The Catherine Wheel

by Patricia Wentworth

“It will be a terrible shock to his sister.”

  “Not so great a shock as seeing him stand his trial for murder and be hanged at the end of it. Castell swears it was Geoffrey who planned and carried out Al Miller’s murder. You were right about the motive. Albert knew about the passage and was threatening to go to the police if he didn’t get a handsome rake-off. Castell says Geoffrey stabbed him. Luke White says he changed clothes with Albert and impersonated him, not because he knew anything about a plot to bump him off-how could we think that he would be a party to anything like that? All he thought was Albert was going to be shipped off out of harm’s way for a nice little holiday in France. And after he had made his way back here, of course he had to be in hiding and nobody told him anything-only that the police were after the passage and he’d got to skip over to France with the next run… Florence Duke? Oh, yes, they’d been married and separated, but he’d never set eyes on her from the time he walked out of the inn as Al Miller. It was very stupid of her to commit suicide, because, beyond telling him a bit about the passage years ago, she’d nothing to do with any of it, and it wasn’t her business. That’s going to be his line of defence, and he’ll get a slick lawyer to put it over for him. I’m afraid there isn’t an earthly chance of pinning poor Florence Duke’s murder on to him, but I shall be very much surprised if a jury doesn’t find that he was up to his neck in the conspiracy to murder Al Miller, every detail of which must have been most carefully thought out and planned beforehand.”

  Miss Silver said, “I have no doubt of it.”

  He nodded.

  “Well, as I said, Castell swears Geoffrey Taverner did the actual stabbing, and if Geoffrey were alive, no doubt he would say it was Castell. Both of them were only just across the passage from that very convenient back stair which comes down on the far side of Castell’s office. When last seen alive Al Miller was being hustled into that office through the door which opens from the lounge. He was then more than half drunk. This was about ten o’clock. At a guess I should say Castell kept him there, and kept him drunk. Remember, he said he had been drinking downstairs with Luke White till round about eleven. This, of course, wasn’t true, because Luke was impersonating Albert at the Wiltons’ in Thread Street, but I think it’s pretty well certain that Castell was down in his office plying Albert with drink. He may have slipped upstairs about eleven and pretended to go to bed, in which case Geoffrey could have gone down and kept an eye on Albert. They had to give time for everyone in the house to be asleep, and they had to give time for Luke to establish his alibi. Then, right in the middle of their arrangements, John Higgins cropped up. He had heard from Mrs. Bridling of Eily’s scene with Luke, and naturally enough he came out here hot-foot to try and get her to come away. As you know, they compromised on her going to sleep with Jane Heron. But meanwhile Castell had overheard their conversation, and it gave him a bright idea.”

  Miss Silver coughed.

  “I do not think that it was Castell’s idea. We know very little about Geoffrey Taverner’s part in the whole affair, but I am not inclined to minimize it.”

  He looked at her sharply.

  “Did you suspect him at all?”

  Her needles clicked.

  “I was beginning to do so.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “I thought him a little too calm and unruffled on the night of the first murder-a little too-no, I cannot get a word for it. But there was something, some discrepancy between his behavior and the impression which it made upon me. It was all very slight, and people sometimes pose when there is no criminal motive. Then today, after Florence Duke had been found dead, he showed a definite change of manner towards myself. He had at first treated me in quite an offhand way. This morning quite suddenly he changed, became confidential on the subject of his sister, and thanked me for my kindness to her. He had noticed that she was inclined to talk to me, and he was anxious to convey certain impressions with regard to her. He wished me to believe that she was nervous, fanciful, credulous, and more than a little unbalanced. Some of these things were true, but why should he desire to impress them upon a stranger? My answer to that was that he was afraid of what she might have told me and wished to discount it without delay. I naturally found this very suggestive. To begin with, Geoffrey Taverner and his sister were the grandchildren of Jeremiah’s second son Matthew. Like his elder brother he was a builder. The older members of the family would have been the most likely to know the secrets of the house. A man who was a builder by trade would be apt to notice structural peculiarities. The eldest son obviously knew something which decided him to break off his connection with the Catherine-Wheel and strike out for himself. His son Jacob has shown an extreme interest in the matter. I discovered from Mildred Taverner that she had been the constant companion of her grandfather Matthew, the second son, and that he had told her he had been frightened by seeing a hole in the wall when he was a little boy. It occurred to me that he might have told Geoffrey a good deal more than that. The secret, if there was one, would be more likely to be handed down to a boy than to a nervous girl. These were some of the things which occurred to me.”

  Frank nodded.

