The Saint 49 Count On The Saint

1

There is an art to the making of mulled ale. The beef should be strong and dark but not too bitter. A steady hand should add the cloves, and the nutmeg should be little more than a suggestion. The brew should be warmed beside the fire, not heated over it. Finally it should be decanted into a pewter tankard and savoured at leisure.

The ale Simon Templar was drinking was a perfect example of that art. The Crown may be the most common pub name in England, but the inn displaying that sign in a cobbled lane under the shadow of St. Enoch’s College, Cambridge, was no run-of-the-barrel beerhouse.

In summer it was almost impossible to make a path to the door through the throng of tourists. But now, with only a few days left before Christmas, the visitors were long gone and the university students who comprised the hard core of regular patrons were on vacation. Simon’s only companions were a couple of ancient worthies playing dominoes, the landlord polishing glasses behind the counter, and his overfed Alsatian lying in front of the fire. The Crown offered a choice of two bars, one small and the other tiny. Simon sat in the larger saloon, but even this measured only some twenty feet square. The ceiling was low and bowed between the rough oak beams supporting it. Pewter and brass glowed in the mellow light of oil lamps and candles. High-backed wooden settles, polished by the posteriors of countless generations of drinkers, warded off the draughts, and the blaze in the inglenook looked hungry enough to devour half a tree at one sitting. Above the mantel, poker-burned into a thick elm plank, was an exhortation to customers:

Simon Templar reserved his doubts about the recommended quantity but raised his tankard to the sentiments of a simpler age.

Those whose knowledge of his life style was founded on their reading of the popular press might have been surprised to find him in such surroundings. Somehow the Crown did not fit the image of the high-living man about town which the gossip columnists projected. Nor did it reflect the picture painted by that other breed of journalist with whom he most frequently came into contact — the crime reporters. The first would not have appreciated the fact that a roaring fire, a drink, and the company of a landlord who is also a friend can be luxury enough. And as for the crime writers, they would immediately have concluded that only some illegal enterprise could have brought the Saint to Cambridge in winter. And, not for the first time in their careers of chronicling Simon Templar’s actions, they would have been totally wrong. Unless, of course, there is legislation to prevent bookmakers being parted from their profits.

It had been an undramatically successful day that had begun with the impulse to leave the smog of London for an afternoon’s racing at Huntingdon. It had continued with three wins in the first four races before the snow had come and caused the rest of the meeting to be abandoned. The blizzard had been so fierce that he had opted for covering the sixteen miles to Cambridge rather than the sixty six back to town.

The storm had blown itself out by the time he had registered at one of the better hotels in the city, but the snow still lay deep and crisp and even, and the walk from the University Arms Hotel to the Crown had chilled him enough to make the mulled ale a particularly welcome form of central heating. After an hour’s reminiscing with the landlord he sat beside the fire considering how to spend the remainder of the evening.

As clairvoyance was not one of the Saint’s gifts, he could not know that the Angel of Adventure who so frequently and welcomingly intervened in his affairs had already made the decision for him.

The grandfather clock in the corner chimed seven, and his thoughts turned to the subject of dinner and a small restaurant off King’s Parade where memory told him the food and wine would reach the standard he required. He drained his tankard and stood up. With a promise to the landlord to return the next day before starting for home, he left the inn.

The wind was still cold and sharp and he paused after a couple of paces to pull up the collar of his sheepskin coat. One glance at the sky said there would be more snow before morning. The distant voices of carol singers drifted from the direction of St. Enoch’s as he turned his back on the comforting lights of the Crown.

The lane was little more than an alley separating the confines of the college from the main thoroughfare which lay on the other side of the buildings backing onto the pub and its adjoining terrace of small shops and cottages. One hundred yards from the Crown it opened into a secluded square dominated by the tall turreted gateway of St. Enoch’s.

It was a couple of years since he had last visited Cambridge, but he recalled the layout of the city well enough. The college buildings ran parallel to the river Cam with King’s Parade lying on the other side of the grounds diagonally across from the square he stood in. To follow the roads round would entail a journey of more than a mile, but by cutting through the precincts the distance was nearly halved.

The gateway comprised a wide arch spanning the drive which led from the square, with two narrower tunnel-like entrances on either side for pedestrians. Heavy iron gates barred the central and right-hand openings so that visitors were channelled past the gatekeeper’s rooms in the left-hand tower. Ignoring a notice stating that only those with business at the college would be admitted, the Saint strolled through and entered St. Enoch’s.

The College of St. Enoch’s, Cambridge, had instructed its first pupils a century before the Armada. It had been established by the rich local wool merchants eager to buy their way into the aristocracy on earth and the heaven hereafter by donating some of their gold to good works.

The elegant halls they had paid for had graced the banks of the Cam for four hundred years until progress, in the shape of nineteenth-century taste, overtook them. To the Victorian industrialists who became the college’s patrons it was not enough for the seat of learning they were supporting to be old; it also had to look old. Consequently they had torn down and rebuilt or simply covered up and enlarged. The mullioned windows, the gables, and the mellow brick had disappeared beneath an avalanche of mortared flint and crude gargoyles, so that St. Enoch’s had come to represent a cross between a Gothic cathedral and a romantic’s idea of a medieval castle.

Although its architectural style made it appear large, St. Enoch’s was in reality much smaller than many of its more famous counterparts in the city. It consisted of a rectangular central block of five storeys built around a court and flanked by two wings which looked as if they had been tacked onto either end as an afterthought. The gateway through which the Saint had just passed was set in a high brick wall which enclosed three sides of the grounds with the river forming the fourth boundary. The college stood in the middle with quadrangles to the front and sides and lawns at the rear. Each court was accessible from its neighbour via arched doorways, and there were also passages which led from the quads through the buildings to the inner court.

The courtyard he entered was paved with flagstones bordered by a gravel drive with a statue of the patron saint rising above an ornamental pond in the centre. The snow had contrived to hide the more hideous features of the façade, and its smooth whiteness gave the college an almost Dickensian Christmas-card prettiness. The court was deserted. A battered Austin saloon parked near the main steps and a solitary lighted window on the third floor were the only signs of life.

The Saint headed diagonally across the quad towards the entrance to the adjoining courtyard, which would lead him to a third, and from there to a side entrance, which he hoped would be unlocked and would deposit him within a few hundred feet of his destination. The only lighting came from a half dozen gas lamps hanging from ornate brackets fixed onto the dividing walls, but it was enough together with the whiteness of the snow and a waxing moon for him to walk briskly. As he passed the pond he heard the carol singers again, much louder this time, and guessed that they too must be using the college grounds as a short cut and keeping in practice as they went, for there could be no chance of a donation for them in the college that night.

Almost at the same instant as he heard the carollers again he saw the shadows move.

It was no more than a brief blocking of the light that filtered through the entrance to the adjoining courtyard, but it made him stop in mid-stride and the chill which crept upwards from the small of his back to the roots of his hair owed nothing to the temperature of the night. For the figure which had so fleetingly crossed his vision was that of a man clad in a flowing robe, his head and face hidden by a pointed cowl.

The Saint did not believe in ghosts, but he had seen too much in his life to disbelieve in them. Now the open mind he had always maintained on the subject was rapidly closing. The thing which had moved with such speed and silence could only have been a monk. Given that it had been the monks of the original St. Enoch’s monastery who had been the recipients of the merchants’ money, it was not a comforting thought.

The shock stilled him for only a moment, and then he was on his toes and racing towards the doorway. His brain registered the fact that the singing had stopped, but he gave it no conscious consideration. He reached the arch and went through without slackening speed. His eyes were automatically scanning the way ahead, searching for the mysterious figure, not looking down.

His foot caught as he cleared the shadow of the entrance and sent him pitching headlong. The loose snow sprayed around him as he hit the ground, momentarily blinding him to the cause of his fall. Instinctively he rolled away from the danger, springing upright and turning to face the man who had tripped him.

But the man made no move. He lay face down in the snow, his black overcoat only a shade darker than the shadows which had hidden him from the Saint’s eyes.

The Saint knelt and carefully rolled him over while his fingers automatically felt for a pulse. But the wide staring eyes that gazed sightlessly up at him told him the search would be futile.

The body was that of a middle-aged, middle-height, middle-weight man wearing a dark business suit. A leather briefcase lay beside him but, like his pockets, appeared untouched. The length of silver twine that had killed him was still embedded deep in the flesh of his throat — flesh which despite the cold of the snow was still warm.

The realisation that the murder could only have happened seconds before made the Saint glance quickly around. But of murderers or monks there was no sign. What there was was a female of Wagnerian stature stamping hurriedly across the snow towards him. Simon held up his hand but she ignored the gesture and kept coming.

“Get the police! Hurry!” he called out, and only on the word “police” did her footsteps falter.

She stopped, stared for a few mute seconds, and then emitted a scream that would have done credit to a Valkyrie. The Saint winced, but his eyes were on the group of children clustered on the other side of the court. A few of the older, braver ones were edging nearer. He pointed towards them.

“Keep the kids away. And, for Pete’s sake, shift yourself and call the police.”

