What Happened at Hazelwood? by Michael Innes

that he was not.’
    I was startled by this – both by the boy’s obliviously calling me Nicolette, and by the marked impression of breeding which he gave, and by the obscure tenor of his words. But instead of inquiring into these (as I ought perhaps to have done) I changed to a less awkward topic. ‘There was a row last night,’ I said.
    Timmy nodded. ‘That is why a fool of a girl called Mary has left. I shall miss her rather, because I used to kiss her quite a lot. Do you think that cheap?’
    This time I did laugh – we were getting on well enough for that. ‘No, Timmy, I don’t. Only don’t ever positively seduce a virgin without thinking hard and long. It’s incalculable.’
    He looked at me with a faint flush and knit his brows, considering. ‘Do you know,’ he said anxiously, ‘I can’t promise?’
    ‘Certainly you can’t. You wouldn’t be a Simney if you could.’
    ‘You think I have a rotten heredity?’
    I found this difficult. ‘Heredity,’ I said (not altogether honestly), ‘is just a bit of jargon you’ve picked up from your books. And, anyway, you’re good enough to kiss as many Marys as we can crowd into the servants’ hall.’
    Timmy flushed darkly and I cursed myself for a fool. The turn of that phrase had been altogether wrong. ‘But why,’ I asked quickly, ‘did the little goose leave?’
    ‘It wasn’t Sir George. I mean, not particularly. All that breaking of stuff last night, and then everybody knowing that Mervyn had been thrown through a window. She just said it wasn’t good service, and she would tell them so at the registry office in town.’ Timmy paused. ‘You know, things are getting a bit hot. This blacksmith’s daughter in the village. The parson has been getting worked up.’
    ‘But that’s quite in the run of things here.’
    Timmy looked slightly shocked. His knowledge of the world was insufficient to tell him how in such situations one must grow a shell, and he thought me hard, I suppose. But the truth was that I had more to think of than the blacksmith’s daughter, and at that moment I was thinking of Timmy himself. If he were George’s son the whole thing could have been kept as obscure as you please. But if Owdon were indeed his father, and his mother some unhappy lady of the family, how could the episode have been so successfully wrapped in mystery? I had found no answer to this when Timmy startled me once more.
    ‘You see,’ he said, ‘it’s Willoughby too.’
    ‘Willoughby?’
    ‘He was painting the girl – this blacksmith’s daughter. She’s very striking, but not what you could call pretty. Sir George butted in just to annoy.’
    ‘Timmy, it doesn’t get anywhere telling me these things. The only result is to make me feel like Grace. There seems to be just nothing on the horizon but these silly, shoddy, sexy scandals.’
    ‘But there is. There’s I don’t know what blowing up. You know the expression about there being bad blood between relations? Well, when the blood that there is badness between is bad itself – and Simney blood is bad–’
    ‘Timmy, I think you’d better run along. You’re being an old Jonah.’
    ‘No I’m not.’ He was very serious. ‘I feel the devil in myself, for one thing. It’s since I came into the house and saw that Sir George – and saw that you…’
    He broke off, confused, and with a fearful rage in his eyes that told me a great deal. ‘Timmy,’ I said sharply, ‘I can look after myself. I’m doing so. You would only–’
    ‘If only I knew,’ he said. ‘If only I knew that he wasn’t my–’
    ‘You’re being melodramatic. It’s the result of long-lost cousins coming back with some mystery from Australia. And now you’re going to stop it.’ I must have spoken with something like vehemence, for I think I was almost frightened.
    Timmy looked crestfallen and for a moment this comforted me. Then professional instinct quickened my scrutiny; I saw that the penitent face before me was a