Penhallow (35 page)

Phineas, holding Faith’s hand between both of his told her that even at the risk of finding themselves in the way neither he nor his sister could forbear motoring over to see how she did, and to inquire further into the very shocking nature of Penhallow’s death. Delia, more than usually incoherent, opened and shut the clasp of her handbag a great many times, scattered her sympathy amongst the family, and timidly asked after Raymond. This gave Phineas an opportunity to interrupt Ingram’s account of his father’s death, and say with that unctuous intonation which never failed to annoy his nephews: ‘Ah, the dear good fellow! This must be at once a sad and a solemn day for him! So much rests upon his shoulders! All the responsibilities of a not inconsiderable estate, the cares of a large family! I must seek him out, and place my services, such as they are, at his disposal.’

‘I simply must know!’ Aubrey said, in an anguished voice. ‘I shan’t be able to bear it if I don’t, and we all know what repressions do to one! What are they, Uncle Phineas?’

‘Ah, my boy!’ said Phineas, reflecting that Aubrey had always been an objectionable young detrimental. ‘There are many questions upon which an older head can come to the help of a young one.’

‘Uncle’s mixed his dates,’ remarked Conrad. ‘Ray’s going on for forty. Incidentally, he’s been managing the estate for the past ten years.’

‘Try again, Uncle,’ recommended Eugene, with drawling insolence. ‘We wouldn’t know why you want to see Ray, of course.’

Chairman fixed her uncle with a penetrating gaze. ‘Come now!’ she said briskly. ‘I don’t believe in beating about the bush! Just what brought you up here yesterday to see Father, Uncle? That’s a question which is interesting us a good deal.’

Delia made an inarticulate sound, and looked imploringly towards her brother. He pressed his fingertips together, perhaps to control their slight unsteadiness, and replied smilingly: ‘I am afraid my errand to your dear father was sadly unexciting. Tut, tut! You silly child, have you been picturing a mystery? The influence of the modern crime novel!’

‘I never read them.’

He passed his tongue between his lips. ‘Well, well! And so you want to know why I came to see my old friend! My dear, if it interests you so much, of course you may know: I came to seek his advice in the matter of a little land deal which I have in contemplation. Now you will all say how dull!’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ said Aubrey. ‘I mean, dull isn’t the word that actually leaped to my tongue. But perhaps I’d better not say what that was.’

‘Mendacious,’ suggested Eugene. ‘No, adroit.’

Phineas decided to remain deaf to this. Still smiling, he said: ‘And did you foolish young people really think that I might have had something to do with your father’s death? I ought to be cross with you, but I know so well what tricks overwrought nerves can play with one that I can forgive you.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Ingrain bluntly, ‘but if your visit to Father was so damned innocent, why did Raymond deny that he’d seen you here?’

Phineas’s eyes snapped, and a muscle quivered in his cheek. ‘The foolish fellow! Now, why should he do that. I wonder? Can he have thought that I didn’t want my little project to leak out? No doubt that would be it!’

‘You know, I do feel that we’ve all under-rated Uncle Phin!’ said Aubrey, looking round appealingly.

Happily for Phineas, Raymond chose this moment to walk into the room. He checked at sight of the visitors. and his brow began to lower. ‘What the devil… ?’ he demanded, in anything but a welcoming tone.

Delia got up, dropping her handbag, and moved towards him, her eyes suffused suddenly with tears, and her lower lip quivering. ‘Ray, dear! I — we had to come to tell you how sorry — see if there is anything — I mean, if we could be of the least help in this sad time ‘

‘Very kind of you, but there’s nothing you can do, thanks. You’d have done better to have stayed away.’

She whitened, and her hand fell from his sleeve. Aubrey said brightly: ‘Isn’t it strange, Eugene dear, how often quite unintelligent persons, like Ray, manage to put into clear, concise language what others, like you and me, who are much cleverer, don’t you agree, feel to be the inexpressible?’

‘That’ll be all from you, thanks!’ said Raymond harshly.

‘Ray, dear old fellow!’ said Phineas, rising from his chair, and advancing towards his nephew. ‘I have just been learning from your brothers of your absurdly quixotic behaviour in regard to my stupid affairs! Did I say that I was anxious my little deal should not be noised abroad? I did not mean by requesting your silence to embroil you with the police, my boy!’

