Clara shook her head. “I’m afraid Bart will marry that gal,” she said. “I don’t see what’s to stop him, now his father’s gone.”
“What girl?” demanded Ingram, pricking up his ears.
“Loveday Trewithian. He had a set-to with his father about it only the other day.”
“Loveday Trewithian! Reuben’s niece?” exclaimed Ingram. “Good God, the young fool! He can’t do that!”
“No, and of course your father wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Why shouldn’t he marry her, if he wants to?” asked Charmian. “She isn’t my style but I should think she’d suit Bart down to the ground.”
“Good lord, Char, he can’t marry Reuben’s niece!”
She shrugged. “I don’t see why not. He’s going to have Trellick, isn’t he? She’ll make a good farmer’s wife.”
“But, Char, you can’t have thought of what our position would be!” cried Myra. “How could one possibly call on a person like that? What would people say?”
“Don’t worry!” Charmian replied, with true Penhallow brutality. “After what’s happened today, no one will be surprised at anything the Penhallows take it into their heads to do! A little scandal more or less won’t make any odds.”
A tear trickled down Clara’s weather-beaten cheek.
She wiped it away. “I wish I’d been taken first!” she said. “I’ve lived too long: I shall never get used to havin’ our name dragged through the mud, and bein’ pointed at and talked about. I’m too old: it’s no good expectin’ me to change my ideas at my time of life.”
Faith looked at her with wide, frightened eyes. “No one will point at you, Clara! It hasn’t anything to do with you!”
“No, my dear, but I know what people are. It isn’t about that, either. I know he was a wicked old man, but I cant bear to think of him bein’ murdered like that, and all for a paltry bit of money!”
Charmian lit a second cigarette, and blew a cloud of smoke down her nostrils. “Well, I’m not so sure that he was murdered for money,” she said, frowning. “I’ve been thinking it over, and I can’t see why Jimmy had to poison Father to get hold of that three hundred pounds. Father was out of his room all the afternoon yesterday. It seem; to me Jimmy could have taken the cash, and made his getaway without the slightest difficulty. In fact, the more you look at it the more senseless it seems to be that he should have murdered Father.”
Ingrain stared at her. “Well, but damn it all, Char, isn’t it obvious? He was afraid of getting caught and jugged!”
“Be your age!” besought his sister. “For one thing, it’s extremely unlikely that Father would have prosecuted him; and for another, we all knew that that three hundred was in Father’s tin box, so he can’t possibly have hoped to have got away with it. Why on earth should he have tied a noose round his own neck?”
“The fact remains that he’s missing, and the money too, my dear girl.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me to find that Jimmy’s disappearance with the money hasn’t got anything whatsoever to do with Father’s death,” Charmian said deliberately.
Ingram took a minute to assimilate this. “Yes, but — I say, Char, that’s a bit grim! If Jimmy didn’t poison the old man, it means that somebody else did, and — Hell, that points to its having been one of us!”
“No, no!” Faith said imploringly.
No one heeded her. “Not entirely,” Charmian said. “I don’t say I think it, but what Con suggested might be true, particularly if Father had nipped Bart’s marriage plans in the bud. Loveday might have done it.”
“She didn’t! I know she didn’t!” Faith cried. “You mustn’t say such wicked things, Char! It isn’t true!”
“My dear Faith, I know you’re fond of the girl, but what do you know about her after all? However, she isn’t the only one who might have done it.” She regarded the end of her cigarette for a moment. “I don’t know what any of the rest of the family feels about it, but I could bear to know what brought Uncle Phin up here yesterday to see Father.”
“Uncle Phin? I never knew he had come up!” said Ingram. “What on earth did he want?”
“That’s what I should like to know. He came up after tea, and insisted on seeing Father in private.”
“But what an extraordinary thing!” Myra exclaimed. “I thought he hardly ever came to Trevellin!”
“Did he have a row with Father?” asked Ingram.
“I don’t know. Father was shut up with him in the Yellow room for nearly an hour. I didn’t see him at all. As far as I know, none of us did.”
“Damned odd!” Ingram commented. “All the same I don’t quite see what he could have had to do with it, Father never had any truck with him that I knew of.”
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!”