The Catherine Wheel (8 page)

Eily went on wiping the blades with her finger.

“There’s nothing else I can do.”

“Of course there is! You ought to tell Mr. Castell and your aunt.”

A faint shudder went over Eily like a ripple going over water.

“You don’t understand.”

“You could walk out of here and marry John Higgins. He wants you to, doesn’t he?”

“I can’t be doing that.”

“Because of what Luke said? He was just trying it on. You could go to the police. There, that’s three things you could do. And you can put those scissors down—they give me the creeps. You stuck them into his hand, didn’t you?”

The dark blue eyes widened. There was another of those slow shudders. Jane said half impatiently,

“I shouldn’t worry—he was asking for it.”

She turned round to the glass, exclaimed at what it showed her, and began to get busy with cleansing tissue.

Eily put the scissors down and moved a step or two away. All the time Jane was doing her face she was aware of her, standing there with that fixed staring look.

When she was ready, Eily was still there. Jane began to feel that she needed shaking. A girl who was chambermaid at an inn which certainly contained some odd people ought to be a bit tougher than that. The Catherine-Wheel was no place for a sensitive plant—very few places were. If you had your living to earn you had to learn how to look after yourself, but it oughtn’t to have to come to stabbing, not even with nail-scissors. She said rather briskly,

“Come along, Eily—there’s no harm done.”

Eily looked down at the blood on her forefinger.

“It was only the little pair of scissors,” she said, “and no harm done at all.”

“Then what are you worrying about?”

She said, “Suppose I’d had a knife—”

This time the shudder was in her voice.

As Jane passed the turn of the stairs on her way down, a cold wind came blowing up to meet her. She stopped half way, and saw the front door open and Luke White standing there with his back to her. She could see that it was Luke because of his grey waiter’s jacket. His left hand hung down and there was a handkerchief around it. His voice came back to her with the blowing wind—quite a polite, civilized voice for someone who had just been talking about cutting people’s hearts out. “I am sorry, madam, but I am afraid we have no room.”

Beyond him, still upon the doorstep, Jane could see a woman’s figure. A voice said, “Dear me!”

Jane came down the rest of the way into the hall and took a step or two along the narrow passage to the front door. There was something familiar about the voice with its very clear enunciation. She came right up to the door and saw a little woman in dowdy old-fashioned clothes, a well-worn fur tippet about her neck, a shabby handbag in one hand and a small fibre suit-case in the other.

She said, “Oh!” And then, “But I’ve met you, haven’t I—at Mrs. Moray’s? Your name—”

There was a faint prim cough.

“Miss Silver—Miss Maud Silver. And you are Miss Jane Heron?”

“Yes. Do come in, won’t you?”

“We haven’t any room, Miss Heron,” said Luke White. He spoke smoothly, but with an underlying impertinence which brought Jane’s head up.

Miss Silver stepped past him and set down her case.

“Pray shut the door.” Her tone was one of quiet authority.

She addressed herself to Jane.

“The wind is extremely chilly. I was on my way to keep an appointment, and after some difficulties with which I need not trouble you a gentleman very kindly gave me a lift in his car and recommended this hotel. He himself was going to stay with a Sir John Challoner who resides in this neighbourhood so it has all turned out most conveniently. I really do not feel able to proceed any farther tonight—so inclement, and I have no conveyance. But I shall be quite content with an armchair if there is no bedroom available.”

She had been walking down the passage as she spoke. They now emerged upon the small square hall. From the lounge door half open on the right there came the smell of coffee and the sound of voices. As Miss Silver turned with a pleased smile in this direction, Luke White pushed past her.

“That’s a private party in there. And we’ve no room—I told you we haven’t.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I have no wish to intrude—” she began with dignity.

But before she could say anything more the half open door was thrown wide. Between Jeremy, who obviously intended to come out, and Jane, who obviously intended to come in, there really was no room for Luke White. He had a look of black anger as he slid past Jeremy into the lounge and made his way to where Fogarty Castell was standing beside the coffee-tray.

Jane had slipped her hand inside Miss Silver’s arm.

