“He’s dead!” Reuben said. “He’s dead, Mr Ray. Cold dead!”
“What?” Raymond ejaculated incredulously. He flung back the bed-clothes, and got up quickly, snatching up Iris dressing-gown. “When? How?”
“I don’t know when. He must have gone in the night. You should know how, Mr Ray!”
Raymond tied his dressing-gown cord, and groped for his slippers. “What the devil do you mean?” he asked.
Reuben drew his sleeve across his eyes. “It was you setting on him the way you did, trying to choke the life out of him, and him as good as bedridden! I told you then we’d know whose door to set it to if he was to go off sudden! Yes, sure, I told you!”
“Don’t be such a blithering old fool!” Raymond said roughly. “He was perfectly well last night! I had nothing whatsoever to do with his dying! More likely what he ate and drank at dinner. Who knows about this? Who found him?”
Reuben followed him to the door. “Martha found him, poor soul! Stiff, he is. He must have gone in his sleep. And today his birthday! I told him how it would be if he ate that lobster! I told him!”
“Shut up! There’s no need to rouse the whole house yet!” Raymond said, turning into the corridor at the back of the house, and going swiftly along it to the narrow stairs down which Faith had passed the day before.
As he approached the small hall at the head of these stairs, the sound of wailing reached his ears. Martha was lamenting over Penhallow’s body, and it was plain that this noise had already awakened those who slept at the end of the house. Eugene’s door stood open; and even as Raymond set his foot on the top step of the stair, Aubrey came out of his room, in a very exotic-looking pair of black pyjamas piped with silver, and asked plaintively what new horror had come upon the house.
“Reuben says Father’s dead,” Raymond replied over his shoulder.