‘Oh!’ said Raymond, glancing round the room. ‘Pity some of you can’t think of something better to do than to poke your noses into my affairs! I’ll have a word with you about that little deal of yours, Uncle, if you’ve no objection.’

"Just what is this so-called deal?’ demanded Ingrain.

‘You’d better tell him, Uncle,’ recommended Raymond sardonically.

‘My dear boy, I’ve already told you that all I wanted was your father’s advice on a certain piece of land.’

‘Well, it seems a damned queer business to me!’ Ingrain said.

Raymond shrugged, and held the door for his uncle to pass out of the room. He conducted him to his office, remarking that since the house appeared to be full of busybodies there only could they be sure of any privacy.

Once in that austere apartment he shut the door and turned to confront Phineas. ‘What the devil did you mean by dragging me into yesterday’s business?’ he asked fiercely.

‘My dear Raymond, I could hardly be expected to guess that you had been foolish enough to deny having seen me when I was here,’ Phineas returned. ‘Really. I can’t imagine what possessed you!’

‘God’s teeth, don’t you suppose I’ve got enough to contend with without getting embroiled in that? What’s this cock-and-bull story you’ve hatched up about a land deal? If you’re going to tell the police I can corroborate your stories I’ll thank you to let me know first what they are!’

‘There is no point in losing our tempers, my boy." Phineas said smoothly. ‘We shall say that I have it in mind to buy up Leason Pastures.’

‘You can say what you dam’ well please, but you won’t lug me into it. I’ve told Logan I know nothing about your business with Father, and I’m sticking to that.’

Phineas sat down in a chair by the desk, and began to drum his soft white fingers on the arm of it. ‘In view of the — er — very equivocal position in which you stand. Ray, do you feel that you are wise to take up this unhelpful attitude?’ he inquired.

Raymond looked contemptuously down at him. ‘You must think I’m a fool if you imagine I don’t know that you’re quite as anxious to keep my secret as I am myself!’ he said. ‘You’d have to leave the neighbourhood, if that got out, wouldn’t you?’

Phineas went on smiling, but the expression in his eyes was hardly in keeping with the benevolent curl of his lips.

‘We won’t go into that. A most unfortunate affair, which we must, I agree, do our utmost to conceal. It was for that reason that I came up to see you today. I must know how matters now stand.’

‘They don’t stand in any better shape for this precious visit! Already the others are beginning to smell a rat.’

‘Then you must have been singularly clumsy, my dear Ray. I thought I could rely on you to present my call upon your father in satisfactory colours. However, there is no profit in repining now that the mischief is done. I have no intention of inquiring into the circumstances of your father’s untimely death, and I beg you will not seek to take me into your confidence. What is done cannot be undone ‘

‘It wasn’t done by me,’ interrupted Raymond.

Phineas bowed his head in polite acceptance of this statement. ‘That, as I have said, is a matter in which I do not propose to interest myself. My sole concern is to keep my sister’s name unsullied. To this end I must request you to tell me what steps you have taken in regard to the woman, Martha Bugle?’

Raymond answered curtly: ‘None.’

Phineas raised his brows. ‘Indeed! Then may I suggest that you give your serious attention to this question?’

Raymond strode over to the window, and stood staring out, his hands thrust into his pockets. After a short pause, he said: ‘I gather that you believe I murdered Father. I didn’t, but it’s quite likely others will share your belief. If Martha thought it, there’s no bribe I could offer her that would induce her to keep her mouth shut.’ He paused. A bleak look came into his face; his mouth twitched as though from a twinge of pain. ‘You’re wasting your time. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. Martha isn’t the only one who knows.’

Phineas stopped his gentle drumming. ‘What? Who else?’

"Jimmy the Bastard.’

‘This lad who has absconded with the money from your father’s strong-box? His mouth must be shut at once! I consider him far more dangerous than the woman!’

‘You’re right,’ Raymond said evenly. ‘I should think he’d demand a high price for giving up the chance of being able to call me — Raymond the Bastard.’

Phineas winced, and glanced at his nephew’s broad back with an expression of distaste. ‘Really, Raymond, must you?’

Raymond laughed mirthlessly. ‘Don’t you like the sound of it? Well, if you don’t, what do you think I feel about it?’

