Penhallow

by Джорджетт Хейер

  He raised his eyes from his notebook. “She is engaged to be married to Mr Bartholomew Penhallow, I believe, madam?”

  She gave a gasp, and clutched the arms of her chair “No! There’s no engagement! Who told you? Who can possibly have said anything about that to you?”

  The Inspector did not feel it to be incumbent upon him to enlighten this nervous, and rather simple creature on the extent of the knowledge of the family’s more private affairs which was enjoyed by Loveday’s fellow servants. He merely said: “That is the information I have madam.”

  She thought that Bart must have avowed his intention to marry Loveday. “It’s nothing but a passing fancy. I know my stepson did — did fall in love with her, but of course marriage is out of the question, and I’m quite sure Loveday knows it, because she’s a thoroughly nice girl, whatever you may have been told to the contrary!”

  “Did Mr Penhallow know of his son’s intention to marry this girl?”

  “Yes. That is... ”

  “Was he willing for the marriage to take place?”

  “No. No, of course not! But I’m sure he didn’t take it seriously, because he didn’t wish me to dismiss Loveday, or anything like that.”

  “Is it a fact that Mr Bartholomew Penhallow expected his father to set him up at Trellick Farm?”

  “Yes. But my—my husband hadn’t said anything definite about it. It was always understood, but...”

  “Was there any quarrel between Mr Penhallow and his son on this subject?”

  “I don’t know. That is — You see, Inspector, my husband and his sons were always quarrelling, so it didn’t mean anything, and in any case Bart — Mr Bartholomew Penhallow — was very fond of his father, and I know he wouldn’t have even thought of — of doing anything to him!”

  He pursued the matter no further with her, but by the time that he left Trevellin, at the end of the morning, he had acquired enough startling and contradictory information to make him inform the Chief Constable that the case was not going to be an easy one to solve. He saw no reason for bringing Scotland Yard into it, but admitted that he had not been prepared to find quite so many people at Trevellin with motives for murdering its master.

  “Well, I was never personally acquainted with Penhallow,” said Major Warbstow, “but, speaking as a plain individual, the only wonder is that someone didn’t murder him years ago, from all I’ve ever heard about him. The doctor’s report isn’t in yet, but I don’t suppose there’s much doubt he was murdered?”

  “None at all, I should say, sir,” responded Logan. “I’ve brought away a bottle of veronal which ought to have been full, and which I found empty.”

  “Good lord! Where did you find it?”

  “In Mrs Penhallow’s room, sir, on a shelf in full view of anyone who happened to come in.”

  “Mrs Penhallow!”

  “Yes, but I don’t make a lot of that, sir. She seems to have been taking the stuff for years, and though she does seem a silly creature, I shouldn’t think she’d be silly enough to leave the bottle about, if she’d used the stuff to poison her husband with.”

  “The use of poison often points to a woman, Logan.”

  “Yes, sir. I didn’t mean that I was ruling her out. But she isn’t the only woman to be mixed up in this case. And really I should doubt whether she’d have had the nerve to poison anyone from the way she carries on! Of course she’s upset by the whole thing, as is natural she should be. But let alone her getting a bit hysterical at my finding the bottle empty, she goes up in the air as soon as ever I ask any questions about anyone else in the house, and keeps on telling me that she knows none of them could possibly have done it, till I could pretty well have brained her. Its plain the rest of them don’t think much of her. What’s more, it’s plain they don’t any of them think she had anything to do with the crime. And that’s significant, sir, because they don’t give me the impression they like her."

  The Major nodded. “All right: go on. What about the boy who has absconded?”

  “Well, we haven’t managed to catch up with him yet sir, but there doesn’t seem to bee much doubt that he made off with three hundred pounds in cash, which h, took from Mr Penhallow’s bed.”

  “From his bed!”

  “Yes, sir. Oh, I don’t mean he kept it under his pillows, but pretty near as bad! I’ve never seen such a bed in my life. It has got a whole lot of cupboards and drawers in the head of it. But there doesn’t seem to have been any need for this Jimmy to have murdered Penhallow. He was his father, too.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, yes, sir!” said Logan matter-of-factly. “The rest of them call him Jimmy the Bastard, making no bones about it!”

  “Good God! What a set!”