“Jeremy, this is Miss Silver whom I met at Mrs. Moray’s. She got held up on the road, and that horrible Luke White says there isn’t any room here. But we can manage something, can’t we?”

“I expect so. Come in, Miss Silver, and have some coffee with us.”

Miss Silver gave him the smile reserved for the polite and attentive young.

“Most delightful—most refreshing,” she said.

As they advanced into the room they encountered Fogarty Castell, all smiles and apologies.

“My excuses, madam, but we really do not have any room that we can offer you. Mr. Taverner’s party has taken up all our accommodation. Captain Taverner will tell you that this is so.”

Captain Taverner frowned. He could see just what Jane had landed him into, and he didn’t see any way of getting out of it. He would have to give up his room. The thought was sweetened by the fact that this was, for some reason, going to annoy Luke White to whom he had taken a considerable dislike. It was also, apparently, going to annoy Fogarty Castell. He made his offer pleasantly enough, received the gracious thanks of Miss Silver and the approbation of Jane, and then had to meet some suave opposition.

In the end it was Miss Silver herself who decided the matter. Speaking with the quiet precision with which she had so often in the past quelled an unruly schoolroom, she observed that if there were any question of the intrusion of a stranger into some private family affair, she would of course withdraw.

Fogarty threw up his hands.

“But there is no private affair! There is a family reunion—you can see it. I will speak to Mr. Taverner. He is the owner, you understand. The inn is his, the party is his—I am only the manager.” He made another of those foreign gestures and was gone. They could see him waving his hands as he talked to Jacob Taverner.

Jane spoke on a sudden impulse. “He didn’t like your saying that about its being a private affair, did he? Look here, come and sit down, and Jeremy will get us some coffee. How odd that the man who gave you a lift should be going to stay with Jack Challoner. He’s a friend of Jeremy’s.”

The room was a good size. There were chairs scattered about over the floor space in groups of twos and threes. Heavy plush curtains masked the windows, giving out a smell of must and tobacco. Even under the softening influence of lamplight both they and all the other furnishings had a drab and dingy look.

Mildred Taverner was sitting by herself at a small table upon which she had placed her coffee-cup. She was thinking how shockingly in need of spring-cleaning the whole place was. Her head felt queer and light, but not quite so queer and light as it had done before she drank her coffee. It was very good coffee— very good indeed. All the food and drink was very good. Without meaning to, she gave a little giggling laugh. The champagne was very good. She had never had champagne before. It made you feel funny afterwards, but it was very good at the time. Might have been a bit sweeter. She would have liked a spoonful of sugar in it herself, but there wasn’t any on the table, and if there had been, she wouldn’t have liked to make herself peculiar. She would have liked another cup of coffee, but she didn’t feel too sure about getting up and going over to ask for it. She thought perhaps she would, and then she thought she wouldn’t.

She looked about her. Geoffrey was standing with his back to her talking to Lady Marian. Funny to think they had a cousin who was an earl’s daughter. But she didn’t think much of that Mr. Thorpe-Ennington. Awful to get married to a man who got drunk like that. Drunk? He might have been dead the way he was lying in that chair. She wondered how they had got him in from the dining-room. Al Miller wasn’t much better. Noisy, that’s what he was—noisy and vulgar—laughing too much, and talking too loud to the waiter and Mr. Castell. The waiter—Luke White—one of the Luke Taverner lot. Not at all a nice family connection. She didn’t really care about any of them, and they didn’t care about her. Nobody came and talked to her. She didn’t want them to—she had much rather they didn’t. She liked looking on.

Jeremy Taverner and Jane Heron were having their coffee with the governessy-looking person who had come into the room with Jane. Such an unfashionable hat, such a shabby fur tie. She remembered her own fur, bought just before the war in a January sale, kept very carefully in a drawer with moth-ball and only worn on special occasions. She kept all her clothes in moth-ball, and had become so used to the smell that she no longer noticed it. It was diffusing itself now like the quality of mercy and contending not unsuccessfully with the odours indigenous to the room.

