Penhallow (32 page)

‘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 that 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.’

Charmian pitched her cigarette out of the window ‘Do you think we knew everything Father was up to? I damned sure we didn’t! Why, we never even knew about Jimmy till he was suddenly pitch-forked into our midst. I’ve got a hunch that there’s a darned sight more to this than meets the eye, and — I repeat — I’d like to know what brought Uncle Phin to Trevellin!’

‘By Jove!’ Ingram said slowly, picking up his glass from the mantelpiece. ‘By -Jove, though!’ Myra gave a nervous little laugh. ‘Like a detective story! Mysteries, and suspects, and things. If it wasn’t happening to ourselves, I mean! Ought the police to know about Uncle Phin’s visit?’

The walls of the nightmare seemed to Faith to be closing in on her. She got up jerkily, saying with a labouring breath: ‘I can’t bear it! It’s too terrible! Phineas couldn’t have — There was no reason! Oh, please don’t go on! I know you’re wrong!’

‘There, Char! I knew you’d upset her!’ Myra cried. ‘You never have the least consideration for people’s feelings! Let me take you up to your room, dear! You ought to lie down.’

‘No. I’m all right. It’s only that — I can’t bear you to keep on talking about it like this!’

Charmian glanced contemptuously across at her. ‘Always the escapist, Faith! Never looked a fact in the face in your life, have you? All right! have it your own way! But you won’t be able to escape this situation, you’ll find!’

Chapter Eighteen

Raymond’s object in immediately seeking out his cousin Clifford was to discover, if he could, what papers Penhallow might have deposited with him. That Penhallow’s will had been drawn up by the firm of Blazey, Blazey, Hastings, and Wembury he knew; and also that the various Deeds of Settlement were in Clifford’s charge. He was uninterested in these, since he knew their provisions. His fear was that some document referring to himself, even, perhaps, a birth certificate, might have been placed by his father in such a place of safety as his solicitor’s office. He was too level-headed to suppose that Clifford would hand over any of Penhallow’s papers to him, nor had he formed any very definite plan of abstracting them; but in the torment of his brain it seemed to him of paramount importance to discover whether any dangerous document did in fact exist. The letters he had taken from Penhallow’s room had revealed nothing. He had read and destroyed them, but the relief to his overstretched nerves had lasted only until he had remembered that Penhallow might have deposited such a document either at his Bank, or with Clifford. As far as he was aware, Penhallow had kept no papers at the Bank: he would ascertain that presently , for as one of the executors of the will he could inspect what ever documents existed without exciting any suspicion. The problem of his father’s death was worrying him hardly at all; he had scarcely wasted a thought on the identity of his murderer, although he was aware that Reuben, from the moment of its being made known to him that his master had not died a natural death. had been regarding him with doubt and mistrust. There had been marks of bruising upon Penhallow’s throat which Rame had at once discovered. Raymond had said with an indifference which had taken the doctor palpably aback: ‘Yes, I know about that. I did it yesterday morning. That didn’t kill him!’

The doctor, although not intimately acquainted with the family, had practised in the neighbourhood long enough to know that the Penhallows were characterised by a wild violence shocking to persons of more temperate habits, but this cool avowal came as a jolt to his professional calm. He had said: ‘This bears all the appearance of an attempt at strangulation!’

‘Yes,’ replied Raymond.

‘A man in your father’s condition, Mr Penhallow?’

Raymond had shrugged his shoulders. ‘I lost my temper with him, that’s all.’

After a moment, the doctor had bent over Penhallow’s body again, his lips rather tightly compressed. Reuben, who had been present, had not spoken a word, but after regarding Raymond fixedly for an instant or two, had lowered his eyes. Then Charmian had come into the room; and Rame, looking up, had asked them if Penhallow had been in the habit of taking sleeping droughts. The additional pallor, taken in combination with slight cyanosis, had not escaped the doctor’s eye, and upon Charmian’s asking him what it was that he suspected, he had replied bluntly that he detected signs of possible barbitone poisoning. Glancing about him, he had perceived the whisky decanter on the bedside table, and had tasted the small amount of liquid that remained in it.

