Jimmy had been arrested in Bristol, whither he had made his way, with the intention of working his passage out to America. Upon reading the news Penhallow’s death in one of the cheaper newspapers, panic had not unnaturally seized him. He had abandoned his plan of signing on as one of a ship’s crew, and had made up his mind to stow away instead.
The paths down which this information travelled to Trevellin were varied and circuitous, but the Penhallows had heard several versions of it by the time they were formally told it by Inspector Logan, who came up to Trevellin to report to the head of the family that most of the stolen money had been discovered upon Jimmy’s person.
There were present at this brief interview not only Raymond, but Faith, and Charmian, and Ingram as well. Having already heard the news, none of them betrayed any emotion when the Inspector made his announcement. Faith, the only member of the family to go into mourning, sat by the window, looking like a ghost in her unrelieved black dress. One of her thin hands grasped the arm of her chair, the other fidgeted incessantly the folds of her skirt; her over-large eyes fixed themselves with an expression in them of painful anxiety on the face of whichever of the four other persons in the room happened to be speaking. Charmian straddled as usual in front of the empty hearth, a cigarette between her lips. Ingram, whose stiff leg had been troubling him, sat with it stretched out before him. Raymond, to whom the Inspector addressed himself, stood in the middle of the room, one hand in the pocket of his breeches, the other resting on the back of a Hepplewhite chair. He merely nodded when the Inspector reported the finding of the three hundred pounds in Jimmy’s possession. It was Charmian who at once took command of the situation. Removing the cigarette from between her lips, and flicking the ash on to the carpet, she said: “Yes, we’ve already heard various accounts of Jimmy’s arrest. Very nice work, Inspector. What I should like to know is whether it’s true that he told the men who took him in custody that he had a most important statement to make?”
Raymond stood like a graven image, his countenance impassive. The ground beneath his feet was cracking; he could see the whole structure of his life beginning to totter; and knew himself powerless to prevent it crashing to earth, and leaving him stripped of everything he had worked and lived for amongst the ruins. He could scarcely have moved, for he felt as though animation had been suspended in his body. He was aware with some dispassionate portion of his brain that Ingram was watching him covertly, but he lacked the volition to move and hardly cared if he should betray himself.
The Inspector looked annoyed. He said repressively that he did not know how such tales got about, to which Charmian replied that if that were so he was strangely ignorant of the peculiarities of English town and country life.
“I have no information to give you on that subject miss,” said the Inspector, taking refuge in officialdom.
“Come, my good man, you needn’t be so damn, indiscreet!” said Ingram impatiently. “We’ve already had it from more than one source that Jimmy said when he was arrested that he could tell the police something that would change the whole complexion of the case, or words to that effect.”
“Indeed, sir? No doubt I shall have more information on what the young man has to say for himself when I have seen him. My object in coming here today was merely to apprise you of the missing notes having been found.” He glanced at Raymond. “The question of prosecution arises, sir. In the circumstances...”
“I shan’t proceed against him.”
The words, uttered in a heavy tone, at once roused a small storm of condemnation. The Inspector, finding that his measured explanation of the intricacies of the situation was rendered inaudible by Ingram’s and Charmian’s far more penetrating voices, relapsed into attentive silence, his keen gaze intent upon Raymond’s face.
“The hell you won’t!” Ingram exploded. “I suppose he’s to be allowed to get away with three hundred pounds with your blessing?”
“Plus the hundred Father left him in his will!” added Charmian. “If you’re thinking of the scandal, you needn’t. We’re chest-deep in scandal already. Of course, I don’t pretend that it will be pleasant to have Jimmy’s relationship to us blazoned all over the county, which I expect is what will happen, but-’
“Good lord, Char, everyone knows it!” exclaimed Ingram scornfully. “Who cares a damn for it, anyway? Father’s bastards fairly litter the place! It’s something new for you to be so nice all of a sudden, Ray! Why shouldn’t you prosecute the little beast? Developed a liking for him? Bit of a change, isn’t it? I was under the impression that you hated his guts!”