‘Properly managed, there is no reason why anyone should—’

Raymond wheeled about. ‘God, can’t you see. Even it I could shut Jimmy’s and Martha’s mouths, I know the truth, don’t I? I’m not Penhallow of Trevellin! I’m just another of Father’s bastards! I’ve no more right here than Jimmy! Do you think I can take that thought to bed with me every night, get up with it every morning, carry it with me all through every day? No, you don’t understand! Why should you? You weren’t brought up to believe yourself Penhallow of Trevellin: it doesn’t mean a thing to you! But it means something to me! You and your land deals! What have you ever cared for the land? What have you ever known about it? I’ve never cared for anything else. Trevellin, and my name! Well, I haven’t got a name, and if I hold ‘Trevellin it’ll be by the courtesy of my nurse, and my fellow-bastard! I can’t stand it, I tell you!’

‘My dear fellow, you’re — you’re overwrought!’ Phineas said, looking frightened. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying! No doubt the whole affair has been too much for you. Naturally I understand how you feel, but really there is no reason for these — well, really, I must say these heroics! If you do not care to approach your nurse, I am perfectly willing to act for you, but I do feel—-’

‘You’ll keep your nose out of it!’ Raymond said savagely. ‘That was one thing Father told you that was true! You’d get your damned smug face scratched open if you approached Martha, as you call it! If Father told her to keep her mouth shut, she will; if he didn’t, there’s nothing you or I can do about it, and — hell, I won’t buy my place here!’

‘Of course, if you believe that your father’s wishes would influence the woman to such a great extent—-’

‘She was his mistress for years. Didn’t you know? Cared for him, too. I never knew why: he wasn’t any more faithful to her than to any of the rest of them.’

‘Need we go into that?’ said Phineas disgustedly. ‘I was certainly unaware of this — this extremely unsavoury relationship, and I should prefer not to discuss it. But I must point out to you that matters are very precariously poised, and you have need to behave with the greatest circumspection. If anything should — er — leak out, I feel sure I can rely on your sense of delicacy to keep my sister’s name out of it. There is really no reason why it should ever be known who your mother was, even if—’

He broke off, shrinking back instinctively in his chair for Raymond had taken a hasty step towards him with such a look of fury in his face that he thought for a moment that he was going to be assaulted.

But Raymond did not touch him. ‘Get out!’ he said. his voice grating unpleasantly. ‘Get out, and take your sister with you! If you cross this threshold again, you fat hypocrite, I’ll throw you out myself?’

Phineas rose with more haste than was consonant with his dignity. ‘I realise that you are not yourself, Raymond. so I shall leave you. It was not my wish that my sister should have accompanied me. I was, in fact, very much against it, but her very natural feelings towards you were such that she could not rest until she had seen you.’

‘I don’t want to see her! Can’t you grasp that the very sight of her makes me sick? O God, it makes me sick to think… ‘He stopped, and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. ‘You’d better go.’

Phineas retreated to the door. ‘I can assure you I have no desire — But I must insist on being told what you mean to do.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I appreciate the painful position ‘

"Get — out!’

Phineas withdrew, gathering the rags of his dignity about him.

Chapter Twenty

Her worst enemy could not have accused Loveday Trewithian of possessing a rancorous disposition. She bore her aunt and uncle no malice for the denunciation of her behaviour, but listened meekly enough to all they had to say, standing with her lovely head a little bowed, and a corner of her muslin apron held between her hands. Martha’s more violent attack upon her she met with a like calm. She was sorry for the old woman, and looked at her with pity in her dark eyes, and presently slipped away from her without returning any retort to her taunts. She had expected to have to run the gauntlet of backstairs condemnation; it did not worry her, nor did it rouse any feeling of resentment in her breast.

Her instinct was to serve, and she was kept so fully occupied in attending to her mistress, and in stepping into the various breaches in the household caused by Sybilla’s collapse on first hearing of Penhallow’s death, and the hysterics into which the upper-housemaid thought it proper to fall, that she had very little time at her disposal to speculate on the manner of Penhallow’s death. When she had been sent for by the Inspector, she had been so frightened that she had lied instinctively. She felt the police to be her natural enemies; and no sooner did she learn that Penhallow had in all probability been poisoned with Faith’s veronal than she at once perceived the dangerous position in which she might stand, and denied her engagement to Bart. Bart scolded her for that afterwards, and told her what a silly girl she had been and swore to protect her from Inspector Logan and a dozen like him. With Bart’s strong arms round her, she regained control over herself; but it was not long before she bethought herself of Conrad. She faltered out her fear that he would try to get rid of her by putting the blame of the murder on to her. Bart had laughed such an idea to scorn, cherishing such confidence in his twin’s loyalty that the shock of finding it had been misplaced came like a blow to the solar plexus. Prevented from choking the life out of Conrad, he had stormed away in search of Loveday, who no sooner saw the condition of rage and grief which he was in than she forgot her own troubles, and put her arms round him, and drew his head down on to her breast, and soothed and petted him into some sort of calm. When he was beside himself, she felt as though she might have been his mother. Her flesh ached with the love a mother has for her first-born, and she would cheerfully, at such a moment, have gone to the scaffold in his stead. She disliked and feared Conrad, but since Bart loved him she was willing, even anxious, to propitiate him, and made up her mind to do it just as soon as his first wild jealousy had had time to wear off. Stroking Bart’s short, crisp locks, she told him that he mustn’t mind so, for his brother would come round when he saw what a good wife she meant to be.

