A E W Mason

The House in Lordship Lane A E W Mason

MR. RICARDO sat on an iron chair at an iron table outside a Bar and drank with his coffee a sweet and heady liqueur. Yet he was exhilarated. "Nobody would believe it," he said with a little giggle. But it was Brittany and summer time. "Browsing with. Browning in Brittany," he alliterated wittily, "and so far I have been fortunate enough not to meet James Lee's wife." Mr. Ricardo was quite alone. He had sent his luggage home from Aix and with his suit-case, his fine big Rolls-Royce and his chauffeur was making a roundabout tour through Brittany to Cherbourg; whence by a transatlantic liner what was to him a preferable entry to England could be achieved. But the car had lurched and something had broken. For three days he must stay in this little town with the uncommon name. But his liner wasn't due at Cherbourg for four days-and it was Brittany and summer time. Moreover, this drowsy little square of Lezardrieux, with the raised terrace at which he sat, the three sides of shops and houses and the empty fourth, where a steep cliff of sand and bushes dropped to the pool of the Lezardrieux river, made a sharp appeal to him. It was operatic. Below the brow of the hill, he could almost hear the conductor tap with his baton for attention. That boy in the bright red shirt strolling across the square might at any moment burst into song. But it would only have made an anti-climax if he had. For the stout, middle-aged woman who had waddled out from the Bar with a big letter in her hand was now at Mr. Ricardo's elbow.