FORTY-ONEAt half past nine o’clock on Monday morning Mr. Holderness gathered his letters together and rose from the breakfast table. A childless widower of many years’ standing, his house had been kept ever since his wife’s death by an unmarried sister, a faded invalidish person with an expression of chronic discontent. As her brother picked up The Times and put it under his arm, she looked up with a puckered brow.
‘Are you going already?’
‘It is half past nine.’
‘Did you have your second cup of tea?’ He laughed.
‘You poured it out yourself.’
Miss Holderness clasped her head.
‘Did I? I’m sure I hardly know what I’m doing. I didn’t sleep a wink. I can’t think how I came to run out of my tablets—I thought the box was half full.’
‘You probably had a glorious burst and took them all the
