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 manufactory 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 up?”

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.