Martha, fetched by Reuben to corroborate his statement, had positively declared that Penhallow had never taken narcotics; and it had become immediately obvious that his death must be a matter for police investigation.

Of the four people standing before Rame, Raymond had shown the least trace of dismay, his expression having been one rather of annoyance. In the midst of his own overmastering preoccupation, the fact that his father had been murdered seemed to him nothing more than a needless complication. He soon became aware of the equivocal position in which he himself stood, but it scarcely worried him at all. He supposed, without devoting much thought to the question, that since Jimmy was unaccountably missing from Trevellin, the murder might be laid at his door; and as any interrogation of Jimmy by the police seemed bound to lead to the disclosure of the cause of his own quarrel with his father he was conscious only of a desperate hope that Jimmy would elude capture. If Jimmy, having murdered Penhallow, contrived to escape from the country, it was certain that he would never dare to return again to trouble the peace of Trevellin’s new master.

As he drove himself to Liskeard, Raymond had leisure to consider the question a little more fully. The same aspect of the situation which had presented itself to Charmian most forcibly struck him: he could discover no motive for murder, and began to think that Jimmy would reappear, having committed no worse crime than  absenting himself from his post without leave, to pursue his own unsavoury pleasures in the neighbourhood. If it were found that Penhallow’s strong-box had disappeared, Raymond considered, weighing the matter coldly, that Aubrey was the most likely thief, and since he held the poorest opinion of his younger brother’s morals and disliked him rather more than he disliked Jimmy, he experienced no difficulty in believing him to be capable of murdering his father. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more probable it appeared to him that Aubrey, first disarming future suspicion by delivering the three hundred pounds into his father’s hands, should later have abstracted it. If there was in this solution a better motive for murder than in the case of Jimmy’s being the thief, the motive was to be found, Raymond believed, in Penhallow’s declared intention of compelling Aubrey to take up his residence at Trevellin. No doubt Aubrey’s affairs were in worse shape than he had admitted, not to be settled permanently by a mere three hundred pounds, although that might serve to pay the more urgent of his debts.

When he arrived at Clifford’s office, he was ushered at once into his cousin’s presence. Clifford, who had only just himself arrived at the office, greeted him cheerfully, but as soon as he learned the news of his uncle’s death he looked very much shocked, and the jovial smile was wiped from his face. He ejaculated ‘Good God!’ a great number of times, and said more than once that he couldn’t get over it. When he was made aware of the imminent entry of the police into the affair, he turned quite pale, and could only sit staring at Raymond with a dropped jaw, and the most ludicrous expression of dismay upon his rubicund countenance.

‘But who?’ he gasped at length. ‘God bless my soul, Ray, who?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ Raymond replied. ‘Not much point in discussing that. We shall have enough discussion about it as soon as the police get going. I came here partly to notify you, and partly to look over the papers Father deposited with you. I want to know just how things stand, and just what there is here.’

‘Well, of course, you’re one of the executors, and you’ve got a perfect right to look into the papers, if you want to, but you know, old man, if the police think it was murder…’

‘I don’t want to take anything away,’ Raymond interrupted. ‘I want to know exactly what documents you’ve got of Father’s.’

‘Oh, if that’s all!’ Clifford said. ‘Not that I’ve got a great deal here that you don’t know about, if anything. I’ll send for the keys to Uncle’s deed-box. Sit down, old man! Shan’t be a minute.’

While he was absent from the room, Raymond sat tapping one foot on the ground, and looking up at the shelf at a tin box that bore in white letters on its side the inscription, Penhallow Estate. Clifford soon reappeared with his clerk, who lifted the box down from the shelf; and set it on the broad desk, and carefully dusted it, before retiring again to the outer office.

