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."
“That,” said Charmian, preparing to hold the stage, “is rank bad psychology. Faith’s behaviour is perfectly consistent with her whole mental make-up, and outlook on life. I know the type well. I haven’t the smallest doubt that she is quite sincere in her present grief, just as I am sure that she was equally sincere when she thought herself unhappy with Father. Her nature is shallow; she is easily swayed, and extremely impressionable. She is the sort of woman who, having complained of her wrongs for God knows how many years, will now spend the rest of her life telling herself that she was always a perfect wife to Father. Just at the moment, she’s had a severe shock, which has jolted her out of her normal rut. I daresay she’s suffering from a good deal of remorse, wishing she’d made more allowances for Father, and that sort of thing, and remembering the days when she was in love with him. It won’t last, but it’s all perfectly sincere while it does.”
“You may be right, my dear Char,” said Eugene languidly, “but in justice to Vivian I must observe that Faith has given us all the impression, for longer than I care to reckon up, that she would regard Father’s death as an unmixed blessing.”
“My good Eugene, can’t you realise that there are a great many people in the world, of whom Faith is one, who talk vaguely about what they want to happen, and not only are horrified when it does happen, but find as well that they didn’t really want it at all?” said Charmian scornfully. “It is typical of Faith that she must always have a grievance. She’s the kind of woman who enjoys a grievance! She’d rather keep it than lift a finger to set it right, as often and often she might have done, merely by exerting herself a little. What is more, she dramatises herself incessantly. Oh, quite unconsciously! It has been my experience that many ineffectual and supine people do. It’s their only form of mental exertion –if you can call it mental! At the moment, she is seeing herself as the sorrowing widow. Really seeing herself! You can call it hypocrisy if you like: I don’t, because I understand her perfectly, and I know that she believes so thoroughly in her own poses that they cease to be poses, and become an integral part of her character.”
“Thank you very much,” said Eugene, in an extinguished voice. “I’m sure we’re all most grateful to you for your masterly exposition of Faith’s character. And now may we talk about something interesting?”
“As a matter of fact,” interposed Ingram, before Charmian could wither Eugene, “I came up to have word with you, Char. Something I want to talk to about.”
“I’m at your disposal,” replied Charmian briskly “Come into the library!”
“Oh, Char darling, don’t say you’re going to talk secrets with Ingram!” begged Aubrey, looking up from the embroidery which he had brought down from his room, and was working on under the light thrown by one of the lamps. “I was just going to ask your advice about this spray I’m about to start on. Do you think a blending of russet-tones would be rather lovely?”
No one supposed for a moment that Aubrey felt the faintest interest in Charmian’s opinion of his work; but although Eugene refused to be drawn, Ingram rendered the gambit an outstanding success by turning to glare at Aubrey with a mixture of loathing and astonishment in his face. He had not previously noticed his deplorable young brother’s occupation, for which reason Aubrey, who had hoped to infuriate the twins, and was feeling defrauded by their tiresome absence, took care to call his attention to it. He at once delivered himself of a scathing denunciation of Aubrey’s character and habits, employing so many well-worn phrases, and looking so extremely like the military man of any farce, that even Eugene’s lips twitched, and he said: “An officer and a gentleman, sir!” while Aubrey himself was so entranced that he forgot to add fuel to this promising blaze, and only recovered his presence of mind when Charmian began to drag Ingram out of the room.
“Don’t be such a fool, Ingram!” Charmian said impatiently. “Can’t you see he’s trying to get a rise out of you?”
“Puppy!” said Ingram.
“Char, my precious, don’t, don’t take him away! Not before he’s said he’d have liked to have had me under him in the regiment! Oh, I do think you’re mean, I do, really!”
Charmian, however, was unmoved by this plea, and marched Ingram off to the library. As she lit the central lamp in this rather dismal apartment, she said severely: “You simply make him more outrageous by taking any notice of him. He does it to annoy you.”
“He’s a namby-pamby, effeminate — well, I won’t say!”
