The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie Page A

she married for a fourth time. This fourth venture had been undertaken for pure pleasure. Mr. Charles Evans, an extremely good-looking young man of twenty-seven, with delightful manners, a keen love of sport, and an appreciation of this world’s goods, had no money of his own whatsoever.
    Lady Tamplin was very pleased and satisfied with life generally, but she had occasional faint preoccupations about money. The button manufacturer had left his widow a considerable fortune, but, as Lady Tamplin was wont to say, “what with one thing and another—” (one thing being the depreciation of stocks owing to the War, and the other the extravagances of the late Lord Tamplin). She was still comfortably off. But to be merely comfortably off was hardly satisfactory to one of Rosalie Tamplin’s temperament.
    So, on this particular January morning, she opened her blue eyes extremely wide as she read a certain item of news and uttered that noncommittal monosyllable “Well.” The only other occupant of the balcony was her daughter, the Hon. Lenox Tamplin. A daughter such as Lenox was a sad thorn in Lady Tamplin’s side, a girl with no kind of tact, who actually looked older than her age, and whose peculiar sardonic form of humour was, to say the least of it, uncomfortable.
    â€œDarling,” said Lady Tamplin, “just fancy.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    Lady Tamplin picked up the Daily Mail, handed it to her daughter, and indicated with an agitated forefinger the paragraph of interest.
    Lenox read it without any of the signs of agitation shown by her mother. She handed back the paper.
    â€œWhat about it?” she asked. “It is the sort of thing that is always happening. Cheese-paring old women are always dying in villages and leaving fortunes of millions to their humble companions.”
    â€œYes, dear, I know,” said her mother, “and I daresay the fortune is not anything like as large as they say it is; newspapers are so inaccurate. But even if you cut it down by half—”
    â€œWell,” said Lenox, “it has not been left to us.”
    â€œNot exactly, dear,” said Lady Tamplin; “but this girl, this Katherine Grey, is actually a cousin of mine. One of the Worcestershire Greys, the Edgeworth lot. My very own cousin! Fancy!”
    â€œAh-ha,” said Lenox.
    â€œAnd I was wondering—” said her mother.
    â€œWhat there is in it for us,” finished Lenox, with that sideways smile that her mother always found difficult to understand.
    â€œOh, darling,” said Lady Tamplin, on a faint note of reproach.
    It was very faint, because Rosalie Tamplin was used to her daughter’s outspokenness and to what she called Lenox’s uncomfortable way of putting things.
    â€œI was wondering,” said Lady Tamplin, again drawing her artistically pencilled brows together, “whether—oh, good morning, Chubby darling: are you going to play tennis? How nice!”
    Chubby, thus addressed, smiled kindly at her, remarked perfunctorily, “How topping you look in that peach-coloured thing,” and drifted past them and down the steps.
    â€œThe dear thing,” said Lady Tamplin, looking affectionately after her husband. “Let me see, what was I saying? Ah!” She switched her mind back to business once more. “I was wondering—”
    â€œOh, for God’s sake get on with it. That is the third time you have said that.”
    â€œWell, dear,” said Lady Tamplin, “I was thinking that it would be very nice if I wrote to dear Katherine and suggested that she should pay us a little visit out here. Naturally, she is quite out of touch with Society. It would be nicer for her to be launched by one of her own people. An advantage for her and an advantage for us.”
    â€œHow much do you think you would get her to cough up?” asked Lenox.
    Her mother looked at her reproachfully and murmured:
    â€œWe