‘He doesn’t darken my doorstep!’ Bart said, his eyes smouldering. ‘Con! Con to say such a thing!’

‘Yes, but, Bart-love, it’s because he don’t like to think of losing you the way he thinks he must if you marry me. I don’t think me good enough for you, besides, and indeed I’m not! I don’t know that I blame him so much is all that. Now, you won’t quarrel with him, my dear, will you? For if you do, they’ll say it was me turned you against him.’

He turned his head, as it lay on her shoulder, and mumbled into her neck. ‘O God, Loveday, my poor old Guv’nor!’ he said in a broken voice. ‘If I knew — if I only knew who did it, I’d kill him with my own hands, whoever it was! Loveday, who could have done such a thing?’

Provided that neither she nor he were implicated in the murder, her private feeling was that the unknown murderer had done her a good turn, but since such a point of view would plainly shock Bart, she replied suitably, assuring him that indeed she had liked his father very well, and wished him alive at that moment. She experienced not the slightest difficulty in uttering these sentiments. If she had considered the matter ethically, which she did not, she would have considered her insincerity justified by the comfort it evidently brought to Bart.

In a similar fashion, later in the day, she listened sympathetically to the jerky outpouring of poor Clara’s over-charged heart. At sundown, with the approach of the dinner-hour, it had occurred to Clara that it was Penhallow’s birthday, and that he had been going to give a party. It was too much for her: she had gone away to her own room, and had given way there to a burst of weeping which was none the less violent for being very unusual in one of her reserved temperament. Loveday had heard her strangled sobs as she had passed the door and without pausing to consider whether her present would be welcome, had softly entered the room. The sight of Clara, crumpled up in a chair, draggled and damp, and convulsed by her grief, woke all that was best in her. She coaxed and persuaded Clara on to her bed, tucked her up with a hot-water bag, and fondled and petted her, as though she had been Faith, until she at last fell into an exhausted sleep. When she emerged from the room it was to find that Faith had been ringing for her for twenty minutes, and was in a state of mind quite overwrought as Clara’s.

‘I can’t bear it!’ Faith said wildly, lifting both hands to her head, and thrusting the hair back from her brow. ‘It’s hideous, hideous! No one’s safe from their suspicions! I never dreamed — Even the Otterys! Oh, do they ever convict innocent people, Loveday? Do they?’

‘Of course they don’t, my dear! There, now, leave me bathe your face with lavender-water! It’s been too much for you, and no wonder! You’ll have your dinner quietly in your bed, and give over worrying your poor head any more about it today.’

‘I ought to go down,’ Faith said wretchedly. ‘They’ll think it strange of me if I don’t.’

‘No, they won’t. They’ll think it natural that you, that was his wife, should be upset.’

Faith gave a shiver. ‘Oh, don’t! I tried to be a good wife! I did, Loveday, I did!’

‘And so you were, my dear, never fret!’

Faith’s eyes crept to her face. ‘Loveday, you don’t think they could suspect me?’

The girl gave a rich little laugh. ‘No, that I don’t!’

‘Or Clay? Loveday, has anyone said anything to you about my boy? Loveday, tell me the truth! Do they — do they think he could have done it?’

Loveday patted her hand. ‘Now, will you be easy, my dear? There’s no call for you to work yourself into a state on Mr Clay’s account, nor on anyone’s. Seeming to me, there’s nothing to show who did it. You let me get you to bed, with one of those aspirins of yours, and you’ll be better.’

‘Don’t leave me!’ Faith begged.

