CHAPTER 3Mrs. Humpage bustled out into the lounge.
“I hope your ladyship enjoyed your dinner,” she said. She curtseyed very nicely, Mr. Pinkerton thought, in spite of her ample figure, and in spite of everything she had just finished saying.
Sir Lionel Atwater grunted, morosely. Lady Atwater smiled. “Very nice, thank you,” she said. “Shall we sit here, dear, for our coffee?”
Sir Lionel grunted again, and sat down. His daughter-in-law sat beside him on the leather sofa, his wife sat beside him on the other side. Mr. Pinkerton hesitated for just an instant, and then slipped, as quietly as a rabbit, into a chair beside the potted rubber plant in the majolica jardinière that the late Mr. Humpage had bought from a writer who once lived in Rye. He knew that, because Mrs. Humpage had, she told
