Читать книгу Pied Piper онлайн

14 страница из 28

He lived in the country when the war broke out. He had a house at Market Saffron, not very far from Colchester. He had moved there from Exeter four years previously after the death of his wife; as a boy he had been brought up in Market Saffron and he still had a few acquaintances in the neighbourhood. He went back there to spend the last years of his life. He bought an old country house, not very large, standing in about three acres of garden and paddock.

His married daughter came back from America and lived with him in 1938, bringing her little boy. She was married to a New York insurance man called Costello, vice-president of his corporation and very comfortably off. She'd had a spot of bother with him. Howard didn't know the ins and outs of it and didn't bother about it much; privately he was of the opinion that his daughter was to blame for the trouble. He was fond of his son-in-law, Costello. He didn't understand him in the least, but he liked him very well.

That's how he was living when the war broke out, with his daughter Enid and her little boy Martin, that his father would insist on calling Junior. That puzzled the old man very much.