Free The Saint in the Sun by Leslie Charteris Page B

the steak-and-kidney pie at the King’s Arms. Mrs Baker makes it herself, and it’s the best I know anywhere-if you like steak-and-kidney pie.”
    “I love it.” This was a natural opening that could hardly be passed by. “Would you like to show it to me sometime?”
    “Don’t make that too definite, or you might find yourself stuck with it.”
    “How about next Sunday?”
    “That would be perfect. In fact, since I’m a working girl, it’s about the only day.”
    He guessed her age at about 26, and had learned that she was a widow-her husband had been the export manager of a manufacturing firm in Slough, who had taken an overdose of sleeping pills when he learned that he had lung cancer about six months ago. That was all he knew about her, aside from what his eyes told him, which was that she had short chestnut hair and a short nose, a wide brow and a wide mouth that smiled very easily, the ingredients combining into a gay gamin look which formed an intriguing counterpoint to her sensuously modelled figure. To a true connoisseur of feminine attractions, which the Saint candidly confessed himself to be, she had an allure that was far more captivating than most conventional forms of pulchritude, and that was rare enough to demand at least a better acquaintance.
    She was ready when he arrived, in a tweed skirt and a cardigan over a simple blouse, and sensible suede shoes, and she said: “I’m glad you’re early, because it’ll give us time to walk over instead of driving. That is, if you won’t think that’s too frighteningly hearty. It’s only about four miles.”
    “I’m glad to know you’re so healthy,” he grinned. “Most girls these days would think a fellow was an unchivalrous cad if he suggested walking around the block. But it’s such a beautiful day, it ‘d be a shame not to take advantage of it.”
    Her house was near the southern end of the village, a tiled and half-timbered doll’s-house with a walled garden that needed tidying but was still a carnival of color. They walked down a lane to the main road and across the bridge, then took a secondary fork to the end of the flat land, hairpinned up through Quarry Wood, and then branched off the pavement altogether to follow a well-worn footpath that rambled along the side of the slope around Winter Hill. The leaves which had fallen into a carpet underfoot had left myriad lacy openings in the canopy overhead through which the light came with fragmented brilliance, and the air was delicately perfumed with the damp scents of bark and foliage.
    “Thank you for doing this,” she said, after a while during which their flimsy acquaintance had been warming and easing through the exchange of trivialities not worth recording and the sense of companionship in sharing an uncomplicated pleasure. “I can see from your tan that you must be out of doors so much that you don’t have to think about it, but it means a lot to me after being cooped up in an office all week.”
    “What sort of work do you do?”
    “You’d never guess.”
    “Then I won’t try.”
    “I’m secretary to a sort of horse-racing tipster. Or a kind of horse-playing service.”
    “That’s certainly a bit out of the ordinary. How does it operate?”
    “People give this man money to bet with, like an investment, and he sends them dividends from his profits.”
    “He really does?”
    “Oh, yes. Every month.”
    And suddenly, in a flash, the pleasure of the walk was no longer uncomplicated. The air was the same, the loveliness of the leaf-tones and the dappled light were the same, but something else had intruded that was as out of place there as a neon bulb.
    “It sounds interesting,” said the Saint cautiously. “Where do you do this?”
    “In Maidenhead, which is quite convenient. Much better than having to go into London. And it came along just in time. When my husband died”-he liked the way she didn’t hesitate before the word, or after it-“I was left practically broke,