Читать книгу A Town Like Alice онлайн

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"Well, Miss Paget," I said. "I heard about you from your aunt--I think she is your aunt? Miss Agatha Paget, at Colwyn Bay."

She inclined her head. "Aunt Aggie wrote and told me that she had had a letter from you. Yes, she's my aunt."

"And I take it that you are the daughter of Arthur and Jean Paget, who lived in Southampton and Malaya?"

She nodded. "That's right. I've got the birth certificate and mother's birth certificate, as well as her marriage certificate." She took them from her bag and put them on my desk, with her identity card.

I opened these documents and read them through carefully. There was no doubt about it; she was the person I was looking for. I leaned back in my chair presently and took off my spectacles. "Tell me, Miss Paget," I said. "Did you ever meet your uncle, who died recently? Mr. Douglas Macfadden."

She hesitated. "I've been thinking about that a lot," she said candidly. "I couldn't honestly swear that I have ever met him, but I think it must have been him that mother took me to see once in Scotland, when I was about ten years old. We all went together, Mother and I and Donald. I remember an old man in a very stuffy room with a lot of birds in cages. I think that was Uncle Douglas, but I'm not quite sure."