What Happened at Hazelwood? (23 page)

But with
some
others we could certainly do. Deamer had come across the park, and his tracks had been clearly visible. He had climbed the trellis, peered, impinged in no other way upon the Hazelwood affair, climbed down, fainted or lurked, scuffled with young Cockayne and made off again – the tracks of what must have been his stockinged feet obscurely visible for a little way. And to this there were only Cockayne’s own footprints to add. What, then, of the person who
had
impinged upon Hazelwood – and most fatally for its owner? On him – or her – there seemed to be only one possible conclusion. He had reached the study not by climbing up the trellis but by climbing
down.

And now suppose that Mr Deamer was indeed what he professed to be: a side-show as far as the death of Sir George Simney was concerned. Suppose the bringing him to intercept Jane Fairey was a hoax. Could it be a
pure
hoax in the sense of being wholly unconnected with the fatal business of that night? Already the Hazelwood affair was pretty heavily burdened with coincidence; was it conceivable that this of Mr Deamer’s vigil had nothing to do with the case? It was difficult to believe that it could be so. In what way then could the unfortunate man’s fool’s errand have formed part of some other person’s plan? He had been persuaded to come to the terrace and lurk beneath the study window something under an hour before Sir George died – before it was planned that Sir George should die. And – since the errand was indeed a fool’s one – there would be a fair expectation that after some twenty minutes or half-an-hour of fruitless waiting he would withdraw.

Had he been brought to the terrace to seal, as it were, that particular approach, even as the butler, working in the corridor, sealed the approach from the house? It was a conceivable notion but scarcely a satisfactory one, since the probability was that after so chilly a vigil the vicar would have taken himself off again somewhat before the vital hour.

What other explanation, then, could there be? Suddenly, and as I stared at Mr Deamer’s old boots, the answer came. The unfortunate man had been coaxed or conjured to Hazelwood and to that very spot on the terrace simply for the sake of the footprints he would leave in the snow. Sir George’s assailant was to come from within the house, and from
above
. The coming and going of Mr Deamer was to suggest that the murderer had come from without, and from
below
.

But who put Mr Deamer’s boots in Sir George Simney’s safe? And why?

I doubt whether I should at all quickly have found any answer to this. But now my speculations were interrupted by the chief. He had no doubt got quite as far as I had, and his next question to our visitor was a cast back to earlier matters.

‘Mr Dearner,’ he said, ‘I suppose it has occurred to you that Jane Fairey may really have been before her hour, and that by the time you looked into the study she and Sir George had – um – withdrawn to another apartment?’

The vicar received this warily, and I had a strong feeling that he suspected a trap.

‘Yes,’ he said at length. ‘It is a reflection which I was bound to make.’

‘Jane Fairey is a personable girl?’

‘Most certainly. Her figure–’ Mr Deamer checked himself. ‘A good-looking girl, no doubt.’

‘Such a girl would have followers, admirers, in the village? Yes? Very well. Might not one of these have detected her keeping this assignation with the squire, followed her up the trellis and concealed himself somewhere in the house?’

‘It seems likely enough.’

‘And then killed Sir George?’

The vicar shifted uneasily in his chair. He was without all the information which we possessed, and he was without the habit of putting such information together. He could therefore not know the difficulties this view presented. ‘Yes,’ he said reluctantly. ‘There seems much in what you say.’

‘Then, Mr Deamer, why drag in the Devil? Sir George, you declared, was carried off by the Devil when about to achieve some illicit sexual enjoyment conjured up for him by black magic. Is that sort of thing merely a fixed idea in your mind, or have you some particular ground for alleging it in this instance?’

Mr Deamer licked his lips – which were bloodless, thin and chapped. He looked round the coffee-room and fixed his eye on a steel engraving which represented (I think) Oliver Cromwell dictating a dispatch to John Milton. Then, as if there were no inspiration in this, he transferred his glance first to one and then to another more than indifferent sporting print. ‘It is a fixed idea,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Nothing more than that. My struggles against vice in this parish have been very terrible. And perhaps I am now more than a little mad. More than once I have suspected myself of being subject to hallucinations. And yet–’

‘Yes, Mr Deamer?’

But the vicar of Hazelwood was soundlessly weeping. Police work has its abominable moments, without a doubt.

