The Catherine Wheel Read Online Free PDF Page B

know why?”
    Quite a bright blotting-paper pink came up into Mildred Taverner’s face. She said in an unnaturally high voice,
    “It was most unfair! My grandfather always said so!”
    Al Miller rubbed his hands together, rolling the handkerchief between them.
    “So did mine. He said it was a right-down shame.”
    Jacob’s mouth twisted.
    “I believe there was complete unanimity on that point. It was the only one on which the rest of the family did see eye to eye. The very minute they’d got over telling my father what they thought of him for taking his legal rights, they started a first-class dog-fight over their mother’s money.”
    Florence Duke said in her deliberate way,
    “There wasn’t any to speak of.”
    He gave his cackling laugh.
    “That’s just why. Throw one bone in amongst half a dozen dogs and see what happens! As you say, it wasn’t a very big bone, and by rights—mark this—by rights it had to be divided among the whole eight children. But my father didn’t claim his share. I don’t say it was handsome of him—I’m just stating facts. He left his mother’s belongings to be divided up among the other seven.”
    “Wills are so tiresome,” said Lady Marian in her delicious voice. “Freddy’s father left a simply dreadful one.”
    Geoffrey Taverner moved impatiently.
    “Just what was there to divide?”
    “Nothing to write home about. There was a cottage with a bit of land to it, a few pieces of jewelry, and five hundred pounds in consols. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, they each got a hundred pounds. Mary and Joanna got a brooch and a bracelet or so apiece, and Joanna got the cottage. She was just going to marry your grandfather”—he addressed John Higgins—“and when they’d all fought themselves to a standstill and Thomas Higgins had put down another twenty pounds, they took a fiver each out of it and let her have the cottage. Mary didn’t come into it, because she was married to Lord Rathlea and safe away on the other side of the Irish Channel. Well, after that there wasn’t much love lost. Matthew did well out of his money. He bought a couple of old cottages and doubled his capital on them. House-coping—that was his job.” He glanced maliciously at Geoffrey and Mildred. “No need to be offended—my father was in the same line. Mark—respectability was his middle name—country solicitor’s clerk to the end of his days. Whilst Mary was an ornament to the Peerage, and Luke—well, the less said about Luke the better.”
    “Why can’t you let him alone?” said Al Miller. His dark skin did not seem to be susceptible to a flush. Anger turned him sallow. He rolled the brightly coloured handkerchief between sweating palms.
    Jacob laughed.
    “All right, all right—least said soonest mended. Joanna lived and died in her cottage in a state of rural felicity. John went up in the world—made a ladder of his brains and climbed. And Acts worked up from rags and bones, figuratively speaking—” he bowed to Jane—“to quite a nice little antique shop in Ledborough. And there we are.”
    Geoffrey Taverner said,
    “Very clear and succinct, but I don’t know that it gets us anywhere. I think we should all like to know why we have been brought here.”
    “Naturally. Now I hope—I really do hope you haven’t all been buoyed up with the idea of hearing something to your advantage.”
    Marian Thorpe-Ennington sighed in a dramatic manner.
    “But of course we have, my dear man. I said to Freddy at once, ‘Things simply can’t go on being as foul as they’ve been ever since we got married. I mean, if there’s a silver-lining, it’s simply bound to show up some time, isn’t it? And why shouldn’t it be now?’ I said that at once. But he’s so gloomy about the whole thing, the poor sweet, and no wonder, having to go to these dreadful creditors’ meetings. That’s why he couldn’t be here this afternoon. And he simply hated my coming alone, because he always thinks