Читать книгу The Catherine Wheel - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 4

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Jacob Taverner sat there, as thin as a monkey and with the same alert, malicious look. A good many different climates had tanned and dried his skin. He had kept his hair, and whether by luck or good management, it was not very grey. It wasn’t dyed either. No hairdresser would have made himself responsible for its odd dried-grass appearance. His eyes behind the sparkle were hazel. For the rest, there wasn’t a great deal of him. He had dropped an inch from his original five-foot-six. Arms and legs had a frail, spidery look. He wore the sort of old clothes which only a tramp or a millionaire would be seen dead in. He wasn’t quite a millionaire, but he was getting on that way, and he was seeing his solicitor, Mr. John Taylor, about the disposition of his property. Not that he intended to die—by no means—but having managed to enjoy a great many different things in the course of his seventy years, he now intended to amuse himself with the always fascinating possibilities of will-making with a difference.

Mr. Taylor, who had known him for some forty-five years, knew better than to try and thwart this latest of many preoccupations. Sometimes he said, ‘Certainly,’ sometimes he said, ‘I should advise you to think that over,’ and sometimes he didn’t say anything at all. When this happened, Jacob Taverner chuckled secretly and the malice in his eyes grew brighter. Silence meant disapproval, and when John Taylor disapproved of him he felt that he had scored, because John Taylor represented middle-class respectability, and when it was possible to give middle-class respectability a brief electric jolt he always enjoyed doing it.

They sat with the office table between them and John Taylor wrote. A pleasantly rounded little man with everything very neat about him, including a head very shiny and bald with a tidy little fringe of iron-grey hair at the back.

Jacob Taverner sat back in his chair with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and laughed.

‘Do you know, I had fifty answers to my advertisement. Fifty!’ He gave a sort of crow. ‘A lot of dishonest people in the world, aren’t there?’

‘There might not be any dishonest intention—’

Jacob Taverner puffed out his cheeks, and then suddenly expelled the air in a sound like ‘Pho!’ Contempt for his solicitor’s opinion was indicated.

‘Taverner’s not all that common as a name, and when you tack Jeremiah on to it—well, I ask you! “Descendants of Jeremiah Taverner who died in 1888”—that’s what I put in my advertisement. I had fifty answers, and half of them were just trying it on.’

‘He might have had fifty descendants,’ said Mr. John Taylor.

‘He might have had a hundred, or two hundred, or three, but he didn’t have half of those who answered my advertisement. He had eight children—I’m not counting four that died in their cradles. My father Jeremiah was the eldest. The next five sons were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, and the two girls were Mary and Joanna. Mary came fourth between Mark and Luke, and Joanna was a twin with John. Well, there’s quite a lot of scope for descendants there. That’s what first put it into my head, you know. Old Jeremiah, he kept the Catherine-Wheel inn on the coast road to Ledlington, and his father before him. Up to their necks in the smuggling trade, they were, and made a pretty penny out of it. They used to land the cargoes and get them into Jeremiah’s cellars very clever.’ He chuckled. ‘I remember him, and that’s the way he used to talk about it—“We diddled them very clever”. Well, he died in eighty-eight and he left everything to my father, his eldest son Jeremiah.’ He screwed up his face in a monkey grimace. ‘Was there a family row! None of them ever spoke to him again or had any truck or dealings with him. He let the inn on a long lease, put the money in his pocket, and set up as a contractor. He made a pile, and I’ve made another—and because of the family quarrel I can’t make a decent family will without advertising for my kith and kin.’

Mr. John Taylor looked incredulous.

‘You don’t mean to tell me you don’t know anything at all about any of them!’

Jacob laughed his queer dry laugh.

‘Would you believe me?’

‘No, I should not.’

Jacob laughed his queer dry laugh.

