Джорджетт Хейер - Penhallow

“I don’t know. Are they sure — are they quite sure Ray did it?”

Charmian set down the candle, and began to straighten the tumbled bedclothes. “Oh, yes, there’s nothing for you to worry about, my dear! The police are satisfied it must have been Ray. So just you go to sleep, and stop fretting!”

She tucked Faith in securely, and went away, reflecting that such an exaggerated display of emotion was typical of a woman like her stepmother; and deciding that, upon the whole, Raymond’s suicide was perhaps the best solution that could have been found to an appalling situation.

This feeling was not shared either by Inspector Logan, or by the Chief Constable. Raymond’s death came as a shock to both these gentlemen; and the Chief Constable was inclined to blame the Inspector for having allowed such a thing to have happened.

“Sir, there was nothing whatsoever to go on!” Logan said earnestly. “You know yourself I couldn’t have detained Raymond Penhallow on the evidence I had! There wasn’t a shred of real evidence against any one of them, nothing I’d dare put up to a jury, that is. I still can’t make out why he did it.”

“There must have been something behind it that you never discovered, Logan,” the Major said heavily. “I ought to have called in Scotland Yard.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, the cleverest detective in the world couldn’t have found evidence that wasn’t there. There was something behind it all; you’re right there! Again and again I felt it, when I was working on the case. If you ask me, I’ll tell you straight I’ve got a conviction that whatever it was, it was something ugly. Well, I’m not fanciful, I believe, but I got such a feeling in that house that there was a worse trouble hanging over it than I’d any notion of, that there were times when it fairly gave me the creeps.”

The Major shook his head, digging the nib of his pen into the blotter under his hand. “I shouldn’t be surprised. An old devil, Penhallow was. I don’t know. Unprofessional, of course, but one can’t help feeling that perhaps it’s as well it ended as it did.”

The Inspector could not agree with this. “I’d have liked to have got to the bottom of it, sir. If it hadn’t been for the news of Jimmy the Bastard’s arrest, and what he said leaking out, I might have had a chance. But we can’t doubt that it was hearing that this Jimmy had something important to disclose which scared Raymond Penhallow into blowing his brains out. Whatever it may have been that he feared Jimmy was going to tell us, he couldn’t stand up to. That finished him.”

“And the young man didn’t throw any light on it, did he?”

“No, sir, nothing to help us. He thought the butler wouldn’t have told us about the quarrel Raymond Penhallow had with the old man, on account of his being so devoted to the family. He never heard anything worth mentioning, though I don’t doubt he’d have had his ear to the keyhole a lot earlier than he did, if he’d known what was going on, for a nastier piece of work I hope I may never see! But all he heard was the old man saying: "That’s where you are, my boy!" and then Raymond Penhallow saying: "You devil, I’ll kill you for this, do you hear me? I’ll kill you, you fiend, you devil!" Or some such words. I wish he had been in time to have overheard a bit more: I’d give a good deal to know what it was that passed between Raymond Penhallow and his father that made it necessary for him to take the risk of poisoning the old man, on top of having half-choked him to death. It must have been something pretty bad, sir, for, unless I’m much mistaken, Raymond Penhallow wasn’t one to lose his head easily.”

“No,” the Major agreed. “A horrible business, Logan, look at it how you will.”

“You’re right, sir. A very unsatisfactory case,” the Inspector said.