Penhallow

by Джорджетт Хейер

  It seemed to her that her brain, which had not seriously contemplated such an action as this, became suddenly suspended above the thought that had so casually occurred to her. She sat with her eyes riveted to the little bottle, and her heart beating so hard that it thudded against her ribs.

  No one would ever know. That was the thought which leaped to her mind, and stayed there, behind all the others which swiftly followed it. Dr Lifton had told her that not even Penhallow’s constitution could stand the strain he was imposing on it. He would feel no surprise it Penhallow were to die suddenly; he would say that he had warned them of what must happen if they could not persuade him to change his way of life. Everyone knew that so far from modifying his eating and his drinking and his crazy spurts of energy he had been going from bad to worse during the past weeks; and although Clara, and perhaps others of his family as well, might be confident that he would survive his excesses, they would only think, when he died, that they had been mistaken after all, and had paid too little heed to the doctor’s warning.

  With fatal clarity, the very means by which she could hasten Penhallow’s end (for it was no more than that, she told herself showed themselves to her, so that it almost seemed as though she were meant to take this course. It was so easy that it seemed strange that she had never thought of it before. He would not suffer; he would not even know that he had swallowed the drug, for when he was already a little fuddled, as he had been for so many nights, he had a way of tossing off his whisky at a gulp. It appeared to her that if he felt no pain she could not be thought to have committed so great a crime. She was sure that she had many times heard him inveigh against the life he was forced to lead, saying that the sooner he died the better pleased he would be, and if her brain could not quite accept this declaration at its face-value, at least it was ready to receive it as a half-excuse for what she meant to do.

  The more she thought of it, the more clearly she perceived that every trivial circumstance militated so strangely in her favour that her task began to assume the colour of a predestined act.

  When they left Penhallow every evening, and the trays of refreshment had been removed from his room, Reuben was compelled to get out the decanter of whisky from the corner-cupboard, and to place it on the table beside the bed. Reuben had a trick of reducing the quantity of liquor in the decanter to a bare minimum, so that there should be a check on the amount his master could consume when he was left alone for the night. There was never anything left in the decanter in the morning, so that there could be no fear that others besides Penhallow might drink the drugged whisky; nor was it ever produced during the course of the evening for the refreshment of those who foregathered in his room. Penhallow would not touch his private store of whisky, she thought, until he had been made ready for sleep, and left alone in his huge, over-heated room.

  The fancy had seized him to get up today; he meant to take the head of his table at dinner, when he would no doubt eat and drink too much, grow boisterous, and exhaust himself, as he always did on such occasions. Surely it would seem the most natural thing in the world if he should be found to have died in his sleep after a day of most unwise exertion!

  Martha, she knew, had seized the opportunity to turn out his room that afternoon. It was done now, all the sweeping and the dusting, and the great bed stood ready for its occupant. There could be nothing to take anyone to the room again until Penhallow re-entered it; all she had to do was to go down to it at a moment when it was unlikely that she would encounter any of the household in that part of the house. That was as easy as the rest. Before dinner, when the family was gathered in the Yellow drawing-room, drinking sherry; and Reuben, with Jimmy to help him, was busy laying the table in the dining-room, she could pass with little fear of meeting anyone on the way down the narrow stairway at the far end of the house into the small hall on to which Penhallow’s room opened. All she had to do then to win freedom for herself, and for Clay, for Raymond, for Vivian, for Bart, even for Aubrey, was to cross the wide floor to the corner-cupboard, to open it, to lift the stopper from the decanter, and to empty in the contents of one small bottle. It seemed such a little thing to do to achieve so much that was good that it scarcely bore the appearance to her of a crime. All the troubles which now beset the Penhallows would be settled by this one act; there would be peace at Trevellin, and happiness: a release for more persons than herself and Clay from an intolerable bondage.

  A long sigh heaved her breast. The thudding of her heart had abated; she felt calm, and clear-sighted; even the ache in her head was less, although it had left her, as it so often did, with a feeling of narcosis, as though the pain had been merely blanketed by a strong anodyne. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, and, getting up from her chair, began to change her dress for dinner.

