“Did Aubrey suggest that I had anything to do with your father’s death?” she demanded.
She sounded indignant, as indeed she was, for although she had killed Penhallow she still felt her action to have been so alien to her nature that it was with a sense of the deepest injury that she learned that one who should surely have known her better could believe her to be capable of committing murder.
Not having any desire to figure as a tale-bearer before his half-brothers, Clay made haste to palliate his original statement. “Oh, he wasn’t serious, Mother! There’s nothing to get het-up about. I shut him up at once, and, anyway, nobody paid the slightest attention to him. In fact, Char said it was the most fatuous thing she’d ever heard.”
“I should hope so!” she said sharply. She picked up her handkerchief from the dressing-table, and pressed it to her lips for a moment. “What — what has to happen now, Clay?” she asked.
“Well, I suppose Rame will do a post-mortem. We shan’t know much till after that. If he does find that father was poisoned, it will be a case for the police, of course.”
She shuddered. “Oh, no! Oh, how dreadful!”
“I know, that’s what Aunt Clara says, but it can’t be helped. Mind you, I daresay Rame won’t find any poise at all! It’s all very well for that ass, Aubrey, to say that we’ve all got motives, but personally I agree with Bart that none of us would dream of doing such a thing. If he was poisoned, then it’s obvious that Jimmy did it.”
She swallowed convulsively. “Clay dear, go downstairs now! I — I really feel so upset about this that I must be alone for a little while. It’s so appalling — I never dreamed! I think I’ll lie down for a time.”
But when he had left the room she remained seated in her chair, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap, her eyes travelling round the room as though in search of some way of escape. They alighted presently upon the two bottles of veronal, standing side by side upon the shelf above the wash-stand, and she began at once to consider how she could best dispose of the empty one which should have been full. An impulse to conceal it in one of her drawers made her start from her chair, only to sink back again as she reflected that nothing could be more fatal than for the bottle to be found in such a place. She knew very little about police procedure, but she believed that they might search the house very strictly. Then she thought that she would be better advised to leave the bottle where it was, since everyone knew that she alone amongst the household was in the habit of taking drops of veronal when she could not sleep. In the few detective novels which she had read, efforts at concealment had almost invariably proved the criminal’s undoing. It would be wiser to do nothing; to leave the bottle in full view would even appear, perhaps, to the police as a strong reason for believing her innocent. And if they did suspect her, and made inquiries about her relations with Penhallow, although it would be found that Penhallow had frequently been unkind to her, it must also be found that she had borne his unkindness for twenty years, and had never in all that time quarrelled with him. Her step-children might despise her, but they knew that she was not the kind of woman who would murder her husband. They knew nothing of the brief madness which had possessed her on the previous evening; apparently they regarded the very possibility that she might be the guilty person in the light of a joke. No one had seen her enter Penhallow’s room: of that she was certain. Without considering who might become implicated in her place, she began to reflect that anyone could have poisoned Penhallow’s whisky, and with the veronal prescribed for her, since she kept it in full view in her room, and had never made any secret of her possession of it.
She remembered Jimmy suddenly, and stirred uneasily in her chair, for although she disliked Jimmy she would have thought his arrest for a crime which he had not committed a more dreadful thing than the murder itself. Then she gave herself a mental shake, realising that since he had had nothing to do with Penhallow’s death the probability was that he had merely taken French leave for a day, and would reappear in due course.