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.
Ingram, who, in Raymond’s absence, had constituted himself as head of the establishment, took him there, and was struck at once with a sense of loss. The great bed stood empty, the blazing quilt stretched neatly across it; the mountain of ash had been cleared out of the hearth; and the litter of miscellaneous objects on the refectory table had been removed. The silence of the room brought home his father’s death to Ingram as nothing else had done, yet Penhallow’s spirit seemed to hang over it, so that Ingram almost expected to hear his loud, jovial voice hail him. He was rather shaken, and said: “By Jove! The poor old Guv’nor! Brings it home to one!”
From Ingram, the Inspector learned the names and relationships of those living in the house.. He was obliged to write these down, and to refer to them frequently during the course of his inquiries. Sergeant Plymstock said crankly that it would be a month of Sundays before he got any of them sorted out. He had always understood Penhallow to have been a proper tyrant, but by the time his superior had elicited from Ingram various admissions which showed the extent and nature of Penhallow’s despotism he began to feel that his previous impressions of the deceased had been milk-and-water bowdlerising of the truth.
It had not taken Logan long to discover the almost certain means by which Penhallow’s death had been brought about. In response to his preliminary inquiries, Faith had said: “But I’m the only person in the house who takes sleeping-draughts. Unless you do, Eugene? Only it isn’t exactly a sleeping-draught. I’ve taken it for years. Dr Lilton prescribed it for me. It’s veronal. But I always keep it in my own room!”
“Is it kept under lock and key, madam?” Logan asked her.
She fixed her strained, startled eyes on his face. “No. No, not under lock and key. But no one has ever—”
“Don’t be an ass, Faith!” Charmian interrupted. “Obviously someone has! Where is the stuff?”
“It’s always kept on the shelf, with my other medicines and things. But there’s only a very little left in the one bottle, and I haven’t opened the new one yet! I really don’t think...”
“May I see it, madam?”
“Yes, of course! Shall I fetch it, or would you like to see for yourself where it is?”
“If you please,” said Logan.
She led the way up the main staircase to her room at the head of it. “There it is, Inspector. Those two bottles at the end of the shelf. You’ll see that the new one hasn’t been opened even. I’m sure... ”
The Inspector, who had picked one of the bottles up with his handkerchief, said: “This is empty, madam.”
“Empty? Oh, you must have got the old one! But I quite thought there was a little left in the bottle!”
He picked up the other bottle, and tilted it. “In this one, madam, there is.”
She put a hand to her head, faltering: “But I never even opened it! You must be mistaken! Oh, no, of course I know you can’t be, but — but I don’t understand! Do you mean he was poisoned with my drops? Oh, no, no. it’s too awful! I won’t believe it!”
He wrapped the bottle up in his handkerchief. “You said, I think, that you have been in the habit for some years of taking veronal? Was anyone in the household aware of this?”
She sank down into a chair. She looked very white, and a little dazed. “Oh, yes! Everyone knew I had to take drops to help me to sleep.”
“Does the bottle always stand on that shelf?"
“Yes — at least, I do sometimes have it on the table by my bed, but generally — Oh, I ought to have kept it locked away, only I never thought — Besides, who could possibly… ? And they wouldn’t have put it back in my room! You don’t think I did it? Inspector, you can’t think I would do such a thing?”
“It’s too early for me to think anything, madam. On the face of it, it seems that anyone in the house could have had access to the bottle at any time.”
“Yes, but — Oh, does it mean that I’m actually responsible? For leaving the bottle about? But I never dreamed…it didn’t even occur to me that anyone would-’
“No, madam, I’m sure. Was anyone aware, to your knowledge, that you had recently had this prescription made up again?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think — that is, my maid knew, and of course the housemaids must have seen it, when they dusted the room.”
“How long have you had the second bottle in your possession, madam?”
She pressed her hand to her brow again. “Let me think! Everything’s such a nightmare that I find it hard to — Was it yesterday? No, I think it must have been the day before. My maid was going into Liskeard, and I asked her to get the prescription made up again. Yes, I’m nearly sure that was when it was.”
The Inspector referred to his notes. “That would be Loveday Trewithian?”
“Yes. She is our butler’s niece. But she couldn’t have had anything to do with it, Inspector!”
He raised his eyes from his notebook. “She is engaged to be married to Mr Bartholomew Penhallow, I believe, madam?”
She gave a gasp, and clutched the arms of her chair “No! There’s no engagement! Who told you? Who can possibly have said anything about that to you?”
