The others were in the living-room, if such a baronial chamber could be correctly designated by such an ordinary name. From the inside, it looked like a Hollywood studio designer’s idea of something between a Cordoban mosque and the main hall of a medieval castle. It had a tiled floor and a domed gold mosaic ceiling, with leopard and tiger skin rugs, Monterey furniture, and fake suits of armor in between.
“This is Miss Starr,” Freddie introduced. “Call her Ginny. Mr Templar.”
Ginny had red hair like hot dark gold, and a creamy skin with freckles. You could study all of it except about two square feet which were accidentally concealed by a green Lastex swim-suit that clung to her soft ripe figure — where it wasn’t artistically cut away for better exposures — like emerald paint. She sat at a table by herself, playing solitaire. She looked up and gave the Saint a long disturbing smile, and said, “Hi.”
“And this is Lissa O’Neill,” Freddie said.
Lissa was the blonde. Her hair was the color of young Indiana corn, and her eyes were as blue as the sky, and there were dew-dipped roses in her cheeks that might easily have grown beside the Shannon. She lay stretched out on a couch with a book propped up on her flat stomach, and she wore an expensively simple white play suit against which her slim legs looked warmly gilded.
Simon glanced at the book. It had the lurid jacket of a Crime Club mystery.
“How is it?” he asked.
“Not bad,” she said. “I thought I had it solved in the third chapter, but now I think I’m wrong. What did he say your name was?”
“She’s always reading mysteries,” Ginny put in. “She’s our tame crime expert — Madam Hawkshaw. Every time anyone gets murdered in the papers she knows all about it.”
“And why not?” Lissa insisted. “They’re usually so stupid, anyone but a detective could see it.”