“Well, I’m glad one of you has the moral courage to say what you really think!” said Vivian.
“Your approval, darling, might have been expresses I more grammatically, but I can’t tell you how much it has encouraged me,” said Aubrey dulcetly. “After all, it is the spirit which counts, isn’t it?”
“Anyway, you can bloody well keep what you think to yourself!” Bart said, addressing his sister-in-law. “We all know what you thought of the Guv’nor!”
“Now, Bart, don’t, there’s a good boy!” Clara said. “We, don’t want any quarrellin’. I daresay he was a wicked old man, but I don’t know what we’re any of us goin’ to do now he’s gone. It won’t seem like Trevellin without him goin’ on the rampage, and upsettin’ everybody right and left.” She applied her handkerchief to her eyes again. “I’m sure I don’t know why I’m cryin’, for very uncomfortable he’s made me, time and time again, but there it is! Has anyone been up to Faith?”
“I’ve seen her,” Vivian answered. “She’s having a bath at the moment.”
“Is she cut up about it?” asked Conrad.
Vivian gave a short laugh. “She thinks she is, anyway. I’m afraid I’ve got no time for these conventionally minded women who think it incumbent upon them to shed tears just because someone whom they detested has died!”
“Here, I say, that’s coming it a bit thick!” protested Conrad. “I don’t say Father didn’t treat her to rather a rough passage, but you’ve got no right to say that she detested him! I should have thought that she’d be bound to be cut up about it!”
“Then you won’t be disappointed,” said Vivian acidly. “She’ll gratify all your ideas of how a bereaved person should behave, I’m sure!”
Clay came into the room at that moment, looking reared and bewildered. “I say, is it true?” he asked. “I’ve just heard — I overslept this morning — I didn’t know a thing! But one of the maids told me — only I simply couldn’t believe it!”
“If you mean, is it true Father’s dead, yes, it is!” said Conrad. “So you can go upstairs again, and take off that bloody awful pullover, and put on something decent!”
“Of course I wouldn’t have put on a coloured thing if I’d known!” Clay said. “I’ll change it after breakfast, naturally. Good lord, though! I — I can’t get over it! How did it happen? When did he die?”
The barely veiled excitement in his voice roused Bart to a flash of anger. “What the devil does it matter to you how he died, or when he died? A fat lot you care! God damn your eyes, you’re glad he’s dead!”
“How dare you's-say such a th-thing?” Clay stammered, flushing to the roots of his hair. “Of course I’m not!”
“Liar!” said Conrad.
Aubrey intervened, saying in his most mannered style: “Sit down, little brother, and try to carry off this very difficult situation with as much grace as you can muster. You really could hardly do better than to model yourself on me. Now, I’m not bewailing Father’s death in the least, but neither am I permitting an indecent elation to appear in my demeanour. As my raiment, so my conduct: subdued but not funereal!”
“Shut up, you ass!” said Conrad.
“Listen!” Vivian interrupted, lifting her head. “That sounds like the doctor going!”
In another minute the door opened, and Charmian came in. She looked rather pale, as though she had sustained a severe shock, and she did not at first say anything.
“Is that Rame going?” Vivian asked. “What on earth has he been doing all this time?”
“Where’s Ray?” Conrad demanded.
“Seeing Rame off.” Charmian dug her hands into her coat-pockets, and took up her favourite position on the hearth-rug, with her feet widely planted. “Well, you might as well know at once what has happened. Rame won’t sign the certificate.”
Chapter Seventeen
Her words were received in uncomprehending silence. Conrad broke it. “What do you mean, he won’t sign the certificate? Why not?”
“He thinks Father didn’t die a natural death,” responded Charmian bluntly.
They all stared at her. “Didn’t die a natural death?” Conrad repeated. “What on earth are you driving at, Char?”
“Oh dear, I do wish I hadn’t come home!” said Aubrey. “I can see, because I am very quick-witted and sensitive to atmosphere, that everything is going to become too morbid and repellent for words. Char, my precious, do put us out of this frightful suspense! I can’t bear it!”
“If you want it in plain words, Rame thinks Father was murdered,” said Charmian.
Clara dropped her teaspoon with a clatter into her saucer. Bart half-started from his chair, and sank back again, his eyes fixed incredulously on his sister’s face. Clay turned chalk-white, and moved his lips stickily.
“Rot!” said Conrad loudly and scornfully.
“Yes, that’s what I said, but apparently I was wrong,” Charmian replied, drawing her cigarette-case from her pocket, and taking a cigarette from it. She shut the with a snap, and turned to feel for a matchbox on the mantelpiece behind her.
“But what — how… ?”Bart demanded.
She struck a match, and lit her cigarette. “Poison, of course.”
“Rubbish!” said Clara strongly. “I never heard of such a thing! Poison, indeed! He ate and drank a lot of foolish things last night, as anyone could have told Rame! What next!”
“There was a sort of blue look about him,” Charmian said. “I noticed it myself, though it didn’t, of course, convey anything in particular to my mind. Rame asked if Father was in the habit of taking sleeping-draughts. Reuben and Martha both swore that he wasn’t. Them was a drain of whisky left in the decanter beside the bed, and he tasted it. He has taken both the glass and the decanter away with him, and I suppose you know what that means.”
“Do you mean — do you mean that there’ll have to be an inquest?” Conrad said, in a stupefied tone. “On Father."
“Of course.”
Clara, who had been staring at Charmian with dropped jaw and slowly mounting colour, found her voice to say: “Inquest? We’ve never had such a thing in our family! I never did in all my life! Why, whatever next. I should like to know? Your father would be furious at the idea of anythin’ like that happenin’! It’ll have to be put a stop to: I won’t have it!”
“I wish it could be stopped,” returned Charmian. “Unfortunately, it can’t. This is where the police take over. Jolly, isn’t it?”
“Police?” Clay gasped. “Oh, I say, how awful! Rame must have made a mistake!”
“Of course he’s made a mistake!” said Clara, more moved than anyone could remember to have seen her. “This is what comes of callin’ in one of these newfangled doctors! I’ve no patience with it! Your father died because he ate and drank too much last night, and that’s all there is to it!”
No one paid any heed to this. Bart got up suddenly, thrusting back his chair. “But, my God, this is ghastly!” he exclaimed. “Are you saying that somebody put poison in the Guv’nor’s whisky? One of us?”
Charmian shrugged. Clay was inspired to say: “It’s titter piffle! I mean, who would?”
“Little brother, do you think you could keep your ill-omened mouth shut?” asked Aubrey plaintively. “I am beginning to feel quite too terribly unwell, and that remark has conjured up such a number of daunting reflections that I wish more than ever that I hadn’t stupidly forgotten to bring my vinaigrette with me. I don’t know who would — at least, not yet — but when I think of all who might -well, I needn’t go on, need I?"
“You figure on the list yourself, don’t you?” suggested Conrad, not very nicely.
“Yes, beloved, I should think I am destined to occupy a prominent position on the list, and that is what is upsetting me. Fancy being so unfeeling as to point it out to me in that horrid way! Oh, I do wish I weren’t here!”