The Inspector did not feel it to be incumbent upon him to enlighten this nervous, and rather simple creature on the extent of the knowledge of the family’s more private affairs which was enjoyed by Loveday’s fellow servants. He merely said: “That is the information I have madam.”
She thought that Bart must have avowed his intention to marry Loveday. “It’s nothing but a passing fancy. I know my stepson did — did fall in love with her, but of course marriage is out of the question, and I’m quite sure Loveday knows it, because she’s a thoroughly nice girl, whatever you may have been told to the contrary!”
“Did Mr Penhallow know of his son’s intention to marry this girl?”
“Yes. That is... ”
“Was he willing for the marriage to take place?”
“No. No, of course not! But I’m sure he didn’t take it seriously, because he didn’t wish me to dismiss Loveday, or anything like that.”
“Is it a fact that Mr Bartholomew Penhallow expected his father to set him up at Trellick Farm?”
“Yes. But my—my husband hadn’t said anything definite about it. It was always understood, but...”
“Was there any quarrel between Mr Penhallow and his son on this subject?”
“I don’t know. That is — You see, Inspector, my husband and his sons were always quarrelling, so it didn’t mean anything, and in any case Bart — Mr Bartholomew Penhallow — was very fond of his father, and I know he wouldn’t have even thought of — of doing anything to him!”
He pursued the matter no further with her, but by the time that he left Trevellin, at the end of the morning, he had acquired enough startling and contradictory information to make him inform the Chief Constable that the case was not going to be an easy one to solve. He saw no reason for bringing Scotland Yard into it, but admitted that he had not been prepared to find quite so many people at Trevellin with motives for murdering its master.
“Well, I was never personally acquainted with Penhallow,” said Major Warbstow, “but, speaking as a plain individual, the only wonder is that someone didn’t murder him years ago, from all I’ve ever heard about him. The doctor’s report isn’t in yet, but I don’t suppose there’s much doubt he was murdered?”
“None at all, I should say, sir,” responded Logan. “I’ve brought away a bottle of veronal which ought to have been full, and which I found empty.”
“Good lord! Where did you find it?”
“In Mrs Penhallow’s room, sir, on a shelf in full view of anyone who happened to come in.”
“Mrs Penhallow!”
“Yes, but I don’t make a lot of that, sir. She seems to have been taking the stuff for years, and though she does seem a silly creature, I shouldn’t think she’d be silly enough to leave the bottle about, if she’d used the stuff to poison her husband with.”
“The use of poison often points to a woman, Logan.”
“Yes, sir. I didn’t mean that I was ruling her out. But she isn’t the only woman to be mixed up in this case. And really I should doubt whether she’d have had the nerve to poison anyone from the way she carries on! Of course she’s upset by the whole thing, as is natural she should be. But let alone her getting a bit hysterical at my finding the bottle empty, she goes up in the air as soon as ever I ask any questions about anyone else in the house, and keeps on telling me that she knows none of them could possibly have done it, till I could pretty well have brained her. Its plain the rest of them don’t think much of her. What’s more, it’s plain they don’t any of them think she had anything to do with the crime. And that’s significant, sir, because they don’t give me the impression they like her."
The Major nodded. “All right: go on. What about the boy who has absconded?”
“Well, we haven’t managed to catch up with him yet sir, but there doesn’t seem to bee much doubt that he made off with three hundred pounds in cash, which h, took from Mr Penhallow’s bed.”
“From his bed!”
“Yes, sir. Oh, I don’t mean he kept it under his pillows, but pretty near as bad! I’ve never seen such a bed in my life. It has got a whole lot of cupboards and drawers in the head of it. But there doesn’t seem to have been any need for this Jimmy to have murdered Penhallow. He was his father, too.”
“What?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” said Logan matter-of-factly. “The rest of them call him Jimmy the Bastard, making no bones about it!”
“Good God! What a set!”
“I believe you, sir. I’ve only spent one morning in the place, but I give you my word nothing would surprise me what I found out about them. I mean, there’s no end to it. But though there’s a good few of them would like to bring the murder home to this Jimmy there’s two of them with enough common sense to see that he could have got away with the money without adding to the risks he was taking by killing the old man. That’s Miss Penhallow, and Mr Raymond Penhallow. She’s one of these masterful women who make you want to run a mile to get away from them; he’s a surly sort of chap: doesn’t say much.”
“I know Ray Penhallow slightly. Always thought him the best of the bunch.”
“Yes, sir? Well, he had a shot at strangling the old man yesterday morning,” said the Inspector calmly.
The Major stared at him. “You don’t say so! Good heavens!”
