Penhallow

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “I don’t know. I suppose we most of us had pretty good reasons for wanting Penhallow dead.”

  He uttered an unconvincing laugh. “I say, I wish you’d speak for yourself I’m sure I never had such an idea in my head!"

  “Hadn’t you?” she said, looking at him rather oddly.

  “Of course not! Good lord, what a question!”

  “It’s one you’re likely to be asked,” she said.

  He was so disconcerted by this answer that he found nothing to say. She walked past Faith’s door towards the corridor at the back of the house, and after watching her uncertainly until she had disappeared from his sight, Clay knocked for admittance into Faith’s room.

  She was seated at her dressing-table, fully dressed, her hands clasped in her lap. She smiled faintly when she saw Clay, and said: “Darling!”

  “Mother, have you heard?”

  “Your father? Yes, dear, of course.”

  “Not that! I thought perhaps Loveday might have told you, for I suppose all the servants know by this time.”

  She fixed her eyes on his face with an expression in them of painful intensity. “I sent Loveday downstairs to have her breakfast a little while ago. What is it?"

  “Rame wouldn’t sign the death certificate!”

  It seemed to her that her pulses stopped beating with her heart. She knew quite well what Clay meant, but her instinct screamed to her to be careful, and she said, to gain time: “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, it means that Rame thinks he didn’t die a natural death. Frightful situation, isn’t it?”

  She moistened her lips. “Why should he think that.” Lifton warned me that your father couldn’t go on as he was doing! Did no one tell him what your father ate and drank last night?”

  “I don’t know what they told him. I wasn’t there. Apparently, Rame suspected poison straight away . Asked if Father were in the habit of taking sleeping draughts. Martha and Reuben said he wasn’t, and the end of it was that Rame walked off with the whisk decanter from beside Father’s bed, and Father’s body is going to be taken away by the police for a post-mortem examination. Pretty ghastly, isn’t it?”

  She said, with a catch in her voice: “It’s absurd! I don’t believe it! Everyone knew how foolishly Adam had been behaving lately!”

  “I know, that’s what Aunt Clara said. She’s fearfully upset. But the thing is that that little swab Jimmy seems to have disappeared.”

  "Jimmy?”

  “Stayed out all night, and hasn’t turned up yet. When you remember the sum of money Father made Aubrey fetch him from the Bank yesterday — well, pretty obvious., isn’t it?”

  Her eyes started at him; she said faintly: “Oh, no, no!"

  “Yes, but, Mother, think! I know it sounds ghastly, Father being killed by that filthy little beast, just for three hundred pounds, but if it wasn’t Jimmy — not that I think there’s the least doubt that it was, mind you! — it’s going to be absolutely dire for the rest of us! I mean, already Aubrey’s been saying the most poisonous things, and you can bet your life...”

  “What has Aubrey been saying?” she interrupted.

  “Oh, about so many of us having motives! Actually, I shut him up pretty quickly, because he had the cheek to start on you, and naturally I wasn’t going to stand that.”

  Her colour fluctuated; she leaned forward in her chair. " On me? Why? What did he say about me?”

  “Oh, well, I don’t think he really meant anything: it was a sort of joke — you know what Aubrey is!”

  “Did Aubrey suggest that I had anything to do with your father’s death?” she demanded.

  She sounded indignant, as indeed she was, for although she had killed Penhallow she still felt her action to have been so alien to her nature that it was with a sense of the deepest injury that she learned that one who should surely have known her better could believe her to be capable of committing murder.

  Not having any desire to figure as a tale-bearer before his half-brothers, Clay made haste to palliate his original statement. “Oh, he wasn’t serious, Mother! There’s nothing to get het-up about. I shut him up at once, and, anyway, nobody paid the slightest attention to him. In fact, Char said it was the most fatuous thing she’d ever heard.”

  “I should hope so!” she said sharply. She picked up her handkerchief from the dressing-table, and pressed it to her lips for a moment. “What — what has to happen now, Clay?” she asked.