This time his words got through, but by then they were superfluous, for a blue uniform, attracted by the scream, was already lumbering into view.

The Saint looked from the constable to the corpse and back again. A wry smile played with the corners of his lips as he stood up. He never actually spoke the words “Here we go again.” But he thought them.

2

It was three hours since he had left the Crown. Even if the clock on the interview-room wall had not told him so, his stomach would have done. The nearest the Cambridge constabulary had come to providing refreshment had been a mug of tea the colour of mahogany and the consistency of a rich soup, and a digestive biscuit so stale that a weevil would have been ashamed to be found dead in it. The beat bobby who had answered the woman’s scream had summoned his superiors, and everyone had been kept waiting in the cold until the body had finally been removed and the area diligently combed for clues, of which there had appeared to be a distinct shortage. Then the Saint, the woman, and her choir of carol singers had been brought to the station and had given their statements, waited for them to be typed, and signed the same. At which point he had expected to be allowed to proceed on his lawful business of searching for sustenance.

Experience, however, had warned him that that was likely to be a forlorn hope. As soon as his identity had been established, the duty inspector had contacted his chief, and the Saint had been escorted to the interview room to await the detective’s arrival. Such, at times, was the price of fame.

That detective, in the unenlightening shape of Superintendent Frederick Nutkin, now sat on the opposite side of the table, carefully reading through the Saint’s statement, which he had doubtless already scanned before entering the room. If the process was intended to unsettle him it was a failure. For once the possessor of a clear conscience, Simon Templar was completely at ease, but his irritation was growing. He surveyed the detective with practised appraisal and did not like what he saw.

Superintendent Nutkin had apparently been dining out when the news reached him and had not welcomed being disturbed. Simon guessed that the celebration had been with Mrs. Nutkin. He played with the vision of a candlelit supper with a young well-proportioned blonde, but understood that a man like Superintendent Nutkin would never consider such a liaison in case it jeopardised his ambition to join the Parochial Church Council. He looked like a man whose ambition was to be a parochial church councillor: he was in his late forties, tall, wiry of frame, and sparse of hair, and exuded an aura of pomposity and pride.

Simon waited patiently for him to finish his reading. At last the superintendent laid the statement on the table between them and fixed the Saint with a suspicious stare.

“And this is everything that happened from the time you left the Crown?”

“To the last dotted i,” the Saint said.

Nutkin scratched his chin as his eyes travelled down the typescript. Simon found the gesture annoying. Finally the detective located the passage he was looking for and read it aloud in the same dry tone he would have used for giving evidence in court.

Nutkin looked searchingly at the Saint.

“Why? Do you normally go chasing after everyone you see?”

“His actions appeared suspicious,” Simon said blandly.

“But you say you saw this man only for a fraction of a second,” Nutkin countered. “That’s a very short time in which to consider him suspicious, don’t you think?”

“Yes and no. Yes, I do think, and no, it isn’t a short time,” the Saint replied, the weariness in his voice conveying the fact that he considered the question irrelevant.

“Could it have been his clothes that made you think there was something wrong?” Nutkin asked, and the Saint showed his surprise only by the raising of a solitary eyebrow.

“The person I caught a glimpse of looked like a monk,” he said evenly. “And if that sounds crazy you’ll just have to believe that I’d only had two pints.”

The superintendent sat back in his chair and recommenced scratching his chin.

Simon continued: “He appeared to be wearing a habit and cowl.”

For a while Nutkin chewed over the information and then slowly shook his head.

“A monk, you say? Or a Father Christmas perhaps?”

Simon smiled tolerantly at the detective.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Mr. Nuthatch, but Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist. Now I realise this may come as a shock but on Christmas Eve...”

Nutkin ignored for the moment the misrendering of his name. He waved an impatient hand, but his voice never varied its monotone.

“Very amusing. Miss Williams reports that, as she and her carol singers were entering the court where the body was found, a man dressed as Father Christmas pushed past them and ran off.”

The Saint said seriously: “That would tie in. But why should someone dress themselves like that to commit murder? It seems a strange sort of disguise.”

Nutkin shrugged.

“Perhaps, but effective. No one saw his face.”

“Who was the dead man, anyway?”

“Sir Basil Lazentree, the Master of St. Enoch’s College. He only took over at the start of the autumn term.”

“I’ve heard of him. Doesn’t he appear on one of those radio quizzes?”

“That’s right,” Nutkin said, and steered the interview back to the murder. “There’s nothing else you can tell me?”

“Absolutely nothing, I’m afraid,” said the Saint firmly. “I haven’t eaten since lunch, so if you’re finished with me I’d like to go.”

“Yes, you can go. We’ll contact you if we need you again.”

The superintendent stood up and the Saint followed suit.

“We have your address in London. You’ll be told when the inquest is to be opened.”

“I don’t think I’ll be leaving Cambridge just yet, Superintendent,” the Saint remarked with a smile.

Nutkin frowned.

“I can’t tell you to leave the town, and I can’t stop you staying,” he said heavily. “But this is now a police matter, Mr. Templar. We don’t need any help from you. I know your reputation, and I’m warning you not to meddle.”

“Meddle, Superintendent?” said the Saint in a tone of pained surprise. “Why should I be interested in a homicidal Santa Claus who strangles people with silver twine?”

Nutkin’s gaze followed the Saint down the corridor. He felt uneasy and irritable. He had often read of how Simon Templar had made the bigwigs at Scotland Yard look like so many bungling amateurs, and his official frown had masked a self-satisfied smile. It would, he had always maintained, never happen to him. The Saint’s parting comments had bruised that confidence and left him strangely deflated. Suddenly it did not look like being such a happy Christmas after all.

For his part, Simon Templar hardly spared the superintendent a thought as he ate his dinner and then returned to his hotel. Nor did he wonder at the whim of the Fates who had delivered him into the hands of such an intriguing mystery; it was enough that they had. Instead, he concerned himself with the problem of where to begin looking for the murderous Mr. Claus.

Which was why, after breakfast the following morning, he entered the premises of Messrs. Drake & Humbolt. He had been directed to the small bow-windowed shop in Market Street by the hotel manager after enquiring where he might hire a costume for a fancy-dress party. Their main business came from renting out formal morning and evening wear, but he had been told that a variety of costumes were also available.

A small delicate-featured man came forward to greet him as he entered. Simon explained the purpose of his visit and the man looked doubtful.

“You’re a bit late, sir, I’m afraid. Most of our customers reserve their costumes some time in advance. But we should be able to find something to suit you. What about a Roman senator or a pirate?”

“What about Father Christmas?” Simon suggested, but the assistant shook his head.

“I’m sorry, they’ve all gone, sir. We rent them to the department stores at the end of November, and then there are church bazaars and charity functions and so on. Regulars, you see, same people every year.”

“You know most of your customers, then?”

“As I said, sir, regulars.”

“Has anyone hired a Santa Claus outfit recently whom you did not know?”

The assistant looked keenly at the Saint.

“Why should you be interested in that, sir?”

“Just curious,” Simon replied casually.

“The police were here this morning, sir, asking the same question. I gave them the list of customers but, as I told the officer, they were all known to us. Now, sir, about your costume.”

The Saint shook his head.

“I’ve had another idea. Perhaps I’ll cut the cost and go as Adam. Fig leaves are quite in vogue this year.”

Back on the pavement he strolled idly towards St. Andrew’s Street. He was not particularly disappointed. It had been the longest of long shots and he had not really expected to be told, “We had a homicidal maniac in here yesterday hiring one.” But it had been worth trying.

His conversation had at least given him an idea of how to spend the rest of his morning: in the unexciting but necessary business of buying Christmas presents.

Wakeforth’s was the newest and largest and unquestionably the ugliest department store in the town. Its Edwardian builders had contrived to make it look more like a four-storey mausoleum than an emporium by giving it a portico of classical dimensions and covering the façade with carvings depicting commerce throughout the Empire. But the goods displayed in the huge windows at street level were attractive enough, and inside there was at least room to move between the multitude of counters stacked with brightly packaged gifts.

The Saint browsed through the departments on the ground and first floors until he reached the second. It had been given over entirely to toys and children’s clothing, and he was about to carry straight on up the stairs when a banner strung between two pillars in the centre of the floor caught his eye:

Simon grinned as he read it and decided that in the circumstances it was an invitation he could not refuse.

The Christmas grotto took up one complete corner of the floor, and consisted of a hardboard cave enclosed by cardboard cutouts of a fairy castle. The children handed their money to a bored-looking girl dressed as a pixie in a booth at the castle entrance and then walked up to where Santa sat on his sleigh in the entrance to the cave. Everything had been covered in tinsel and artificial snow and the result was obviously approved of by the line of eager children queuing at the pay booth. After their brief chat with Father Christmas the children left by a one-way turnstile at the side of the cave.