“Good lord, I know all about Aubrey! As a matter of fact, he isn’t such a wet as you might think. I never saw anyone ride straighter to hounds.”
“That makes it worse!” said Ingram, not very intelligibly, but with immense conviction. “But I didn’t come here to talk about that young so-and-so! Now, look here, Char, you’ve got a head on your shoulders! What’s your frank opinion about Father’s death?”
“I don’t know. What’s yours?”
“Well, I’ve been having a long pow-wow with Myra about it, and we both of us feel the same. Of course, it isn’t for me to say anything — damned awkward position, and all that! — but taking one thing with another, and looking at it all round — perfectly dispassionately, mind you! — everything points in the same direction.”
“You mean you think Ray did it.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I’ve told you: I don’t know. I shouldn’t have thought he was the sort to poison anyone, but as I said this morning, he takes his own line. I’ve never got to the bottom of Ray, and I don’t suppose I ever shall.”
“Never did hit it off with the old man, you know. It struck me lately that things were worse between them than usual. And then there’s this extraordinary busing, about his trying to strangle Father! Upon my word Char, I could hardly believe it! I don’t hold any brief for Ray, but I honestly didn’t think he was as bad as that. Seems to me a perfectly astonishing affair.”
“Yes,” Charmian agreed thoughtfully. “I wonder what Father did to make him lose his temper to that extent?”
“Oh, some row about money! They’ve had any number.”
“I know that. But they never ended in that kind of a scene before. I can’t help feeling that there’s something very odd behind it.”
“Connected with Uncle Phin?”
“That I can’t make up my mind about.”
“Frightful thing if it was Ray,” Ingram remarked, in rather an unconvincing tone.
Charmian disliked blatant insincerity, and said at once: “It would suit your book all right, wouldn’t it?”
“Now, look here, Char!” expostulated Ingram, reddening. “That’s a poisonous thing to say! I don’t pretend that I’ve ever got on with Ray, but I call it a bit thick to insinuate…”
“I wasn’t insinuating. You can’t stand Ray at any price, and he can’t stand you. You probably think you’d make a better head of the family than he will, and you know darned well that life won’t be nearly so easy for you now he’s holding the purse-strings.”
Ingram looked disconcerted by this forthright speech, and muttered: “Never thought of such things! All the same, I shouldn’t want to get rid of the rest of the family if I were the heir!”
“Well, my opinion is that it may be the saving of the family to be obliged to fend for themselves.”
As Ingram chose to take this as a reflection upon himself, the interview came to an abrupt end. Charmian went away to write her nightly letter to Leila Morpeth; and Ingram returned to the Yellow drawing-room to propound his views to Eugene.
Eugene, who was more worried than he cared to admit, would have subscribed to any theory which exonerated Vivian; and although he privately considered it unlikely that Raymond would have descended to such a weapon as poison, he did not like Raymond, knew very well that he would receive little, if any, pecuniary assistance from him in the future, and so experienced no difficulty in suppressing his inner scepticism, and discovering a number of good reasons for believing him to be guilty. Clara was distressed, and made several attempts to put an end to the discussion, maintaining stoutly her conviction that it was Jimmy who had killed Penhallow; but Vivian, who for all her brazen attitude was haunted by dread, supported Ingram, rather in the manner of one catching at a straw. Clay, who had come back into the room, also added his mite, with more eagerness than was seemly; but he was speedily reduced to silence by Aubrey, who looked up from his needlework to say kindly: “Dear little fellow, we all feel sure you believe Ray did it, but you must learn to be seen and not heard. Besides, it’s very dangerous to draw attention to yourself. What with one thing and another — well, you see my point, don’t you?”
This had the effect, first of shutting Clay up, and then of making him leave the room to seek reassurance of his mother.
Faith, coaxed by Loveday to eat some dinner, feeling better, and had begun to argue herself into the belief that the police would never discover the authors of the crime; but a very little of her son’s companionship sufficed to throw her back into a condition of extreme terror. Clay’s account of the discussion at present in progress downstairs made her eyes dilate. She sail faintly: “No, no! Of course it wasn’t Ray! How can they say such a thing?”
