Her words were received in uncomprehending silence. Conrad broke it. “What do you mean, he won’t sign the certificate? Why not?”
“He thinks Father didn’t die a natural death,” responded Charmian bluntly.
They all stared at her. “Didn’t die a natural death?” Conrad repeated. “What on earth are you driving at, Char?”
“Oh dear, I do wish I hadn’t come home!” said Aubrey. “I can see, because I am very quick-witted and sensitive to atmosphere, that everything is going to become too morbid and repellent for words. Char, my precious, do put us out of this frightful suspense! I can’t bear it!”
“If you want it in plain words, Rame thinks Father was murdered,” said Charmian.
Clara dropped her teaspoon with a clatter into her saucer. Bart half-started from his chair, and sank back again, his eyes fixed incredulously on his sister’s face. Clay turned chalk-white, and moved his lips stickily.
“Rot!” said Conrad loudly and scornfully.
“Yes, that’s what I said, but apparently I was wrong,” Charmian replied, drawing her cigarette-case from her pocket, and taking a cigarette from it. She shut the with a snap, and turned to feel for a matchbox on the mantelpiece behind her.
“But what — how… ?”Bart demanded.
She struck a match, and lit her cigarette. “Poison, of course.”
“Rubbish!” said Clara strongly. “I never heard of such a thing! Poison, indeed! He ate and drank a lot of foolish things last night, as anyone could have told Rame! What next!”
“There was a sort of blue look about him,” Charmian said. “I noticed it myself, though it didn’t, of course, convey anything in particular to my mind. Rame asked if Father was in the habit of taking sleeping-draughts. Reuben and Martha both swore that he wasn’t. Them was a drain of whisky left in the decanter beside the bed, and he tasted it. He has taken both the glass and the decanter away with him, and I suppose you know what that means.”
“Do you mean — do you mean that there’ll have to be an inquest?” Conrad said, in a stupefied tone. “On Father."
“Of course.”
Clara, who had been staring at Charmian with dropped jaw and slowly mounting colour, found her voice to say: “Inquest? We’ve never had such a thing in our family! I never did in all my life! Why, whatever next. I should like to know? Your father would be furious at the idea of anythin’ like that happenin’! It’ll have to be put a stop to: I won’t have it!”
“I wish it could be stopped,” returned Charmian. “Unfortunately, it can’t. This is where the police take over. Jolly, isn’t it?”
“Police?” Clay gasped. “Oh, I say, how awful! Rame must have made a mistake!”
“Of course he’s made a mistake!” said Clara, more moved than anyone could remember to have seen her. “This is what comes of callin’ in one of these newfangled doctors! I’ve no patience with it! Your father died because he ate and drank too much last night, and that’s all there is to it!”
No one paid any heed to this. Bart got up suddenly, thrusting back his chair. “But, my God, this is ghastly!” he exclaimed. “Are you saying that somebody put poison in the Guv’nor’s whisky? One of us?”
Charmian shrugged. Clay was inspired to say: “It’s titter piffle! I mean, who would?”
“Little brother, do you think you could keep your ill-omened mouth shut?” asked Aubrey plaintively. “I am beginning to feel quite too terribly unwell, and that remark has conjured up such a number of daunting reflections that I wish more than ever that I hadn’t stupidly forgotten to bring my vinaigrette with me. I don’t know who would — at least, not yet — but when I think of all who might -well, I needn’t go on, need I?"
“You figure on the list yourself, don’t you?” suggested Conrad, not very nicely.
“Yes, beloved, I should think I am destined to occupy a prominent position on the list, and that is what is upsetting me. Fancy being so unfeeling as to point it out to me in that horrid way! Oh, I do wish I weren’t here!”
“Do you mean to tell me,” demanded Clara, “that we’re goin’ to have police at Trevellin?”
“I suppose so,” replied Charmian.
“And it’s no use your saying that you’ve never heard of such a thing, Clara love, because they were practically never out of the house when the twins were innocent boys,” said Aubrey. “Not to mention the various occasions when Ray and Ingram and Eugene…”
“That was nothin’!” interrupted Clara. “A bit of boyish devilry, and your father always settled it without any fuss. But this! Well, I shall never get over it!” Vivian, who had been sitting in silence for some minutes, now said defiantly: “If he really was poisoned.. I quite see, of course, that I might have been the person to have done it.”
“Yes, darling,” agreed Aubrey, “but there’s nothing to be so grand about in that. It would be far more distinguished not to be a suspect. I mean, it’s so obvious, isn’t it, that it’s going to be too dreadfully commonplace to be one of those who might well have murdered Father?”
