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 take 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!”