II
How Lady Valerie complained about heroes,
and Mr Fairweather dropped his hat
I
"Seeing that time is flying," said Peter Quentin, "and since you have to attend an inquest this morning, I suppose you could use some extra nourishment."
"How right you are," said the Saint. "Some people have no respect for anything. It's a gloomy thought. Even when you're dead, you're liable to be lugged out of the morgue at the squeak of dawn to have your guts poked over by some revoltingly healthy jury of red-faced yokels."
"I like getting you up early," said Patricia. "It seems to lend a sort of ethereal delicacy to your ideas."
Simon Templar grinned and watched Peter nipping the caps from a row of bottles of Carlsberg. As a matter of fact it was nearly ten o'clock, and for half an hour after breakfast they had been sitting in the sun on the porch outside Peter's dining room. Two days had gone by since the fire, and it would have been hard to identify the supremely elegant Saint who sprawled in Peter's most comfortable deck chair with the blistered smoke-blackened scarecrow who had arrived there in the small hours of a certain morning with his grim foreboding.
He took the tall glass that Peter handed him and eyed fit appreciatively.
"And while we're soothing our tender nerves with this ambrosia," he said, "I suppose we'd better just run over what we've found out about these people who roast their week-end guests."