Читать книгу Payment Deferred. Psychological Thriller онлайн

11 страница из 53

‘But how did you know we lived here?’

‘Mother told me your address before she d-died.’ The stumble was excusable. After all, the boy was no more than twenty. ‘We’d often talked about this trip. She was coming with me, you see. She never liked Australia—I don’t know why—and after father died—’

‘Tom dead as well? That’s bad luck.’

‘Yes. He died the beginning of last year. It was that really that made mother—’

‘Quite, quite,’ Mrs Marble clucked in sympathetic chorus. She hated to hear of anyone dying.

Mr Marble made haste to change the conversation to matters more interesting.

‘And how was your father’s business getting on?’ he demanded.

‘Oh, pretty well. He made a lot of money during the war. He didn’t want to, you know, but it just came, he said. But mother sold out after he died. She said she couldn’t run that big shipping office by herself, and I was too young, and they offered a good price for it, so she took it.’

‘So you’re a young man of leisure now, eh?’

‘I suppose so. I’ve only just come out of college, you know. Melbourne University. I’m having a look round to start with. That’s what mother always planned for me.’