The Rajah’s Emerald: An Agatha Christie Short Story. Agatha Christie

it’s not manners. He’s dressed just like any other gentleman at the hotel is dressed.’

      ‘Bah!’ said James. ‘Do you know what I read the other day in “Society Snippets”? Why, that the Duke of – the Duke of, I can’t remember, but one duke, anyway, was the worst dressed man in England, there!’

      ‘I dare say,’ said Grace, ‘but then, you see, he is a duke.’

      ‘Well?’ demanded James. ‘What is wrong with my being a duke some day? At least, well, not perhaps a duke, but a peer.’

      He slapped the yellow book in his pocket, and recited to her a long list of peers of the realm who had started life much more obscurely than James Bond. Grace merely giggled.

      ‘Don’t be so soft, James,’ she said. ‘Fancy you Earl of Kimpton-on-Sea!’

      James gazed at her in mingled rage and despair. The air of Kimpton-on-Sea had certainly gone to Grace’s head.

      The beach at Kimpton is a long, straight stretch of sand. A row of bathing-huts and boxes stretched evenly along it for about a mile and a half. The party had just stopped before a row of six huts all labelled imposingly, ‘For visitors to the Esplanade Hotel only.’