What Happened at Hazelwood?

by Michael Innes

  ‘It was not about Owdon. The queerness, however, I admit. Fortunately it is not, I think you will agree, a queerness of any very impenetrable sort.’

  ‘I can’t say that I see my way through it, sir.’

  ‘You don’t see?’ Inspector Cadover had halted beside me in the darkness. ‘You mean to say you don’t know who this Alfred Owdon is?’

  ‘No, sir. I’m afraid I don’t.’

  The chief moved forward again. We could now see the lights of the Simney Arms before us. When he spoke it was quite gently. ‘Think of that business of the lugger and the canoes,’ he said. ‘Is there any real reason to suppose that only George escaped the sharks? Take it from me that Denzell got away too – and that his name has been Alfred Owdon ever since.’

  9

  Well, here I am in bed at the Simney Arms, and trying to think it out. I believe the chief must be right about Owdon. That he is really Denzell Simney is a hypothesis explaining a great deal.

  For suppose that Denzell as well as George survived the sharks and savages during that blackbirding incident. It was Denzell whom real trouble awaited, because it was Denzell who had been identified, who had attempted to shoot one of the anthropologists, and who had actually wounded a native. Would he not, then, with a stiff prison sentence hanging over him, naturally go to ground? And, unless he was prepared to go back and face the music, would he not have to renounce his true identity for the rest of his days? That his face had suffered such shocking damage in the fracas would make this the easier, and a not inconvenient disguise would be that of his brother’s man-servant.

  But why, all these years later, should Denzell have been his brother’s manservant still? Why, during a large part of his life, should he have continued to perform menial duties at Hazelwood when it might quite easily have been arranged that he should retire quietly upon some less unsuitable employment? There can be only one answer to this: the positive malice of his brother. That George had an altogether perverted sense of humour we know. It is possible then that he simply enjoyed keeping Denzell under his thumb, and that he made the continuation of these butler’s offices a condition of silence. This was a state of affairs as queer as it was ugly, but it is possible enough.

  And now to test the hypothesis more fully. There seems to be a general opinion at Hazelwood that Owdon is a stupid man, and yet scrutiny belies this impression. Now, if a man is a gentleman, and yet obliged to live as a servant in the house of his ancestors, it seems to me that he will be very likely to take refuge in a feigned dullness. This would always give him time to think. And how often, at least at first, Denzell Simney would stand in need of that! In time the unhappy man learnt to play his part well. His accent, for instance, is not such as would betray him. It is only his turns of expression that are occasionally not in the part. Thinking back, I can see that this is what first put the chief on the scent. ‘Really, I have no idea,’ the butler replied to some question of his – and, of course, when you test it on the ear, it is indefinably not a manservant’s way of speaking. Indeed, I am aware now that I detected something of the same thing myself only a few minutes earlier; and I think it likely that this alien cadence must have been heard by others from time to time.

  Then there is Timmy. Timmy is plainly a Simney – is the split image of Mervyn Cockayne – and this is possibly because his mother was a Simney, but quite definitely because his father the butler is one too! Does the lad know anything of this? Almost certainly not. I have an inkling that he may suspect something unknown in his paternity (considering Sir George’s moral character, for instance, he may well wonder whether it doesn’t, perhaps, lie in that quarter); but I am pretty sure he has no notion that the Hazelwood butler is a Simney too.

  And so I come to the arrival of the Australians on the scene. What knowledge did they bring with them, and what knowledge did they gain on the night before Sir George’s death?

  The younger of them – Gerard and his wife Joyleen – almost certainly knew nothing. And, almost equally certainly, they have learnt nothing either. But Hippias is different. He knew Denzell intimately as a young man and even if (as I think likely) he really believed that Denzell had been killed years ago, it is not at all unlikely that he penetrated to the true state of affairs shortly after his arrival. Denzell himself – or Owdon, as it is perhaps less confusing to call him – may well have been apprehensive of this from the moment the Australians appeared on the doorstep – and there is, of course, a good deal of evidence that the butler was, in fact, badly shaken. Discovery after all these years might well dismay him, for it is evident that Hippias is the sort of man who would unhesitatingly exploit such a scandal for his own ends. At an ugly word from the visitor Owdon might very conceivably drop a tray of glasses, and in a moment of panic he might well drop his suitcases in preparation for a bolt. All this fits together well enough.