  “I believe you, sir. I’ve only spent one morning in the place, but I give you my word nothing would surprise me what I found out about them. I mean, there’s no end to it. But though there’s a good few of them would like to bring the murder home to this Jimmy there’s two of them with enough common sense to see that he could have got away with the money without adding to the risks he was taking by killing the old man. That’s Miss Penhallow, and Mr Raymond Penhallow. She’s one of these masterful women who make you want to run a mile to get away from them; he’s a surly sort of chap: doesn’t say much.”

  “I know Ray Penhallow slightly. Always thought him the best of the bunch.”

  “Yes, sir? Well, he had a shot at strangling the old man yesterday morning,” said the Inspector calmly.

  The Major stared at him. “You don’t say so! Good heavens!”

  “Yes, sir. No deception about it: all clean and above board, just as though a little thing like that was nothing out of the way. Which I daresay it wasn’t. Interrogated, he said he had lost his temper with his father on account of the old man’s interference in the business of the estate. Jimmy and the butler — chap called Lanner — pulled him off his father’s throat. Lanner’s been with the family since he was a lad, and his father before him, and the way I see it is that he’s torn between his loyalty to the Penhallows as a whole, and his affection for the old man, which I should say was pretty considerable. He wasn’t keen to talk, but I did get out of him that he’d never known Mr Raymond to do a thing like that before.”

  The Major pursed his lips. “They’re a wild lot. At the same time, I shouldn’t expect a man who’d tried to strangle his father in the morning, and been prevented from doing it, to poison him in the evening.”

  “No, sir. But I’m bound to say that he does look, on the face of it, to be the one with the biggest motive. A couple of his brothers gave me some interesting sidelights on the way things have been at Trevellin, and it does seem as though Mr Raymond, being the heir, might have had very good cause to want his father dead. I got it out of the second brother -’ He consulted his notes — “Big chap with a stiff leg — Ingram! — Well, he told me that the old man had taken to throwing his money about in a way likely to ruin the estate, and that he and Raymond were always at loggerheads about it. Said he never had got on with his father. However, I got the impression that there wasn’t much love lost between himself and Raymond. Then there’s the third brother — chap with a foreign name. I can’t make out what he’s doing in the house at all, for he’s got a wife, and you’d think anyone would be glad to get away from such a place. I must say, I didn’t take to him. Smooth-tongued fellow, with a nasty little way of making insinuations about the rest of the gang…family! But, then, his wife’s mixed up in it, so I daresay he has his reasons. Anyway, he’d like the murderer to turn out to be Jimmy. Failing Jimmy, he favours Raymond, with Loveday Trewithian as a close second. Also ran, Aubrey, and Clay. That’s the second Mrs Penhallow’s boy and not such an unlikely candidate either, if you were to ask me, sir.”

  “What about the third son’s wife?” interrupted the Major. “Why should she have done it?”

  “To get away from the place. Stormy little thing: one of the kind who tells you she’s going to be perf
ectly frank with you, and then shoots off a lot of damaging; information about herself, as though she dared you to think she’d have done so if she’d had anything to do with the murder. Said she hated her father-in-law, and didn’t care who heard her say so.”

  “Yes, but surely that isn’t a reason for murdering him!” protested Warbstow. “She needn’t have stayed at Trevellin if she hated him so much!”

  “That’s just it, sir. If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t properly understand the lay-out. It took me a bit to grasp the hold old Penhallow must have had over the lot of them. Couldn’t call their souls their own, from what I can make out. I never set eyes on him myself, but you can take it from me that he wasn’t an ordinary sort of a man at all. Seems he had a passion for keeping the family hanging round his bedside. The description Mrs — What was that name? Oh, I’ve got it! — Mrs Eugene gave me of what used to go on fairly made my hair stand on end. I mean, if you’d only seen that room of old Penhallow’s, sir. Mrs Eugene said they used to have to sit in it, every blessed night, watching the old man drink himself boisterous, while the rest of the family quarrelled, and shouted each other down. Enough to get on anyone’s nerves, if you ask me!”

  “All the same,” began Warbstow dubiously, “I don’t think I’d expect anyone to murder Penhallow for a reason like that.”

