“Poor dear! I don’t wonder you’re shocked. That’s what I said: it seems so dreadful to think of his having been murdered just for three hundred pounds! Come and sit down! Ingram, pull the bell, and tell them to bring another cup-and-saucer! A cup of tea will do her good.”
“No, please!” Faith managed to say. “I couldn’t swallow it! Have they — have they arrested Jimmy?”
“Not yet,” Ingram replied. “He’s done a bunk, of course, but they’ll find him all right, don’t you worry!”
She allowed Myra to lead her to a chair, and sat down, tightly grasping her handkerchief in one hand. She glanced round the room in a rather blank way. “The others — Ray?”
“Ray said he must go into Liskeard to see Cliff, my dear,” answered Clara. “I expect it’s about Adam’s will, and that sort of thing. He’s not back yet.”
Ingram laughed shortly. “Ray’s not losing any time. Didn’t turn a hair, as far as I could see!”
“Now, you oughtn’t to say that,” Clara reproved him mildly. “Ray’s never been one to show his feelin’s, but that isn’t to say he hasn’t got any.”
Charmian flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette.
“Queer cuss, Ray. He’s always been a bit of a skirter. when you come to think of it. I don’t think I ever knew him to run with the rest of the pack, even when we were kids.”
Faith turned her eyes towards her stepdaughter “Can’t he do anything? Can’t he stop it? Oh, don’t you see how awful…”
“No one can stop it,” Charmian said bluntly. “We’re in it up to our necks. Of course we see how awful it is! But we shan’t make it any better by getting hysterical about it.
“Now, Char, don’t be so hard and unsympathetic!” said Myra, pressing Faith’s hand in a very feeling way. “Naturally poor Faith is dreadfully upset! I mean, we all know that Mr Penhallow was often very trying, but what I say is, you can’t live with anyone for years without feeling it very much when they die. Why, I feel it myself! I’m sure the house seems different already! I noticed it the moment I set foot in it.”
“It’ll seem still more different when we get Ray firmly seated in the saddle,” observed Ingram grimly. “You mark my words: there are going to be a good few changes at Trevellin!”
“A few changes wouldn’t come amiss,” said Charmian. “I hope Ray does make them. I’d like to see Eugene doing an honest day’s work; and I consider it’s high time the twins learned to fend for themselves.”
Clara said forlornly: “It won’t seem like Trevellin, with all the boys gone. I don’t know if he’ll want me to go, I’m sure.”
“Oh, no, no! Why should he?” Faith cried.
“I suppose you won’t stay here?” Charmian asked her.
“No — that is, I haven’t thought. It’s too soon! I don’t know what I shall do.”
“Of course not!” said Myra, with a reproving glance cast at Charmian. “Besides, it isn’t as if Ray’s married.”
“Well, I think there’s a good deal to be said for the old man’s way of keeping the family together!” announced Ingram. “I don’t say he didn’t carry it to excess, but if Ray turns the twins out it’ll be a damned shame!”
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
