“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 perfectly 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!”