“Of course, we’re assuming that the creature isn’t facing a charge of murder,” said Charmian, her voice over-riding Ingram’s. “My view has always been that he had nothing to gain by murdering Father. As for what he said to the police who arrested him, I don’t know that I set much store by it. It sounds to me very much the sort of wild statement a badly frightened man might be expected to make. Naturally, it will have to be investigated—”
“Thank you, miss,” put in the Inspector, unable to control himself. “Is there any other suggestion you would like to make?”
Ingram interrupted, ignoring this piece of sarcasm.
“You may not set any store by what he said, Char, but there are some of us who’d give a good deal to know just what Jimmy the Bastard knows that we don’t!”
Faith found her voice. “Ingram! Please!”
“Yes, it’s all very well for you to object to a little plain speaking, Faith, but in your anxiety to shield everyone who might be suspected of having committed the crime, you’re rather losing sight of the fact that it’s Father who was murdered! I should have thought you’d be more anxious to bring the filthy swine who killed him to justice than to spend your time trying to hush it up! Damn it, he was your husband, little though you may have cared for him!”
“Shut up! Leave Faith alone!” said Charmian. “It’s in good expecting her to look at the thing in a rational light, you know perfectly well that she’s incapable of reasoned thought. I flatter myself I can look at the whole question dispassionately, and I’m bound to say that I’m not wholly out of sympathy with Faith. There is such a thing as loyalty, after all."
“Yes!” retorted Ingram. “And my loyalty was to Father, and it still is! I’m fed-up with all the hush-hush business going on in this house! I want Father’s murderer brought to book, and I don’t care who it is! An eye for an eye is my motto! When I think of the old man’s being done-in like that, my blood fairly boils!”
Raymond smiled contemptuously. “Why not say openly that you believe I murdered Father?”
“If the cap fits!” Ingram barked.
“Don’t answer him, Raymond!” Faith begged, crushing her handkerchief into a ball. “I know you didn’t — didn’t murder your father! Everyone who knows you realises that you wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing!”
“That would come better if we hadn’t already had ample proof that Ray was perfectly capable of murdering him!” Ingram said, with an ugly little laugh. “I’ve mentioned no names, but this I will say — I’d like to know just what it was that made you try to strangle the old man! And from all I’ve heard it seems to me that the one man who may be able to answer that question is Jimmy the Bastard!”
Faith rose from her chair, trembling so much that she was obliged to rest her hand on the back of it to steady herself. She was very white, but she managed to speak with a good deal of dignity, though in a husky, rather halting voice. “Ingram, you forget that I’m — that I’m still mistress here. I won’t have such things said. You’re jealous of Ray. You’ve always been jealous of him. Ever since it — since it happened, you’ve come here day after day making trouble, trying to put the blame on to Ray because you want to be Penhallow of Trevellin. But I won’t have it. Please go! You have no business here, and you — upset me very much.”
“Well, I’m damned!” said Charmian, in an astonished tone. “Talk about worms turning! Well played, Faith! You’re about right, too.”
Ingram, at first thunderstruck by this unexpected attack, recovered himself, and said: “Of course, if I’m not welcome in my own home...”
“You’re not,” Raymond interrupted. “You’ve had your marching orders! Get out!”
Ingram rose, very red in the face. “By God, Ray—”
“I’ll be getting along myself, sir,” interposed the Inspector tactfully.
Raymond turned towards him. “As you please. In view of the fact that Jimmy at least shares with me the distinction of being suspected of murdering my father, I should be glad to hear from you as soon as you have seen him. I take it that you will be seeing him immediately?”
“Yes, sir. I expect to see him today,” replied the Inspector.
Raymond nodded, and moved across to the door, and opened it. The Inspector stood aside for Ingram to precede him out of the room, and after a moments hesitation Ingram shrugged, and limped out. Raymond followed them both, and shut the door behind him.
