She let herself in with her key and took Jeremy up three flights of stairs to the attic floor. There were two attics which had once been maids’ bedrooms, and there was a boxroom and a bathroom. Jane had both the attics, and alluded to them as “my flat.” The back one was the sitting-room. With the light switched on and the curtains drawn it always gave her a thrill, because it wasn’t in the least what you would expect. There was an old walnut bureau, and two Queen Anne chairs with seats of Chinese brocade. A walnut mirror surmounted by a golden eagle hung above the bureau. There was a very good Persian rug, and a comfortable sofa heaped with many-coloured cushions. The oddly named Mr. Acts Taverner had, in fact, started life as a purveyor of secondhand furniture and finished up by achieving the kind of antique shop which provides its owner with a good deal of pleasure without bringing in a great deal of cash. Jane’s furniture was what she had been able to salve from the sale.
“Now,” she said, turning round from the window. “Put on the kettle, there’s an angel-I’m dying for a cup of tea. And then I’ll show you what I got this morning.”
Jeremy put a match to the gas ring and stood up.
“I know what you got-an answer from Box three hundred and whatever it was, because I got one too. I brought it along to show you.”
They sat down side by side upon the sofa and each produced a sheet of rather shiny white paper. The notes were headed Box 3093. One began “Dear sir,” and the other “Dear madam.” Jane’s ran:
“Your answer to the advertisement inviting the descendants of Jeremiah Taverner who died in 1888 to communicate with the above box number received and contents noted. Kindly inform me of the date of your grandfather Acts Taverner’s decease, and state whether you remember him clearly, and to what extent you were brought into contact with him.”
Except for a variation in the name the two letters were identical. Jeremy and Jane gazed at them frowning. Jeremy said,
“I don’t see what he’s getting at.”
“Perhaps he’s writing a family history.”
“Why should he?”
“I don’t know-people do. Let’s write our answers, then perhaps we’ll find out.”
His frown deepened.
“Look here, you’d better let me write.”
“Jeremy, how dull!”
“I didn’t want you to answer the advertisement.”
“I know-you said so.”
She jumped up and began to get out the tea-things-a dumpy Queen Anne teapot, two Worcester cups and saucers, one of them riveted, a dark blue lustre milk-jug, an engaging tea-caddy painted in pastoral scenes.
Jeremy said slowly, “What does he want?”
“A family reunion, darling-all our cousins. Perhaps some of them will be rays of sunshine. You are not doing much in that line, you know, my sweet.”
He came over to her and stood there in a very up-in-the-air kind of way.
“I think you had much better drop it. I’ll write if you like.”
Jane lifted her eyes. They held a definite sparkle.
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me say, ‘How dull!’ ”
“Jane-”
“Well I’m saying it again-dull, dull, dull-ditchwater dull.” Then she stepped back and tapped a warning foot. “You wouldn’t like me to lose my temper, would you?”
“I don’t know-”
Dark lashes fell suddenly over the sparkling eyes. A little flush came up under the pale skin.
“I’m too tired.” Then, with a sudden change of manner, “Oh, Jeremy, don’t be a beast!”
CHAPTER 2
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 carefully,” 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 Taverner put his head on one side and grinned.
“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.”