Patricia Wentworth - The Catherine Wheel

Mr. John Taylor looked incredulous.

“You don’t mean to tell me you don’t know anything at all about any of them!”

Jacob Taverner put his head on one side and grinned.

“Would you believe me?”

“No, I should not.”

Jacob laughed his queer dry laugh.

“You don’t have to. I know a thing or two here and there, as you might say. Some of them went up in the world, and some of them went down. Some of them died in their beds, and some of them didn’t. Some of them got killed in both wars. Between the little I knew and what was in the fifty letters, I’ve got them more or less sorted out. Now, to start with-my own generation don’t interest me, and they’re mostly gone. So far as my money is concerned you can wash them out. They’ve either made enough for themselves or they’ve got used to doing without. Anyway I’m not interested. It’s the next generation, old Jeremiah’s great-grandchildren, that I’ll be putting my money on, and this is what they boil down to. It’s not the whole of them- you’re to understand that. I’ve picked them over and I’ve sorted them out.”

“Do you mean you’ve been interviewing them?”

“No, I don’t. I didn’t want to be mixed up in it personally-not for the moment. As a matter of fact I’ve taken the liberty of using your name.”

“ Really , Jacob!” Mr. Taylor looked decidedly annoyed.

His client gave that odd laugh again.

“You’ll get over it. I haven’t compromised you-only invited the ones I’ve picked to come and meet you here this afternoon.”

John Taylor tapped his knee.

“To meet me-not you?”

“Certainly not to meet me. I am the great Anon, as far as a personal appearance goes. You can give them my name, but I want to have a look at ’em before they have a look at me. You will interview them, and I shall lurk”-he jerked a scraggy elbow-“behind that door. I shall hear without being heard. You will place nine chairs with their backs to me, and I shall be able to look through the crack and see without being seen.”

John Taylor leaned forward and said in a perfectly serious voice,

“You know, Jacob, sometimes I really do think that you are mad.”

He got a grimace and a burst of laughter.

“My dear John, I pay you handsomely to prevent anyone else saying so. Besides it isn’t true. I have merely retained my youth, while you have become a fogy. It amuses me to gambol, to disport myself, to play tricks. I have a lot of money. What’s the good of it if I don’t make it amuse me? Well, I’m going to-that’s all. And now, perhaps, you will let me get down to brass tacks and tell you about the people who are coming to see you this afternoon.”

Mr. John Taylor pursed his lips, pulled forward a sheet of note-paper, and took up a nicely pointed pencil. His manner showed resignation, with an underlying suggestion of protest.

Jacob let out one of his cackling laughs.

“All set? Well then, off we go! Taverner’s the name-Geoffrey and Mildred-grandson and granddaughter of Jeremiah’s second son Matthew-brother and sister-somewhere in their forties.”

John Taylor wrote them down.

“Got ’em? Now we come to the next brother, Mark. Granddaughter of his in the female line-Mrs. Duke- Florence -Mrs. Florence Duke.”

John Taylor made no reply. He wrote down, “Mrs. Florence Duke.”

Jacob rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

“Jeremiah’s fourth child was a daughter, Mary. This is where we go up in the world. She ran away to go on the stage and married the Earl of Rathlea-old family, poor wits, twopence half-penny in his pocket, and a tumbledown castle in Ireland. The family didn’t know whether they were coming or going. First she disgraced them by going on the stage, and then they disgraced her by being in trade. One way and another there was no love lost, and what you might call a pretty clean cut. Well, Mary’s gone, and the title’s gone-last male heir killed in the war. But there’s a granddaughter, Lady Marian Thorpe-Ennington.”

John Taylor looked up quickly.

“Lady Marian-”

Jacob nodded.

“Lady Marian O’Hara-Lady Marian Morgenstern-Madame de Farandol-Lady Marian Thorpe-Ennington.”

“My dear Jacob!”

Jacob Taverner grinned.

“Famous beauty-or was. Lively piece by all accounts-varied taste in husbands. Married Morgenstern for his money-no one could possibly have married him for anything else-and he diddled her out of it.”