Bart turned his eyes towards him. “Not one of us — not one of us! — would have done such a thing!” he said fiercely.
“How sweet of you to say so, Bart! I shouldn’t think it’s in the least true, but I do appreciate the thoroughly nice spirit that inspired you to utter such noble words. I quite thought you would instantly assume that I was the guilty party.”
“I wouldn’t put it beyond you,” interpolated Conrad.
“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t, but that’s only because I wear a maroon velvet jacket and a silk shirt, and you can’t help feeling that such a man would be capable of committing almost any crime.”
“Well, all I know is that Father had made up his mind to make you live at home, which is about the last thing on earth that would suit your book!”
“Mustn’t it be lovely to be Conrad?” said Aubrey, looking round the table. “Sitting there in a perfectly unassailable position, making spiteful remarks to me! I cant help entertaining what I admit to be a very ignoble hope that we shall discover that he had a motive for killing Father after all.”
Conrad looked rather taken aback. “Look here, who do you consider might have had a motive?”
“It would be so much easier to tell you who hadn’t,” replied Aubrey. “I shouldn’t think even a policeman could suspect darling Aunt Clara. Unless you’re cherishing a hideous secret, you would appear to be out of the running — but do try not to look so smug about it! It goes against the grain, but I’m bound to say I don’t see what Eugene would have had to gain. Char and Ingram seem to be out of it too. I can’t think of anyone else.”
“You’d much better not talk about it at all,” said Clara severely. “Depend upon it, it won’t lead to any good.”
“I don’t know about anyone else, but if you mean to say that you think Bart would have laid a finger on Father...”
Aubrey sighed. “I simply can’t bear it when you start on your oppressive Damon and Pythias act, Con dear. I daresay Bart didn’t do it, but the meanest intelligence — yes, that’s my polite way of saying yours, so that angry flush isn’t wasted — must perceive that he has a perfectly beautiful motive. Of course, if Ray is the murderer, the whole thing is most sordid, because he must have done it for filthy lucre, which one can’t help feeling lets the whole family down; but if Bart did it, his motive, however little it may appeal to me personally, lifts the crime on to a much higher plane. All for Love, in fact. Darling Clara, please pour me out another cup of coffee!”
“I consider it in the highest degree unlikely that Bart had anything at all to do with it,” said Charmian, before Bart could speak.
“Yes, precious, so do I, but if half what one reads is true love has a most peculiar effect, even upon people like Bart. I wouldn’t know. Of course, the thing that would afford one a really subtle gratification would be to find that Faith had atoned for years of almost complete ineffectiveness by — Oh dear, there’s Clay! To think I had nearly committed a social solecism! I didn’t quite though,, did I?"
“If you imagine I’m going to sit here while you cast your rotten aspersions on my mother, you’re jolly well mistaken!” said Clay, growing very red in the face, and assuming the blustering tone he was too prone to use when talking to his brothers.
“Why don’t you knock me down?” mocked Aubrey. “Go on! What are you waiting for?”
“Oh, shut up!” said Charmian impatiently. “Of all the futile suggestions, Aubrey, that surely takes the cake!”
“I know, but you must admit it was a very lovely thought. Oh, look! Here’s Ray, looking exactly as though he’d been stuffed!”
Except for glancing scornfully at him, Raymond paid no attention to him. He took his place at the head of the table, and looked down the length of it at Clara. “Coffee, please. I take it Char’s told you all what Rame said?”
“It isn’t true, Ray!” Bart had been staring out of the window, but he wheeled round to fling these words at his elder brother. “It couldn’t be true! Not the Guv’nor!”
“Oh, isn’t Bart sweet?” Aubrey said, addressing the company generally. “Or don’t you like guilelessness above the age of consent? I think it’s rather touching.”
“If you don’t keep your damned mouth shut, I’ll knock hell out of you!” Bart threatened, clenching his fists.
“The wish is father to the thought, dearie. You wouldn’t believe the number of dirty Japanese tricks I’ve got up my sleeve.”
“You can both of you keep your mouths shut!” Raymond said. “What good do you imagine you’re doing, bickering like a couple of school kids? We’re in the bloodiest mess possible, let me tell you! By midday it’ll be all over the county that Father’s been murdered! We’re going to be dragged through the mud, all of us! We shall have reporters trying to photograph the scene of the crime, and our name splashed all over the cheaper press!”
“Will we by God!” said Conrad. “I’d like to see a reporter trying to poke his nose into Trevellin! He’d get something he wasn’t expecting!”
“You’ll make a fool of yourself if you come to blows with the Press,” observed Charmian dryly. “What happens next, Ray?”
