What Happened at Hazelwood? (26 page)

The garden-boy looked at him in consternation. ‘Please, sir,’ he said, ‘I was sent down by Sergeant Laffer to fetch you. It be Mr Owdon, sir – shot dead in his pantry.’

Well, I doubt if either of us had remotely envisaged another violent death – although such things, just like funerals, do tend to breed each other at times. We left Hoodless at his inn and hurried to Hazelwood. The chief spoke never a word on the way. But he whistled – which is a thing altogether uncommon with him, so far as I know. He whistled one tune after another in a perfunctory sort of way, and I had a strong impression that he wasn’t simply seeking to soothe his own savage breast. With every fragment of tune his brow grew darker. The garden-boy, who draggled along uncertainly beside us, stared at him round-eyed.

Perhaps, I thought, we ought to have expected just this. The butler had turned ashen at the arrival of mysterious visitors out of the past. The butler had dropped trays, sneaked about with suitcases, sagged in a nasty way at the knees. Surely conduct so conventional could only end with a pistol-shot. Perhaps he would prove to have murmured as he expired a few exquisitely enigmatic words to an under-housemaid – supposing Hazelwood to have any under-housemaids left. Perhaps a fragment of some cryptic message would be found clutched in his hand…

This silly sort of reverie meant no more than that I was getting hopelessly out of my depth. From the Simneys and their obscure Australian hinterland we had been whisked to the psychopathology of Christopher Hoodless. Now we were back with that old blackbirding incident and all that had followed from it. In a sense the death of Owdon came in neatly enough on top of what we knew. He had lived for years under false colours and within the shadow of a crime. Those had returned who knew – or were about to penetrate to – his story: and now there had been a pistol shot and he was out of the mess. The sequence was logical enough. But what of the centre of the whole affair – the violent death of his brother? Had he first attempted to stifle the past by silencing George, who had in any case treated him so vilely? And when this horrible expedient proved futile had he then in desperation taken his own life?

I couldn’t see it that way. Owdon’s testimony, I had firmly decided, was true so far as it went, though certainly it might have gone further. His account of Tuesday night had given us virtually our whole physical framework for the affair, and to say the least it would be tiresome to have to scrap it. But, quite apart from this, I was obstinately convinced that its essence was true. To Alfred Owdon – or Denzell Simney if one preferred to think of him that way – Sir George’s death had been both unexpected and inexplicable, a mysterious catastrophe in what he knew to have been an empty room. The wretched Deamer, watched by the sombre Hoodless, had come up that trellis. But who had descended it from above? The death of Owdon brought us no nearer a solution of that.

We rounded a sweep of the drive and the great manor house lay before us. A groom was leading a couple of horses across a paddock and near at hand a gardener placidly performed some indistinguishable task beside a lily pond. The life of the place went on, and would presumably continue to do so until impersonal economic forces strangled it. Until then the Simneys would continue their ways here. There would always be a Sir Somebody adding his portrait to that unengaging gallery in the study. Only the interspersed ladies a change of taste or humour might banish from that sinister room…

Sergeant Laffer received us in the hall, a good deal awed by this second stroke of violence. He was a simple fellow and likeable; and his one tenet of faith in the affair hitherto had been that Sir George’s death was to be laid to the charge of some casual marauder. He said nothing of this now but led us through green baize doors to a small apartment assigned to the butler’s professional offices. Owdon lay sprawled across a table much as his master, and brother, had done. A writing-pad and fountain-pen had been pushed to one side; on the other side was a revolver which might well have fallen from his own hand. The shot had certainly been at short range and the bullet had gone in at the temple. He must have died at once.

Timmy Owdon and Mervyn Cockayne were standing silent in a corner of the room. Both were dressed in Mervyn’s clothes, so that more than ever they looked like twins. But whereas Mervyn’s expression displayed both shock and decent sorrow Timmy’s showed tragic and stark. Years had fallen upon him like a burden; he was as one still mastering a complex and overwhelming experience. Dark circles had drawn themselves round his eyes – but his shoulders were square and his chin had tilted upwards.