‘You don’t have to. I know a thing or two here and there, as you might say. Some of them went up in the world, and some of them went down. Some of them died in their beds, and some of them didn’t. Some of them got killed in both wars. Between the little I knew and what was in the fifty letters, I’ve got them more or less sorted out. Now, to start with—my own generation don’t interest me, and they’re mostly gone. So far as my money is concerned you can wash them out. They’ve either made enough for themselves or they’ve got used to doing without. Anyway I’m not interested. It’s the next generation, old Jeremiah’s great-grandchildren, that I’ll be putting my money on, and this is what they boil down to. It’s not the whole of them—you’re to understand that. I’ve picked them over and I’ve sorted them out.’

‘Do you mean you’ve been interviewing them?’

‘No, I don’t. I didn’t want to be mixed up in it personally—not for the moment. As a matter of fact I’ve taken the liberty of using your name.’

‘Really, Jacob!’ Mr. Taylor looked decidedly annoyed.

His client gave that odd laugh again.

‘You’ll get over it. I haven’t compromised you—only invited the ones I’ve picked to come and meet you here this afternoon.’

John Taylor tapped his knee.

‘To meet me—not you?’

‘Certainly not to meet me. I am the great Anon. as far as a personal appearance goes. You can give them my name, but I want to have a look at ’em before they have a look at me. You will interview them, and I shall lurk’—he jerked a scraggy elbow—‘behind that door. I shall hear without being heard. You will place nine chairs with their backs to me, and I shall be able to look through the crack and see without being seen.’

John Taylor leaned forward and said in a perfectly serious voice, ‘You know, Jacob, sometimes I really do think that you are mad.’

He got a grimace and a burst of laughter.

‘My dear John, I pay you handsomely to prevent anyone else saying so. Besides it isn’t true. I have merely retained my youth, while you have become a fogy. It amuses me to gambol, to disport myself, to play tricks. I have a lot of money. What’s the good of it if I don’t make it amuse me? Well, I’m going to—that’s all. And now, perhaps, you will let me get down to brass tacks and tell you about the people who are coming to see you this afternoon.’

Mr. John Taylor pursed his lips, pulled forward a sheet of notepaper, and took up a nicely pointed pencil. His manner showed resignation, with an underlying suggestion of protest.

Jacob let out one of his cackling laughs.

‘All set? Well then, off we go! Taverner’s the name—Geoffrey and Mildred—grandson and granddaughter of Jeremiah’s second son Matthew—brother and sister—somewhere in their forties.’

John Taylor wrote them down.

‘Got ’em? Now we come to the next brother, Mark. Granddaughter of his in the female line—Mrs. Duke—Florence—Mrs. Florence Duke.’

John Taylor made no reply. He wrote down, ‘Mrs. Florence Duke.’

Jacob rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

‘Jeremiah’s fourth child was a daughter, Mary. This is where we go up in the world. She ran away to go on the stage and married the Earl of Rathlea—old family, poor wits, twopence halfpenny in his pocket, and a tumbledown castle in Ireland. The family didn’t know whether they were coming or going. First she disgraced them by going on the stage, and then they disgraced her by being in trade. One way and another there was no love lost, and what you might call a pretty clean cut. Well, Mary’s gone, and the title’s gone—last male heir killed in the war. But there’s a grandaughter, Lady Marian Thorpe-Ennington.’

John Taylor looked up quickly.

‘Lady Marian—’

Jacob nodded.

‘Lady Marian O’Hara—Lady Marian Morgenstern—Madame de Farandol—Lady Marian Thorpe-Ennington.’

‘My dear Jacob!’

Jacob Taverner grinned.

‘Famous beauty—or was. Lively piece by all accounts—varied taste in husbands. Married Morgenstern for his money—no one could possibly have married him for anything else—and he diddled her out of it.’

‘I remember. The will made a sensation. He left everything to charities—and a secretary.’