For what it was worth, we interviewed Jane Fairey. She was very composedly posed for Willoughby Simney in a room behind her father’s smithy. Her figure might be described as nubile (ask auntie Flo that one) and Willoughby had persuaded her to expose rather more of it than was altogether proper in one who was not a model by profession. But I don’t think that this young man dabbles in paints to any fleshly end. Whether he has real promise as a painter I have, of course, no idea. But he was genuinely absorbed in the job he was about. The sky was leaden – perhaps with a promise of fresh snow – and a dull diffused light came from the window. Through an open door flickered a red glow from Mr Fairey’s forge; it played on Jane’s shoulders; and I don’t doubt that the result was sufficiently complex to tax whatever technique Willoughby had.

This interview, or double interview, was entirely the chief’s. And it taxed his technique too.

‘It must be a great adventure to you, Mr Simney,’ he said smoothly, ‘to have so fine a collection of Old Masters at the Hall. There must be any amount of inspiration in that.’

Willoughby was gazing intently at what I took to be the lobe of Jane’s left ear. ‘Would you mind,’ he asked civilly, ‘going to hell out of here?’

This might be described as a straight drive to the off. But the chief fielded it smartly. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is how your vicar regards the death of your uncle. Sir George went to hell out of here – and in the most literal way. Mr Deamer is reluctant to believe there was a body. He supposes that the only appropriate end for Sir George was to be hoisted on the back of the Devil himself and disappear through a trap. But then I suppose Mr Deamer is a little mad.’

‘Mad? Nothing of the sort.’ Willoughby held out a brush and appeared to measure Miss Fairey’s nose. ‘Wretched little man is as sane as you are.’

‘Is that so, now?’ The chief looked uncommonly thoughtful.

‘Deamer seldom sees smoke where there’s no fire. But of course this parish is pretty well fire all over. Ask Jane.’

Miss Fairey, whose fine eyes had rounded as the chief delivered himself of Mr Deamer’s opinion, hitched her shift a little higher, thought better of this and let it drop again, giggled, and assumed an expression of inscrutable charm.

‘Jane is very close.’ Willoughby was scraping at his palette. ‘To you she looks like an advertisement for soap. To me she is a girl the curve of whose chin is oddly repeated in the curve of her breast. That’s why she’s undressed, more or less. But it is the advertisements and the movies, and not life, that have taught her to look wanton. Jane is a good girl, and easily repelled the advances of the bad baronet. Just badger her a little, Inspector, would you? I want her sulky and not smeared with soap-box glamour.’

Miss Fairey understood enough of this to look sulky without further urging.

‘All manner of lads have been after Jane,’ Willoughby pursued. ‘My late uncle wasn’t even leading the field. Was he, Jane?’

‘That ’e were not.’

These were the first words that Miss Fairey had spoken. There was no mistaking their conviction, and they settled the trellis-business for good and all. This girl had never climbed, nor thought to climb, to Sir George Simney’s room. From that particular satyr the nymph had fled – nor had ever stumbled or cast a look behind. And this was enough for us. Whether Jane was indeed a good girl concerned us not at all. I am inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Mr Deamer’s telephone message, then, had been assuredly either mistaken or bogus – and ten to one it was the latter. But who, it occurred to me to ask myself, could sufficiently simulate Miss Grace Simney’s familiar warning voice to carry conviction over the wire? With a shock I realized how strong was the pointer here. Lady Simney, a professional actress, was by far the likeliest suspect. No doubt her sister-in-law, Mrs Cockayne, was a possibility, as were Mrs Gerard Simney and various maidservants at present unknown. But none of these could have been so sure of success as the appealing Nicolette.

But the chief, as usual, was before me here. He had sat down, noticed that he cast a shadow on Jane’s shoulders, thoughtfully shifted his position, and was now easily filling a pipe. ‘Lady Simney, now,’ he said. ‘I wonder if she could be called a mischievous woman?’ He turned to Willoughby. ‘For instance, when young Cockayne was dropped through the window – would that appeal to her sense of fun?’

Willoughby hesitated. ‘I’m damned,’ he said, ‘if I see why we should sit chattering about Nicolette. But she was certainly not amused. She loathes anything in the nature of a practical joke. And quite right too.’

‘Can you imagine her playing rather a cruel trick on Mr Deamer?’

