What Happened at Hazelwood? (25 page)

Hoodless paused. I believe I was startled enough. As for the chief, he positively stumbled in his tracks.

‘Quite so,’ said Hoodless. ‘My tragedy had ended in mere comedy. And I assure you that the wild indecency of the thing by no means escaped me. But the old boy himself was delighted.’

‘The old boy?’ asked the chief.

‘Helmholz. It was one of the big triumphs of his career.’

We had entered a glade and the little temple was before us. Hoodless regarded it fixedly. ‘So I suppose,’ he continued, ‘that I am not the man who should throw stones at the late Sir George Simney, or take exception to what is called an
affaire
. Still, there are limits, after all. And that brute overstepped them, if a man ever did.

‘But let me go on. I stopped off writing to Nicolette. She was a married woman – though not, I knew, a happy one. It was an ironic situation. I suppose it might be called tragic too.

‘I arrive at my home-coming. I sent Nicolette no word that I was on my way. But I realized that she would possibly hear of it. For in a small and learned way I am news, and she would keep her eye on the papers for that sort of thing. Still, I hoped to get down here quietly and learn how the land lay before she did, in fact, hear. If her marriage to Simney seemed after all not so bad I would clear out for good. Well, I arrived at the Green Cow on Monday night.’

Inspector Cadover shook his head almost despondently. ‘And on that same Monday night,’ he said, ‘several indignant Australian cousins arrived at Hazelwood and started an obscure quarrel. Fantastic questions of identity and inheritance were conceivably involved. And on the next night Sir George was murdered.’

Hoodless smiled. ‘It would appear that you are confronted with an embarrassing excess of material. And you must not of course forget what happened here’ – and he nodded towards the temple – ‘on Tuesday morning.’

‘I don’t think I am likely to do that, Mr Hoodless.’ And for a moment the chief glanced keenly at the tall anthropologist. ‘But may we have your own account of the incident?’

‘Incident is the word.’ Hoodless had gone rather pale. ‘I doubted if I had done right coming down, and I decided to take a walk in the park to think it over. It didn’t occur to me that I might run into anybody it was awkward to meet.

‘I walked through the village and came in by the west gate. That brought me up on high ground from which I had a bird’s eye view of the place. And as I prowled about up there I’m bound to say I saw some uncommonly odd things.’

‘Ah,’ said the chief. ‘So Jane Fairey wasn’t the only spy at work that morning.’

‘Jane Fairey? I haven’t heard of her. But it’s true I saw one other spy: Nicolette herself.’ He smiled faintly at some reminiscence. ‘But she wasn’t spying when I first saw her; she was snowballing. She was pelting an oak with snowballs. And as the house seemed to be watching her in an inimical sort of way from one side it seemed to me that I might fairly keep a friendly eye on her from the other. And I was doing that when a man and a woman on horseback came up behind me and reined in within a stone’s throw. I guessed that the man was Nicolette’s husband, and when he gave me an angry glance I took it to be because I was, after all, trespassing. But now I think it likely that he had done a bit of guessing too, and knew me for Nicolette’s former fiancé. Who the girl was I had no idea. But I had a very good understanding of the sort of way she was looking at Simney.

‘I turned away, and by this time Nicolette had vanished. When I next saw her she was talking to a fellow who looked like a manservant, and who was standing in the snow between a couple of suit cases. Well, at that I did, I think, feel a little like a spy, and I stopped giving myself the pleasure of watching Nicolette and tramped off in the other direction. But I wasn’t yet through. Twice after that I came upon her. And the first time was enough to tell me that at Hazelwood things were in a precious queer way.’ Hoodless paused. ‘She was worming her way up a shallow snow-filled ditch towards two elderly men, total strangers to me, who were perched on shooting-sticks nearby and arguing with considerable heat.’

Inspector Cadover raised his eyebrows. ‘Odd,’ he said. ‘In the lady of the manor, indeed, thoroughly disconcerting.’

‘She must have managed to hear a good deal – but then the two men moved off. It seemed to me I had better do the same; either that or make myself known to Nicolette at once. I decided to give myself time to think things over, and I made for the village by what I thought would be the shortest route. It took me past this building. Two horses were tethered there, and so I knew that Sir George and his companion were either inside or close by. It was no business of mine, and I moved on. But when I got round to the other side I heard a twig snap and a rustling in the undergrowth. I realized that there was more spying going on, and it seemed logical to suppose that it was again Nicolette.’