  “Well, I suppose Rame will do a post-mortem. We shan’t know much till after that. If he does find that father was poisoned, it will be a case for the police, of course.”

  She shuddered. “Oh, no! Oh, how dreadful!”

  “I know, that’s what Aunt Clara says, but it can’t be helped. Mind you, I daresay Rame won’t find any poise at all! It’s all very well for that ass, Aubrey, to say that we’ve all got motives, but personally I agree with Bart that none of us would dream of doing such a thing. If he was poisoned, then it’s obvious that Jimmy did it.”

  She swallowed convulsively. “Clay dear, go downstairs now! I — I really feel so upset about this that I must be alone for a little while. It’s so appalling — I never dreamed! I think I’ll lie down for a time.”

  But when he had left the room she remained seated in her chair, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap, her eyes travelling round the room as though in search of some way of escape. They alighted presently upon the two bottles of veronal, standing side by side upon the shelf above the wash-stand, and she began at once to consider how she could best dispose of the empty one which should have been full. An impulse to conceal it in one of her drawers made her start from her chair, only to sink back again as she reflected that nothing could be more fatal than for the bottle to be found in such a place. She knew very little about police procedure, but she believed that they might search the house very strictly. Then she thought that she would be better advised to leave the bottle where it was, since everyone knew that she alone amongst the household was in the habit of taking drops of veronal when she could not sleep. In the few detective novels which she had read, efforts at concealment had almost invariably proved the criminal’s undoing. It would be wiser to do nothing; to leave the bottle in full view would even appear, perhaps, to the police as a strong reason for believing her innocent. And if they did suspect her, and made inquiries about her relations with Penhallow, although it would be found that Penhallow had frequently been unkind to her, it must also be found that she had borne his unkindness for twenty years, and had never in all that time quarrelled with him. Her step-children might despise her, but they knew that she was not the kind of woman who would murder her husband. They knew nothing of the brief madness which had possessed her on the previous evening; apparently they regarded the very possibility that she might be the guilty person in the light of a joke. No one had seen her enter Penhallow’s room: of that she was certain. Without considering who might become implicated in her place, she began to reflect that anyone could have poisoned Penhallow’s whisky, and with the veronal prescribed for her, since she kept it in full view in her room, and had never made any secret of her possession of it.

  She remembered Jimmy suddenly, and stirred uneasily in her chair, for although she disliked Jimmy she would have thought his arrest for a crime which he had not committed a more dreadful thing than the murder itself. Then she gave herself a mental shake, realising that since he had had nothing to do with Penhallow’s death the probability was that he had merely taken French leave for a day, and would reappear in due course.

  She thought that perhaps she ought to go downstairs, that it would appear more natural in her than to remain in her bedroom while such momentous events were in progress. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, tidied a strand of her faded hair, and got up.

  The house seemed strangely quiet, although why it should have done so, at an hour when she might have expected, in the ordinary run of things, to have found it deserted by most of its inhabitants she
did not know. A housemaid, encountered on the upper hall, threw her an awed look. She ignored the girl, and went down the stair to the morning-room.

  Myra had followed Ingram up from the Dower House some time previously, and was now seated on the sofa beside Clara, discussing Penhallow’s death in the hushed voice which she apparently considered suitable to the occasion. Ingram was standing on the hearth-rug with his hands in his pockets, talking to Charmian, who way leaning against the window-frame, a cigarette in one hand, and a cup of tea in the other. All three ladies were partaking of this stimulating beverage, but Ingram seemed to feel the need of a more invigorating tonic, since a glass half-full of whisky-and-soda stood on the mantelpiece behind him. When Faith entered the room, they all looked round quickly, and Myra at once rose from the sofa, and came towards her, exclaiming: “You poor dear! I’m so terribly sorry for you! If there was only anything one could do!”

  Faith submitted to having her cheek kissed, saying in a subdued tone: “Thank you. It has been such a shock — I don’t seem able to realise it.”