The Saint walked around the grotto and leaned against the wall beside the turnstile where he could watch the Santa at work. Close to, he looked rather less imposing than when seen from outside the grotto. Simon had no idea whether there was a regulation height for Santas but, had there been, this one would definitely not have measured up. He was little more than five feet four, and despite the bulging padding beneath his tunic quite clearly of slim build. The tunic hung loose about the shoulders and the trousers bagged at the knees. After going to so much trouble to make the grotto look attractive, it seemed strange that the management had not paid the same attention to its star attraction.

But it was not the clothes or the physique which made the Saint’s eyes narrow with suspicion as he scrutinised the man. It was the face. True, the cheeks were the required rosy red, but the grease paint looked as if it had been applied with a trowel. The hood of the costume hid the forehead, and the fake cotton-wool eyebrows and luxuriant white beard contrived to conceal eighty per cent of the face. But there was no hiding the eyes, which were small and dark. He looked for final confirmation at the hands, but they were encased in thick knitted woollen gloves.

The Saint smiled thoughtfully as he nevertheless penetrated the disguise. Santa was not a he but a she.

3

The girl soon became aware that she was being watched. She pulled the hood further down over her face and shifted sideways on her sleigh so that as much of her as possible was hidden from him. Using her body to mask the gesture, she waved to the pixie in the pay booth. It was obviously a prearranged signal, for the assistant immediately closed the gate leading to the grotto and hung a notice on it promising that Father Christmas would return in thirty minutes. Santa jumped nimbly from the sleigh and with the pixie hurried towards a door marked “Staff Only.”

The Saint skirted the grotto wall and followed. He was just in time to see the pixie disappearing into the lavatory a few yards along the corridor, while Santa darted through a door marked rest room directly opposite.

Simon paused for a moment to be sure that the corridor was not about to be used by other members of the staff, who might be curious as to his presence, before he opened the rest-room door.

The girl was standing in the middle of the room. She had pulled off the false beard and eyebrows. She still wore the boots and red breeches, but the fur trimmed tunic had been discarded and thrown across a chair on which also rested the cushion she had used to pad out her figure to the required traditional plumpness.

He smiled with open approval.

“Darling,” he murmured, “you can come down my chimney any night of the year.”

She was young, trim, and beautiful, small-featured under the now ridiculous ruddy make-up. Straight black hair slid past slender shoulders. Her eyes transmitted that combination of mystery and innocence which is the birthright of so many Eastern women.

She snatched up the tunic and clutched it modestly to her chest.

“Go away, please,” she blustered indignantly. “I have to change.”

“Carry on,” he said coolly. “I won’t watch.”

He made a play of turning and closing the door and studiously averting his gaze to give her time to pull on a sweater snug enough to emphasise the charms he had already glimpsed. He read the fire regulations pinned to the wall beside him while she exchanged the boots and breeches for a pair of shoes and a skirt.

At last he turned and appraised the result.

“Well, it certainly beats the Father Christmas costume,” he said.

She tried to hide her embarrassment by dabbing cold cream on her face and scrubbing it with tissues to remove the grease paint. The skin that it revealed was the colour of honey and as smooth as silk. She looked at him sullenly and spoke with a defiant edge to her voice.

“What do you want?”

The Saint perched himself on the corner of a table. It was a good question, and one to which he did not have a ready answer. He toyed with a number of possible replies before deciding on the most direct approach.

“I’m curious about why Wakeforth’s employ a Miss instead of the usual Mr. Claus. Not that I’m complaining, you understand — just very interested.”

She hesitated, as if she considered telling him to mind his own business, but something in his casually confident attitude told her he would not be so easily dismissed.

“If I told you, would you tell the manager?”

“I never tell on a lady,” he assured her, and added: “Especially when I know her name.”

His friendly tone and lighthearted manner, as much as his words, seemed to provide the reassurance she was seeking.

“My name is Chantek Alam.”

“And mine is Simon Templar,” he responded with a smile. “I must compliment your parents on such an apt choice of a name for you.”

The Saint’s knowledge of the Malay language was not comprehensive, but he remembered enough from early adventures to know that Chantek means “beautiful.”

For the first time her tenseness began to dissolve.

“Thank you.”

“Now, do I get my explanation?”

“I am a student at St. Enoch’s from Singapore and I am working here during the holiday. That is all.”

St. Enoch’s was unique in Cambridge in those days for admitting both male and female students.

“But not as Father Christmas,” said the Saint.

Chantek shook her head.

“No, as an assistant in the doll department.”

At that moment a rasping snore reverberated through the air. Chantek walked across and pulled aside a curtain which cut off one corner of the room, to reveal a day bed on which was curled the slumbering form of a portly white-haired gentleman of pensionable age. His suit was crumpled and stained, the collar had come adrift from his shirt, and his face had not seen soap, water, or razor for at least twenty-four hours. The atmosphere surrounding him smelt like the discharge from a brewhouse chimney.

“That specimen is, I presume, the authentic Mr. Claus,” said the Saint.

Chantek sighed as she regarded the sleeping man.

“Yes. His name is Ted, and he is really quite sweet. But sometimes he has a little too much to drink.”

Simon glanced at his watch and laughed.

“At eleven in the morning?”

“Oh no,” Chantek explained. “He did not feel well when he arrived this morning. I think he had been to a party last night.”

“It must have been some fling. So you told him to sleep it off and you took his place?”

She nodded.

“Yes. You see, if he had tried to work in that state they would have sacked him. Mary and I — she’s the pixie — just wanted to help him. He’s a nice old man really, and he needs the money.”

Another snore sounded from the sleeping Santa and the girl looked at him in dismay.

“I thought he would have woken up by now.”

“I think we can do something to bring him back to the land of the living,” Simon assured her with a grin.

One end of the rest room had been made into a kitchenette by the addition of a sink, a work surface, a few cupboards, and an electric hot plate. He removed the kettle from the ring, poured away the hot water, and replaced it with cold. Positioning it directly above the man’s head, he tilted it through ninety degrees.

Ted-the-Santa’s eyes opened as soon as the stream of icy water hit his brow and cascaded down his face. He coughed and spluttered, and with a convulsive heave managed to sit up. Simon continued the shower until the power of speech returned.

“’Ere, what the hell’s going on?” the man demanded aggrievedly, wiping the water from his eyes as he looked from Chantek to the Saint.

Simon surveyed him coldly.

“You’re going on.” He consulted his watch. “In about ten minutes, if we can make you look like something resembling the kiddies’ favourite and not a reject from a doss house.”

The man jumped angrily to his feet as the words penetrated the congeners numbing his senses. It was not a wise move. His face twisted in pain and he collapsed back onto the day bed and sat holding his head in his hands.

“Me brain’s breaking up,” he whined, but the Saint had no pity.

“Chantek, brew some coffee,” he said as he hoisted the man back to a vertical position and shoved him towards the sink. “And as for you, start cleaning yourself up.”

The man scowled at him but slowly set about doing as he was told. Chantek put the kettle on the hot plate. She turned back to the Saint and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

Simon followed her eyes and glanced over his shoulder. Framed in the doorway, staring at the scene with undisguised disapproval, stood two men.

“What is going on here?”

It was the larger of the pair who spoke, and the way the other man followed him into the room stamped them immediately as employer and employee.

Both Chantek and the drunk stood as if frozen and were obviously too stunned or too nervous to answer. As an outsider the Saint had no such inhibitions, and for no logical reason other than that he did not like his attitude or his appearance he took an immediate dislike to the man who had spoken.

He smiled benignly.

“We’re rehearsing the firm’s panto,” he said agreeably. “I’m Prince Charming, Chantek is Cinderella, this specimen is Buttons — or will be when we’ve done him up. If you’d like a part, we still have to cast the Ugly Sisters.”

The bigger man’s cheeks burned and he appeared to be about to have a seizure. He wore a pin-striped three-piece which, despite the quality of its tailoring, could not hide a spreading paunch which was the result of too many dinners and an equally expansive rear that was the legacy of spending too much time sitting in a chair telling other people what to do.

“Who the devil are you?” he spluttered, and the Saint’s smile broadened.

“Not a devil, a saint. My name is Templar. And who are you?”

The thin, lanky, and extremely ill-at-ease individual who stood at the big man’s right hand answered. His tone conveyed as much surprise at the Saint’s ignorance as if someone at a Buckingham Palace garden party had asked him to identify the Queen.

“This is Mr. Wakeforth. Mr. Stanton Wakeforth.”

The Saint considered the revelation and appeared duly impressed.

“Not the Mr. Stanton Wakeforth?”

The lanky man continued to look surprised.

“Of course.”

The Saint slowly shook his head.

“Sorry, I never heard of him.”

It was, in fact, an outright lie but the Saint could never resist the chance to prick the balloon of pomposity whenever it blew across his path. Mr. Stanton Wakeforth, he knew from his reading of the daily papers, was founder and autocratic ruler of the chain of department stores which bore his name. Mr. Stanton Wakeforth was very rich. Mr. Stanton Wakeforth was a self-made man, and Mr. Stanton Wakeforth’s greatest pleasure in life was telling people so.

The said Mr. Stanton Wakeforth glared at him.

“Are you an employee of this organisation?”

“No, sir, he isn’t,” answered his companion, with the look of a man who wishes he had died thirty seconds previously.

