Джорджетт Хейер - Penhallow

“Well, I’m damned!” said Charmian, in an astonished tone. “Talk about worms turning! Well played, Faith! You’re about right, too.”

Ingram, at first thunderstruck by this unexpected attack, recovered himself, and said: “Of course, if I’m not welcome in my own home...”

“You’re not,” Raymond interrupted. “You’ve had your marching orders! Get out!”

Ingram rose, very red in the face. “By God, Ray—”

“I’ll be getting along myself, sir,” interposed the Inspector tactfully.

Raymond turned towards him. “As you please. In view of the fact that Jimmy at least shares with me the distinction of being suspected of murdering my father, I should be glad to hear from you as soon as you have seen him. I take it that you will be seeing him immediately?”

“Yes, sir. I expect to see him today,” replied the Inspector.

Raymond nodded, and moved across to the door, and opened it. The Inspector stood aside for Ingram to precede him out of the room, and after a moments hesitation Ingram shrugged, and limped out. Raymond followed them both, and shut the door behind him.

Charmian stubbed out the end of her cigarette." I never knew you had it in you, Faith!” she remarked. “If you’ll allow me to say so, it’s a pity you didn’t assert yourself more long before this. There’s nothing to look scared about: Ingram is all bluster, and precious little bite. He won’t bear you any malice.”

“It doesn’t matter to me what he does,” Faith said clinging to the chair-back.

“No, I suppose not. I take it you don’t mean to stay here, once we get things settled?”

“Oh, no! I couldn’t! If only I could go now! I can’t bear any more. It’s driving me mad!”

“It’s a great mistake to allow things to get on one nerves,” said Charmian oracularly. “Personally, I try to look at the whole affair as dispassionately as possible.”

Faith’s face twisted. She said wildly: “Dispassionately! How can you talk like that? Haven’t you any feeling? Oh, no, no! You never had! You were always hard and cold! Oh, don’t talk to me! You wouldn’t understand! You’ve never understood anything!”

“If you mean, my dear Faith, that I lack your faculty of persuading yourself into a state of exaggerated emotion, you are quite right,” replied Charmian dryly.

Faith gave a sob, and made blindly for the door.

Meanwhile, Raymond, having seen his brother and the Inspector off the premises, had walked down the long corridor to his office at the end of it. There were several letters on his desk, and he sat down behind it, and rather mechanically read them, placing them when he had finished them in one of the trays in front of him. The matter in them was not of immediate importance. He reflected coldly that Ingram would no doubt deal with them at some later date. He opened one of the drawers in his desk, and began methodically to go through the contents, destroying one or two papers, slipping rubber-bands round some others, and writing neat slips describing their nature. In that moment when he had so clearly seen the framework of his life crumbling, he had quite suddenly realised what the end to all the mental torment he was undergoing must be. Before many hours had elapsed, the police would be in possession of the story of his birth, for he could not doubt that Jimmy had overheard his last quarrel with Penhallow. He did not suppose that the police would wantonly publish such a disclosure, but he perceived that it must appear to them as a sufficient motive for the murder of Penhallow, and that they would be obliged to follow it up strictly. Sooner or later the truth would become known, and he thought that since there would be nothing left then worth living for it would be better to die now, while he was still, in the world’s eyes, if not in his own, Penhallow of Trevellin. He was not in the least afraid of being convicted of murder, his father’s death seeming to him so secondary a matter that he scarcely wasted a thought upon it. But he knew that he could neither face the scandal that would attend upon the publication of his illegitimacy, nor endure to see Ingram stepping into his place. Ingram would triumph; some others might pity him, and the pity would be as hard to bear as the triumph. He was not imaginative, but he was able to visualise with terrible clarity all the humiliations that lay before him, if he should choose to live.

He went on sorting the contents of his desk. Well, hr thought, I’m not going to live. Whatever they say, I shan’t hear. They’ll think I murdered Father to stop his mouth. I don’t mind that. It may even work out for the best. The police will drop the case, and Ingram won’t let the truth leak out, once I’m safely out of his way. The police will probably tell him, but he’ll see to it that it doesn’t go any further. Or they might not even tell him. Jimmy would, though. Yes, Jimmy will try to get money out of him by threatening to broadcast the story. Well, that’s Ingram’s worry, not mine any longer. He’ll deal with Jimmy all right.

He opened the bottom right-hand drawer in the desk, and took out the small service revolver which lay in it, in its holster. The revolver had belonged to Ingram, and was a relic of the Great War. Ingram had left it at Trevellin, forgetting all about it. It was typical of Raymond that, although he had never had any use for it, he should have kept it in good order. There was a box of cartridges in the drawer. Raymond drew the revolver out of its holster, broke it, and slipped in one cartridge. After that, he laid it down on the blotting-pad, and rose to open the safe that stood against the wall behind him. Here everything was in order, but he went through the contents, not so much because he desired to make things easy for Ingram, but because he had always prided himself upon his businesslike methods. After a moment’s hesitation, he took his keys out of his pocket, and, detaching the key of the safe from the ring, placed the others in the safe, and shut the door, and locked it.

He glanced round the room, trying to remember if there were anything he had forgotten to do. The accounts were all made up to date, he knew. He wished he could think that Ingram would keep his ledgers in the apple-pie order in which he would find them, but he supposed that it didn’t really matter to him what Ingram did when he took command of the estate. He ran his eyes along the shelf that held his files. Rents; Farm; Hunting-Stables; Stud-Farm; Pedigrees — he hoped the Demon colt would fulfil his early promise; he thought he would take a last look at the colt in which so many of his hopes had been centred; sentimental nonsense, of course, but he hadn’t had time during the past three interminable days to visit the Upper Paddock, and he would like to see the colt again.

There were one or two matters that would require attending to in the course of the next few weeks: he must direct Ingram’s attention to them, and also to the estimates for inch-elm for the new loose-boxes. He sat down again at his desk, and drew a sheet of notepaper towards him, unscrewed the cap of his fountain-pen, and began unhurriedly to write a letter to Ingram.

It was a strange, businesslike communication, containing no reference to what he had made up his mind to do, no message of farewell, no directions for the disposal of his private property. Merely it informed Ingram where he would find various papers and documents; what business was necessary to be settled in the near future; and what was the safe combination. He enclosed the key of the safe in this letter, slipped the whole into an envelope, and sealed and addressed it. He left it on the blotter, and rose, picking up Ingram’s revolver, and putting it in his pocket. One of his pipes lay in a large bronze ashtray, some of the cold ash in it spilled from the bowl. He took the pipe in his hand, meaning to knock out the dottle, and to restore the pipe to the rack on the mantlepiece. Then it occurred to him that he would not smoke it again, and with a slight twisted smile , he dropped it into the wastepaper-basket.