  “Yes, I expect it was something like that. Well, to get back to Saturday night. I think we may assume Castell went and told Geoffrey that John Higgins had rolled up, and that one of them, probably Geoffrey, saw a way of making use of this. They waited until twelve or so, one of them in charge of Albert, and then they dressed him in Luke’s clothes, bumped him off, and laid him out at the foot of the stairs to be found by the first person who came down. Then, I think, Geoffrey went out and whistled Greenland’s Icy Mountains under Jane Heron’s window. If nobody heard him, well, that was that. If anyone did, it would throw suspicion on John Higgins. Castell unlatched one of the lounge windows to help the good work along. Then they both went back to bed and waited for someone to give the alarm. It was a very ingenious plan, and if it hadn’t been for you it might have come off.”

  Miss Silver gave a modest cough.

  “What about Mr. Jacob Taverner? He made a statement, did he not? What did he say?”

  Frank’s smile had a tinge of malice.

  “He hasn’t confided in you?”

  “No.”

  “How surprising! All the same, I’d like to know how he strikes you.”

  She laid her knitting down for a moment and rested her hands upon it.

  “Because a man has made a fortune in business it does not follow that his judgment in other matters is to be relied upon. I have thought that, having retired from active management, he has perhaps found time hangs heavy upon his hands, and I think that he has always had some kind of romantic fancy about the Catherine-Wheel. Most men have a point on which they are not quite grown up. I think that with Mr. Jacob Taverner this point is the Catherine-Wheel. Like the rest of the family, he knew something, and I think at the back of his mind there was the idea that someday when he had time he would go into the matter and clear it up. The lease ran out, the property came back to him, he retired from business, and there was his opportunity. By assembling as many of Jeremiah Taverner’s descendants as possible he hoped to piece together what they knew. I think he also may have had the idea of observing them with a view to the ultimate disposal of his fortune.”

  “Well, well, you were looking over his shoulder, I suppose. Invisible, of course, because Crisp and I were there and we didn’t see you.”

  She smiled indulgently.

  “Did his statement say anything like that?”

  “Practically word for word-especially the bit about not being quite grown up. He said his father told him there was a secret room-room, not passage-when he was a boy, and it took hold of him. He used to plan to go and find it, and to find it full of gold and silver. Rather an ironical way for a dream to come true! When he took the place over he pressed Castell about it. He didn’t get anything at first, but after he had put in his advertisement and the relations began to roll up Castell showed him the pass
age between the cellar and the shore. He said Annie had only just told him about it. Jacob didn’t believe him, and he still believed there was a secret room, because that’s what his father had called it, and nobody would have called that passage between the cellar and the shore a room. So he went on fishing to see what he could get from the relations. He thought they all knew something, and if he got them all together down here he’d be able to put the bits together and get what he wanted. Well, he got more than he bargained for. He’s a bit shattered. Two murders and a criminal conspiracy-it’s a little like going out with a shrimping-net and finding you’ve caught a shark!” Miss Silver was casting off her stitches. She said gravely, “It has been a very trying time, but it is over.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Mrs. Bridling was very late in getting home. On any other day she would have felt some apprehension on the score of Mr. Bridling’s temper, and would certainly have had to endure a prolonged dissertation on the duty of a wife, supported by quotations from the Scriptures, but tonight she had so much news to impart that she could count upon holding the floor. Mr. Bridling’s curiosity, whetted by rumour and far from being appeased by the snatches of news which had come his way, was in a really rampant condition. Wat Cooling’s aunt had rushed in with the bare statement that Geoffrey Taverner had committed suicide and then rushed out again to give an irascible husband who was working over-time his belated supper. John Higgins hadn’t been near him. He was, in fact, what Mrs. Bridling called “all worked up.”

  Mrs. Bridling found herself being listened to as never before, and she fairly let herself go.

  “Seems there’s been goodness knows what going on. Secret passages full of gold and diamonds and all sorts. And Mr. Castell taken up for murder-and Mr. Geoffrey Taverner too if he hadn’t killed himself. And that Luke White not dead at all. Too bad to be killed easy is what I say!”

  “Flourishing like the green bay tree,” said Mr. Bridling with a groan.

  His wife gave an emphatic nod.

  “You couldn’t have put it better. You’re a wonderful hand with texts, Ezra, and that I must say.”

  Mr. Bridling groaned again, this time with impatience.

  “Go on!” he said.

  Emily Bridling went on with an extremely colourful narrative.

  “It’s poor Annie I’m sorry for,” she said at the end of it.

  “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.”

  Patricia Wentworth

  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.

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