  Clara blew her nose. “I never thought I should live to see the day when my poor brother’s body was carried off by the police,” she said.

  Faith shivered. “Oh, don’t!” she begged. “Has — have: they… ?”

  “An hour ago,” replied Ingram, clearing his throat. “A beastly business! Can’t get over it. The old Guv’nor, you know! I always said he’d rue the day he brought that little swine into the house. Never would listen to reason! And this is what has come of it! Mind you, I blame Ray for allowing him to keep a sum like that in his bed! Asking for trouble!”

  She raised her eyes nervously to his face. “I don’t quite…What do you mean?”

  “It was that Jimmy, my dear,” Clara said. “The strongbox is missing, with three hundred pounds in it.”

  She uttered an inarticulate sound, turning so pale that Myra put an arm round her.

  “Poor dear! I don’t wonder you’re shocked. That’s what I said: it seems so dreadful to think of his having been murdered just for three hundred pounds! Come and sit down! Ingram, pull the bell, and tell them to bring another cup-and-saucer! A cup of tea will do her good.”

  “No, please!” Faith managed to say. “I couldn’t swallow it! Have they — have they arrested Jimmy?”

  “Not yet,” Ingram replied. “He’s done a bunk, of course, but they’ll find him all right, don’t you worry!”

  She allowed Myra to lead her to a chair, and sat down, tightly grasping her handkerchief in one hand. She glanced round the room in a rather blank way. “The others — Ray?”

  “Ray said he must go into Liskeard to see Cliff, my dear,” answered Clara. “I expect it’s about Adam’s will, and that sort of thing. He’s not back yet.”

  Ingram laughed shortly. “Ray’s not losing any time. Didn’t turn a hair, as far as I could see!”

  “Now, you oughtn’t to say that,” Clara reproved him mildly. “Ray’s never been one to show his feelin’s, but that isn’t to say he hasn’t got any.”

  Charmian flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette.

  “Queer cuss, Ray. He’s always been a bit of a skirter. when you come to think of it. I don’t think I ever knew him to run with the rest of the pack, even when we were kids.”

  Faith turned her eyes towards her stepdaughter “Can’t he do anything? Can’t he stop it? Oh, don’t you see how awful…”

  “No one can stop it,” Charmian said bluntly. “We’re in it up to our necks. Of course we see how awful it is! But we shan’t make it any better by getting hysterical about it.

  “Now, Char, don’t be so hard and unsympathetic!” said Myra, pressing Faith’s hand in a very feeling way. “Naturally poor Faith is dreadfully upset! I mean, we all know that Mr Penhallow was often very trying, but what I say is, you can’t live with anyone for years without feeling it very much when they die. Why, I feel it myself! I’m sure the house seems different already! I noticed it the moment I set foot in it.”

  “It’ll seem still more different when we get Ray firmly seated in the saddle,” observed Ingram grimly. “You mark my words: there are going to be a good few changes at Trevellin!”

  “A few changes wouldn’t come amiss,” said Charmian. “I hope Ray does make them. I’d like to see Eugene doing an honest day’s work; and I consider it’s high time the twins learned to fend for themselves.”

  Clara said forlornly: “It won’t seem like Trevellin, with all the boys gone. I don’t know if he’ll want me to go, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, no, no! Why should he?” Faith cried.

  “I suppose you won’t stay here?” Charmian asked her.

  “No — that is, I haven’t thought. It’s too soon! I don’t know what I shall do.”

  “Of course not!” said Myra, with a reproving glance cast at Charmian. “Besides, it isn’t as if Ray’s married.”

  “Well, I think there’s a good deal to be said for the old man’s way of keeping the family together!” announced Ingram. “I don’t say he didn’t carry it to excess, but if Ray turns the twins out it’ll be a damned shame!”

  Clara shook her head. “I’m afraid Bart will marry that gal,” she said. “I don’t see what’s to stop him, now his father’s gone.”

  “What girl?” demanded Ingram, pricking up his ears.

  “Loveday Trewithian. He had a set-to with his father about it only the other day.”