“Well, I don’t know why you are here and I don’t care.” Wakeforth’s voice trembled with barely suppressed rage. “This is a staff-only area and unless you leave immediately I’ll have Security throw you out.”

Before the Saint could say anything, Wakeforth turned on the others: “I heard everything you said from the corridor. I will not tolerate such behaviour in my stores. Collect your cards and get out. You are both dismissed.”

Simon looked steadily at the store boss and resisted a strong urge to make his fat lips even fatter. He had been presented with a virtual invitation to deflate the man’s ego and he had accepted it heartily without first considering where his action might lead. Now he felt sorry — not for what he had done, but for the consequences for Chantek and the elderly Santa. He accepted the responsibility of trying to repair the damage he had unintentionally caused.

“Look, Mr. Wakeforth, you’re absolutely right, I shouldn’t be here and I’ll go,” he said. “But there’s no cause to lay the heavy hand on these two, especially Chantek. After all, she was only trying to help. Where would you have been this morning without a Santa Claus? And as for Ted here, surely everyone is permitted one lapse, especially at this festive season.”

But his pleas were useless. His first impudence had infuriated the magnate beyond the point where he might have listened to rational argument.

Wakeforth turned on him savagely.

“How dare you try and tell me how to run my business, young man! Just get out of here now, all three of you.”

The loudspeaker on the wall above the door crackled:

Wakeforth glared at the intercom as if he wished it possessed a neck he could wring. He grabbed the transceiver from the internal phone on the wall, dialled a couple of numbers, and bellowed his name into the mouthpiece.

His face went a shade darker as he listened.

“The stock room? Why?”

The answer clearly did nothing to ease his temper. He banged the handset back into its cradle and addressed his aide.

“Apparently there’s some flap on. Stock control want me down there straight away, personally.” He wagged an accusing finger under the man’s nose. “I tell you, Parsons, I don’t like the way this store is being run. I don’t like it at all”

Parsons blanched.

“Shall I come to the stock room with you, sir?” he suggested timorously, and only just managed to conceal his relief when the offer was refused.

“No, I’ll deal with it. Though God knows why I should have to. You just get these people out of my store before I return. I’ll talk to you later.”

An uneasy silence followed the slamming of the door behind Mr. Stanton Wakeforth. Parsons looked apologetically at Chantek and the now abruptly sobered Santa.

“You had better come to my office straight away. I’ll make your money up to the end of the week. I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”

Simon attempted a final appeal.

“Couldn’t you get him to reconsider?” he asked hopefully. “Perhaps when he’s cooled down a bit.”

Parsons sighed, and his regret seemed genuine.

“There is no chance of that, I’m afraid. Mr. Wakeforth doesn’t cool down. He’s always like that, and this has been one of those days when nothing has been right for him. I have to do what he tells me. Would you come this way, please?”

He led the dispirited trio out of the rest room, and they filed without speaking up to his office on the top floor and waited while he contacted the accounts department and arranged for the cards and wages to be sent up.

“Tida apa,” the Saint said to Chantek consolingly. “There must be plenty of other jobs going at this time of year. And if I can’t find ’em for you, I’ll have you both myself, as my personal Santas. I always wanted to feel like the Man Who Has Everything.”

Her eyes had sparkled with happy surprise at the first phrase he used.

“First, you will have to tell me how you learned to speak Malay.”

“It’s a long story,” said the Saint wickedly, “and may involve several evenings.”

Parsons sat behind his desk gazing awkwardly into space. The man called Ted sat, head down, staring at the carpet. Chantek stood looking out of the window over the snow-brushed rooftops. The Saint eyed the safe in the corner and considered whether the almighty Mr. Stanton Wakeforth should be taught a lesson where it would hurt him most — in his pocket.

All four stopped their meditations as a commotion erupted in the outer office, and turned as the door was thrown back and a man in brown overalls staggered in.

“Murder!” he panted. “He’s dead. I saw it!”

“What on earth are you blabbering about?” the manager demanded.

“I tell you, I saw it,” the porter repeated.

“Who’s been murdered?” Parsons asked sharply. “You’re not making sense, man.”

The porter shook himself as he fought to control his shock and regain his breath.

“Mr. Wakeforth, sir. He’s been shot. Murdered! I saw it.”

“Where?” The Saint’s voice sliced through the stillness that followed.

The porter swung around and noticed him for the first time.

“In the stock room. Just now. I saw it!”

“Good, then you can show me. Come along.”

Simon grasped the man by the arm and hustled him back to the door. He turned to the manager as he reached it. “Don’t sit there gawping, phone the police.”

In the corridor the porter suddenly stopped and began to struggle against the Saint’s grip.

“I’m not going back down there!”

“Yes, you are,” Simon told him firmly. “Don’t worry, I’ll hold your hand. Pull yourself together. Where is the stock room?”

The authority in his voice was not to be denied, and the porter stopped resisting and managed to get a hold on himself.

“Ground floor at the rear. I ran up the stairs, but there’s a service lift.”

The elevator was at the end of the passage, and Simon hustled the porter to it and bundled him inside.

The iron cage descended with infuriating slowness. The lower they went, the more the porter’s agitation increased, and when they finally stopped he pressed himself into a corner and refused to budge. The Saint let him stay where he was.

There was no need to search for the body. Stanton Wakeforth lay spread-eagled on the floor a few feet from the lift. There was a neat round hole in the breast pocket of his jacket where the bullet had entered, and a crimson stain that oozed and spread from beneath him.

The Saint knelt beside the body, and his experienced eye told him all he needed to know. The scorch marks around the wound showed that the gun had been fired at point-blank range, and death had come so quickly that the magnate’s features still seemed to be contorted in anger rather than fear.

Clutched in the left hand was a scrap of paper, and Simon had to open the fingers to extract it. At first he thought it was gift-wrapping paper, and then its real purpose dawned. It was part of a Christmas cracker.

The stock room covered a large area, and nearly all of it was stacked to the ceiling with crates and boxes. On one side was an open loading bay leading to a service road which ran behind the store. The Saint knew it was no use now to hunt for the murderer. It must have been simple for him to get in and hide among the crates until Wakeforth arrived, and just as easy to get away again afterwards without being seen.

He walked back to the lift and pressed the top-floor button.

“Tell me what happened,” he said to the porter as the lift slowly rose.

“I was checking the inventory of the last delivery when I see Mr. Wakeforth come out of the lift. Then this figure steps out in front of him and holds out a cracker. Mr. Wakeforth tries to pull it away from him, and then there’s a bang and he’s dead. Shot!”

“What did this man look like?”

The porter could not stop trembling. His fingers dug into the Saint’s shoulder, and his voice was little above a croak.

“I told you, I saw it. It wasn’t a man. It was Father Christmas!”

4

What the Chronicle’s front-page headline lacked in syntax it made up for in dramatic effect.

Simon Templar propped the paper against the coffeepot and read the story during breakfast.

The killing of Sir Basil Lazentree had happened too late for the following morning’s papers, but the murder of Stanton Wakeforth could not have been better timed if the editor had committed it himself.

Two murders within twenty-four hours and half a mile of each other, both of important people, both killed by a man disguised as Father Christmas, and both with Simon Templar in the vicinity: the story had everything any news-hungry editor ever dreamt of.

There was an account of each murder plus potted biographies of both victims. Everyone but the cat appeared to have been interviewed, and there was a spread of pictures of every person and place in any way involved.

The Saint reviewed his own notices critically. For once the quotes were accurate, but he thought it was time the press took a new portrait for their files. The picture of Nutkin, however, was an accurate likeness, the photographer having managed to catch him looking both arrogant and angry as he shouldered his way through the throng of reporters outside the department store.

There are certain moments which transcend description, when words become not only superfluous but positively obstructive to a clear understanding of the emotions they seek to describe. The look on Superintendent Nutkin’s face when he marched importantly into the manager’s office and found himself confronted by the Saint had been one such moment. It was like the expression of a monarch who, after walking grandly up the aisle to be crowned, finds someone already sitting on his throne.

“What are you doing here?” he almost shouted.

“Waiting for you, like everybody else, Mr. Nuthatch—”

“Nutkin!”

“—and before you go out on a limb and I have to saw it off,” Simon continued kindly, “we were all here together while Brother Wakeforth was being promoted to the Great Board Room in the sky. So let me warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence of probable paranoia.”

Once he had recovered from the shock and reluctantly accepted that the Saint’s alibi was not merely cast iron but made of titanium alloy, Nutkin had instituted the ritual known as Standard Procedure. The store had been cleared of customers and searched, the staff had been questioned and their statements taken, the stock room had been dusted for fingerprints and the body examined, photographed, and finally despatched to the morgue.

The net result of so much activity had been to establish that the murder of the store boss was in some way connected with the killing of the master of St. Enoch’s — a fact that had been fairly obvious from the moment the porter had given his description of the murder.

