“Why don’t you knock me down?” mocked Aubrey. “Go on! What are you waiting for?”
“Oh, shut up!” said Charmian impatiently. “Of all the futile suggestions, Aubrey, that surely takes the cake!”
“I know, but you must admit it was a very lovely thought. Oh, look! Here’s Ray, looking exactly as though he’d been stuffed!”
Except for glancing scornfully at him, Raymond paid no attention to him. He took his place at the head of the table, and looked down the length of it at Clara. “Coffee, please. I take it Char’s told you all what Rame said?”
“It isn’t true, Ray!” Bart had been staring out of the window, but he wheeled round to fling these words at his elder brother. “It couldn’t be true! Not the Guv’nor!”
“Oh, isn’t Bart sweet?” Aubrey said, addressing the company generally. “Or don’t you like guilelessness above the age of consent? I think it’s rather touching.”
“If you don’t keep your damned mouth shut, I’ll knock hell out of you!” Bart threatened, clenching his fists.
“The wish is father to the thought, dearie. You wouldn’t believe the number of dirty Japanese tricks I’ve got up my sleeve.”
“You can both of you keep your mouths shut!” Raymond said. “What good do you imagine you’re doing, bickering like a couple of school kids? We’re in the bloodiest mess possible, let me tell you! By midday it’ll be all over the county that Father’s been murdered! We’re going to be dragged through the mud, all of us! We shall have reporters trying to photograph the scene of the crime, and our name splashed all over the cheaper press!”
“Will we by God!” said Conrad. “I’d like to see a reporter trying to poke his nose into Trevellin! He’d get something he wasn’t expecting!”
“You’ll make a fool of yourself if you come to blows with the Press,” observed Charmian dryly. “What happens next, Ray?”
“The body will be removed for a post-mortem examination. Rame will arrange that with the police.”
“No!” Clara arose in her wrath. “That’s too much! Ray, I don’t know what you’re thinkin’ about to allow such a thing! It’s not decent!”
“I’ve no power to stop it. You don’t suppose I want any of this to happen, do you? For God’s sake, don’t you start kicking up a fuss! I’ve had a bad enough time with Martha already.”
“O God!” Bart said, in a breaking voice, and plunged out of the room.
Conrad rose from his chair. “If it’s found to be true that Father was murdered, I’ll bet I know who did it!” he said savagely. “It ’ud be just about what she would do, the damned slut that she is!” He looked down at Aubrey. “As for you, you keep your tongue off Bart!”
Aubrey waited until he had slammed his way out of the room before remarking: “Yes, that was always one the possibilities. They say poison is a woman’s weapon don’t they?”
“I never liked that gal,” said Clara, shaking her head “but I don’t hold with tryin’ to put things on people like that.”
“I know nothing about Loveday Trewithian,” said Charmian. “What seems to me to be of more importance is the fact that Jimmy the Bastard was out all night, and isn’t yet back.”
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Clara.
“I’ll bet he did it!” Clay said.
“He’s disgusting enough to do anything,” said Vivian. “But why should he? I don’t see what he had to gain.”
“Robbery, or something like that.”
Raymond looked up quickly, his lips slightly parted, as though he were about to speak. Then he closed them again, and lowered his gaze. He had remembered suddenly that there had been no battered tin box in the cupboard above Penhallow’s bed. At least, he thought there had not been, but in his haste he might, he supposed, have overlooked it.
“It only remains for us to discover that the three hundred pounds I fetched Father from the Bank yesterday is missing,” said Aubrey. “An unexciting finish to the episode, but I confess I should welcome it.”
“You’re right!” Charmian said. “Now I come to think of it, Jimmy was in the room when Father spoke of it at dinner last night! Ray, was Father in the habit of drawing so much at a time?”
“No, not as much as that.”
“Well, then! Where ought the money to be?”
“In the cupboard over his head,” Vivian replied eagerly. “I had to get it out for him once, so I know. Of course Jimmy stole it! It’s as plain as a pikestaff! Don’t you think so, Ray?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, can’t someone go and look in the cupboard?”
“Not at the moment. The room has been locked up. There’s no hurry.”
“Oh, isn’t Ray just too wonderful?” said Aubrey, awed. “So unmoved-and-all! I can’t think how you preserve your exquisite calm, Ray, really I can’t! My nervous system is definitely shattered.”
“Then it’s just as well mine isn’t,” Raymond replied, getting up from the table, and moving towards the door. “One of you had better go down to the Dower House to tell Ingram what has happened. I must go into Liskeard, to have a word with Cliff.”
He opened the door as he spoke, just in time to admit Ingram himself, who came limping into the room, rather out of breath, and with a countenance expressive both of surprise and indignation.
“I suppose it didn’t occur to you that I might like to be informed of Father’s death!” he said hotly, glaring at Raymond. “I might have expected you to leave me to hear of it through a servant! A fair sample of what we may expect to have to put up with now that you’re mounted in the saddle!”
“I’ve had no time so far to think about you,” Raymond answered, his voice as cold as Ingram’s was heated. “If it comforts you at all, I’ve just this instant told the others to let you know.”
“Damned kind of you! How did it happen? When was it?”
'You can get the details from Char: I’ve got something more important to attend to,” Raymond responded briefly, and left the room, shutting the door behind him.
“Yes, it’s going to be jolly with him in the seat!” Ingram said, with a short laugh. “By Jove, though, the old man! I never was more surprised in my life, never! Thought he’d go on for years yet! Frightful shock to me!”
“Ah, and that’s not the worst of it!” Clara said. “They’re sayin’ your father was poisoned, Ingram!”
He stared at her. “Why, what did he eat? I always thought there was dam’ little the old man couldn’t digest!”
“When Clara said poisoned,” explained Aubrey, in the kindly tone of one instructing a child, “she meant murdered.”
“Good God!” Ingram gasped, sitting down plump in Raymond’s vacated chair.
Vivian left the room as Charmian began to tell Ingram about Dr Rame’s visit, and went upstairs to put Eugene in possession of the new facts. She was overtaken on the stairs by Clay, on his way to his mother’s room. He said to her with a sort of suppressed eagerness: “I shouldn’t think there could be a doubt it was Jimmy, should you? I mean, it’s obvious!”
“I don’t know. I suppose we most of us had pretty good reasons for wanting Penhallow dead.”
He uttered an unconvincing laugh. “I say, I wish you’d speak for yourself I’m sure I never had such an idea in my head!'
“Hadn’t you?” she said, looking at him rather oddly.
“Of course not! Good lord, what a question!”
“It’s one you’re likely to be asked,” she said.
He was so disconcerted by this answer that he found nothing to say. She walked past Faith’s door towards the corridor at the back of the house, and after watching her uncertainly until she had disappeared from his sight, Clay knocked for admittance into Faith’s room.
She was seated at her dressing-table, fully dressed, her hands clasped in her lap. She smiled faintly when she saw Clay, and said: “Darling!”
“Mother, have you heard?”
“Your father? Yes, dear, of course.”
“Not that! I thought perhaps Loveday might have told you, for I suppose all the servants know by this
