, was a small safe let into the wall. ‘Yes,’ he called, ‘it’s a key, not a combination. Better get the bunch. But what about fingerprints?’
I shook my head. ‘They’ve made a full record, of course, and it’s all available for analysis. But I doubt if anything’s going to appear.’
He grunted. ‘If fingers only left legible prints as often as they’re supposed to… Come on, lad. Hurry up with the key.’
Without resentment, I hurried up. It appeared that he set store by the possibilities of this safe. And, indeed, he paused before it now almost dramatically. ‘Do you see any reason to suppose,’ he asked, ‘that the secret of the affair lies here?’
‘Well, sir – yes, in a way. It seems that when there was this rough house the other night the picture got smashed and the safe was revealed as a result. Everybody must have become aware of it, including the Australians. Now, there’s an Australian secret, as we’ve said. And secrets – or the material witness to them – are frequently kept in safes.’
‘So they are, lad.’ He was quite genial now, and I could see that he really did regard this concealed repository with something of the confidence of a conjuror before a silk hat. ‘Well, here goes. Got a torch? Just give us a little extra light.’
I shone my torch. He turned the key. The little steel shutter slid back. There can be no doubt about what we expected – about what, that is to say, the reasonable expectation was. Documents, some yellow with age, were the proper thing for this safe to hold. But what it did hold was a pair of men’s boots, fairly new. There was nothing else.
This sort of thing is popularly supposed to be quite in a policeman’s ordinary line of business. And, of course, we are always running up against the unexpected. But not quite like this. Those black boots appeared positively to grin at us, delighted at the effect of utter inconsequence they had achieved. I looked cautiously at the Inspector. ‘Perhaps,’ I asked, ‘you would like me to take them round the household and see whom they fit, as I did with the things in the suitcase?’
‘Of course you must do that.’ Now he was looking not at the boots at all but into some speculative vacancy. ‘And, of course, apply all your detective talent to them. You may find that they were worn by a swarthy man, fond of music and with a slight cast in the left eye, who has recently made a proposal of marriage.’
Just for a moment I didn’t realize that he was merely making fun of me. Then I took them carefully from the safe. ‘All right, sir,’ I said, ‘I’ll have a go at it.’ And I inspected them carefully. ‘They are the property of someone who played football as a boy, is disregardful of both personal appearance and comfort, rides a badly neglected bicycle and is fond of gardening.’ I paused. ‘Moreover, I think the owner is probably left-handed.’
‘Let me have a look.’ He glanced at me suspiciously before taking the boots. ‘Appearance and comfort, yes – they’re kinked at the toes and wrinkled up inside. And the gardening’s clear enough too; they’ve plainly been used to drive in a fork or spade – and with the left foot, which at least suggests left-handedness. But as for the bicycle–’ He frowned. ‘Yes, scratches just over the right ankle-bone such as might certainly be made by a chain – and a rusty chain rather than a well-oiled one. But the football as a boy appears to me pure fantasy.’
‘It’s just the way they’re tied loosely together by the ends of their laces. It reminds me of what we used to do with f
ootball boots before slinging them round the neck.’
‘I see. Well, nothing much of all this seems to fit the dead man. And I doubt if the boots will either. But why should he keep a pair of men’s boots, whether his own or somebody else’s in a concealed safe? If they had been women’s shoes, now, there would be nothing odd about it at all. There’s nothing commoner than the treasuring of such things as erotic symbols. They told you that in lectures, I don’t doubt.’
Sometimes he likes to show that he’s up in all the latest. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘nothing in the way of women’s attire would surprise us in the least, of course. But these don’t look like erotic symbols, by a long way.’
‘Would you say they look like red herrings – something planted here with a deliberate meaninglessness and incongruity, the way you get things in those surrealist pictures people fancy nowadays?’
I hadn’t imagined he followed art. ‘No,’ I replied after some thought. ‘No – somehow I don’t.’
‘It’s curious about modern painting. No understanding much of it, if you ask me.’
As you know, I try to keep wide awake when he starts talking like that. Otherwise I just get left at the post.
And I got left at the post now. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘apart from his being disregardful of comfort and appearance, you haven’t told me much about this fellow’s temperament.’
‘I’ve told you,’ I said warily, ‘as much as I can infer.’
He held the boots up under my nose. ‘Can’t you see,’ he asked, ‘that he’s a man of an uncommonly mistrustful nature? Make not a bad policeman, if you ask me.’ He swung round, for there was the sound of somebody entering the study behind us. ‘Good evening,’ he said to the newcomer. ‘Are you in the habit of wearing boots?’
What Happened at Hazelwood? Page 14