“Yes, sir. No deception about it: all clean and above board, just as though a little thing like that was nothing out of the way. Which I daresay it wasn’t. Interrogated, he said he had lost his temper with his father on account of the old man’s interference in the business of the estate. Jimmy and the butler — chap called Lanner — pulled him off his father’s throat. Lanner’s been with the family since he was a lad, and his father before him, and the way I see it is that he’s torn between his loyalty to the Penhallows as a whole, and his affection for the old man, which I should say was pretty considerable. He wasn’t keen to talk, but I did get out of him that he’d never known Mr Raymond to do a thing like that before.”
The Major pursed his lips. “They’re a wild lot. At the same time, I shouldn’t expect a man who’d tried to strangle his father in the morning, and been prevented from doing it, to poison him in the evening.”
“No, sir. But I’m bound to say that he does look, on the face of it, to be the one with the biggest motive. A couple of his brothers gave me some interesting sidelights on the way things have been at Trevellin, and it does seem as though Mr Raymond, being the heir, might have had very good cause to want his father dead. I got it out of the second brother -’ He consulted his notes — “Big chap with a stiff leg — Ingram! — Well, he told me that the old man had taken to throwing his money about in a way likely to ruin the estate, and that he and Raymond were always at loggerheads about it. Said he never had got on with his father. However, I got the impression that there wasn’t much love lost between himself and Raymond. Then there’s the third brother — chap with a foreign name. I can’t make out what he’s doing in the house at all, for he’s got a wife, and you’d think anyone would be glad to get away from such a place. I must say, I didn’t take to him. Smooth-tongued fellow, with a nasty little way of making insinuations about the rest of the gang…family! But, then, his wife’s mixed up in it, so I daresay he has his reasons. Anyway, he’d like the murderer to turn out to be Jimmy. Failing Jimmy, he favours Raymond, with Loveday Trewithian as a close second. Also ran, Aubrey, and Clay. That’s the second Mrs Penhallow’s boy and not such an unlikely candidate either, if you were to ask me, sir.”
“What about the third son’s wife?” interrupted the Major. “Why should she have done it?”
“To get away from the place. Stormy little thing: one of the kind who tells you she’s going to be perfectly frank with you, and then shoots off a lot of damaging; information about herself, as though she dared you to think she’d have done so if she’d had anything to do with the murder. Said she hated her father-in-law, and didn’t care who heard her say so.”
“Yes, but surely that isn’t a reason for murdering him!” protested Warbstow. “She needn’t have stayed at Trevellin if she hated him so much!”
“That’s just it, sir. If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t properly understand the lay-out. It took me a bit to grasp the hold old Penhallow must have had over the lot of them. Couldn’t call their souls their own, from what I can make out. I never set eyes on him myself, but you can take it from me that he wasn’t an ordinary sort of a man at all. Seems he had a passion for keeping the family hanging round his bedside. The description Mrs — What was that name? Oh, I’ve got it! — Mrs Eugene gave me of what used to go on fairly made my hair stand on end. I mean, if you’d only seen that room of old Penhallow’s, sir. Mrs Eugene said they used to have to sit in it, every blessed night, watching the old man drink himself boisterous, while the rest of the family quarrelled, and shouted each other down. Enough to get on anyone’s nerves, if you ask me!”
“All the same,” began Warbstow dubiously, “I don’t think I’d expect anyone to murder Penhallow for a reason like that.”
“No, sir. I’m only giving you the possibilities. Then we have this Loveday Trewithian. I don’t more than half like the look of her. She’s going to marry Mr Bartholomew — the one they all call Bart. Tough young devil with a temper. She’s maid to Mrs Penhallow, and it was she got the prescription for the veronal made up the day before the murder. Not that I want to make a lot of that, because anyone could have got at that veronal at any time. She’s like a good many of the people about here: sooner tell a lie than not. She denied that there was any fixed understanding between herself and Mr Bart , said old Mr Penhallow had never said a word to her about it. She was frightened all right. But Mr Bart blurted out the whole thing. Said he was going to marry the girl; that his father had found it out, and they’d had a row about it, which ended though in his agreeing to do nothing about it for a bit. Told me his father said I could please himself once he was dead, and that he hadn’t wanted to upset the old man, if he really was going to die.”
“Frank!” ejaculated the Major. “I think I’ve seen the young fellow once or twice: generally rather well liked about here.”