Charmian stubbed out the end of her cigarette." I never knew you had it in you, Faith!” she remarked. “If you’ll allow me to say so, it’s a pity you didn’t assert yourself more long before this. There’s nothing to look scared about: Ingram is all bluster, and precious little bite. He won’t bear you any malice.”
“It doesn’t matter to me what he does,” Faith said clinging to the chair-back.
“No, I suppose not. I take it you don’t mean to stay here, once we get things settled?”
“Oh, no! I couldn’t! If only I could go now! I can’t bear any more. It’s driving me mad!”
“It’s a great mistake to allow things to get on one nerves,” said Charmian oracularly. “Personally, I try to look at the whole affair as dispassionately as possible.”
Faith’s face twisted. She said wildly: “Dispassionately! How can you talk like that? Haven’t you any feeling? Oh, no, no! You never had! You were always hard and cold! Oh, don’t talk to me! You wouldn’t understand! You’ve never understood anything!”
“If you mean, my dear Faith, that I lack your faculty of persuading yourself into a state of exaggerated emotion, you are quite right,” replied Charmian dryly.
Faith gave a sob, and made blindly for the door.
Meanwhile, Raymond, having seen his brother and the Inspector off the premises, had walked down the long corridor to his office at the end of it. There were several letters on his desk, and he sat down behind it, and rather mechanically read them, placing them when he had finished them in one of the trays in front of him. The matter in them was not of immediate importance. He reflected coldly that Ingram would no doubt deal with them at some later date. He opened one of the drawers in his desk, and began methodically to go through the contents, destroying one or two papers, slipping rubber-bands round some others, and writing neat slips describing their nature. In that moment when he had so clearly seen the framework of his life crumbling, he had quite suddenly realised what the end to all the mental torment he was undergoing must be. Before many hours had elapsed, the police would be in possession of the story of his birth, for he could not doubt that Jimmy had overheard his last quarrel with Penhallow. He did not suppose that the police would wantonly publish such a disclosure, but he perceived that it must appear to them as a sufficient motive for the murder of Penhallow, and that they would be obliged to follow it up strictly. Sooner or later the truth would become known, and he thought that since there would be nothing left then worth living for it would be better to die now, while he was still, in the world’s eyes, if not in his own, Penhallow of Trevellin. He was not in the least afraid of being convicted of murder, his father’s death seeming to him so secondary a matter that he scarcely wasted a thought upon it. But he knew that he could neither face the scandal that would attend upon the publication of his illegitimacy, nor endure to see Ingram stepping into his place. Ingram would triumph; some others might pity him, and the pity would be as hard to bear as the triumph. He was not imaginative, but he was able to visualise with terrible clarity all the humiliations that lay before him, if he should choose to live.
He went on sorting the contents of his desk. Well, hr thought, I’m not going to live. Whatever they say, I shan’t hear. They’ll think I murdered Father to stop his mouth. I don’t mind that. It may even work out for the best. The police will drop the case, and Ingram won’t let the truth leak out, once I’m safely out of his way. The police will probably tell him, but he’ll see to it that it doesn’t go any further. Or they might not even tell him. Jimmy would, though. Yes, Jimmy will try to get money out of him by threatening to broadcast the story. Well, that’s Ingram’s worry, not mine any longer. He’ll deal with Jimmy all right.
He opened the bottom right-hand drawer in the desk, and took out the small service revolver which lay in it, in its holster. The revolver had belonged to Ingram, and was a relic of the Great War. Ingram had left it at Trevellin, forgetting all about it. It was typical of Raymond that, although he had never had any use for it, he should have kept it in good order. There was a box of cartridges in the drawer. Raymond drew the revolver out of its holster, broke it, and slipped in one cartridge. After that, he laid it down on the blotting-pad, and rose to open the safe that stood against the wall behind him. Here everything was in order, but he went through the contents, not so much because he desired to make things easy for Ingram, but because he had always prided himself upon his businesslike methods. After a moment’s hesitation, he took his keys out of his pocket, and, detaching the key of the safe from the ring, placed the others in the safe, and shut the door, and locked it.