  She thought that if she met anyone on her way to Penhallow’s room, or heard someone in the room when she came to it, it would be a sign to her that she was not, after all, meant to carry out her intention; but she felt so sure that she was meant to that it would have been a shock to her to have encountered even so small a hindrance as a housemaid upon the landing.

  When she came out of her room, there was no one in sight. She could hear the twins’ voices raised in the hall below, and Charmian singing, rather unmelodiously, behind the shut bathroom door. The broad corridor at the back of the house, with its deep window embrasures, was deserted too. The doors into the twins’ rooms stood open on to it; Conrad had put his shoes outside; she taught a glimpse, as she passed, of Bart’s clothes tossed carelessly on to the floor of his room. The corridor led into a smaller hall, the counterpart of the one below it. Here was Eugene’s and Vivian’s bedroom, with its dressing-room beyond, and Aubrey’s room opposite. Aubrey had gone downstairs, but a murmur of voices sounded in Eugene’s room. Faith went softly down the narrow, worn stairs, meeting no one, holding the phial in her handkerchief. A scent of lavender drifted into the hall at the foot of the stairs from the door which stood open on to the garden; and one of Bart’s dogs, an old setter, lay on the mat with his head on his paws. He cocked his ears, and followed Faith with his eyes, but he did not lift his head, because he was uninterested in anyone but Bart. The double door into Penhallow’s room stood wide, as though to invite her to enter. From the hall she could see the patchwork quilt upon the bed shimmering and glowing in a shaft of late sunlight striking into the room slantways through one of the windows. She went in, quite unafraid, and crossed the room to the corner-cupboard. The decanter stood there, with a glass beside it, and a siphon, upon a silver tray. As she had expected, there was only a little whisky in it. She removed the heavy cut-glass stopper, and poured in the veronal. A tiny sound behind her made her start, and look over her shoulder. But it was only Penhallow’s cat, Beelzebub, which had awakened. and was stretching luxuriously. She replaced the stopper, and closed the cupboard door. The cat sat on its haunches, and began to wash one foreleg. As she moved away from the cupboard, it paused to regard her fixedly, holding its paw suspended. She did not like cats; she thought that this one looked malevolently at her, as though it knew what she had done. She left the room: and the setter’s eyes followed her again as she went towards the staircase.

  Eugene and Vivian were still talking in their room; Charmian was whistling an air from La Boheme in the bathroom. Faith went into her room, and put the empty veronal phial back on the shelf beside the other bottles and pots that stood there. She felt strangely calm, as though she had not done. anything at all out of the ordinary, but she thought that her headache would be sure to return before she had spent many minutes amongst the Penhallows, so she swallowed a couple of aspirin tablets before going downstairs to join the party in the Yellow drawing-room.

  No one paid much attention to her when she entered the room, and she went to sit down by the open window. Bart, who was standing by the pie-crust table upon which Reuben had set the tray with the sherry, had the decanter in his hand, and did indeed acknowledge his stepmother’s presence by liftin
g it suggestively, and saying: “Faith?”

  She shook her head. There was a motley collection of glasses in the room, for it seemed that nothing broke quite so readily as a sherry glass, or was so hard to replace. Penhallow held one of an old set in his hand, and Clara had another; but Conrad was drinking from a tinted glass of thin Czecho-Slovakian ware, obtained from Woolworth’s; and Bart had a miniature club-tumbler. Faith thought dreamily that when she and Clay lived together in their London flat, everything should match.

  Phineas’s call had left Penhallow in high good humour. Not even the appearance of Aubrey in his maroon velvet jacket provoked him to more than a sardonic crack of laughter. He said, a little boastfully, that he had not felt so well in years. Then he saw Bart look at him with narrowed, frowning eyes, and he added that he was going to die on his feet, or at any rate in his chair. When the time came to go in to dinner, he had his chair wheeled to the head of the table, remarking agreeably to Raymond that he was not going to be deposed yet. Raymond returned no answer to this jibe, but took his place between Charmian and Eugene. His brothers thought that the set look on his face betokened annoyance at Penhallow’s presence, and were amused at seeing him put out of countenance. But Penhallow’s resumption of the place which he had not sat in for so long affected him not at all. He was thinking of the strange interview which had taken place in the Yellow drawing-room after tea.