  “No, sir. I’m only giving you the possibilities. Then we have this Loveday Trewithian. I don’t more than half like the look of her. She’s going to marry Mr Bartholomew — the one they all call Bart. Tough young devil with a temper. She’s maid to Mrs Penhallow, and it was she got the prescription for the veronal made up the day before the murder. Not that I want to make a lot of that, because anyone could have got at that veronal at any time. She’s like a good many of the people about here: sooner tell a lie than not. She denied that there was any fixed understanding between herself and Mr Bart , said old Mr Penhallow had never said a word to her about it. She was frightened all right. But Mr Bart blurted out the whole thing. Said he was going to marry the girl; that his father had found it out, and they’d had a row about it, which ended though in his agreeing to do nothing about it for a bit. Told me his father said I could please himself once he was dead, and that he hadn’t wanted to upset the old man, if he really was going to die.”

  “Frank!” ejaculated the Major. “I think I’ve seen the young fellow once or twice: generally rather well liked about here.”

  “Well, I rather liked him myself,” admitted Logan, caressing his chin. “Compared with the rest of them, that is. I’d say he isn’t the sort to use poison. Violent young chap: half-killed his twin brother when I was questioning him this morning. It took Plymstock and me quite a time to drag ’em apart. That was because his brother, as soon as he saw I was taking notice of this Loveday Trewithian business, said he hadn’t a doubt she’d poisoned the old man. Seems Mr Bart told him how the old man had said he’d get Trellick Farm when he died, whatever he did. As I see it, sir, he’s mad with jealousy — you do get that sort of thing in twins, I believe —— and nothing would please him more than to get Loveday Trewithian removed out of his brother’s path. Hates her like the devil. Told me the old man knew very well the thing would die a natural death, given time enough, and that the girl knew it too, which was why she didn’t dare risk waiting for Penhallow to die in his own good time. I daresay he’d have told me a lot more, but that was where Mr Bart walked into the room. Before I properly knew what was happening, there was one chair broken, and a table with a lot of knickknacks on it sent flying, and this Conrad Penhallow flat on his back, with his brother on top of him, trying to choke the life out of him. However, they’re much of a size, and Mr Bart didn’t have it all his own way by any means. It took us quite a time to get them separated.”

  “You take it very calmly!” exclaimed the Major.

  The Inspector’s rather grave face relaxed into a smile. “Well, sir, that’s the way everyone else took it. The noise they made brought the old lady — Mr Penhallow’s sister, that is — into the room, with Mr Ingram and his good lady, and all the old lady had to say about it was, "Now, boys!" while Mr Ingram just told them to shut up. Seemed to me there wasn’t anything what you might call out of the way about that little scrap, Mr Bart being given to using his hands a bit quicker than most people.”

  “Good lord! Do you mean to say he’s in the habit of attacking people in that homicidal fashion?”

  “Well, he threw Jimmy the Bastard down the backstairs not so long ago,” replied Logan. “No one seemed to think much of it, and I’m bound to say that kind of high-spirited behaviour doesn’t go with poisoning: not to my mind it doesn’t.”

  “I never heard of such a thing in my life! He sounds to be a most dangerous young ruffian! What about the other two you mentioned? Are they cut after the same pattern?”

  “No, sir, not by a long chalk. Between you and me, I don’t know when I’ve seen a nastier bit of work than Aubrey Penhallow. He’s one of these writing-blokes, who wears his hair long, and goes about in fancy clothes, and smells of scent.”

  “God bless my soul!” said the Major, properly disgusted.

  “Yes, sir. He thinks he’s got to be funny, too, and I’m not fond of humorists. Not his kind. Regular smart alec. By what I could see of it, he spends his time annoying the rest of them.”

  “In face of what you’ve just told me, I wonder he dares!”

  “Yes, so did I, but he very kindly explained to me when a couple of his brothers looked like getting rough with him that they’d like to kick him into the middle of next week, but didn’t dare to, on account of his knowing Jujitsu."

  “A pleasant lot, upon my word!”

  “Well, they’re not the kind of people you meet ever day of the week, sir, and that’s a fact. But this Aubrey! Well, he doesn’t care who gets pinched for the murder as long as he doesn’t.”

  “Is he implicated in any way?”

