Penhallow

by Джорджетт Хейер

  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!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  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 t
ake 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!”