‘Do you want to take a look at the will?’ asked Clifford, fitting the key into the lock. ‘You and I are the sole executors, you know. That’s about all Uncle left with me , except for the various Deeds of Settlement, of course. Fairly straightforward, as far as I remember. There was a codicil added some time ago, in respect of Trellis Farm: you knew about that, I expect?’

Raymond nodded, watching his cousin turn the lock and lift up the lid. Clifford took the papers out of the box. and picked the will out from amongst them. ‘The estate was resettled in Joshua Penhallow’s time, of course,’ he said, spreading open the will. ‘The eldest son succeeds to the entailed property — well, you know all about that. Four thousand pounds to each of the younger sons; two thousand to Char; one or two smaller legacies — here we are, you’d better take a look at it for yourself?’ Raymond had been quickly glancing through the remaining documents, none of which contained the slightest reference to himself. He drew a breath, and turned mechanically to take his father’s will from Clifford, saying as he did so: ‘Four thousand only? Well thank God for that! I thought it would be more.’

‘Well, so it was up till about five years ago,’ said Clifford confidentially. ‘This is the second of your father’s wills.’ He coughed, and began to play with one of the pencils on his desk. ‘Nothing to do with me, of course, Ray old man, but I’m afraid the settlements, even as they now stand, are going to be a bit of a charge on the estate.’

‘The devil of a charge!’ Raymond replied.

Clifford made a sympathetic noise in his throat. ‘I thought Uncle had been living a bit above his means,’ he said, tactfully understating the case.

‘Playing ducks and drakes with his means would be nearer the mark. God knows what sort of a mess I’m going to find!’

Clifford shook his head. ‘Of course, times are very bad. The estate… ‘

‘The estate brings in about four thousand a year. It’s not that. I know very well he’s been selling out his invested capital for years. That’s where the pinch is going to come. What’s that you’ve got hold of?’

‘Faith’s marriage settlement.’

Raymond took it out of his hand, and ran his eye down its provisions. He gave one of his short laughs. ‘Quite a nice little jointure! A thousand a year, most of which will be squandered on Clay!’ He got up, tossing the settlement deed back into the tin box. ‘All right: it seems fairly simple. You’d better bring the will up to Trevellin, and read it to the family. Usually done after the funeral, isn’t it? Well, God knows when that’ll be, but if I know anything about Ingram and Eugene and Aubrey, there’ll be no peace until they know how much they’re going to get and precious little when they do know!’

Clifford accompanied him out to his car, expressing in an embarrassed tone the conventional wish that there were something he could do to assist the Penhallows in their affliction. As he added the conviction that Rosamund would be as anxious as he was himself to bring aid and comfort to the family, the wish sounded more than usually insincere, and drew nothing more than a grunt from Raymond. Clifford then said that if Raymond did not think that his presence in the house would be a nuisance he felt that he ought to motor out to Trevellin to see his mother. Raymond replied that he might do as he pleased, got into his battered runabout and drove off towards Bodmin.

By the time he returned to Trevellin, the morning was considerably advanced, and not only the Vicar and Penhallow’s old friend, John Probus, had called to condole, but the house was invaded by Detective Inspector Logan, supported by Sergeant Plymstock, at present engaged in pursuing investigations which however quietly proceeded with, had had the effect of casting at least half the household into a flutter.

The Inspector, who was a sensible-looking man of about forty-five, knew the Penhallows well by reputation but he had not previously come into contact with them nor had he until this morning penetrated into what must, he privately considered, be surely the most extraordinary house in the county. He had an impression of innumerable rooms of all shapes and sizes all crammed with furniture, many leading one out of the other; of local stone corridors; of irrelevant staircases; of rambling cellars; of huge fireplaces; and of odd doors which gave unexpectedly on to hitherto unsuspected halls and passages. He had not uttered a word on first being led to Penhallow’s bedroom, but he admitted to his dazed Sergeant, later, that he really did think he’d got by mistake into a sort of Aladdin’s cave.