A clue that confirmed a probable link between the killings had been spotted by the Saint. Left to his own devices after being clearly exonerated of Wakeforth’s murder, he had ignored Nutkin’s instruction to leave the store and instead wandered up to the tycoon’s office. Browsing through his diary, he had found an entry: “Lazentree 3.30.” The date was December 23, two days away. It was unexplained. He had bought Wakeforth’s secretary, who always accompanied her boss on visits to his stores, a calming brandy in a nearby pub, and she had identified the handwriting as his but had had no idea what the meeting was to have been about. Nutkin’s investigation did not seem to have noted it, but it had made the Saint somewhat curious about the connection of Stanton Wakeforth with St. Enoch’s.

One good thing to have resulted from Wakeforth’s death was that his last ukase had been forgotten, and Chantek and Ted had been allowed to go back to their jobs. The Saint was no longer concerned with the hung-over Santa, but Chantek was a different matter and had provided a delightful companion at dinner that night. Not yet having been thoroughly contaminated by the rising Western tide of feminine assertiveness, she happily and shamelessly deployed all the complaisant wiles which were the natural legacy of her other-worldly upbringing.

Simon Templar was not numbered among the ranks of those who believe that early rising leads to health, wealth, and wisdom, and he was the last customer left in the restaurant when he was finally thinking of leaving the breakfast table and officially acknowledging that the day had begun. At that moment what is commonly termed a discreet cough sounded in close proximity.

“I should take something for that,” he murmured without looking up from the article he was finishing.

There was a brief pause before the intruder spoke.

“Are you Mr. Simon Templar?”

There was an officious undertone to the voice which matched the abruptness of the cough. The Saint folded his paper and eyed the newcomer speculatively.

“That depends on whether you are (a) from the Inland Revenue, (b) from a news agency, (c) from the police, or (d) looking for a donation,” he replied.

On reflection, the other could not have been any of those alternatives, except just possibly the first. His pinstriped suit was too severely cut to belong to a reporter, and at around five feet seven he was a shade too small for the constabulary. There was a sharpness about the eyes and a tightness about the lips which did not suit the image of a charity worker. But rather than a tax collector he reminded the Saint of a bank manager.

The man smiled, or, to be precise, his lips twitched in what was an effort to produce a smile.

“I am Godfrey Nyall, bursar of St. Enoch’s College,” he stated formally. “I wonder if I might have a word with you.”

Simon gestured towards the vacant chair beside him.

“Wonder no more. Sit down and have as many words as you wish. Would you like some coffee?”

Nyall accepted the chair but declined the coffee. He came immediately to the reason for his visit.

“I read in the paper this morning that it was you who found Sir Basil’s body.”

“That’s right.”

“And you were also present when Mr. Wakeforth was murdered.”

“Just a knack, really,” smiled the Saint, with a dismissive shrug of his shoulders.

Having established his facts, Nyall appeared uncertain how to continue, and Simon had to prompt him.

“What can I do for you?”

“I, that is, we — the senior members of the faculty-would like to talk to you. Naturally we have already spoken with the police, but with a person such as yourself involved — quite innocently of course — we thought it might be...”

Nyall floundered, and again the Saint came to the rescue.

“Useful? Advantageous?” he suggested.

The bursar nodded.

“Yes. It’s not that we lack confidence in the police, you understand — just that a man of your reputation — that is, your experience in such matters — might be able to give us some suggestions, or — er — advice...”

It was one of the most roundabout invitations Simon had received for a long time, but none the less welcome for being so. Evidently the dons of St. Enoch’s had not been overimpressed with the good superintendent. And it solved the first of his problems as perfectly as if he had written the script himself.

“If there’s anything I can do to help, I shall certainly be glad to do it,” he said.

Nyall looked relieved.

“Thank you, Mr. Templar. Unfortunately the dean is in London today but we expect him back early this evening. Would it be convenient for you to come to the college at half past eight tonight?”

“Fine by me,” Simon agreed.

He had been prepared to go with the bursar immediately but was not sorry about the delay. He had had his own plans for the day which had nothing to do with solving crime but everything to do with developing his acquaintance with Chantek, whose day off it happened to be.

The bursar took his leave, and the Saint ushered him out of the breakfast room into the hotel lobby, but after one glance at the crowd of reporters gathered between the reception desk and the door turned on his heel and eventually made a less hazardous exit via the kitchens.

A slow thaw had started and the city streets had been reduced to dirty grey strips of slush, but the flat lands of the Cambridgeshire countryside were still carpeted in white with a thin mist blurring the edges of the fields. The Saint allowed the Hirondel to idle along winding lanes, letting the starkness of the scenery be warmed by the vivacity of the girl beside him. They lunched at Newmarket and motored back in a wide loop via Bury St. Edmunds and Haverhill at a speed lazy enough to bring them back to Chantek’s digs in a house near the college soon after dark, where she insisted that he come in for tea. It was cosy by the small coal fire, and when she offered to fix a snack it was difficult to remind himself that sometimes business had to be put before pleasure. But her good night was long and lingering enough to force him to hurry the last few yards to be on time at St. Enoch’s for his appointment.

Godfrey Nyall collected him from the gatekeeper’s lodge and led him into the central block of the college and through a labyrinth of corridors to the senior common room. It was spacious and elegant with oak-panelled walls, a deep-pile carpet, and rows of bookshelves holding richly bound volumes. The overall effect was more reminiscent of the smoking room in a St. James’s club than a staff room in a university.

Two men rose to greet them as they entered, and Nyall performed the introductions.

“Professor Edwin Darslow. Professor Denzil Rosco.”

The Saint shook hands and let himself be planted in a wing armchair at the hearthside. He accepted the whisky they offered, and took advantage of the pause while it was poured to observe his hosts.

Edwin Darslow looked to be about fifty, but he had that type of timeless face which is hard to date accurately. His hair was white but plentiful, and the lines that etched his features were more the furrows of concentration than the mark of passing years. He was thin to the point of gauntness, and his movements were jerky and hesitant. He perched rather than sat on his chair, and his eyes darted continually around the room as if he constantly expected to be surprised.

Denzil Rosco was a complete contrast. Dressed in comfortably rumpled slacks and a leather-patched tweed jacket, he lounged in his chair and seemed to regard both his colleagues and the Saint with a detached air of vague amusement. He was the youngest of the St. Enoch’s trio, probably in his thirties, and from his build and the slight misalignment of his nose it seemed likely that he had not long ago hung up his rugby shirt for the last time.

Nyall handed round the drinks and then sat in the chair facing the Saint.

“Professor Burridge, the dean, has been delayed, I’m afraid, but he should be here shortly,” Nyall informed him.

“Well, Mr. Templar, what do you make of it all?” asked Rosco with a smile. “How long before we catch this slaying Santa?”

Simon returned the grin. There was something immediately likeable about the man, perhaps because he appeared less dusty and formal than his colleagues.

“I don’t make anything of it — yet. And I haven’t got the faintest idea how long it will take to catch him,” Simon said truthfully.

Nyall looked slightly offended by the Saint’s bluntness.

“You mean they may never catch this madman?”

The Saint shook his head.

“Oh, he’ll probably get caught sometime, if he makes a mistake, and most murderers eventually do. But I wouldn’t dismiss him as a madman if I were you. He may be obsessed, he may even be slightly deranged, but he’s sane enough to know exactly what he’s doing and plan it well beforehand.”

“How do you mean, exactly?” Nyall asked.

“Madmen don’t time their murders so well. He knew when Sir Basil would be alone and where. He knew Wakeforth was visiting his Cambridge store, he knew how to get into the loading bay, use the internal telephone to contact him, and what excuse to use to put him on the spot. Not only that, he’s intelligent and cunning enough to work out a brilliant disguise. A Santa Claus costume is a practically total cover-up, and yet at this time of year it doesn’t arouse any suspicion. He could use it again and still get away with it, because nobody would expect him to make himself so conspicuous.”

“Do you think he will kill again?” Darslow asked.

“There’s an old superstition that things always go in threes.”

“So we just hang around until he decides to kill somebody else and hope he leaves a footprint or a cigarette butt or a trail of blood or some such clue so that the worthy Superintendent Nutkin can do his Sherlock Holmes act,” Rosco said cheerfully.

“We’re really interested to know — as, er, off-the-record fans of yours — what you’d be doing in the meantime, if you were in Nutkin’s place,” said Nyall.

“I’d be looking for a motive,” said the Saint, “and hoping that it would point me to a suspect. You knew Sir Basil, have you any idea why somebody should want to murder him?”

He looked at each of the three men in turn as he spoke. Both Nyall and Rosco returned his gaze negatively, but Darslow concentrated on the liquid in his glass and avoided a direct encounter. His nervousness was so apparent that the Saint warned himself against jumping to conclusions.

But before any of the three dons could answer his question, the door opened to admit a tall imperious individual who could only be the dean. A pace behind him trailed the less imposing figure of Superintendent Nutkin.

“Why, here’s the man himself!” Simon exclaimed joyfully. “How’ve you been getting on with your enquiries, Mr. Nutcase?”

The look on the detective’s face when he saw the Saint suggested a sudden violent attack of indigestion.

“What are you doing here, Templar?” he demanded in a strangled voice which indicated that his pains were getting worse.