“Well, but Mother, you must admit it does look fishy. I mean, we know he went for Father yesterday morning_
he didn’t deny it. And, on top of that, we know he had rows with Father about his spending so much. Then, too, he’s the heir. What’s more, he’s behaving damned queerly, you know. Of course, I know he’s always a surly sort of a chap, but honestly, Mother, ever since Father was killed-’
“Stop!” Faith exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in bed. “You mustn’t say such things, Clay! I — I forbid you! It’s wicked! I know Ray didn’t do it!”
“It’s all very well to say that, but you can’t know it,” objected Clay. “It’s obvious the police have got their eyes on him. He’s the one who stands to gain the most. And what about all that business with Uncle Phin? It stood out a mile that there was something up between the pair of them. Why was Ray so anxious to squash the idea that Uncle Phin could have had anything to do with it? For he was: no getting away from that! What did Uncle Phin come up here for today? I’ll bet it wasn’t just to inquire after you! No: he and Ray have got some kind of an understanding.”
She broke in on this to say in a desperate tone: “What can Phineas Ottery possibly have had to gain through your father’s death? They scarcely ever met! It’s the most absurd, the most far-fetched-’
“Well, what did he want with Father yesterday, Mother? And why did Ray say he hadn’t seen him, when he had?”
“I don’t know — I can’t imagine! There’s probably some perfectly simple explanation!”
“Of course, I quite see that it’ll be a shocking affair, if it does turn out to be Ray, but, after all, Mother, it’ll be just as bad if it was Aubrey, or Bart.”
“Aubrey or Bart!”
“Well, Con thinks it was Loveday, but I can’t see why it mightn’t just as well have been Bart. Apparently, Father had put a complete spoke in his wheel, and you have to bear in mind that in all probability he was afraid Father meant to cut him out of his will. Or it might have been Bart and Loveday between them. In fact—”
“Clay, I tell you I can’t bear this! How dare you talk like that? I won’t permit it! What would you feel if they spoke about you in this dreadful way?”
He gave an uneasy laugh. “As a matter of fact, Aubrey as good as told me he believed I’d done it. I know very well they all think I might have. Of course, it merely amuses me, because it’s so utterly absurd, but all the same-’
She turned so white that he was startled. “Aubrey — no, no, they wouldn’t pay any attention to him! He always says spiteful things. The police don’t think you had anything to do with it!”
“Oh, lord, no! Well, I mean to say, why should they? said Clay, with an assumption of carelessness.
The prospect he had conjured up, however, was terrible enough to keep his mother awake long into the night; and when, during the following day, it became apparent that the police were pursuing their investigations very strictly, and were fast bringing to light even circumstance which the family would have wished to bury in decent oblivion, she began to look so hag-ridden, that Charmian observed dispassionately that she would probably end up in a Home for Nervous Breakdown Cases.