  But there is evidence that Sir George no less than his butler was disconcerted by some turn of events following the Australians’ arrival, and that the danger he apprehended was something much more immediate than any trouble which might be raised over the old affair of Dismal Swamp. Well, this seems to fit together not badly too. To be exposed as one who was due for a prison sentence in Australia many years ago would be unpleasant for Denzell. But to be discovered as one who had kept his younger brother in a sort of grotesque thrall would be almost equally awkward for the baronet. No wonder Sir George was a little at a stand! And no wonder, too, that the whole situation should lead to the obscure quarrel and bottle-throwing which Lady Simney witnessed in the study.

  So far, so good. The initial hypothesis explains a lot. But does it explain the death of Sir George Simney – or go any way towards explaining that?

  I can’t see that it does. But here the chief’s technique may help me out. Never, he says, try to answer the big questions till you have dealt with as many as possible of the small ones. Very well. Take the boots.

  This of Owdon’s being in fact Denzell Simney is a family secret. Family secrets – or the material evidences of them – often live in safes. And in Sir George’s safe was a pair of boots. Could they conceivably be evidence – evidence against Denzell – in the matter of that blackbirding adventure long ago? It seems impossible that it should be so. If George, out of a nasty itch for power, had really been holding the thing over his younger brother, material evidences would be unimportant. For mere word to the police that here was a man wanted in Australia for a long-past crime would be sufficient to set going an investigation that would inevitably result in the establishing of the truth. Documents there might be – ship’s papers, perhaps, or a confession signed by Denzell years before. But how a pair of boots (whether used for gardening and cycling or not) could enter into such a business I just don’t see.

  Here then is one matter that the hypothesis sheds no light on. Is there any other important area of the case that it leaves equally unilluminated? I believe there is.

  For what of Lady Simney and her former fiancé, the young anthropologist Christopher Hoodless? That Owdon is really Denzell, or that Owdon is really the Lord High Executioner, would surely be discoveries almost equally irrelevant to the immediate marital situation at Hazelwood. And yet we have to cope with this fact: that the mysterious death of Sir George Simney followed hard upon two events. These are (1) the arrival of the Australians at Hazelwood and (2) the arrival of Christopher Hoodless in the neighbourhood, or at least in England. Perhaps the second of these circumstances is the more striking of the two. For it seems to have been only a matter of minutes after Lady Simney learnt from The Times that Hoodless was in England (and perhaps realized that it was to Hoodless that her husband had referred when he claimed to ‘have seen her lover’) that Sir George died. I can see that nothing of the significance of this has been lost on the chief, and that he has his eye on Nicolette Simney still. But it is a line of thought that takes us right away from the Owdon Denzell approach. And
indeed the tentative conclusion to which I am persuaded is this: that either one or other of those arrivals – the Australians’ and Hoodless’ – is coincidental. If one of them was operative in the fatality then the other is out of it, or if not out of it has certainly only a very subsidiary significance.

  But here on a little reflection I see the possibility of endless complications, and I doubt the wisdom of tackling them after much cold beef and beer, and at this last hour of the night. Still, one speculation I will jot down.

  Suppose that Lady Simney had been driven beyond all bearing by her husband. Hoodless is returning and she suddenly feels desperation come upon her. Of course there is difficulty here. A man so immoral as Sir George it would not have been hard to rid oneself of in the Divorce Court – and indeed it isn’t easy to see why Lady Simney didn’t go about matters in that way long ago. But pass that by. Here is Hoodless returning, and at the prospect, this tormented lady’s control snaps. What relevance might the return of the Australians have here?

