Free The Catherine Wheel by Patricia Wentworth Page B

stories?”
    “What did you say?”
    “I spread a fairly thick fog.”
    She dropped her voice to a whisper.
    “What did your grandfather say?”
    “Lots of things. What did yours?”
    “That’s telling.”
    “Aren’t you going to tell?”
    “Not unless you do—and not here—not now.”
    “Why not?”
    They had been standing quite close together, his arm half round her. Now he drew away frowning.
    “Because I don’t like this place. You’ve no business to be here.”
    “Jeremy—really!”
    “Jane, we’ve got to clear out tomorrow. We ought never to have come.”
    “Yes, darling—you’ve said all that before. Do you know, I’ve got a sort of feeling that I might get bored if you don’t stop soon.”
    He gloomed.
    “There are worse things than being bored. If ever I saw a bad lot in my life, it’s that fellow Luke White. The man Castell is an offensive bounder, and that girl Eily looks scared to death. I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s something shady, and we’re leaving tomorrow.”
    Jane opened the door and walked out. Jeremy had all the makings of a trampling bully, and she had no intention of being his door-mat.
    She said, “Good-bye, darling,” and waited for Florence Duke who was coming down the stairs. She had caught only a glimpse of her when they arrived, and she had thought there was something odd about her colour. She couldn’t very well turn pale, but the heavy red in her cheeks had a curious undershade of purple. She now wore a remarkable garment of very bright red silk profusely patterned with pink and green. It was rather tight and rather short, and it had seen fresher days.
    As they went down the stairs together, a cloud of strong pungent scent accompanied them. Jane was just thinking that she really preferred paraffin, when Florence said under her breath,
    “Do I look all right?”
    Jane took in the heavy untidy hair, the overdone make-up, the dress, the shoes with their tawdry buckles, and said the only thing that it was possible to say.
    “Oh, yes.”
    She wouldn’t have found it convincing herself, but it seemed to go down all right with Florence. She put a large coarse hand with bright fingernails on Jane’s arm and said, her deep voice lower still,
    “I’ve had a most awful turn.”
    “What sort of a turn? What can I do for you?”
    Florence shook her head.
    “Nobody can’t do anything. That’s the way when you’re in a fix. You get yourself in, and you’ve damn well got to get yourself out—nobody can’t do it for you.” She stood on the bottom step but one and swayed a little. “Oh, gosh—why did I have to come!” Jane thought, “She’s tight. We are going to have a jolly party—”
    Florence gazed at her with tragic eyes and swayed. Jane said briskly,
    “Those cocktails were much too strong. We’ll feel a lot better when we’ve got some food inside us. There’s the gong now. Come along and see how Cousin Annie cooks.”
    The dining-room was opposite the lounge. Dark panelling rose to within a foot of the ceiling, which was crossed by massive beams. Above the cavernous hearth a wide brick chimney-breast ran up. It supported an irregular trophy composed of old flintlocks, bayonets, and heavy horn-handled knives. There was a long table covered with a coarse linen cloth. Someone had set a tankard full of evergreens half way down the narrow board. For the rest, the service might have been described as rag-tag-and-bobtail—here and there a heavy silver fork or spoon amongst cheap electroplate, old knives worn down to a point and three inches of blade, the flimsiest modern glass mixed up with half a dozen old cut beakers. The chairs were as mixed—rush-bottomed, Windsor, common kitchen. There were places laid for nine, with Jacob Taverner at the top of the table in a massive old chair carved with lions’ heads. A lamp hung down from the central beam and made of the table and the people round it an island of light.
    They took their