It was amazing how easily the police seemed to be able to ferret out information. A chance word led them to question first this member of the household, and then that one discovered, to one’s dismay, how little had ever taken place in the family of which the servants had not had the fullest cognizance. The between-maid had heard Clay say that he would go mad if his father forced him to work in his cousin’s office; all the housemaids remembered perfectly being sent to find Mr Bart, and send him to his father’s room, and recounted with zest the rage Penhallow had been in at the time; Martha disclosed that Penhallow had, previously to that occasion, summoned Loveday Trewithian to his presence, and had also questioned her on the relationship between. Loveday and Bart. Martha, who had no love for Faith, told too of the occasion when Penhallow had rung for her to remove his weeping wife from his sight. Encouraged by Inspector Logan, she dilated upon this theme, with the result that the Inspector formed the opinion that her stories, were greatly exaggerated. As he had by that time reached an understanding of the peculiar position she had held in the house ever since the first Mrs Penhallow’s death, he had no difficulty in concluding that she was actuated largely by jealousy of haith. That Penhallow had often reduced his meek, laded wife to tears he did not doubt: he had already had evidence of the astonishing ease with which Faith shed tears. He did not exclude her from his list of possibles, but he did not consider it likely that, having borne patiently with Penhallow for twenty years, she should suddenly have taken it into her head to murder him. That she might have done it on her son’s behalf did not appear to him to be a tenable theory. The fate Penhallow had had in store for Clay did not strike Inspector Logan as being at all terrible. He could appreciate that a young gentleman might object strenuously to being removed from college (where he had obviously been wasting his time), but he set very little store by the various accounts he heard of his hysterical pronouncements. Young gentlemen of Clay’s type were much given, in the Inspector’s experience, to talking a lot of wild nonsense, and behaving as though the end of the world had come when they had to do things they didn’t fancy doing. To be articled to his own cousin, well known to be a very nice and sporting gentleman, and to be kept at home, with nothing to pay for his board, and every agreeable luxury of horses and cars and such-like at his disposal, could hardly be expected to impress the Inspector as being anything but a very pleasant life; and even if he had been able to believe that Clay, who seemed to him a silly, spoilt sort of a young man, might not have liked the career planned for him, it would have been quite incomprehensible to him that his mother should not have perceived the advantages of having him so well provided for, and, moreover, kept at home under her fond eye.
Inspector Logan had heard a great deal about Penhallow’s tyranny, but from never having encountered him, nor experienced life at Trevellin under his rule he did not arrive at any real understanding of the circumstances which had driven Faith and Vivian to distraction. From all he was told, he formed a picture of a jovial old ruffian, of autocratic temperament, casual morals, quick rages, and apparently boundless generosity. The very fact that so many of his children lived under the parental roof seemed to him to show that Penhallow could not have oppressed them very badly. It even appeared that he condoned the wild exploits of their riotous youth, and had always been ready to rescue them from the consequences of their lawlessness. His despotism seemed, in fact, to have been a benevolent one; and although the Inspector could readily imagine that his rages and his excesses might make him at times an awkward man to deal with, he could not perceive that there had been anything in his behaviour to drive even two such highly-strung women as Faith and Vivian to poison him.
His suspicions, then, pending the apprehension of Jimmy the Bastard, began to centre upon Raymond, and upon Loveday Trewithian, who, alone amongst the suspects, seemed to him to have had adequate motives for committing murder. The possibility that Bart might have had some hand in the affair he kept at the back of his mind, but did not consider very probable. He thought Bart’s grief at his father’s death was real enough, and hardly believed him to be the type of man who would murder anyone in cold blood, and by such means as poison. Loveday, on the other hand, had she decided to get rid of the only barrier to her marriage, might naturally have been expected to choose poison as her weapon, particularly since poison was ready to her hand. On the face of it, she seemed to be the most likely suspect, and might have absorbed all the Inspector’s attention had not Phineas Ottery paid a call on Penhallow on the day of his death, and had not Raymond denied having seen him upon that occasion.
It did not take the Inspector long to discover what had been the main cause of the quarrels which he knew had constantly cropped up between Raymond and his father. To one who was heir to the estate, Penhallow’s crazy extravagance must have been more than galling. Had Raymond not committed a violent assault upon his father on the very morning of the date of his death, the Inspector would have considered him the most obvious man to suspect of having poisoned Penhallow. But the two circumstances did not, in his experience, dovetail together. To start with, he thought, men who blatantly attempted to choke their victims did not resort to poison; to go on with, to poison a man having been prevented, earlier in the day from strangling him, would have been the act of a lunatic, and Raymond, so far from being a lunatic, bore all the appearance of being a level-headed man long past the age of youthful folly. It might be that the explanation given him of Phineas Ottery’s visit, and of Raymond’s denial of having seen him, was the true one. But every time the Inspector reached this point in his cogitations, his intuition stirred uneasily, and he could not rid himself of the feeling that there was something behind that episode which he had not so far discovered.