We made what examination was worth making. The two lads watched us, quite silent. And then, suddenly, Timmy turned and left the room. I was prompted to follow him. He walked to the baize doors which marked the boundary of the servants’ quarters, and for a moment regarded them fixedly. He passed out into the hall and looked deliberately round. He moved to the fireplace and passed his hand over the arms of the Simneys carved above it. He crossed to a table and paused, frowning at a small bronze nymph which was its sole ornament – a vulgar little thing, and no doubt prized by Sir George on that account: Timmy took it up and pitched it into a wastepaper-basket. ‘Mervyn,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘let’s get some air.’

And he passed out into the bleak afternoon sunlight.

Here, then, was a second unnatural death on our hands – and of a sort that every CID man learns to detest. The revolver was Sir George’s; it had been kept ready loaded in a bedroom drawer which anyone could rob; it showed the dead butler’s finger-prints after a fashion which might mean nothing at all. Moreover anyone might have come in upon Owdon unobserved, and the thing had taken place at an hour when the household was dispersed and movements were difficult to check. I had an uncomfortable sense that the whole mystery was gaining on us; for example, there had been gathered for us a good deal of information about people’s whereabouts at the time of the first fatality, but we had as yet made little progress in analysing this – and now here was another set of circumstances in which it looked as if similar labour would have to be undertaken. Unless something turned up almost out of hand to prove that the butler had simply taken his own life (as I, for one, was pretty sure that he had) we were faced with a tolerably formidable task.

Perhaps it is odd that, confronted by this, I should have chiefly felt the need to find out about Cuvier and his feather. But so it was, and I took myself to the library to investigate: fifteen minutes got me the facts for what they signified. It was Cuvier, it seems, who started the business of reconstructing whole prehistoric monsters from such fragments of them as archaeologists turned up. The feather told him about the wing, the wing about the thorax, and so on; presently he could describe the whole bird. And then years later somebody would dig out a skeleton of the creature in its entirety and Cuvier would be proved exactly right. No doubt it is an admirable pattern for detective investigation. But at least, I reflected rather gloomily, one has to be sure of one’s feather. And where was the feather in the Hazelwood affair? Perhaps the chief knew. I was pretty sure that I did not.

But the chief, meantime, had disappeared, and inquiry revealed that he had asked his way to the music-room. I set out to find this apartment myself and was presently guided to it by strains of melody. I entered. Inspector Cadover was regaling himself with a programme of light opera on the gramophone.

Well, a quarter of an hour off to track down Cuvier was one thing; this was quite another. I suppose I gaped at him as if he were demented. And then I saw that I was not alone in this activity. No less than three ladies, sitting in a row on a window-seat, were similarly employed,
The Three Feathers
, I thought idiotically, and watched the chief irritably lift the tone-arm and remove a record.

The youngest of the ladies – it was, of course, Joyleen Simney – giggled hysterically; the chief glowered at her and turned on something from
The Yeomen of the Guard
. After a minute he removed this in turn and rummaged irresolutely in a record album. ‘And where have you been?’ he demanded disagreeably.

‘Looking up Cuvier’s feather, sir.’ It always pleases me to be particularly polite when he is like this. ‘I’m very sorry to have gone off duty without permission. May I help you to find a really nice piece? I believe Mrs Gerard would enjoy something from
The Bohemian Girl
.’

Joyleen giggled again. Another of the ladies – it was Mr Deamer’s friend, Miss Grace – was making noises like a coffee percolator, and I couldn’t decide whether she was having a quiet cry over Owdon or merely designing to express indignation at the irregular conduct of the higher constabulary. The third lady was looking rather helplessly about her. ‘If my dear Mervyn were here,’ she murmured vaguely, ‘he would be delighted to help. He knows such a lot about music – but mostly on the heavier classical side.’

This seemed to rouse the chief momentarily from his extraordinary vagary. ‘Music?’ he growled at Mrs Cockayne. ‘
Your
concern with music is facing it. And you’d better face it now, all three of you.’

I was more startled than ever. This was not a manner which any assistant-commissioner would recommend, particularly when dealing with the propertied classes. Indeed, it is specifically condemned in the lectures, which are very strong on the dangers of Americanization.

‘A short time before Sir George was killed,’ said the chief, ‘Mr Deamer received a telephone call from someone he believed to be Miss Grace. It had the effect of bringing him beneath the study window between eleven o’clock and midnight. Assuming that the call did, in fact, come from Hazelwood – and it will be possible to check up on that – it was almost certainly made by one of a small number of women – and by a woman with a naturally cultivated voice. Servants, it appears to me, are ruled out. Moreover this call, I am sorry to say, can scarcely have been made with other than a criminal intent. Just think it over, will you, while I try another tune.’

