The Catherine Wheel

As she moved away from the door, a lank, uncertain figure appeared from behind her. It was a male figure, and it looked very uncomfortable in an awkwardly cut blue suit-too tight, too light, too jaunty. John Taylor, perceiving it, made a shot in the dark.

“Mr. Miller?”

Al Miller said, “That’s right.”

He had a cap in his hand and kept turning it and plucking at it in a ma

He was still doing so when Jeremy Taverner and Jane Heron arrived together.

Behind his chink Jacob Taverner grimaced. He didn’t see they were going to be much use to him, but of course there was no saying. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. They were the youngest of the party by some years. He had seen all their birth-certificates and he knew. The Lady Marian woman was thirty-seven. Didn’t show it of course, and wouldn’t for the next ten years, if then. She was a looker all right-he’d give her that. Complexion out of a box, but quite a good skin underneath. Good hair-you didn’t often see that bright chestnut shade. Good teeth, and not spoilt with smoking like three-quarters of the women’s were nowadays. Fine figure of a woman-good curves. He liked a woman with curves himself, but he thought she’d have to watch her weight when she got into the forties. He hummed to himself inside his mind:

“There will be too much of me

In the coming by and bye.”

Al Miller, he’d be about thirty. Bit of a fish out of water, and a wet fish at that. Young Jeremy Taverner and him cousins- comic when you came to think of it. Goodlooking fellow, young Jeremy-credit to the family. Twenty-seven he’d be-or was it twenty-eight? No, twenty-seven. And the girl, Jane Heron, would be twenty-two. Graceful girl-very good figure-she’d have to have that to be a ma

He cocked an attentive ear, and heard Lady Marian say,

“My grandmother-Mary Taverner? Oh, yes, of course I remember her. I’m supposed to be exactly like her. She ran away, you know, and went on the stage, and married my grandfather. We’ve got a portrait of her at Rathlea, and everyone says I might have sat for it.” She turned a radiant smile upon the room as if she were collecting applause.

John Higgins received the full impact as he opened the door. It put a slightly bewildered look into his very bright blue eyes. She had looked right at him and smiled, but now she looked away. She was talking to the gentleman behind the desk. He stood where he was and waited for her to be done. Her laugh floated out.

“She was a great beauty, and my grandfather adored her. But an awful warning all the same, because when I remember her she weighed about sixteen stone. And she didn’t care.” The words were heavy with drama. “Fatal of course-quite fatal. Because there’s nothing like worry to keep you thin-and it’s so difficult to worry, isn’t it?” There was the least, faintest touch of Irish on the last word. The beautiful eyes went here and there, for sympathy this time. “She never could worry, and nor can I. She lived to be ninety, and I suppose I shall too. Marvelous stories she used to tell me about her acting days and all.”

John Higgins stood there looking and listening. He couldn’t possibly have put it into words, but she gave him the kind of feeling you got when the sun first came to having any strength in the spring. He wouldn’t have known what to say about it, but you can know a lot of things you don’t know how to say. He didn’t say anything, he just stood with those very blue eyes fixed on her, and the thick fair hair which wouldn’t lie down no matter what you did to it standing up in a shock all over his head, which was a couple of inches above that of anyone else in the room. Jacob, looking through his chink, put him at six-foot-three, and young Jeremy somewhere between six foot and six-foot-one.

Marian Thorpe-E

“Mrs. Duke-Florence Duke-that’s me-Floss to my friends. I’m Mark Taverner’s granddaughter-old Jeremiah’s third son. Solicitor’s clerk he was. Never made much of a living, but always very kind to us children. I had two brothers killed in the war. My father died when I was a baby. He was a clerk too-William Duke-so we lived with my grandfather.” The words came out one after the other like bubbles rising in oil, not fast but steadily.

Jacob thought, “She’d be a hard woman to stop if there was anything she wanted to say.”

John Taylor put the same question to her which he had put to the others.

“You remember your grandfather, then.”

“Remember him? I should say I do! I don’t know what we’d have done if he hadn’t taken us in, because my mother was delicate. I was too as a child, though you wouldn’t think so to look at me now, would you?” She gave a deep rich laugh. “Small for my age too, and so thin I looked as if you could blow me away. Well, it only shows there’s hope for all-doesn’t it?”

She showed magnificent teeth as she laughed again.

Then her colour deepened. She held her head well up and said,

“If you’re thinking about my name-Duke I was born, the same as you’ll see if you’ve got a list of us all, as I suppose you have.”

John Taylor said, “Yes.” He wondered what was coming.

She went on speaking in her deep, deliberate voice.

“Ellen Taverner was my mother, and William Duke was my father, so Duke I was born. And Duke is what I’ve gone back to. I married, and I got a bad bargain, so I went back to my own name that I didn’t have any reason to be ashamed of. My grandfather was dead by then, and I went behind the bar to keep myself. And there’s nobody can say a word against me-I’ve got nothing to hide. I’ve a little business of my own now, a snackbar, and doing well.” She looked from one to another, not aggressively but with a large tolerance. “There you are. It’s best to say what’s to be said and be done with it to my way of thinking, then nobody can cast it up at you afterwards that you weren’t straight with them. That’s all.”

She gave John Taylor a smile and a nod, and went and sat down between Jeremy and Al Miller. As she did so, John Higgins came slowly up to the table and gave his name.

“I got a letter telling me I was to call here.” He spoke slowly with a pleasant country accent.

John Taylor observed him with interest. There was a puzzled frown between the blue eyes.

“That’s quite all right, Mr. Higgins. Just where do you come into this family tree?”

“Well-” the big work-roughened hands took hold of each other-“well, sir, my grandmother Joa