Джорджетт Хейер - Penhallow

Bart had entered the house, and flung his riding-whip on to the table. Conrad came quickly out of the Yellow drawing-room, and started towards him, catching him by the arms in a hard grip. “Twin! Twin, don’t!” he said rather thickly. “For God’s sake, Bart!”

Bart threw him off violently. “Leave me alone, can’t you?” he said, with suppressed passion. “Keep off, damn you! I’ve got nothing to say to you!”

Ingram, who had followed Conrad out of the drawing room, tried to intervene. “Come, old chap, you mustn’t give way! I know it’s been a shock, and all that, but—”

“Get to hell out of my way!” Bart shot out, white as a sheet. “A fat lot you care! A fat lot any of you care!”

“Bart-love!”

He looked up quickly to the stairs, where Loveday stood, one hand on the broad balustrade. His face twisted; he gave a dry sob, and went to the stairs, and stumbled blindly up them. She held out her arms to him, and folded him in them when he reached her, murmuring to him, stroking his black head.

“There, my love, there! Come along, then, my dear one, with Loveday!”

“O God, Loveday! O God, Loveday!”

“I know,” she said. “Do you come with me, my love!”

He flung his arm round her, and went with her up the remaining stairs. Below, in the hall, Conrad stared after them, his face as white as Bart’s, an expression of stark hatred in his eyes. Ingram said, in a maladroit attempt to console him: “He’s a bit upset, Con, that’s all. He’ll come round soon enough. I wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you.”

Conrad looked at him with bitter contempt, turned on his heel, and strode out of the house.

Ingram went back into the drawing-room, shaking his head over it. “Seems to be no end to our troubles,” he said heavily. “Now it’s the twins! Bart must have heard the news down at the stables. I can see I’m going to have my work cut out, keeping the peace between the pair of them.”

Aubrey looked up admiringly. “Oh, isn’t Ingram wonderful? I’m sure I should find it frightfully difficult to feel like a patriarch without a moment’s warning, but you can see it comes quite naturally to him.”

Ingram cast him a glance of dislike, but was prevented from answering him by the entrance of Reuben, who silently handed him a letter.

“What’s this?” Ingram said, recognising the handwriting. “Where did you find it?”

“It’s a letter from Mr Raymond, as anyone can see,” replied Reuben dourly. “It was on his desk. You’d better open it, instead of standing there gaping at it.”

“Damn your impudence, you old rascal!” Ingram said cheerfully, and tore open the envelope.

The key of the safe dropped on to the floor; he stooped, grunting, to pick it up, before reading the letter. While he read, the others watched him in pent-up silence.

“Well, I’m damned!” he ejaculated, when he came to the end of the letter. "Just like him! Gosh, he was always a cold-blooded devil, but this fairly takes the cake! Here, Eugene, what do you make of this?”

He handed the letter to his younger brother as he spoke, but as Vivian, Charmian, Aubrey, and Reuben all tried to read it over his shoulder, Eugene had some difficulty in mastering its contents. Charmian settled the matter by twitching it out of his hand, and reading it aloud. When she came to the end, there was a moment’s silence. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Vivian burst into tears.

“My pet!” exclaimed Eugene, putting his arm round her.

She groped for her handkerchief, and fiercely blew her nose, saying huskily: “I never even liked him, but I think it’s awful! To write a letter like that, m-making everything as easy as possible for Ingram, not even m-mentioning what he meant to do! Oh, don’t you see how dreadfully tragic it is? Sorry! I’m a bit on edge. I didn’t mean to make a scene.”

“Trust Ray to be businesslike up to the end!” Ingram said, holding out his hand for the letter. “Give it back, will you, Char? I shall have to show it to the police. Pretty conclusive, I imagine. With any luck, we ought to be able to get through this affair with the minimum amount of scandal.”

Vivian flushed angrily, and said, stammering a little: “You call Ray cold-blooded! My God, what do you think you are? You stand there talking about the scandal, when this frightful thing has happened! As though that were the only thing that counted!”

“What you all of you seem to be in danger of forgetting,” retorted Ingram, “is that Ray, on whom you’re squandering so much pity, murdered Father!”

“I don’t care if he did!” Vivian cried, unable to contain herself. “It was the best day’s work he ever did in his life, and I only wish he’d got away with it!”

Bart was no more seen until dinner-time, but he put in an appearance then, and although he ate very little, and said less, he seemed to be quite calm. Ingram had stayed at Trevellin; and as Clifford had returned from seeing Inspector Logan, there was naturally a good deal of discussion on Raymond’s suicide. Bart endured this in silence, only betraying by a folding of his lips how much he disliked the conversation.

Clifford thought there was no doubt that the police would now drop the investigation of Penhallow’s murder; but he had no information to give the family on the nature of Jimmy’s disclosures, the Inspector having made no reference to these, so that he did not even know whether he had yet had an opportunity to interrogate Jimmy. Charmian and Aubrey felt strongly that he ought to have made it his business to find out what Jimmy had said, but he told them that he had had other and more important matters to attend to, and would not, in any case, have thought it a part of his duty to try to pump the Inspector.

Clara did not come down to dinner, but Ingram made a point of visiting her room to assure her that whatever Raymond had intended towards her, he and Myra hoped that she would continue to make Trevellin her home. “I’m not one to want to get rid of my family,” Ingram said, throwing out his chest a little. “I always thought there was a lot to be said in favour of Father’s idea of keeping us all round him. I mean, in these days, when people don’t seem to care any longer for their homes and families — Besides, Trevellin wouldn’t seem like Trevellin without you, Aunt.”

“Thank you, my dear, I don’t know, I’m sure,” she said apathetically. “It’s knocked me over, and that’s the truth, Ingram. First Adam, and now Ray. I daresay I’ll get over it, but I don’t seem able to get my bearings just at present. You go on down, and don’t let any of them worry about me. I’ll just stay quietly where I am tonight. I know you never got on with him, but he was always very pleasant to me, and I don’t feel somehow as though I could bear to see his empty place at table.”

So Ingram went down to dinner without her, and, after hesitating for a moment, took his place at the head of the table, saying that they might as well begin as they meant to go on.

“Speaking for myself,” said Aubrey, “I mean to go on as far from Trevellin as I can contrive to be. Setting aside the unnerving nature of the late events, which have irrevocably spoilt the place for me, my spirit would become too utterly crushed by the platitudinous atmosphere in which you wrap yourself, Ingram dear, for me even to contemplate prolonging my sojourn here. I mean to say! — Too corroding, my dear!”

“Wait till you’re asked!” recommended Ingram brusquely.

“Oh, weren’t you going to ask me?” asked Aubrey, with a maddening air of innocence. “I quite thought you were. In fact, I made sure you’d begun to see yourself as a second father to me already.”