She was mentally pricing the rest of Miss Silver’s attire, a process which gave her a pleasantly superior feeling, when Jacob Taverner came and sat down beside her. The superior feeling petered away and left her fluttered and wishing herself anywhere else. His eyes were so bright they made her quite giddy, and there was something about his voice—as if he was laughing at you, only of course there wasn’t anything to laugh at.

“Well, my dear Mildred, Annie Castell makes good coffee, doesn’t she? You’re none the worse, I hope, for your visit to the Smugglers’ Cave?”

She bridled a little, lifting her long neck out of its habitual poke and drawing in her chin. He was a cousin, of course, but to call her “My dear Mildred” like that—well, it was only the second time they had met. It wasn’t really quite nice. Too familiar, that’s what it was, and it wasn’t a thing she had ever cared about or encouraged. And then it all went out of her head, because he was saying,

“What did you mean when you said, ‘But I thought—’?”

At once she became quite dreadfully confused. Men made her feel nervous. Though he was two years younger, Geoffrey had always bullied her. She could still feel the place on her arm where he had pinched her down in the cellar. As if she had said something dreadful. He oughtn’t to have done it—she was sure she was going to have a very bad bruise. What she had said was nothing really—anyone might have said it. She hadn’t meant to.

“Well? Why did you say it?”

“I don’t know—”

“You were surprised—was that it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You didn’t think there was a passage?”

She looked as confused and nervous as she felt. Because of course she had always known there was a passage, and Geoffrey had always told her not to talk about it.

Jacob Taverner didn’t give her any time.

“No, it wasn’t that. You knew there was a passage, didn’t you? But you didn’t know that it opened out of the cellars. Was that it? You said, ‘But I thought—’ Did you think it opened somewhere else?”

The questions came as quick as peas out of a pea-shooter. That’s what they reminded her of—Geoffrey shooting peas at her out of his pea-shooter when he was eight years old and calling her a cry-baby because she burst into tears. As if anyone wouldn’t cry if they thought they were going to have their eyes shot out! She had a moment’s terrified recollection of just how frightened she had been.

Jacob fired that last question at her again.

“Did you think it opened somewhere else? Where did you think it opened?”

The champagne was still in her head. She didn’t mean to speak, but before she knew that she was going to she had said,

“Upstairs—”

His bright, twinkling eyes were much too near. He had his elbows on the table, leaning across it. She didn’t like anyone to be so near her.

He said, “Why?”

“I don’t know—”

“Come along—you must know why you thought it was upstairs. What made you think so?”

It was like being pushed into a corner. His eyes twinkled at her and made her feel giddy. It was like being pushed. She hadn’t any resistance left.

“My grandfather said so.”

“Matthew? What did he say?”

“It was when he was very old—he liked talking. He said he woke up in the night and heard something. It was all in the dark and he was frightened—he was only a little boy. Then he saw a light coming from a hole in the wall. He was dreadfully frightened, and he ran away back to his bed and pulled the clothes over his head.”

“And where did he see this hole in the wall?”

She shook her head.

“He didn’t say.”

“Didn’t you ask him?”

She shook her head again.

“That’s what Geoffrey said, but I didn’t think about it. It was when I was helping to nurse him before he died. Geoffrey was angry, but I didn’t think about it at all—not like that. I thought he’d been dreaming. I didn’t think there was a passage. But when you said there was—then I thought perhaps it really happened. Only I didn’t think he could have gone all the way down to the cellars—not a little boy like that, in the dark. And that’s why I said, ‘But I thought—’ ”

The twinkling eyes fixed hers.

“That was all?”

She nodded.

“It wasn’t anything really.”

He took his elbows off the table and sat up. Such a relief to have him farther away.

“No, it wasn’t anything,” he said. “You were right about what you thought the first time. He’d been dreaming. And whether he dreamed what he told you when he was a kid or when he was in his second childhood doesn’t make a ha’porth of difference. The passage has always opened out of the cellar just the same as you saw it tonight. Seeing’s believing. And first to last what Matthew told you would be just something he’d dreamt.”

He began to get up out of his chair. “Not that it matters anyway,” he said, and went over to the group beside the coffee-tray with her empty cup in his hand.