And, sure enough, Inspector Cadover again started up the gramophone. It almost seemed to me as if he were more genuinely concerned with his musical entertainment than with the inquiry he was sandwiching into it. This time he played, among other things,
Three Little Maids
from School
. I doubt whether the three Hazelwood ladies heard it. No sooner had the music stopped than Mrs Cockayne spoke. ‘It’s quite absurd,’ she said. ‘I know nothing about it whatever. I don’t like the telephone. And I don’t like Mr Deamer either.’

The chief appeared to weigh this and docket it for reference. ‘Mrs Simney?’ he said.

Joyleen Simney tossed her head. ‘Give it a go!’ she said scornfully. ‘Why should I telephone to some little dill I’ve never seen? And how could I imitate the funny way that Grace talks?’ Suddenly she turned from petulance to tears. ‘I don’t even know,’ she sobbed, ‘where they keep their stupid telephone in this horrid house.’

The chief nodded gravely, as if acknowledging that there was some force in all this. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘The simplest explanation, after all, remains. Miss Grace sent the spurious message herself.’

There was a pause. I didn’t, for my own part, expect other than a flat, and perhaps vehement, denial in this quarter also. But Miss Grace, for some reason, was struck all of a heap. She lay back on her window-seat, apparently fighting for breath, and her lips were as pale as blotting paper. And at this the chief very seriously played another record. I began to think he was really mad. But presently he frowned, shook his head, and switched off again. ‘Well?’ he said.

I didn’t know much about Miss Grace Simney, but had rather gathered that she was an unbalanced woman who had suffered from a morbid preoccupation with her dead brother and his morals. Was it possible, I wondered, that she was in fact some sort of maniac, and that the whole mystery would have some horrid explanation in this? She looked uncommonly queer now. And, when she spoke, what she said was uncommonly queer as well.

‘George died with his sins about him,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘He died in vileness and in plotting vileness. And would you have me
not
have called Mr Deamer, who, although despised and reviled by him, was his only hope?’

Inspector Cadover was standing very still. ‘Do I understand,’ he said, ‘that you believed – or affected to believe – in a plot to bring Jane Fairey to the study that night, and that you rang up Mr Deamer and told him so?’

Miss Grace had gone paler still; there was something in the manner of this that frightened her. ‘
That
night?’ she faltered. ‘I didn’t know anything about that night. I knew only that he hoped soon to – to accomplish his vile purpose on the girl. I wanted Mr Deamer’s advice – his support. But I – I didn’t get through.’

‘You mean that you tried to telephone him, and
failed
?’

‘Yes. Nicolette’s maid, Martin, was helping me to dress. There is a house telephone in my room and I asked her to put the call through that way. She did so and then left the room. But when I picked up the receiver I found there had been some hitch and the engaged signal was sounding. I felt very tired, and so I didn’t try again.’

Miss Grace’s voice faded out on a sigh. The chief said nothing, but put another record on the gramophone. Jaunty music filled the room. There was nothing impossible in the story Miss Grace Simney had told. But if she felt she had to lie it was obviously the best she could do, since a telephone call initiated by the maid Martin could not well be denied outright.

This was a moment at which I felt extraordinarily depressed. The chief was proceeding to badger these three women as to their whereabouts on Tuesday night, and his growing irritability suggested his sense that it was a perfectly futile task. Sir George had been killed at midnight, and some time before midnight most of the household had gone to bed. This held of the three witnesses now present. Mrs Cockayne had retired to her widowed couch shortly after eleven, and Miss Grace Simney to her virgin one some half an hour earlier. Naturally there had been no one to keep an eye on them in bed. And even if their movements had been other than they professed their stories were peculiarly easy to hold to, so that even a severe interrogation was unlikely to achieve anything. It was true that Miss Grace had told us a queer story and might fairly expect a little sharp questioning. But I certainly didn’t believe that she would prove to have bashed in her brother’s head from behind, and I had an uncomfortable feeling that with her the chief was doing no more than fill in time while waiting for some line to come to him.