The chief shook his head. ‘It was the blacksmith’s daughter. The girl called Jane Fairey.’

‘I couldn’t know that, and I was extraordinarily troubled. It occurred to me that things might have been so bad at Hazelwood that Nicolette had gone a little astray in her wits.’

‘I would say that nothing’ – the chief spoke rather drily – ‘was farther from the truth. If it at all relieves your mind, I may tell you that I regard Lady Simney as very fully in possession of her usual marked intellectual abilities.’

Hoodless glanced at him rapidly, hesitated, and went on. ‘I decided to investigate. But I had hardly got into the undergrowth when there was a sound behind me, and there was Nicolette standing about where I stand now, right in front of the temple. She had just looked at the horses and taken the situation in. She hurried forward, stopped, and suddenly the horses were rearing and plunging. And at that out came Simney and his lady friend. They mounted and made as if to ride past Nicolette. But when just up with her Simney reined in for a moment, said something, and then struck her in the face. He and the woman rode off, and I ran from behind the temple. Nicolette was walking rapidly towards the house. Something in her stride brought me to a halt. If I could have caught up with Simney it would have been another matter. But upon Nicolette hard upon that humiliation I didn’t want to break. So I waited and she disappeared. I haven’t seen her since.’

‘Or communicated with her in any way?’ The chief had taken a couple of strides in the melting snow and turned to face the anthropologist.

‘Nor have I communicated with her.’ Hoodless looked first at one and then the other of us bravely. ‘I had entered that park feeling only a relationship with her; now I was in a relationship with her husband as well. It needed considering.’ Hoodless paused. ‘A couple of hundred years ago the solution would have been comparatively simple. But a duel would be distinctly eccentric today, nor do I suppose he was the sort of man who would have hazarded himself after that fashion. I don’t know that our customs have changed for the better in these ways. Cultures in which there is some form of judicial combat usually escape a good deal of underhand violence.’

Inspector Cadover was looking appraisingly at the sinister little building called Sir Basil’s Folly. ‘You meditated underhand violence yourself?’ he asked.

‘Violence, certainly. One does in such a situation think of killing one’s man. But such thoughts are atavic and one presently recognizes them as such. Sticking the Simney carving knife, or the ancestral Hoodless stiletto, into Sir George would by no means have mended matters. I decided to sleep on my problem – and when I woke up it was to hear an excited landlord telling a group of yokels that Sir George had been murdered. All his earthly accounts were closed – my own, which was the latest opened, among them.’

We had mounted the steps of the temple as Hoodless spoke, and walked half round the little terrace before it. The chief surprised me by unceremoniously forcing a window and entering. We waited in complete silence until he came out again. ‘Nicely fitted out,’ he said. ‘Conveniently appointed.’ He frowned and added a most unprofessional remark. ‘Do you know, I cannot feel that society has lost much in the late Sir George?’

‘I imagine,’ said Hoodless, ‘that, on the contrary, the gain is considerable. Still, the brains even of very bad hats should not be scattered about the carpet. If I can help clear the thing up, I will.’

Inspector Cadover brought out his pipe. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘I’ll just fumigate a little after inspecting the love-nest. And now, sir, it will be best that I put a few direct questions. Sir George has come to this violent end and Lady Simney must be presumed in considerable distress of mind. Why have you not attempted to have any communication with her?’

‘I had to think things out.’

Impatiently the chief struck a match. ‘That seems to be your line every time.’

Hoodless flushed. ‘You don’t understand. But I think you will when you have asked your remaining questions.’

‘Very well. What were you doing on Tuesday, Mr Hoodless, shortly before midnight?’

‘Prowling about within a stone’s throw of Hazelwood.’

We both stared at him dumbfounded. ‘When you remarked that you probably had no
alibi
,’ said the chief, ‘it looks as if you weren’t far wrong. Have you any explanation of so extraordinary a proceeding?’

‘I was in love.’

There, was a silence. The thing was perfectly adequate. Men do behave just so. But it took some swallowing, all the same.