  Hardly knowing what good, if any good at all, he hoped to do, he had joined his father and his uncle there, encountering, as he had entered the room, so bleak a look of hatred from Phineas that it had surprised a laugh out of him. In her dread of having her youthful indiscretion exposed by Penhallow, it appeared that Delia had cast herself upon her brother’s protection, openly acknowledging what Phineas had known, or perhaps only guessed, for forty years, but had shrunk fastidiously from facing. It was evident that he was furious at having the discreet veil in which he lived torn down by rude, Penhallow hands; and from the expression of distaste on his countenance it seemed that he blamed Raymond as much as Penhallow himself for the disturbance created in his ordered life.

  “Hallo, Ray!” had said Penhallow genially. “Here’s your uncle been playing ostrich for forty years! You’ve upset his apple-cart nicely! What did you go running off to Delia for, you fool?”

  “To learn the truth!” Raymond replied.

  Penhallow had chuckled. “There’s an undutiful son for you! Mistrusting your own father! Didn’t I tell you that Delia was the sort of little fool who couldn’t keep a still tongue in her head? You might have known she’d scuttle off to blurt the whole thing out to Phineas, who didn’t want to hear it.” He directed his attention to his visitor, scanning him appreciatively. “Knew it all along, didn’t you, Phin? Old pussy-cat Phin! I thought you did. Lacked the plain guts to tackle me! Lord, there was never more than one man in your family, and that was my Rachel!”

  Phineas had passed his tongue between his lips. The hostility he had been at pains to disguise for so many years was naked in his eyes, but his dread of scandal was more powerful than his dislike of Penhallow, and he had not allowed himself to be goaded into any intemperate rejoinder. He had said smoothly, picking his words with care: “I conceive it to be useless, my dear Penhallow, to indulge in idle recriminations. I have come here today to learn from you what your object was in making this unsavoury disclosure to the — er — unfortunate outcome of an interlude in your past which I prefer not to dwell on.

  “That’s you, Ray,” remarked Penhallow.

  “He wants an answer,” Raymond had replied. “So do I”

  One of his soundless laughs had shaken Penhallow. “Damme if I ever thought I was going to get so much amusement out of it when I told you!” he had said. “Maybe I hadn’t got an object.”

  Phineas had set his slightly trembling finger-tips together. “I require your assurance, Penhallow, that this affair will go no farther.”

  “You won’t get it,” Penhallow answered genially.

  Phineas’s voice had become a little shrill. “Have you considered what my sister’s position must be if any word of this disgraceful story passes your lips?”

  “Your position is what you mean, Phin!” Penhallow had retorted. “A fat lot you ever cared for Delia’s troubles! All you want is to be able to live snug and soft in your damned respectability! Well, you won’t live quite so snug in future. Time some of the lard was sweated off you!”

  “What about me?” Raymond had demanded, his words falling heavily between the two older men.

  His father’s eyes had glinted at him mockingly. “You’ll learn to sing small, Ray. Maybe if you behave yourself I’ll hold my tongue.”

  Raymond had been silent, bitterly envisaging his future at Penhallow’s hands.

  “I apprehend,” had said Phineas, “that a woman why was once in my father’s employ, and later became nursemaid to your children, is also privy to this affair. I must insist that adequate steps be taken to ensure her silence.”

  “Oh you must insist, must you?” had retorted Penhallow, kindling to quick wrath. “By God, Phineas.. I’d like to know where you think you are! This is my stamping ground, let me tell you, and the only man to do any insisting at Trevellin is Penhallow! Perhaps you’d like to offer old Martha a fat bribe? Or perhaps you’re going to insist that I should? That ’ud be more like you, wouldn’t it, so careful as you are with your money? Well, I shan’t do it, but I’ve no objection to your trying it on! Lord, I’d like to see your smug face well scratched!"