  One possibility is this: that Lady Simney learnt from Hippias, or perhaps even from Owdon himself, the story of her husband’s dastardly dealing with his younger brother. Might this not be the last straw, so that she felt that of such a blackguard it was legitimate to be rid in any way? Moreover the arrival of the Australian cousins had brought more than commonly violent times to Hazelwood. There was bad blood over Dismal Swamp; there was a row in the very room in which Sir George was later to meet his death. Might not the lady, if sufficiently steeled to crime, regard these circumstances as likely to provide a useful element of confusion and complication? To leave the whole detestable crew of Simneys under the embarrassment of suspected murder: there might, to one stirred up to sufficiently ferocious feeling, be a good deal of satisfaction in that.

  And yet that Nicolette Simney herself killed Sir George seems virtually impossible. There is no getting past Owdon’s evidence of the empty room and empty window-embrasure – or none unless we regard him (and this, of course, is by no means ruled out) as a confederate in the crime. How then could Lady Simney succeed in attacking her husband? Only by lowering herself from her bathroom window, making her way along the terrace and climbing the trellis. But the snow on that vital stretch of terrace showed no footprints. I know that the chief in his own mind has been chewing savagely at this. He thought he had found something when he noticed that the trellis outside the study window provides a way down from the next storey as well as up from the ground. But up from the ground somebody certainly did come. Moreover from Lady Simney’s bathroom there appears to be no means by which she could have gained an upper storey without coming out into the corridor and making herself visible to Owdon. The possibility of her getting down to the terrace is a different matter: a couple of lengths of the oil-silk round the shower would enable an active women to make the descent easily. And Lady Simney is accustomed to athletics, as the hockey sticks and skis in her room show. Still, the evidence of the printless snow is irrefutable. And so, I am pretty sure, is the evidence of the invisible clock which controls the affair. Between the moment of Sir George’s death, and the moment of Owdon’s seeing her emerge from the bathroom, the return trip by trellis, terrace and oil-silk would be impossible. Again, there is Mervyn Cockayne’s scuffle with an unknown man. I believe that the chief had a good idea here, and suspected that Lady Simney took the precaution of slipping on male attire – and that here we had the explanation of the clothes which she declares belong to Hoodless. It would be rather amusing if young Cockayne’s new opinion of himself as a fighter were the result of a drawn battle with a woman. But the whole notion doesn’t take us far. Lady Simney, I think, cannot be fitted into the fatality except in terms of a conspiracy of which she was a member. And anything of that sort I find it hard to believe.

  What happened at Hazelwood? It begins to look as if we shall have precious little to say at the inquest. And yet I have a notion that the chief has got somewhere, or at least that he has seen or senses something that may get him there at any time. One day, and on some case, I shall be there before him. But not, I am afraid, in the Simney affair!

  10

  Friday

  A couple of days have passed, my dear Dad, and we have not been standing still. A good deal has changed, including the weather. On our first night in this pub there was a thaw. Everything dripped and squelched; the village and the park and the great house all looked pretty drear – and it was in this rather depressing atmosphere that we were visited at the breakfast-table by the local vicar. He brought us a theory of the case – and also one or two facts that he didn’t mean to bring at all. And for bagging these I really get the credit myself, as you will hear.

  Mr Deamer was extremely excited. We found it hard to decide whether this was exceptional, or whether he is chronically so. But if I believed the things he believes, I am pretty sure I should be in a great fuss all the time. He appears to regard Hazelwood and an area of some five miles round as labouring beyond all other localities under the divine malediction, and himself as a sort of solitary Abdiel among the faithless. I don’t know that I would myself have chosen Mr Deamer to hold such a key position. To cope with the Devil (and it is the Devil himself whom he regards as conducting operations from the neighbourhood of the Hall) I fancy that judgement as well as zeal would be desirable. And I doubt if Mr Deamer has that. Indeed, his call upon us was an error of judgment, if you ask me.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Mr Deamer. ‘May I take it that you are the police officers sent down to investigate the grievous scandals and iniquities rife at Hazelwood Hall?’