“I’m not one to talk a lot of hot air about my instinct,” he told Sergeant Plymstock, “but the further I go into this case, the more certain I am that there’s something being hidden from me that I can’t get hold of. What’s more, I’ve got a hunch it’s got something to do with Mr Ottery’s visit.”
“Well, I don’t know, sir,” said the Sergeant dubiously. “It don’t seem likely Mr Ottery could have had anything to do with the case, not on the evidence.”
“What I’m telling you is that I haven’t got all the evidence. I wish I knew what it was that set Raymond Penhallow on to his father’s throat!”
“They all seem to think it was the old trouble about the money Mr Penhallow got away with, don’t they, sir? That’s what he said himself.”
“Oh, yes! He wouldn’t cash his father’s cheque, and all the rest of it! It might be true; I don’t say it wasn’t, but I do say I’m not satisfied.”
His conviction that a possibly vital clue was eluding him led him to interrogate still more closely the various members of the household, amongst them being Faith, who was, by that time, so obsessed by the fear that Clay, or Loveday, or one of her stepsons, or even Vivian, might be arrested for her crime, that she almost lost sight of her own danger, and consequently answered Logan’s questions in a manner far more calculated to allay any suspicions of her which he might have nourished than the most studied defence could have done. She perceived that the two persons whose activities most interested the Inspector were Raymond and Loveday, and she did her best to paint their characters in such colours as must convince him that neither would have so much as contemplated murdering Penhallow. She had never liked any of her stepchildren very much, but of them all Raymond and Bart had been the least inimical to her, Bart’s good nature having precluded his treating her with anything but careless kindness; and Raymond having generally refrained from criticising or condemning either her actions or her opinions. His attitude was largely one of indifference, but whereas the rest of the family more often than not behaved as though she did not exist, he had always accorded her a curt civility, and had more than once sternly checked attempts on the parts of Eugene, Conrad, and Aubrey to exercise their wits at her expense. Nor did he bully Clay; and while his habit of almost entirely ignoring his half-brother scarcely indicated any liking for him, Faith was grateful to him for not reducing Clay to that state of stammering nervousness which was usually the result of any intercourse with the rest of the family.
As soon as she realised that she had unwittingly placed Raymond in a position of considerable danger, Faith began insensibly to exaggerate these somewhat negative qualities, and to see in him the only one of her stepsons who had ever been kind to her, or had sympathised (tacitly, of course) with her misfortunes. She saw that he was looking more than ordinarily grim, and her conscience reproached her painfully. She had never meant to place him — nor indeed anyone else — in so dreadful a situation; she had thought that in hastening Penhallows end she would be bringing peace to his whole family. Instead of this, and by what she could not but believe to have been the mischance of Doctor Lifton’s indisposition, the consequences of her action were as appalling as they had been unforeseen. When she saw the frown in Raymond’s eyes, and knew that he was being harried by the Inspector; when she became aware of Ingram’s barely disguised hope; when she realised that Clara and Bart had loved Penhallow, and bitterly mourned him; and most of all when she saw the growing suspicion of one another in the faces of her stepsons, she regretted her mad deed as she had never thought it possible that she could. If she could have called Penhallow back to life, she would have done it. He had epitomised for her all that she most hated at Trevellin, but without him chaos, uneasy tension, and dissensions far more serious than the cheerful quarrels which had flared up under his auspices made the house gloomy as it had never been in his lifetime. She had loathed the noisy gatherings in his bedroom, but the silence that now reigned in the room seemed to her more unendurable than the noisiest gathering had been, and she could almost have wished to hear his loud, bullying voice accost her from the great bed.
She clung desperately to the hope that the police would not succeed in finding Jimmy the Bastard, that they would be forced through lack of evidence to abandon the case; for it seemed to her that if only the menace of their presence could be removed from Trevellin, some part at least of the horror now lurking in every corner of the old house would vanish. But on the third day the police found Jimmy the Bastard.