“Nothing much, just passing the evening trying to solve a couple of homicides,” the Saint said breezily. “And you? Have you come to enrol for a degree in detection or did you just slip in before they shut the door?”

The dean, whose gaze had flittered between the two like an umpire at a tennis match, stepped into the breach of the peace.

“I ran into the superintendent on my way from the railway station,” he explained. “I thought it might be helpful if he joined us for an informal chat. I presume that you are Mr. Simon Templar. I am Dr. Burridge, the dean of St. Enoch’s.”

Burridge’s solemn monotone matched his sombre features. His handshake was strong and authoritative. Nutkin tried to ignore the Saint with the same dedication he might have used to try to forget an aching tooth. When he and the dean were seated, Nyall summarised the conversation they had missed, up to the Saint’s question.

“Can any of you gentlemen think of anyone who might have had a grudge against Sir Basil?”

Burridge slowly shook his head.

“You must remember, Mr. Templar, that Sir Basil had only been Master here for a few months. I don’t think any of us knew him before then, although naturally we knew of him because of his broadcasting activities. As far as I know, he made no enemies since he came here.”

Denzil Rosco’s mouth curved in a cynical smile.

“Only the spiders,” he drawled, with a mischievous sidelong glance at the bursar.

“I beg your pardon?” said Nutkin sharply.

“I meant that only spiders might take a dislike to people who brush away cobwebs.”

“What Professor Rosco may be trying to say,” Nyall explained, “is that some of us did not like a few of Sir Basil’s ideas for the future of the college.”

“And what where they?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Rosco said lightly. “He just wanted to bring St. Enoch’s into the twentieth century.”

“St. Enoch’s is not as old or as famous or as rich as many of the Cambridge colleges,” Nyall said starchily, sitting forward in his chair and glaring at Rosco. “But that doesn’t mean that we do not have our traditions and that we are not proud of them.”

“But you still haven’t told us what his plans were,” the Saint reminded them.

Again it was the dean who intervened like the chairman of an unruly committee. He spoke quickly to prevent either Nyall or Rosco from continuing their apparent feud.

“That is because we do not know. Sir Basil talked in generalisations — about getting new patrons to endow new fellowships in new and perhaps controversial subjects. He had not taken us into his confidence about anything specific. It was mainly his general attitude that may have struck some of us as a bit commercial and unacademic.”

“But not upset them enough to make anyone think of murdering him, I suppose?” Nutkin asked.

Edwin Darslow gave a short nervous laugh. It was the first sound he had made for such a long time that it drew all eyes to him. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair as he realised he had become the focus of attention.

“I hardly think anyone would take us for murderous types, Superintendent,” he said hastily, in a voice a tone higher than it should have been.

“You’d be surprised,” Nutkin said rather smugly, “if you met some of the murderers I’ve had to deal with.”

“All caught with your own bare hands?” said the Saint with mock admiration.

The summons of the telephone splintered the tension that was building again.

Nyall lifted the receiver and then handed it to Nutkin.

The superintendent listened for a few moments, his expression indicating that his indigestion had returned with a vengeance.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He dropped the receiver into its cradle and faced the gathering.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said heavily, “but I have to return to the station immediately.”

“Another murder?” asked the Saint hopefully.

“I have to brief the chief constable on the progress of our enquiries,” Nutkin said, with a return to his usual pompous manner. But there was something about it which suggested that he would have preferred being summoned to deal with a dead body rather than a live one with gold braid on its shoulders.

The dons rose as the detective made to leave. Their eagerness for the amateur- Sherlock session had clearly evaporated, and the Saint realised that little was likely to be gained by pressing the subject at that moment. He contented himself with the thought that he could always come again.

The goodbyes were brief, and a few minutes later the Saint found himself walking across the main courtyard beside Nutkin. The detective did not seem to welcome his company and Simon saw no reason to force a conversation from which he would learn exactly nothing. Nutkin’s car was parked in the square, and the Saint lingered beneath the main gateway and watched him drive away.

He leaned against the wall while his gaze roamed round the quadrangle. Except for the quantity of snow it was identical to when he had cut across it and discovered Lazentree’s body. But though everything seemed to be the same he had a nagging feeling that it was in some way different.

As he stood scanning the scene and trying to decipher the subtle change that had taken place, a lone figure hurried down the college steps and headed for the doorway into the adjoining court with a large package under his arm.

“A bit early for delivering Christmas presents,” the Saint observed to himself thoughtfully. “Even for a Santa Claus.”

Keeping close to the wall, he followed Professor Edwin Darslow into the neighbouring courtyard, past the spot where Sir Basil had been murdered, and out into a narrow close of terraced cottages that bordered the college grounds.

Staying in the protective shadows of the doorway that gave onto the pavement, he watched Darslow cross the road and stop beside a car. After a hurried glance each way as if to assure himself that the coast was clear, the professor opened the rear hatch and put the parcel inside.

The Saint smiled softly in the darkness and blessed the impulse that had prompted him to follow the professor. Darslow’s actions were curious enough by themselves, but there was something else that made his smile tighten, as he remedied the memory lapse that had worried him a few minutes before. The car was a battered Austin saloon, and the last time he had seen it was in the main courtyard of St. Enoch’s a few moments before Sir Basil Lazentree was murdered.

5

With a final furtive look around, Darslow let himself into the nearest cottage. The slamming of the- door was immediately followed by the scrape of a bolt being shot home. A moment later a light came on behind the curtains of the broad downstairs window.

The roadway and pavement were deserted, but lights showed in several other windows on the street. Simon lingered in the shadows until he was sure that neither the professor nor his neighbours were looking out from behind their curtains. Satisfied that he would be unobserved, he crossed the road and tried the handle at the blunt end of the Austin. It was securely locked. Had he been carrying even the most rudimentary instrument, the mechanism would not have survived his probing for more than a few seconds, but he had not expected for a moment to need any such thing when he set out.

He straightened quickly and glanced along the close at the sound of a door opening and the clatter of milk bottles on the step. Conscious of how suspicious he looked, he turned on his heel and walked briskly back to the college gate from where he could see Darslow’s cottage and most of the close without being visible himself.

Analysed individually, the three pointers that came together to make Professor Edwin Darslow a suspect were each completely innocuous. Why shouldn’t his car be parked outside the college wherein he worked? Why shouldn’t he put a parcel in the boot of the aforementioned automobile? And why shouldn’t an academic who has spent his life surrounded by books be ill at ease in the company of the most notorious outlaw of his generation, especially when the said outlaw is investigating the murder of the said academic’s boss? The Saint was fully aware that he might be adding one and one and one and making four. But it was the only equation that had so far presented itself, and he wasn’t going to dismiss it until he had double-checked the arithmetic.

Short of hammering on Darslow’s door, dragging him out, and forcing him to open his car and the mysterious package, which would have lacked a certain degree of subtlety, there were only two options open. One was to return to the hotel and bring back the kit of burglarious implements which he always carried with him in readiness for all contingencies; the other was to do nothing and wait on events.

While the Saint considered the alternatives the light downstairs was extinguished and after a few moments another came on in the room above. Ten minutes later that too went out.

His watch showed ten forty-five, which seemed a fairly early bedtime unless the professor was planning an equally early start in the morning. The Saint waited for a further five minutes, to assure himself that Darslow had done nothing more exciting than go to bed, before retracing his steps through the college grounds and heading back for his hotel. Whatever Edwin Darslow’s plans for the following day, it seemed an odds-on chance that they included the parcel and its contents. Simon decided that it might prove more interesting to keep an eye on the professor and his package than to pre-empt events by breaking into the car.

In spite of Simon Templar’s scepticism about the virtues of early rising, there were occasions when his vocation made such tiresome activities mandatory. The sun rose at seven twenty-five the next morning and the Saint witnessed its first rays pierce the sky from behind the wheel of the Hirondel. Faced with the choice of enduring the discomforts of keeping the house and its occupant under surveillance all night or of returning early in the morning and risking missing Darslow’s exit, he had gambled on the latter. The fact that the professor’s car was still in the same spot, and he had arrived in time to see the bedroom light switched on, showed that the bet had paid off.

He had parked the Hirondel at the T junction where the close met a quiet side road which in turn connected with the main thoroughfares of the city. Through the side window he could see the entire close at a glance, while the windscreen provided a clear view of the road leading to the city centre, the direction in which anyone leaving the close was most likely to go.

He leaned across and pushed open the passenger door in response to a rap on the window. Chantek slid into the seat beside him.

She smiled brightly.

“Good morning.”

Simon looked at her doubtfully.

“Is it? I’ve been here an hour and he hasn’t done anything more exciting than take in the milk.”

Chantek delved into the carrier bag she had brought and produced a vacuum flask and a stack of bacon sandwiches.

“Coffee?”

“That’s the best offer I’ve had today,” he said gratefully.

Aware that he would have to leave the hotel before the kitchen started serving breakfast, he had taken the precaution of calling Chantek the night before and enlisting her help in combating early morning hypoglycemia, though he was not entirely motivated by the need for nutrition. The department store was closed out of respect, and he had his own ideas about how to fill the time on her hands.

