Dead Men Don't Ski

June came down to the Manor, bringing five-year-old Michael and a mountain of luggage. She had been there for six months, and it was difficult to say who disliked the arrangement most—June or her father-in-law. Chivalry and a sense of duty prevented Colonel St Cyres from suggesting any other arrangement. With June, it was sheer inertia which kept h

Meanwhile, however, the Count’s infatuation was no laughing matter, and I expressed my sincerest conviction when I said, after a pause, that I should recommend him to see either a priest or a physician. He burst into uproarious laughter. ‘A priest! What should I do with a priest, or he with me? I never loved them, and I feel less like beginning tha

The “poor chap” of whom the Colonel was thinking was his son, Denis, now a prisoner of war in Japanese hands. Whether the Colonel’s epithet was due to Denis’s plight or to the wife he had married was uncertain, but Colonel St Cyres disliked his daughter-in-law as heartily as any well-bred man allowed himself to dislike a woman.