“Well, I rather liked him myself,” admitted Logan, caressing his chin. “Compared with the rest of them, that is. I’d say he isn’t the sort to use poison. Violent young chap: half-killed his twin brother when I was questioning him this morning. It took Plymstock and me quite a time to drag ’em apart. That was because his brother, as soon as he saw I was taking notice of this Loveday Trewithian business, said he hadn’t a doubt she’d poisoned the old man. Seems Mr Bart told him how the old man had said he’d get Trellick Farm when he died, whatever he did. As I see it, sir, he’s mad with jealousy — you do get that sort of thing in twins, I believe —— and nothing would please him more than to get Loveday Trewithian removed out of his brother’s path. Hates her like the devil. Told me the old man knew very well the thing would die a natural death, given time enough, and that the girl knew it too, which was why she didn’t dare risk waiting for Penhallow to die in his own good time. I daresay he’d have told me a lot more, but that was where Mr Bart walked into the room. Before I properly knew what was happening, there was one chair broken, and a table with a lot of knickknacks on it sent flying, and this Conrad Penhallow flat on his back, with his brother on top of him, trying to choke the life out of him. However, they’re much of a size, and Mr Bart didn’t have it all his own way by any means. It took us quite a time to get them separated.”
“You take it very calmly!” exclaimed the Major.
The Inspector’s rather grave face relaxed into a smile. “Well, sir, that’s the way everyone else took it. The noise they made brought the old lady — Mr Penhallow’s sister, that is — into the room, with Mr Ingram and his good lady, and all the old lady had to say about it was, "Now, boys!" while Mr Ingram just told them to shut up. Seemed to me there wasn’t anything what you might call out of the way about that little scrap, Mr Bart being given to using his hands a bit quicker than most people.”
“Good lord! Do you mean to say he’s in the habit of attacking people in that homicidal fashion?”
“Well, he threw Jimmy the Bastard down the backstairs not so long ago,” replied Logan. “No one seemed to think much of it, and I’m bound to say that kind of high-spirited behaviour doesn’t go with poisoning: not to my mind it doesn’t.”
“I never heard of such a thing in my life! He sounds to be a most dangerous young ruffian! What about the other two you mentioned? Are they cut after the same pattern?”
“No, sir, not by a long chalk. Between you and me, I don’t know when I’ve seen a nastier bit of work than Aubrey Penhallow. He’s one of these writing-blokes, who wears his hair long, and goes about in fancy clothes, and smells of scent.”
“God bless my soul!” said the Major, properly disgusted.
“Yes, sir. He thinks he’s got to be funny, too, and I’m not fond of humorists. Not his kind. Regular smart alec. By what I could see of it, he spends his time annoying the rest of them.”
“In face of what you’ve just told me, I wonder he dares!”
“Yes, so did I, but he very kindly explained to me when a couple of his brothers looked like getting rough with him that they’d like to kick him into the middle of next week, but didn’t dare to, on account of his knowing Jujitsu."
“A pleasant lot, upon my word!”
“Well, they’re not the kind of people you meet ever day of the week, sir, and that’s a fact. But this Aubrey! Well, he doesn’t care who gets pinched for the murder as long as he doesn’t.”
“Is he implicated in any way?”
“That’s what I haven’t yet satisfied myself about, sir. Mr Eugene took care to let me know that Mr Penhallow had suddenly taken it into his head to keep young Aubrey at home, and that that wouldn’t suit Aubrey’s book at all. I gather he’s in debt, but I haven’t yet discovered to what extent, nor how serious this living at home business was. I wouldn’t put it beyond him to slip a drop of poison into a man’s drink, but whether he’d poison his father is another matter. You can’t spend long in that house, sir, without coming up against the feeling that however much they quarrelled with the old man, and whatever way he treated them, they all of them, barring, perhaps, Mr Raymond, were proud of him, and even rather liked him. Young Bart, and Mrs Hastings, the old lady, and Mrs Penhallow are definitely upset at him dying. Well, I should think they’d miss him, I must say.”
“A darned good miss, I should imagine! Is that the full list of the people you suspect?”
“No, sir, I’ve got one more suspect, and one man I’ll have to look into this afternoon. There’s Mrs Penhallow’s son, this one they call Clay. Nervous boy, scared stiff of me, and trying to carry the whole thing off in a breezy kind of way. Seems his father had just taken him away from college, and meant to article him to his cousin — Hastings, of Blazey, Blazey, Hastings, and Wembury. I had all this from Eugene and Conrad and Aubrey. Apparently Master Clay never has got on with the rest of the family — well, it isn’t likely he would: he’s the soft kind, and I should think a chap like that would have a pretty thin time in that household. He’s been going about talking in a wild way about how he’d go mad if he had to live at Trevellin for the rest of his life, and how he’d sooner be anything than a solicitor. What’s more, he tried to hatch up some sort of an alibi for himself, which didn’t exist; and altogether he struck me as a chap worth watching.”