He turned in his seat to take the mug from her and grimaced at the stiffness of his joints.

“I’ve just made medical history. I’m the first person to get rigor mortis while still breathing,” he complained.

Chantek was not sympathetic.

“It serves you right for suspecting Professor Darslow. He looks such a timid little man.”

The Saint sipped the hot brown liquid and sighed at the rapid thaw it produced in his arteries.

“So did Crippen and Christie,” he pointed out.

“I still don’t believe it,” Chantek said firmly.

The Saint nodded towards the cottage as he saw its front door opening.

“Well, we shall see. It looks as though we’re going into business at last.”

Chantek followed his eyes and watched Darslow leave the cottage and get into his car.

The Saint put a hand on her shoulder and drew her down beside him below the level of the dashboard as the Austin chugged past them heading for the centre of town. The rakish lines of the Hirondel would have drawn curious attention in Piccadilly; in that staid and sleepy backwater the cream and red speedster was as much in harmony with its surroundings as a tuba in a string quartet. For once he wished he had been driving something more sedate, but as he had not used it to go to the college there was no reason why anyone seeing it should associate it with him: it could as well have belonged to some very well-heeled undergraduate. At any rate, it did not seem to affect Professor Darslow’s progress.

Cautiously Simon peeped over the rim of the steering wheel and noted that the professor had not bothered to scrape the overnight frost from the rear window. Until the sun or the car’s heater dissolved the grey crystal coating, it would not be easy for him to discover that he was being followed.

The Hirondel awoke with a roar that slipped into rhythmic purring as he flicked the stick into gear and swung out on the trail of the Austin, steering with one hand and munching a bacon sandwich held in the other.

Darslow drove at a steady forty miles an hour once they had cleared the limits of Cambridge, and the Saint remained a regular fifty yards astern. As they followed the main highway towards Saffron Walden he brought the conversation back to the fellows of St. Enoch’s.

“If you think Professor Edwin Darslow is far too meek and mild to be a murderer,” he remarked thoughtfully, “why does he have that shifty and evasive manner?”

“I think he’s terribly shy. But he’s rather sweet.”

It was not the objective observation he would have preferred, and Chantek, sensing that he was hoping for something more substantial, continued: “It doesn’t seem likely that someone who lectures in law would commit a crime.”

The Saint smiled to himself as he thought of all the pillars of propriety he had known, from Cabinet ministers and judges to a few police officers, who were always lecturing in law in one way or another but had not always been known to practise their teachings themselves. But he let the matter rest and went on to see if he could learn any more about Darslow’s colleagues.

“What do you know about Professor Rosco?” he asked.

“He’s sweet.”

“Are all professors sugar-coated as far as you’re concerned?” Simon enquired, half amused by her innocence and half exasperated by her vagueness.

“What I mean,” Chantek explained with slow deliberation, “is that Professor Darslow is sweet like an uncle, but Rosco is mmmmm sweet.”

The seductive purr made the Saint chuckle.

“I get the message. Is he one of your tutors?”

“No, bad luck. I’m reading English, and he lectures on zoology,” she said with a sigh.

Rosco was clearly a more stimulating topic of conversation, and she needed no prompting to continue.

“He’s really very clever and he has been all over the world on expeditions. Borneo, the Amazon, Africa, everywhere. When he came here last year there was a feature on him in the university magazine, full of pictures of him wading through swamps and hacking through jungles and things. Last summer he went to Kenya to study the animals in one of the national parks and almost got killed by a leopard.”

“Sounds like stirring stuff,” Simon agreed.

“He doesn’t approve of hunting, but he had to kill it with a single shot just as it sprang,” Chantek said.

The Saint, who had firsthand knowledge of the speed of a big cat going for the kill and the reflexes needed to stay alive, was duly impressed.

“He must be a good shot.”

“He’s won prizes for it. There’s a whole cabinet full of them in his study, and he helps to run the shooting club of the university too.”

“Is that so?” he murmured, and was silent as he considered what Chantek had told him.

He had thought Rosco out of place the night before because he appeared less fusty than the others, and his global wanderings certainly provided a reason why he should be more open-minded than they. The fact that he could also handle himself in a tight corner and knew his way around a firearm was of even greater interest.

“I don’t think that either Dr. Burridge or Mr. Nyall really approves of him,” Chantek was saying, and he filed his thoughts for the moment and returned to the present.

“Why not?”

She shrugged.

“Oh, I don’t know really. They’re so stuffy and always going on about the college and its traditions, and he’s not a bit like that.”

She paused, and he was about to press her for more information about the college administrators when the Austin indicated right and turned off the main highway onto a secondary road. The Saint followed, and before he could restart the conversation a signpost announced that they were coming to the village of Bucksberry.

As English villages go, it was neither historically nor visually interesting, but on that particular morning it did have a certain picturesque charm owing to the riders and their pack of yapping hounds who were gathered on the green outside the aptly named Fox Inn. With the last traces of snow still clinging to the rooftops, it could have been a scene straight from a Victorian painting.

Darslow stopped in the pub’s forecourt next to a group of locals who were watching the preparations for the morning’s hunt. Simon tucked the Hirondel behind the cover of a conveniently placed van outside the general store on the opposite side of the road and switched off the engine.

The professor clambered out of his car and began talking to two or three of the men standing on the pavement. The Saint wound down his window but was too far away to hear what was said, and to leave the Hirondel would have risked instant recognition if Darslow looked his way. The conversation appeared, however, to consist more of arm pointing and head nodding than verbal communication.

Darslow’s dress of Wellington boots, tough cord trousers, and chunky rollneck sweater beneath a heavy homespun jacket blended perfectly with the clothes of those he talked to and with the environment generally. If the rest of the day was to be spent roaming the countryside, the Saint began to fear that his Bond Street car coat and Savile Row jacket and slacks might place him at a conspicuous disadvantage.

“What’s he doing, Simon?” Chantek asked.

“I’m not sure, but by the look of it he’s being given directions. We’ll just have to wait and see where to.”

Although he could not hear Darslow’s conversation there was no difficulty in hearing the remarks of the nearer riders and hunt followers as they drained their stirrup cups and speculated on the sport ahead of them. Dominating the group and clearly in charge of it was a red-jacketed rider whose heavy roan gelding stamped impatiently on the turf. The man, like his horse, was large and powerfully built. His features were strong and florid and he controlled his mount with the sureness of an accomplished horseman.

The whippers-in were ordering the hounds and the landlord of the inn was collecting the last of the stirrup cups, indicating that the hunt was about to move off. He retrieved the big red-coated rider’s cup last of all and smiled diffidently at the man, who had every air of being the master of the hunt.

“Should be a good day, Colonel,” he said chattily,

“Damn well hope so,” the colonel muttered, and briskly caught up with his companions on the way through a gate beside the inn where they trotted out into the open fields beyond. Once through the narrow opening they fanned out and broke into a canter behind the vanguard of sniffing canine noses.

Darslow got back into his car as the pack set off and headed out of the village in the opposite direction to the way he had entered it. Simon waited until he had rounded the first bend and then pulled out in pursuit.

Bucksberry rests in a shallow scoop of land between two low tree-crested ridges. The village consists of little more than a couple of dozen houses, most of them strung out along each side of the one main street like beads on a necklace. From the back fences of the houses the fields run flat for half a mile before beginning to slope gently upwards. The road meanders for nearly a mile before forking into two lanes which curve around the base of each hill.

At this junction Darslow turned left. As he followed, the Saint glanced across the fields to his right and saw the hunters reach the end of the flat land and begin heading uphill along a path that would take them through a broad gap in the trees and over to the open country on the other side.

Darslow’s next move was so unexpected that the Saint had to brake hard to avoid coming up too close behind him. As the Austin rounded the foot of the hill it made a sudden right turn through a gateway onto a rutted cart track leading towards the top of the hill.

Simon cruised the Hirondel around the next bend, and as soon as the hedges hid them he came to a halt in a fortunate pull-off beside a farm gate.

“What do you think he’s up to?” Chantek asked.

“It must be something to do with the hunt,” said the Saint. “Or one of the hunters. At the pub, he must have been trying to find out where they were going to have their first try at drawing a fox. The answer must have been the woods on top of that hill, and he’s meaning to get there first.”

“But what for?” she persisted.

“Maybe he’s one of those fox-hunting buffs who can’t ride or can’t afford a horse and like to follow the action on foot.”

He got out of the car and watched the Austin pulling itself up the track. At the top of the hill it stopped and Darslow climbed out. He walked quickly around to the back, unlocked it, and lifted out the package he had put there the night before. The hunt was now halfway up the slope, the huntsman shouting encouragements to the hounds as they cast about for a scent.

Chantek scrambled out of the Hirondel and looked at the Saint uncertainly.

“Stay here and watch Darslow’s car,” he ordered, and without further explanation he vaulted over the gate and sprinted towards the spinney which the professor was entering.