He glanced round the room, trying to remember if there were anything he had forgotten to do. The accounts were all made up to date, he knew. He wished he could think that Ingram would keep his ledgers in the apple-pie order in which he would find them, but he supposed that it didn’t really matter to him what Ingram did when he took command of the estate. He ran his eyes along the shelf that held his files. Rents; Farm; Hunting-Stables; Stud-Farm; Pedigrees — he hoped the Demon colt would fulfil his early promise; he thought he would take a last look at the colt in which so many of his hopes had been centred; sentimental nonsense, of course, but he hadn’t had time during the past three interminable days to visit the Upper Paddock, and he would like to see the colt again.
There were one or two matters that would require attending to in the course of the next few weeks: he must direct Ingram’s attention to them, and also to the estimates for inch-elm for the new loose-boxes. He sat down again at his desk, and drew a sheet of notepaper towards him, unscrewed the cap of his fountain-pen, and began unhurriedly to write a letter to Ingram.
It was a strange, businesslike communication, containing no reference to what he had made up his mind to do, no message of farewell, no directions for the disposal of his private property. Merely it informed Ingram where he would find various papers and documents; what business was necessary to be settled in the near future; and what was the safe combination. He enclosed the key of the safe in this letter, slipped the whole into an envelope, and sealed and addressed it. He left it on the blotter, and rose, picking up Ingram’s revolver, and putting it in his pocket. One of his pipes lay in a large bronze ashtray, some of the cold ash in it spilled from the bowl. He took the pipe in his hand, meaning to knock out the dottle, and to restore the pipe to the rack on the mantlepiece. Then it occurred to him that he would not smoke it again, and with a slight twisted smile , he dropped it into the wastepaper-basket.
He cast one final glance round the room, taking silent leave of it. It would probably never look so neat again, for Ingram was an untidy man, and kept his papers in a perpetual state of chaos. It was so disagreeable to him to picture Ingram in the room that he had to tell himself again that it wouldn’t matter to him what havoc Ingram created amongst his ordered files. All the same, he did hope that Ingram wouldn’t quite undo his careful work. It hurt him so much to think of Ingram perhaps letting Trevellin down that he turned away abruptly, and left the room.
As he traversed the corridor again on his way to one of the garden-doors, he saw Martha emerge from the stillroom at the other end of it. He thought that she looked at him with hostility. She did not speak, and as he went out into the garden he thought: Yes, it’s just as well that things have turned out as they have. Even if Jimmy had got away to America, I couldn’t have stood it. Funny that I didn’t see it before.
This reflection led him on to others. As he walked across the gardens towards the stables, he thought of all the hidden dangers that would have lurked on every side, waiting to pounce upon him, if he had decided to brave it out. He might at some time have had to produce his birth certificate, and heaven only knew what that might not have led to. Or somewhere in the world there might exist some chance traveller who had met Penhallow, with his wife and his sister-in-law on that fantastic honeymoon. He would never have known from one day to the next when some unforeseen and devilish kink of fate might not have betrayed him. Oh, no! It was better to clear out now, before the worry and the suspense had driven him crazy. He had known an impulse to beg Ingram, in his letter, to do what he could to keep his secret, but he had been unable to force his stiff pen to write the words. Probably it was unnecessary, anyway. Ingram might dislike him, but he was too proud of his name to want such a shameful story to be made known. People might believe him to have been a murderer: he cared very little for that; but if he died now it was just possible that they would never know that he had been just another of Penhallow’s bastards; and although, of course, that wouldn’t matter to him in his oblivion, he couldn’t help clinging to the hope that it would be as Raymond Penhallow that he would be remembered.
