“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!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
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.”