  “That’s what I haven’t yet satisfied myself about, sir. Mr Eugene took care to let me know that Mr Penhallow had suddenly taken it into his head to keep young Aubrey at home, and that that wouldn’t suit Aubrey’s book at all. I gather he’s in debt, but I haven’t yet discovered to what extent, nor how serious this living at home business was. I wouldn’t put it beyond him to slip a drop of poison into a man’s drink, but whether he’d poison his father is another matter. You can’t spend long in that house, sir, without coming up against the feeling that however much they quarrelled with the old man, and whatever way he treated them, they all of them, barring, perhaps, Mr Raymond, were proud of him, and even rather liked him. Young Bart, and Mrs Hastings, the old lady, and Mrs Penhallow are definitely upset at him dying. Well, I should think they’d miss him, I must say.”

  “A darned good miss, I should imagine! Is that the full list of the people you suspect?”

  “No, sir, I’ve got one more suspect, and one man I’ll have to look into this afternoon. There’s Mrs Penhallow’s son, this one they call Clay. Nervous boy, scared stiff of me, and trying to carry the whole thing off in a breezy kind of way. Seems his father had just taken him away from college, and meant to article him to his cousin — Hastings, of Blazey, Blazey, Hastings, and Wembury. I had all this from Eugene and Conrad and Aubrey. Apparently Master Clay never has got on with the rest of the family — well, it isn’t likely he would: he’s the soft kind, and I should think a chap like that would have a pretty thin time in that household. He’s been going about talking in a wild way about how he’d go mad if he had to live at Trevellin for the rest of his life, and how he’d sooner be anything than a solicitor. What’s more, he tried to hatch up some sort of an alibi for himself, which didn’t exist; and altogether he struck me as a chap worth watching.”

  “H’m! And the other man you mentioned?”

  “Well, I don’t know that there’s much in that, sir, but I’ll have to investigate it. Miss Penhallow — who seems to have got an idea that it’s she and not me who’s conducting this case ,tel
ls me that a Mr Phineas Ottery, who was the first Mrs Penhallow’s brother, went up to Trevellin to call on Mr Penhallow yesterday afternoon and insisted on seeing him privately.”

  “I don’t see much in that.”

  “No, sir, no more did I, but it’s obvious the Penhallows do. They all say it was highly unusual of Mr Ottery to come to Trevellin uninvited, and there isn’t one of them that has any idea of what he could possibly have wanted with their father. None of them saw him, except the old man himself, and they all seem to think there was something fishy about the visit. All except Mr Raymond, that is. When I spoke to him about it, he said there way nothing odd in it at all, and that his father probably had a bit of business with him. I shouldn’t think much of it if it weren’t for the fact that none of the servants showed Mr Ottery out of the house, and no one can tell mc whether Mr Penhallow went with him to the door or not.”

  “Penhallow? I thought he was bedridden, or next door to it?"

  “No, not entirely he wasn’t, sir. He had a wheeled chair which he used whenever he got out of that extraordinary bed of his. He was up yesterday. Got up after lunch, and didn’t go back to bed until late in the evening. That’s the factor that makes this case a bit of a teaser. By what I could get out of Martha Bugle — she’s the old woman that used to be nurse to the sons, and has looked after Penhallow ever since he first took ill — the room was turned out during the afternoon, but finished, and left ready for Penhallow, by five o’clock. Except for this Jimmy we’re hunting for going in just before dinner to make up the fire, and draw the curtains, which they say he did, I can’t discover that anyone went near the room until Penhallow was put to bed again, which would have been somewhere around eleven o’clock at night. In fact, sir, from five till eleven the coast was perfectly clear for anyone to go into the room, and do what they liked there. As far as the family’s concerned, you can rule out the dinner-hour, when they were all present and correct, but after dinner two of them left the room where the rest were sitting: Mr Bart, who says he was with Loveday Trewithian, and is borne out by her and by his twin brother, who had to fetch him to help get their father to bed; and Master Clay, who says he spent the evening knocking the balls about in the billiard-room. But in between five and eight, when dinner was served, there was nothing to stop any of them tampering with the old man’s whisky, which was kept in a cupboard in his room, and there’s not one of them has an alibi for the whole of that period. Several can prove they were somewhere else for part of the time, but that’s all. The room’s right at the end of the house: you can get to it down a broad sort of passage on the ground floor, or through a garden-door leading into the small hall it opens into, or by way of a staircase leading down into that hall. It’s at the opposite end of the house to the kitchen premises, and the chances are that at that hour of the day you wouldn’t stand much chance of meeting anyone in that wing.”