‘Yes, but dearie, I must, for a little, for my uncle’s that upset that I’ll have to give a hand in the dining-room, or no one won’t get a bite of food this night. I’ll come back to you, surely. Now let me get the clothes off you, and some water to wash your face with, and I’ll soon have you comfortable, my poor dear.’

The appearance of Loveday in the dining-room, waiting on the family in Reuben’s place, though it excited no remark from the greater part of the company, made Clara say grudgingly that she was bound to admit that the gal had a good heart. Clara, restored by her short nap, had reappeared with rather swollen eyes, but all her accustomed self-possession. ‘I’ll say one thing for her, it hasn’t gone to her head, all this nonsense of Bart’s,’ she observed. ‘I shouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started takin’ advantage. If it weren’t for her bein’ Reuben’s niece, I wouldn’t mind it so much, for I’m sure I don’t know what we should have done without her this day.’

Conrad compressed his lips, and kept his eyes fixed on his plate. Charmian said: ‘Well, I don’t believe in class distinctions, and I consider she’s rather an exceptional girl. I haven’t the slightest objection to having her for a sister-in-law, and I hope you’ll invite me to Trellick when you’re married, Bart!’

He threw her a glowing look of gratitude. ‘By God, I will, Char!"

‘Pile it on thick enough, and he’ll invite the Pink Fondant too,’ drawled Eugene.

‘Well, I’m sure I don’t mind whom Bart marries,’ said Aubrey. ‘But I do think it’s frightfully anomalous and shy-making to have his intended waiting on one at meals. I feel I ought to leap from my seat, and say Allow me! or something like that.’

Loveday came back into the room just then, with the sweets, and Charmian instantly said: ‘I’ve just been telling Bart that I hope you’ll both of you invite me to Trellick one of these days, Loveday.’

Everybody but Bart looked slightly outraged. Loveday blushed, and stammered: ‘You’re very good, miss, I’m sure.’

‘You’d better get used to calling me Charmian, my dear girl, if you’re going to be my sister-in-law,’ said Charmian, by way of demonstrating her freedom from class consciousness.

Conrad got up, violently thrusting back his chair. ‘I don’t want any pudding!’ he said. ‘All I need is a basin to be sick into!’

He slammed his way out of the room, and Bart, who had started up, was pressed down again into his chair by Loveday’s hand on his shoulder. She said in her gentle way: ‘It wouldn’t be seemly, miss, not as things are. It’s better we should go on the same for the present.’

This speech, while it rather discomfited Charmian, still further predisposed Clara in Loveday’s favour. She said, a little later, when the family repaired to the Yellow drawing-room, that it showed a good disposition. Since Bart was not present, she was able to add that nothing would ever make her like the gal, but that things might have been worse.

The nightly gathering in Penhallow’s room had never been popular with any member of the family, but a melancholy feeling of loss and of aimlessness descended upon the company when the lamps were brought in, and the curtains drawn. The sense of that empty, darkened room at the end of the house lay heavily upon the minds of the family; and the absence from the gathering not only of Faith, but of Raymond, Clay, and the twins as well, brought home Penhallow’s death more poignantly to his children than anything else during that interminable day had done.

Ingram, walking up after dinner from the Dower House, was instantly struck by the change, and blew his nose loudly, and said that the old place would never be the same again. Gregarious by nature, he had enjoyed the evenings spent in his father’s room, and he had enough of Penhallow’s patriarchal instinct to wish to herd as many of his family together (always excepting Aubrey and Clay) as he could. He would have gone to look for the twins, had he not been dissuaded by Clara, who said gloomily that it would be better to leave both of them alone; and although he had very little interest in his stepmother, he inquired after her as well, and seemed disappointed to hear that she had gone to bed.

‘She’s upset, poor gal,’ said Clara. ‘It’s been a tryin’ day for everyone.’

‘It may have been trying,’ remarked Vivian, in her intolerant way, ‘but why Faith should think it necessary to weep over Mr Penhallow’s death, I fail to see. In fact, I’ve no patience with it. She’s behaving as though she’d cared for him, and we all of us know she was absolutely miserable, and hated the sight of him! I can’t stand that kind of hypocrisy.’

‘Here, I say!’ expostulated Ingram. ‘You’ve got no right to talk like that, Vivian! You don’t know how she may feel!’

Vivian hunched her shoulder. ‘If she had a grain of honesty she wouldn’t pretend to be heartbroken at what she must be glad of."