  “If you are satisfied that the woman’s loyalty may be trusted,” had replied Phineas, with what dignity he could muster, “I must of course bow to your superior knowledge of her character, but I would point out to you—”

  “You’ll bow to more than my superior knowledge of Martha’s character!” Penhallow had interrupted brutally.

  Phineas had been obliged to swallow that. For how long the interview had been prolonged Raymond did not know. He had left the room, perceiving that neither he nor Phineas was serving any other purpose in remaining than that of providing Penhallow with a sport after his own heart. From the exultant joviality of Penhallow’s present mood, he inferred that he had succeeded in thoroughly discomfiting Phineas. He was obviously enjoying an extension of his power, and had as obviously begun to exercise it in a fashion as fiendish as it was capricious, since he announced, with a good deal of relish, that the Otterys were going to join his birthday party on the morrow.

  “Well, it’s your party, sir,” said Eugene, in a tone that left no one in any doubt of his own sentiments.

  “Who’s coming?” asked Conrad. “Have old Ma Venngreen, and make it a real riot of clean fun!”

  “Damned if I don’t!” said Penhallow gleefully. “Faith, my girl, you’ll attend to that!”

  She was quietly eating her dinner, safe in the citadel of her knowledge that there would be no nightmare of a party to be endured. She raised her eyes, and said: “Very well, Adam.” The length of the table separated them, but she had an odd fancy that he was farther removed from her than that.

  Reuben, who had watched with patent disapproval his master’s zestful attack upon a lobster, interposed at this point, remarking severely that since shell-fish were fatal to Penhallow’s digestion the chances were that the party would have to put off, anyway.

  The only result of this was to make Penhallow curse him cheerfully for being a meddling old buzzard, and demand the other half of his lobster. He next bethought himself of a piece of information likely to infuriate Raymond, and let it be widely known that he had sent Aubrey to cash a cheque for him in Bodmin that morning.

  “Going the pace a bit, aren’t you, Guv’nor?” said Bart. “Thought you drew out a tidy bit not so long ago?”

  “What’s it got to do with you how much I choose to keep by me?” demanded Penhallow. “If I have any damned criticism from any of you, I’ll give the whole three hundred to Aubrey to pay his debts with!”

  “Good lord!” ejacula
ted Conrad. “You didn’t draw out three hundred at one blow, did you?”

  “Yes,” said Aubrey, “and I do hope that you will all of you criticise him a great deal, because if Father were to give it to me it would be a very lovely gesture, I feel.”

  “We shouldn’t!” Conrad retorted.

  “Well, I hope you’re as rich as you think you are. Father,” said Charmian. “Though personally I should doubt it.”

  Penhallow signed imperatively to Reuben to refill his wine-glass, and turned his head to look at Raymond. “Well? well?” he said. “You’re not usually backward in giving me your opinion of my actions? Lost your tongue all of a sudden?”

  “You know very well what my opinion is,” Raymond replied curtly.

  “To think I was forgetting that I’d already had the benefit of your criticism!” Penhallow exclaimed. “Held a pistol to my head, didn’t you? Well, well, it’s been a foolish day one way or another! Clara, old lady, here’s to you!”

  Raymond chanced to look up, as Penhallow was drinking his sister’s health. He found that Jimmy, who was helping Reuben to wait upon them all, was watching him covertly, an expression of mingled curiosity and gloating on his dark face. He stiffened, remembering what had seemed of little importance in the first shock of his discovery, that it had been Jimmy who had rushed in to pull him off his father’s throat that morning, and that with a promptitude which suggested that he had all the time been listening at the door. As he stared into Jimmy’s spiteful eyes, so deadly a look came into his own that Jimmy changed colour.

  The blood seemed to Raymond to drum in his head. He lowered his gaze to his plate, thinking, He knows!

  There were too many animated conversations in progress round the table for anyone to have leisure to observe this tiny interlude; nor did Raymond’s silence occasion any remark. It was supposed that one of his moody, taciturn fits had descended upon him. By the time that Bart addressed an inquiry to him across the table he had regained command over his faculties, and was able to answer with a calm that surprised himself.