‘Bit of a sell for my cousin Marian. She married a young de Farandol after that—racing motorist—got himself killed just before the war. Not much money from him. Now she’s married to Freddy Thorpe-Ennington whose father’s pickle factory has just gone smash. She hasn’t had much luck, you see. And now we come down in the world again. The next son, Luke—well, there are quite a lot of his descendants running around. Luke wasn’t what you’d call respectable—he took to the roads and died in a workhouse. But one of his daughters married a railway porter at Ledlington, and they had one son. I’ve picked him. His name is Albert Miller, commonly called Al.’

‘What made you pick him?’

John Taylor’s tone was mildly interested. He was prepared to maintain, professionally, to all comers that Jacob Taverner was not legally mad. A man who has amassed nearly a million pounds can be allowed his eccentricities. In his private capacity, John was interested to see how these eccentricities worked, and how nearly they might be said to approach the borderline.

Jacob withdrew a pin from the lapel of his shocking old jacket and made small stabbing passes with it in the air.

‘Wrote the names on a bit of paper, shut my eyes, and prodded at ’em. Didn’t want more than one or two out of any line. The pin went right into Al at the first go, clean through the M in Miller, so I took him. It’s a good pin. Do you know how long I’ve had it—forty-five years. And when in doubt I’ve always shut my eyes and pricked, and it’s never let me down once. Never lost it but once, and I thought I’d have gone off my head. Dropped in my own office, and they said they couldn’t find it—slipped out of my hand as I was sticking it back into my coat, and they said they couldn’t find it. I had every man jack of ’em up, and I said, “Man, woman, or boy, who finds that pin gets ten pounds, and if it isn’t found, everyone gets the sack.” A matter of two hours afterwards a smart boy comes along and says he’s found it. I took a look at the pin he brought and I said, “I’ve no room for fools in my office. You can get out and you can stay out”.’

‘Why was he a fool, and how did you know it was not your pin?’

Jacob cracked his fingers.

‘How do you know your children from anyone else’s? When you’ve lived with anything for forty-odd years, nobody’s going to take you in. And he was a fool because he brought me a brand-new pin out of a packet. Thought himself smart, and all he got was the sack.’

‘But you did get it back?’

Jacob put the pin carefully into his lapel.

‘I paid a blackmailing young woman five hundred pounds for it. I’d have paid double. She thought she’d scored me off, but I got back on her. Nobody’s ever scored me off and got away with it—nobody. It’s too long a story to tell you now. We’ve done the descendants of Matthew, Mark, Mary, and Luke, and now we come to the twins, Joanna and John. We’ll take Joanna first. Her lot is interesting. She married a man called Higgins, and a daughter of hers married a man called Castell—Fogarty Castell—Portuguese father, Irish mother. And I’ve picked a Higgins grandson, John Higgins—carpenter by trade—bit of a local preacher in his off time. Well, I’ve picked him, and I’ve picked the Castells. I said I wasn’t going to have anyone in my own generation, but they are the exception that proves the rule. I’ve picked ’em because they’ll be handy. Now for number seven, John. I’ve got his grandson, Jeremy Taverner—regular soldier—Captain Jeremy Taverner. Then there’s number eight, Acts—old Jeremiah took all his children’s names out of the Bible—I’ve picked a granddaughter of his, name of Jane Heron. She’s in a shop—tries on the dresses and walks round in ’em so the fat old women and scraggy old maids think they’re going to look like she does. There’s twice at least this afternoon you’ve called me mad, John Taylor, but I’m not so mad as the women who go to dress shows and buy the clothes off a girl with a figure they probably never had and certainly don’t have now. Well, that’s the lot, and I’m off into the next room. Here’s the family tree to keep you straight. By the way, the Castells won’t be coming. I’ve my own private arrangement with them, and they’re down at the Inn. The others are just about due. Amusing to see who comes first, don’t you think? Might be the one that’s hardest up—but then sometimes that sort’s proud. Poverty, greed, or maybe just plain punctuality—any one of the three might bring ’em here on the dot. Now you get those chairs set out so that I can look and listen, and you ask ’em what I told you to ask ’em, and tell ’em what I told you to tell ’em. And the devil take the hindmost!’