  “Loveday Trewithian! Reuben’s niece?” exclaimed Ingram. “Good God, the young fool! He can’t do that!”

  “No, and of course your father wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Why shouldn’t he marry her, if he wants to?” asked Charmian. “She isn’t my style but I should think she’d suit Bart down to the ground.”

  “Good lord, Char, he can’t marry Reuben’s niece!”

  She shrugged. “I don’t see why not. He’s going to have Trellick, isn’t he? She’ll make a good farmer’s wife.”

  “But, Char, you can’t have thought of what our position would be!” cried Myra. “How could one possibly call on a person like that? What would people say?”

  “Don’t worry!” Charmian replied, with true Penhallow brutality. “After what’s happened today, no one will be surprised at anything the Penhallows take it into their heads to do! A little scandal more or less won’t make any odds.”

  A tear trickled down Clara’s weather-beaten cheek.

  She wiped it away. “I wish I’d been taken first!” she said. “I’ve lived too long: I shall never get used to havin’ our name dragged through the mud, and bein’ pointed at and talked about. I’m too old: it’s no good expectin’ me to change my ideas at my time of life.”

  Faith looked at her with wide, frightened eyes. “No one will point at you, Clara! It hasn’t anything to do with you!”

  “No, my dear, but I know what people are. It isn’t about that, either. I know he was a wicked old man, but I cant bear to think of him bein’ murdered like that, and all for a paltry bit of money!”

  Charmian lit a second cigarette, and blew a cloud of smoke down her nostrils. “Well, I’m not so sure that he was murdered for money,” she said, frowning. “I’ve been thinking it over, and I can’t see why Jimmy had to poison Father to get hold of that three hundred pounds. Father was out of his room all the afternoon yesterday. It seem; to me Jimmy could have taken the cash, and made his getaway without the slightest difficulty. In fact, the more you look at it the more senseless it seems to be that he should have murdered Father.”

  Ingrain stared at her. “Well, but damn it all, Char, isn’t it obvious? He was afraid of getting caught and jugged!”

  “Be your age!” besought his sister. “For one thing, it’s extremely unlikely that Father would have prosecuted him; and for another, we all knew that that three hundred was in Father’s tin box, so he can’t possibly have hoped to have got away with it. Why on earth should he have tied a noose round his own neck?”

  “The fact remains tha
t he’s missing, and the money too, my dear girl.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me to find that Jimmy’s disappearance with the money hasn’t got anything whatsoever to do with Father’s death,” Charmian said deliberately.

  Ingram took a minute to assimilate this. “Yes, but — I say, Char, that’s a bit grim! If Jimmy didn’t poison the old man, it means that somebody else did, and — Hell, that points to its having been one of us!”

  “No, no!” Faith said imploringly.

  No one heeded her. “Not entirely,” Charmian said. “I don’t say I think it, but what Con suggested might be true, particularly if Father had nipped Bart’s marriage plans in the bud. Loveday might have done it.”

  “She didn’t! I know she didn’t!” Faith cried. “You mustn’t say such wicked things, Char! It isn’t true!”

  “My dear Faith, I know you’re fond of the girl, but what do you know about her after all? However, she isn’t the only one who might have done it.” She regarded the end of her cigarette for a moment. “I don’t know what any of the rest of the family feels about it, but I could bear to know what brought Uncle Phin up here yesterday to see Father.”

  “Uncle Phin? I never knew he had come up!” said Ingram. “What on earth did he want?”

  “That’s what I should like to know. He came up after tea, and insisted on seeing Father in private.”

  “But what an extraordinary thing!” Myra exclaimed. “I thought he hardly ever came to Trevellin!”

  “Did he have a row with Father?” asked Ingram.

  “I don’t know. Father was shut up with him in the Yellow room for nearly an hour. I didn’t see him at all. As far as I know, none of us did.”

  “Damned odd!” Ingram commented. “All the same I don’t quite see what he could have had to do with it, Father never had any truck with him that I knew of.”