When he reached the stables, Weens came up to speak to him about several small matters requiring his consideration. Habit made him attend to Weens, but just as he was authorising the head-groom to proceed with certain trivial alterations in the stable routine, he remembered that it was absurd of him to give Weens orders which Ingram might overset, and he told the man that he would think it over, and let him know later.
While his favourite hack was being saddled for him, he walked over to the loose-box which housed one of his hunters, and fondled him, pulling his ears, and running his hand down his satin neck. The animal, knowing well what he always carried in his pockets, nudged him, blowing softly down his nostrils. Raymond gave him a handful of sugar, patted him finally, and turned away. He hoped Ingram wouldn’t sell his hunters: he had loved them as he had never loved a mere human.
An under-groom led out his hack. He took a last look at the stables of his designing. Well! Ingram would run them, at least, as well as he had done: no use allowing himself to sentimentalise over them. He mounted the hack, nodded to Weens, and rode out of the yard, up the track that led to the stud-farm.
When he came to the Upper Paddock, he reined in, and sat watching the Demon colt. Yes, he had been right in thinking that he had bred a hit. It was hard to fault the colt. He had the long, muscular fore-arm that meant a strong action, a grand shoulder-blade, high, thin withers, and well-bent hocks. He was going to be a winner all right. A pity he wouldn’t be here to break the colt himself. If Ingram were wise, he would put him in Bart’s hands. He hoped he wouldn’t let Con meddle; Con was no good at training horses: too impatient to be allowed to handle a nervous, high-couraged colt such as this one. Oh, well! No use worrying his head over the colt’s breaking: probably Ingram would manage all right.
He turned a little in the saddle, and looked back at Trevellin. He had come uphill, and beyond the new roofs of the stables, and the screen of trees, he could just see the old grey house, sprawling in the middle of its haphazard gardens, its graceful gables and tall chimney-stacks lifting towards the cloudless sky. A wreath of smoke from the kitchen chimney curled upwards in the still air; and a glimpse of intense blue, caught through the foliage of the intervening trees, showed where the great bank of hydrangeas shut off the west wing from his sight. He let his eyes travel over all that he could see of his home, in a long, steady look; and then turned, and rode on, and did not again glance back.
He rode towards the Moor, as he had done a few days earlier. It seemed a very long time ago. He really didn’t know why he had chosen to come again, or why he had a fancy to look at the Pool once more. He would probably find it infested with trippers, for the summer was advancing; and its old associations for him had been spoilt by the bitter hour he had spent beside it four days before. But he had always loved the Moor, and in particular that corner of it, and he thought that if he must blow his brains out somewhere he would like it to be there.
He was so fully prepared to find trippers picnicking on the banks of the Pool that he was surprised to find it deserted when he came to it. The waters were unruffled, and somewhere, high in the hazy blue, a lark was singing. He lifted his head to meet the slight breeze blowing from the east, and sat for a moment, looking towards the horizon. The sky-line was broken by great outcroppings of granite; not far away, a gorse-bush blazed golden in the sunlight; the breeze which so lightly fanned his cheeks was laden with the smell of peat, and of thyme: nostalgic scents, which brought to his mind the memories of happier times spent on the Moor. Well, I’ve had close on forty pretty good years, he thought, dismounting, and pulling up his stirrups. Lots of fellows of my age were killed in the War. I was luckier than that. Good job I’m not married, too. Don’t know what I should have done if I had been. Hell, I wish it wasn’t Ingram!
He pulled himself up on that thought, and began to unbuckle the cheek-strap of the bridle. “Think I’ll unbridle you, old chap,” he said, giving the horse a pat. “Don’t want you to go breaking a foreleg.”
The horse stood still, sweating a little, for it was very warm. Raymond drew the bridle over his head bestowed a last, friendly pat on him, and started him off with a clap on one haunch. He watched him for a moment or two; then he thought there was no point in hanging about, and took the revolver out of his pocket.