‘You rallied us,’ said the chief, ‘on the fascination of footprints in the snow. Well, you didn’t leave any.’

‘I suppose I kept to the carriage sweep, which had been pretty well cleared. Why shouldn’t you believe me? It would be absurd to invent such a story.’

‘It would seem to be so.’ The chief was cautious and plodding. ‘While you were on this prowl, then, did you see or hear anything material?’

‘I certainly did. It put me in grave doubts as to how to act at the time. I was watching the house – there was, as you will have heard, a glimmer of moonlight – when I saw a dark figure apparently scaling one of the wings. I couldn’t make out how it was being managed, but it appeared to be a fairly easy ascent.’

‘I see.’ We had turned from Sir Basil’s Folly and were moving through the oak trees. ‘You have quite a talent, Mr Hoodless, for failing to break new ground.’

The anthropologist laughed a trifle shortly. ‘Professionally,’ he said, ‘I hope it is otherwise. And I don’t at all know what you mean.’

‘That yours, so far, is what is called corroborative evidence. But please go on.’

‘What is called a cat-burglar would no doubt present just such an appearance. I wondered whether I ought to give an alarm. But to account for my presence would have been uncommonly awkward. And, after all, Sir George’s spoons and forks were nothing to me.’

‘To be sure they were not. Can you give us an idea of the hour, by the way?’

‘I have no idea of it. I had got into the sort of state, I am afraid, at which time makes very little impression. But one very acute sense I always have – that of hearing. I doubt if, from where I was standing, any normal ear would have heard what I heard then. It was a scream – a scream of rage and terror.’

How the chief took this I don’t know. For my own part I nearly jumped out of my skin. For these were the very words which Owdon – or Denzell Simney – had used to describe what he had heard from Sir George’s study. This was corroborative evidence with a vengeance.

‘And then the figure reappeared again and re-descended to the darkness of a terrace. I fancied I heard sounds of a scuffle. Then I heard the panting breath of somebody approaching me, and the figure of a man came into sight quite close at hand. I had just decided that it was the cat-burglar, and was wondering whether to do a rugger tackle, when he came fully into view. Three things were surprising about him and made me hold my hand.’

The village was now before us and I could see a thin wisp of blue smoke rising from the Green Cow. Dramatic sense had made Hoodless fall silent while we walked a dozen paces. ‘Three things?’ I asked.

‘Yes. First, the cat-burglar was a clergyman. Second, he was running through the snow in his stockinged feet. And third, his face in the moonlight bore such an expression of horror and fear as I had never before seen, or seen only in New Guinea natives who believed themselves haunted by demons.’

‘I see.’ Inspector Cadover looked inquiringly into the bowl of his pipe. ‘You might say he was like a man who had run up against the Devil?’

‘Yes. Against the Devil and all his works.’

We climbed a stile and were again on the high road. ‘In the matter of those New Guinea natives,’ said the chief. ‘Your experience of them wouldn’t, I suppose, go back twenty years or thereabouts?’

‘Heavens, no. Not ten.’

‘Did you ever come up against b1ackbirding?’

Hoodless stared in surprise. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I never did. It’s an evil that has pretty well died out. But then so have the potential blackbirds, poor devils.’

‘Did you ever hear of two anthropologists who went on a trading voyage with some natives and had a brush with blackbirders?’

‘Never.’

‘Have you ever heard anything whatever of a family of Simneys in Australia?’

‘I’m very sure I never have.’

‘You say you wrote frequently to Lady Simney after her marriage. I suppose, therefore, that she wrote to you. Did she tell you anything whatever of her husband’s relations or family connexions?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘Would you be surprised to learn that the butler at Hazelwood is really the late Sir George’s brother living under an assumed name?’

Hoodless laughed. ‘I would think it a very tall story indeed. For surely–’ He broke off abruptly. ‘Hullo. There’s something up.’

Outside the Green Cow a little knot of villagers had gathered, and in their midst was a panting youth whom I recognized as some sort of garden-boy from Hazelwood. Whatever news he brought had evidently been worth the rapid carriage, for surprise and awe were evident on the faces of those around him. The chief took one look at the scene and then pushed in without ceremony. ‘Now then,’ he said – and thirty years appeared to drop from him as he spoke – ‘Now then, what’s all this?’