Patricia Wentworth - The Catherine Wheel

“She shouldn’t have married a foreigner,” said Mr. Bridling.

Mrs. Bridling brought him his cup of cocoa.

“Someone’s got to marry them.”

Mr. Bridling blew on the froth.

“Let them marry foreign,” he said. “Annie Higgins was brought up Chapel and she did ought to have known better.”

“She didn’t know he was going to turn out the way he did. Ever such a way with him, and she was tired of cooking for other people-wanted a home of her own.”

Mr. Bridling sipped complacently.

“And look where it’s brought her,” he said. “Lucky for her if she isn’t took up too. There’s no word of that, I suppose?”

Mrs. Bridling flushed.

“No, there isn’t, nor there won’t be if anyone’s got a grain of sense. Poor Annie didn’t know a thing. Nor they wouldn’t tell her-why should they? A bit simple from a child, but that good-hearted, and such a hand for pastry as never was.”

Mr. Bridling sipped again.

“Ah, well,” he said, “she’s made her bed and she must lie on it.”

Up at the Catherine-Wheel Jane and Eily were talking in bed. Jane looked into the darkness and thought of all the things that had happened since Jeremy drove her down on Saturday evening. It was only Tuesday now, and by another Saturday she wouldn’t be Jane Heron any more, because she was going to marry Jeremy. She had lost her job, she had got past feeling proud, they loved each other, he wanted to take care of her. There really didn’t seem to be anything to wait for.

The last thought got itself into words.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything to wait for.”

Eily made a rather indeterminate sound-a kind of murmur with a question in it. Then she said,

“John is in a terrible hurry.”

Jane said what she had said once before.

“He wants to look after you. You can’t stay here.”

Eily shuddered. She put out a hand, and Jane held it.

“Don’t you want to marry him?”

Eily didn’t answer that. She said,

“He says there’s room for Aunt Annie and she’ll be welcome.”

“He’s good. He’ll look after you, Eily.”

Eily drew a long sighing breath.

“I shall have to go to chapel twice on a Sunday.”

Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.

Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.