“The body will be removed for a post-mortem examination. Rame will arrange that with the police.”
“No!” Clara arose in her wrath. “That’s too much! Ray, I don’t know what you’re thinkin’ about to allow such a thing! It’s not decent!”
“I’ve no power to stop it. You don’t suppose I want any of this to happen, do you? For God’s sake, don’t you start kicking up a fuss! I’ve had a bad enough time with Martha already.”
“O God!” Bart said, in a breaking voice, and plunged out of the room.
Conrad rose from his chair. “If it’s found to be true that Father was murdered, I’ll bet I know who did it!” he said savagely. “It ’ud be just about what she would do, the damned slut that she is!” He looked down at Aubrey. “As for you, you keep your tongue off Bart!”
Aubrey waited until he had slammed his way out of the room before remarking: “Yes, that was always one the possibilities. They say poison is a woman’s weapon don’t they?”
“I never liked that gal,” said Clara, shaking her head “but I don’t hold with tryin’ to put things on people like that.”
“I know nothing about Loveday Trewithian,” said Charmian. “What seems to me to be of more importance is the fact that Jimmy the Bastard was out all night, and isn’t yet back.”
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Clara.
“I’ll bet he did it!” Clay said.
“He’s disgusting enough to do anything,” said Vivian. “But why should he? I don’t see what he had to gain.”
“Robbery, or something like that.”
Raymond looked up quickly, his lips slightly parted, as though he were about to speak. Then he closed them again, and lowered his gaze. He had remembered suddenly that there had been no battered tin box in the cupboard above Penhallow’s bed. At least, he thought there had not been, but in his haste he might, he supposed, have overlooked it.
“It only remains for us to discover that the three hundred pounds I fetched Father from the Bank yesterday is missing,” said Aubrey. “An unexciting finish to the episode, but I confess I should welcome it.”
“You’re right!” Charmian said. “Now I come to think of it, Jimmy was in the room when Father spoke of it at dinner last night! Ray, was Father in the habit of drawing so much at a time?”
“No, not as much as that.”
“Well, then! Where ought the money to be?”
“In the cupboard over his head,” Vivian replied eagerly. “I had to get it out for him once, so I know. Of course Jimmy stole it! It’s as plain as a pikestaff! Don’t you think so, Ray?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, can’t someone go and look in the cupboard?”
“Not at the moment. The room has been locked up. There’s no hurry.”
“Oh, isn’t Ray just too wonderful?” said Aubrey, awed. “So unmoved-and-all! I can’t think how you preserve your exquisite calm, Ray, really I can’t! My nervous system is definitely shattered.”
“Then it’s just as well mine isn’t,” Raymond replied, getting up from the table, and moving towards the door. “One of you had better go down to the Dower House to tell Ingram what has happened. I must go into Liskeard, to have a word with Cliff.”
He opened the door as he spoke, just in time to admit Ingram himself, who came limping into the room, rather out of breath, and with a countenance expressive both of surprise and indignation.
“I suppose it didn’t occur to you that I might like to be informed of Father’s death!” he said hotly, glaring at Raymond. “I might have expected you to leave me to hear of it through a servant! A fair sample of what we may expect to have to put up with now that you’re mounted in the saddle!”
“I’ve had no time so far to think about you,” Raymond answered, his voice as cold as Ingram’s was heated. “If it comforts you at all, I’ve just this instant told the others to let you know.”
“Damned kind of you! How did it happen? When was it?”
"You can get the details from Char: I’ve got something more important to attend to,” Raymond responded briefly, and left the room, shutting the door behind him.
“Yes, it’s going to be jolly with him in the seat!” Ingram said, with a short laugh. “By Jove, though, the old man! I never was more surprised in my life, never! Thought he’d go on for years yet! Frightful shock to me!”
“Ah, and that’s not the worst of it!” Clara said. “They’re sayin’ your father was poisoned, Ingram!”
He stared at her. “Why, what did he eat? I always thought there was dam’ little the old man couldn’t digest!”
“When Clara said poisoned,” explained Aubrey, in the kindly tone of one instructing a child, “she meant murdered.”
“Good God!” Ingram gasped, sitting down plump in Raymond’s vacated chair.
Vivian left the room as Charmian began to tell Ingram about Dr Rame’s visit, and went upstairs to put Eugene in possession of the new facts. She was overtaken on the stairs by Clay, on his way to his mother’s room. He said to her with a sort of suppressed eagerness: “I shouldn’t think there could be a doubt it was Jimmy, should you? I mean, it’s obvious!”
“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 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!”