  Inspector Cadover nodded. ‘We are inquiring into the violent death of Sir George Simney. I suppose that ranks as a scandal, sir, and perhaps as an iniquity too.’

  Somewhat surprisingly, Mr Deamer shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think so. Sir George’s life was both scandalous and iniquitous. And so, too, I have much reason to believe, are the lives of his wife and most of his relations. But his death must be otherwise regarded.’ Mr Deamer paused and looked from one to the other of us with what was at once a wild and wary eye. ‘Do I understand,’ he asked, ‘that there was a body?’

  ‘Well, sir, there is to be an inquest. And I never heard of an inquest without a body – or a substantial part of one – yet.’

  Mr Deamer frowned. ‘Sir George Simney,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘had bartered his soul to the Devil. In such cases it is unusual – altogether unusual – that there should be a body. The Devil appears at midnight, claims his own, and there is an immediate and corporeal transfer to the infernal regions.’

  ‘Dear me!’ The chief looked genuinely surprised. ‘May I ask whether, in your view, many persons barter their souls to the Devil in these days?’

  ‘Most assuredly.’

  ‘Then surely there ought quite often to be no body? And yet one never reads or hears of such a thing from year’s end to year’s end.’

  But Mr Deamer was by no means put to a stand. ‘Every day,’ he asked, ‘do you not hear of persons disappearing from their home and never being seen again? These are all cases in point. A bargain has been made and the Devil has appeared to claim it. Close investigation would commonly reveal a slight smell of sulphur and brimstone at the scene of the disappearance.’ Mr Deamer frowned. ‘Though to be candid with you I am not quite clear about the brimstone. It is certainly something extremely unpleasant, but I cannot be confident that it gives off an odour. On the sulphur, however, I am perfectly assured.’

  Inspector Cadover listened very patiently to this. I could see that for some reason he had considerable hopes of our eccentric visitor. ‘What you tell us of an infernal bargain,’ he said gravely, ‘is very interesting indeed. I wonder if you would detail your grounds for believing in it? And may we offer you a cup of coffee?’

  Mr Deamer accepted the coffee, sipped it, and appeared to go off into a brown study. Presently his lips moved. �
�Sweet Helen,’ he murmured in a strange voice, ‘ – Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.’

  Well, I followed that one. It is what Faust says in the old play when the Devil to whom he has sold himself raises up for him Helen of Troy. And later in the play, of course, there is what Mr Deamer would call an immediate and corporeal transfer of Faust to the infernal regions. ‘Do you mean,’ I asked, ‘that Sir George had made a bargain with the Devil to secure him various remote and impossible mistresses – paramours?’

  ‘Yes!’ Mr Deamer was suddenly violent. ‘It was precisely that. It can have been nothing else. And the wretched man was snatched to his doom on the very threshold of just such an illicit enjoyment.’

  It was thoroughly queer. The intensity with which the vicar of Hazelwood desired to convince himself of this tall story was as queer as anything I have ever met. And suddenly he asked a question – one altogether irrelevant to the line he had been pursuing. ‘How did he die?’ he demanded. ‘You say there was a body. How was Simney killed?’ And this fanatical clergyman glared at us with sweat pouring down his forehead.

  But the chief was suddenly uncommunicative. ‘I don’t know about remote and impossible mistresses being summoned by the Devil,’ he said. ‘But perfectly ordinary ones could very well be summoned by Sir George himself up that trellis. It might well have been put there to provide him with amatory amusement without the necessity of stirring his stumps. Always provided, of course, that the mistresses were willing to present themselves. Now suppose, Mr Deamer, that there was something like that. Sir George was proposing to keep a tryst in his study with some little wanton from the neighbourhood. And some other interested party intervened and killed Sir George on the spot. That is pretty well your own story put into naturalistic terms. Does it satisfy you?’