“H’m! And the other man you mentioned?”
“Well, I don’t know that there’s much in that, sir, but I’ll have to investigate it. Miss Penhallow — who seems to have got an idea that it’s she and not me who’s conducting this case ,tells me that a Mr Phineas Ottery, who was the first Mrs Penhallow’s brother, went up to Trevellin to call on Mr Penhallow yesterday afternoon and insisted on seeing him privately.”
“I don’t see much in that.”
“No, sir, no more did I, but it’s obvious the Penhallows do. They all say it was highly unusual of Mr Ottery to come to Trevellin uninvited, and there isn’t one of them that has any idea of what he could possibly have wanted with their father. None of them saw him, except the old man himself, and they all seem to think there was something fishy about the visit. All except Mr Raymond, that is. When I spoke to him about it, he said there way nothing odd in it at all, and that his father probably had a bit of business with him. I shouldn’t think much of it if it weren’t for the fact that none of the servants showed Mr Ottery out of the house, and no one can tell mc whether Mr Penhallow went with him to the door or not.”
“Penhallow? I thought he was bedridden, or next door to it?"
“No, not entirely he wasn’t, sir. He had a wheeled chair which he used whenever he got out of that extraordinary bed of his. He was up yesterday. Got up after lunch, and didn’t go back to bed until late in the evening. That’s the factor that makes this case a bit of a teaser. By what I could get out of Martha Bugle — she’s the old woman that used to be nurse to the sons, and has looked after Penhallow ever since he first took ill — the room was turned out during the afternoon, but finished, and left ready for Penhallow, by five o’clock. Except for this Jimmy we’re hunting for going in just before dinner to make up the fire, and draw the curtains, which they say he did, I can’t discover that anyone went near the room until Penhallow was put to bed again, which would have been somewhere around eleven o’clock at night. In fact, sir, from five till eleven the coast was perfectly clear for anyone to go into the room, and do what they liked there. As far as the family’s concerned, you can rule out the dinner-hour, when they were all present and correct, but after dinner two of them left the room where the rest were sitting: Mr Bart, who says he was with Loveday Trewithian, and is borne out by her and by his twin brother, who had to fetch him to help get their father to bed; and Master Clay, who says he spent the evening knocking the balls about in the billiard-room. But in between five and eight, when dinner was served, there was nothing to stop any of them tampering with the old man’s whisky, which was kept in a cupboard in his room, and there’s not one of them has an alibi for the whole of that period. Several can prove they were somewhere else for part of the time, but that’s all. The room’s right at the end of the house: you can get to it down a broad sort of passage on the ground floor, or through a garden-door leading into the small hall it opens into, or by way of a staircase leading down into that hall. It’s at the opposite end of the house to the kitchen premises, and the chances are that at that hour of the day you wouldn’t stand much chance of meeting anyone in that wing.”
The Major’s face began to lengthen. “This doesn’t sound promising, Inspector.”
“No, sir, it isn’t promising, and that’s a fact. Talk about murder made easy! Why, even the butler played into the murderer’s hands, by having made it a rule never to leave more than a couple of drinks in the whisky decanter in his master’s room! And as for fingerprints, we can rule them out, because the only ones on the decanter that aren’t hopelessly confused are Penhallow’s own; and the only one on the veronal phial belongs to the housesmaid who admits she moved all the bottles when she dusted the shelf this morning.”
“It boils down to this, that you’ve got nothing to go on then, unless something unexpected transpires?”
“That’s about the size of it, sir. Still, we’ve not caught Jimmy the Bastard yet, and you never know how people will give themselves away once they get a bit scared. I think I’ve rattled one or two of them already, and I don’t despair, not by any means. After all, they don’t know how little I’ve got to go on.”
The Major shook his head. “It looks nasty to me, very nasty, Logan.”
“You’re right, sir: it is nasty, or I’m much mistaken. I got the feeling I’m only on the fringe of the truth of all that’s been happening in that house lately. Every now and then it came over me that I was standing on the edge of a regular volcano. And I’m not what you’d call fanciful, either. Plymstock felt it too. He passed the remark to me as we came away that it wouldn’t surprise him if something was to break at any moment.”
“Well, we’ll hope it may,” said the Major.
“Yes,” agreed Logan slowly. “We’ll hope it may, sir.”