The Catherine Wheel by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page A

round.
    “I’m not. You’ve been asking me to marry you. I’m saying no.”
    “Why?”
    “You don’t love me—I don’t love you—cousins oughtn’t to marry.”
    He looked away for a minute, and then back again.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because it’s true.”
    He gave rather a curious laugh.
    “That I don’t love you? Jane, you’re not really a fool—you know perfectly well.”
    “I don’t. Why should I? You’ve never said so.”
    Jeremy said in quite an expressionless voice,
    “I love you like blazes, and you know it.”
    Jane said, “Oh!”
    He put his hands on her shoulders. They felt hard and heavy.
    “Do you love me? Come along—be honest!”
    Jane said, “No—” She said it three times in a voice that dwindled until it made no sound at all, because every time she said it Jeremy kissed her. The last kiss went on for quite a long time.
    When he lifted his head he said,
    “Liar!”
    Jane said nothing at all.
    CHAPTER 6
    Chief Detective Inspector Lamb rose from behind his office table and shook hands with Miss Maud Silver. As always when they met, there was a ritual of polite enquiry.
    “I need not ask if you are well, Chief Inspector.”
    He had his jovial laugh for that, a sign, if one had been needed, that the proceedings were to be of a not too formal nature.
    “My health doesn’t trouble me, I’m glad to say.”
    “And Mrs. Lamb? I trust she has not felt the inclement weather.”
    “She’s too busy being a grandmother.”
    Miss Silver beamed.
    “Ah—Lily’s boy—little Ernest. Called after you, is he not?”
    “Fancy your remembering that! Well, what do you say to a granddaughter as well? A month old yesterday—little Lily Rose. Pretty, isn’t it?” Miss Silver thought it very pretty indeed.
    Detective Inspector Abbott, who had ushered her in and now stood waiting to offer a chair, regarded this interchange with affectionate sarcasm. Lamb’s three daughters were the pride of his heart and the surest way to it. But Miss Silver had no ulterior motive, her interest was genuine and perennial. She was now enquiring after Violet, who had a good job at the Admiralty.
    Lamb shook his head.
    “Just engaged again. My wife says it won’t last. She’s a pretty girl and a good girl, but she doesn’t know when she’s well off, and that’s a fact. When she’s got a young man she thinks she’d like to have a job, and when she’s got a job she thinks she’d like to get married. Wants to eat her cake and have it.”
    “And Myrtle? Is she still training for a nurse?”
    Lamb looked gloomy.
    “Yes, she’s training, and kept pretty hard at it. My wife says it’s too much for her. The fact is, she’s our youngest and we miss her in the home. Well, take a chair, Miss Silver. I know you’re always ready to help, and there was something I thought perhaps you’d be willing to do for us—privately and without any formality, if you know what I mean. So I thought if we could just have an informal talk—”
    Miss Silver seated herself. Her pale, neat features displayed a polite degree of interest. Everything about her was neat, old-fashioned, and rather shabby. A breadth of olive-green cashmere showed beneath the black coat. A bunch of brown and yellow pansies, the gift at Christmas of her niece Ethel Burkett, had replaced the purple ones with which her black felt hat had started its career. She wore black knitted gloves, and a tippet of yellowish fur, friend of many years’ standing, encircled her neck—so warm, so cosy. She settled herself without hurry, arranged an elderly handbag on her lap, and gazed at the Chief Inspector with just the right degree of deference.
    “Well,” he said, “let’s get down to it. We’ve generally met over a murder case, haven’t we? This isn’t anything so violent, but I think perhaps you might be able to help us. It isn’t as if your name had ever got into the papers. Of course you’re known to the police, if I may put it that way, but I