‘Good heavens, no! Deamer dislikes her in rather an open way. But that only makes her act the perfect lady.’

‘Happen I can!’

We swung round, startled. It was Jane Fairey who had uttered this vehement affirmation.

‘After Tuesday morning I can! Didn’t even treat her like dirt, he didn’t. You’d notice dirt, and give yourself a shake to be rid of it. But he just looked through her when she called good morning to him.’

Inspector Cadover regarded the girl gravely. ‘You mean that Mr Deamer cut Lady Simney dead?’

‘Yes, did ’e – the little beast. I were standing at smithy door there and saw it myself. Mr Deamer ’e be talking to Miss Simney – Miss Grace, that is – by lich gate. And Lady Simney she passed by and called good morning to him. And Mr Deamer did flout but put his lips together and look straight through her.’ Miss Fairey tossed her head. ‘I’d play any cruel trick on man who did that to me.’ She hesitated and looked sly. ‘Though I won’t say as her ladyship was up to any good that morning, either.’

‘Jane,’ said Willoughby, ‘shut your dirty little mouth, my dear.’ He picked out another brush. ‘I’m not making a talkie, praise heaven.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said the chief, ‘that Miss Fairey must continue to talk. If she doesn’t do it now she must do it later.’

Jane stood up, grabbed at her shift just in time, and sat down on the table. ‘Her ladyship’s a good sort,’ she said. ‘But terrible hard, I’ll say. Were she not an actress before she caught squire?’

Willoughby flung down his palette. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let’s wallow.’

‘Playing hide-and-seek in the park, she be, with two men at once. And then squire slapped her face for it.’

The chief nodded. ‘We know he did that,’ he said quietly.

‘But am I to understand that you spent the morning following Lady Simney and spying on her?’

Jane Fairey nodded emphatically. ‘Happen I often do,’ she said. ‘I do think she be a lovely lady.’

‘I see.’

I rather think I saw too. Jane’s mental age was round about eight, and a fascinated shadowing and watching was quite in the rural picture. I wondered if Lady Simney herself was at all aware of what rustic curiosity might achieve.

‘The way she looked, when Mr Deamer did that to her frightened me. I thought she were going to cry. I wanted to see her cry. So I followed without her a-knowing of it. And for a time she went dodging about as if she didn’t know or care where she be going to. It be then that I saw there were a gentleman after her – the young Australian gentleman from Hall. He were a-prowling and not knowing whether to come up on her.’

Inspector Cadover frowned. ‘And was Lady Simney aware of this?’

Jane Fairey paused to think. Once launched as a witness, she seemed likely to prove a fairly reliable one. ‘I be sure she was. But she seemed just not to attend. Leading him on, she would be. As to whether she was really aware of the other gentleman I wouldn’t like to say. Tall he was, and he just stood behind an oak tree on a rise and watched her.’

‘Have you ever seen this tall gentleman before?’

Jane shook her head. ‘Never!’ she said. ‘But I got close to him once and happen I should know him again. He were a lovely gentleman.’

Willoughby Simney uttered an exclamation of impatience and disgust, ‘A lovely gentleman,’ he said, ‘peering at a lovely lady through a shrubbery. And my lovely but imbecile Jane peering at both of them. Good lord!’

‘And then he did go off – the tall stranger. And I didn’t see him again until he came from behind Sir Basil’s Folly when it be all over.’

The chief looked absently at Willoughby’s canvas. ‘When what was all over, my good girl?’

Jane Fairey gathered her garments about her, evidently for good. ‘What did happen there,’ she said.

‘Um. So you know about that too.’

‘I can put two and two together like.’

Willoughby gave a sort of disgusted guffaw. ‘Wallow, wallow, wallow,’ he said.

‘Now, don’t you know you were talking nonsense’ – the chief was severe – ‘when you spoke of Lady Simney as playing hide-and-seek?’

Jane nodded sulkily. ‘Happen I was.’

‘The facts, were they not, were these. Lady Simney was simply taking a walk in the park; the Australian gentleman wanted to join her but was shy about doing so; and there was a stranger watching her unobserved who presently went away and – well – investigated the Folly?’

‘That would be it.’

‘And later the stranger emerged from behind the building in time to see Sir George strike his wife and ride away with a lady? Now please be very careful about this. Did Lady Simney see the stranger?’