“I remember. The will made a sensation. He left everything to charities-and a secretary.”

“Bit of a sell for my cousin Marian. She married a young de Farandol after that-racing motorist-got himself killed just before the war. Not much money from him. Now she’s married to Freddy Thorpe-Ennington whose father’s pickle manufactory has just gone smash. She hasn’t had much luck, you see. And now we come down in the world again. The next son, Luke- well, there are quite a lot of his descendants running around. Luke wasn’t what you’d call respectable-he took to the roads and died in a workhouse. But one of his daughters married a railway porter at Ledlington, and they had one son. I’ve picked him. His name is Albert Miller, commonly called Al.”

“What made you pick him up?”

John Taylor’s tone was mildly interested. He was prepared to maintain, professionally, to all comers that Jacob Taverner was not legally mad. A man who has amassed nearly a million pounds can be allowed his eccentricities. In his private capacity, John was interested to see how these eccentricities worked, and how nearly they might be said to approach the borderline.

Jacob withdrew a pin from the lapel of his shocking old jacket and made small stabbing passes with it in the air.

“Wrote the names on a bit of paper, shut my eyes, and prodded at ’em. Didn’t want more than one or two out of any line. The pin went right into Al at the first go, clean through the M in Miller, so I took him. It’s a good pin. Do you know how long I’ve had it- forty-five years. And when in doubt I’ve always shut my eyes and pricked, and it’s never let me down once. Never lost it but once, and I thought I’d have gone off my head. Dropped it in my own office, and they said they couldn’t find it-slipped out of my hand as I was sticking it back into my coat, and they said they couldn’t find it. I had every man jack of ’em up, and I said, ‘Man, woman, or boy, who finds that pin gets ten pounds, and if it isn’t found, everyone gets the sack.’ A matter of two hours afterwards a smart boy comes along and says he’s found it. I took a look at the pin he brought and I said, ‘I’ve no room for fools in my office. You can get out and you can stay out.’ ”

“Why was he a fool, and how did you know it was not your pin?”

Jacob cracked his fingers.

“How do you know your children from anyone else’s? When you’ve lived with anything for forty-odd years, nobody’s going to take you in. And he was a fool because he brought me a brand-new pin out of a packet. Thought himself smart, and all he got was the sack.”

“But you did get it back?”

Jacob put the pin carefully into his lapel.

“I paid a blackmailing young woman five hundred pounds for it. I’d have paid double. She thought she’d scored me off, but I got back on her. Nobody’s ever scored me off and got away with it-nobody. It’s too long a story to tell you now. We’ve done the descendants of Matthew, Mark, Mary, and Luke, and now we come to the twins, Joanna and John. We’ll take Joanna first. Her lot is interesting. She married a man called Higgins, and a daughter of hers married a man called Castell-Fogarty Castell-Portuguese father, Irish mother. And I’ve picked a Higgins grandson, John Higgins-carpenter by trade-bit of a local preacher in his off time. Well, I’ve picked him, and I’ve picked the Castells. I said I wasn’t going to have anyone in my own generation, but they are the exception that proves the rule. I’ve picked ’em because they’ll be handy. Now for number seven, John. I’ve got his grandson, Jeremy Taverner- regular soldier-Captain Jeremy Taverner. Then there’s number eight, Acts-old Jeremiah took all his children’s names out of the Bible-I’ve picked a granddaughter of his, name of Jane Heron. She’s in a shop-tries on the dresses and walks round in ’em so the fat old women and scraggy old maids think they’re going to look like she does. There’s twice at least this afternoon you’ve called me mad, John Taylor, but I’m not so mad as the women who go to dress shows and buy the clothes off a girl with a figure they probably never had and certainly don’t have now. Well, that’s the lot, and I’m off into the next room. Here’s the family tree to keep you straight. By the way, the Castells won’t be coming. I’ve my own private arrangement with them, and they’re down at the inn. The others are just about due.