He covered the quarter mile of steep gradient in a shade over sixty seconds and reached the edge of the copse before Darslow had made his way very far into it. With the skill of an Indian scout Simon dodged quickly and soundlessly between the trees until he was no more than a good stone’s throw behind the professor.

Darslow tramped as quickly as the undergrowth would allow along a diagonal course that eventually brought him out on a footpath that bisected the wood and linked the fields either side of the ridge. In a moment he went behind a bush, knelt down, and seemed to be unwrapping his mysterious package.

Simon moved stealthily closer. From the corner of his eye he could see the first of the hounds enter the gap between the trees. Close on their tails came the huntsman and the whips, followed by other riders led by the colonel.

The top of the ridge formed a small plateau some two hundred yards across, and the leading riders were still only a third of the way into the wood when the crack of a single pistol shot sliced like a bullwhip through the still morning air.

Every bird in Cambridgeshire seemed to take wing at once. Their squawks and the noise of their flapping wings almost managed to cover the startled cries of the other riders and the neighing of the colonel’s mount as it reared. But the colonel made no sound. He appeared to move in grotesque slow motion as his arms flew wide and he pitched backwards out of the saddle and lay still where he landed.

6

The riders who had been nearest him reined in their horses sharply, wheeling them as if instinctively forming a protective cordon around the shot man, while those who had been bringing up the rear of the hunt spurred forward to see what was happening. One of the leaders tried to wave them back as the huntsman dismounted and knelt anxiously beside the spread-eagled figure.

For a quartet of heartbeats the Saint stayed as motionless as the tree that shielded him while his brain absorbed the full import of what he had witnessed. The shot had sounded fairly close and from somewhere directly ahead. As his eyes probed the terrain to try to pinpoint its exact source, the bushes quivered and Darslow half rose from his hiding place less than a dozen yards away.

The undergrowth was denser here than in the part of the wood through which he had stalked the professor. The briers ran like hurdles between the rose-set trees, and together with the carpet of decaying leaves and twigs made moving both quickly and silently almost impossible. Simon opted for speed rather than stealth. Had Darslow been alert he could easily have heard the Saint coming but he was too preoccupied with what was happening along the path to his left.

The first the professor knew of his approach was when Simon’s forearm snaked across his vision and clamped across his throat. At the same time a band of steel seemed to fasten on his right wrist as his arm was bent back and hoisted roughly along the line of his spine. The message in his ear was unchallengeable.

“One squeak and I’ll break your arm. Understood?”

Darslow nodded his head the fraction that was all the freedom the Saint’s hold allowed.

Simon released his grip on the other’s wrist but kept the back hammer in position with the pressure of his body. With fast and expert thoroughness he ran his free hand over the professor’s clothes. When the search produced no weapon he switched his attention to the ground, but the only object in view was the mysterious parcel which lay open at Darslow’s feet. It did not contain a Santa Claus costume as the Saint had originally half hoped. Instead, all that spilled from the waterproof wrapping was a large bundle of rags which exhaled a malodorous mixture of aniseed and paraffin.

Along the path the riders’ initial shock was beginning to wear off. Others had now dismounted and were standing or stooping uncertainly around the colonel’s body. Another scarlet-coated man appeared to be taking charge. He shouted instructions in an authoritative tone that easily carried the hundred yards to where Simon and Darslow stood, detailing two members of the hunt to go for help. As they turned their horses and set off at a gallop back towards the village, he turned his attention to some braver souls who were beginning to explore the woods on either side and another who was edging cautiously along the track.

“Come back, you fools, do you want to get killed as well?” he called, and they hesitated, neither returning to the cluster around the colonel nor going farther.

The Saint sensed that their indecision was temporary. They were younger than most of their companions and looked as if they might find the gamble exciting. He and Darslow were protected by a thick screen of trees and bushes which would also hinder the horses if the riders decided to comb the wood, but if they rode along the path they would certainly be seen.

“Where’s the gun?” Simon demanded softly.

“I never had one,” Darslow gasped. “I only meant to sabotage the hunt. Someone else — I didn’t see—”

The denial had an unmistakeable ring of truth, and Simon relaxed his throttling grip.

Events had moved quicker than the time taken to relate them and it was still barely three minutes since the sniper had fired. But the Saint grimly acknowledged that the lapse was likely to be more than long enough.

He found no fault with his own reactions. Darslow had been the obvious suspect and the Saint had tackled him without considering an alternative. He had tracked the professor diagonally across the wood and felt confident that he would have spotted anyone else hiding there. But the path split the wood in two and the other half was unexplored territory.

He dragged Darslow down so that the undergrowth screened them as much as possible, and released him.

“Go back the way you came and go fast,” he whispered. “Try not to be spotted. I’ll see you later at the college.”

Without waiting to see if Darslow obeyed he covered the remaining few yards to the edge of the path, bent low, and then rose to sprint across the open glade. Someone shouted as the Saint reached the centre of the path, but he was moving fast with the line of his body turned away and, given the distance that separated them, he doubted that he would later be recognised. Meanwhile, that unavoidable glimpse of him would decoy any ambitious huntsman away from the direction that Darslow should have taken.

Once again hidden by the trees, he paused and looked back. The rider had made no attempt to follow up his sighting, but others who had been casting round at the sides of the path had now joined him, and the Saint guessed that their collective courage would be enough to prod them forward.

He glanced about him. This part of the wood was the same as the one he had just left, except that if anything the undergrowth was even wilder and the trees even closer together, offering the perfect cover for either a sniper or a fugitive.

He was aware of the recklessness of his actions. He was going unarmed in pursuit of a murderer who was not only packing a gun but knew how to use it, and use it well. And now his line of retreat was cut. But if Simon Templar had always bothered with such considerations there would have been very few stories to write about him.

He was about to move on when something glinting dully at his feet caught his eye. It was a spent cartridge, a .22 long rifle, and still not quite as cold as the ground when he picked it up. He slipped it into his pocket. The thick carpet of leaf mould was dented where the sniper had lain in wait. It was the perfect spot for an ambush, offering a clear view of anyone entering the wood from the direction of the village while at the same time providing the maximum amount of concealment.

Cautiously the Saint went on. With every sense alive to the movements and sounds that surrounded him, he dodged from one tree to another but saw and heard nothing except the furred and feathered inhabitants of the wood disturbed by his passing. He had gone only some three hundred yards when the trees suddenly thinned and he found himself unexpectedly at the outer edge of the wood. The ploughed fields that dipped away before him would not have offered cover to anything larger than a rabbit.

Keeping to the edge of the wood where the going was fastest, he skirted it around the top of the hill on the opposite side to the village. He went farther down the hillside as he approached the far end of the path, using the slope of the land to hide him from the riders who had ventured to the place where he had crossed.

He gained the spot where he had first entered the wood in pursuit of Darslow without further incident, and noted that the professor’s car was gone as he raced down the hillside towards his own. The sooner that Bucksberry and its immediate environs were several miles astern the happier he would feel.

Chantek was still standing on the grass verge where he had left her. She opened her mouth to speak but he bundled her unceremoniously into the Hirondel and threw himself behind the wheel. In one fluid movement he gunned the engine into life. Chantek was still closing her door when the big car leapt forward like a cheetah. He hurled it along the twisting lanes and neither spoke until the first mile was covered and Chantek got her voice back.

“I saw Professor Darslow drive away. What happened?”

In clipped sentences he told her, but his mind was roving far ahead of his words.

There was no clue this time to link the killing of the colonel to the murders of Wakeforth and Lazentree, no hooded Santa or diary reminder. But his instinct told him that it was a strand of the same web. Cambridge is a peaceful city where the majority of citizens are concerned with arguments rhetorical. A third murder in three days was too much of a coincidence. There had to be a common reason not only for the killings themselves but for why they all had to occur in such quick succession and thereby make life so much more difficult for the murderer.

The Saint considered the ingredients of each killing as he searched for a connecting link that would help to build up a picture of the murderer. Lazentree had been strangled, which had required strength or a certain technique. Wakeforth’s murder pointed to careful planning and a steady nerve. The shooting had called for a high degree of woodcraft and workmanship.

Chantek’s comment cut through his thoughts.

“At least it proves that Professor Darslow isn’t a murderer,” she said with an air of triumph.

“It proves nothing except that he didn’t kill the colonel,” he said meticulously.

A worried frown tried to spoil the natural gayety of her features.

“Shouldn’t you have stayed until the police arrived?”

The Saint chuckled at the vision the idea conjured up.

“Of course I should have, but I was thinking of Superintendent Nutkin’s blood pressure. If he’d found me on another murder scene, he might have had a stroke.”

“But what if he finds out you were there?” Chantek persisted.

“I may even have to tell him eventually, I don’t know yet. But it’s unlikely that anyone could identify me. Except Darslow — and I don’t think he’ll be so keen to admit that he was there himself.”

He did not mention the cartridge he had found, for no other reason than that it would have led to more questions which he was not ready to answer. He might have to hand it to the police at some time, but not before it had told him as much as it could without the full laboratory treatment.

Not wanting to catch up with Darslow and seem to be hounding him, he eased his throttle and took a slightly circuitous route back to Cambridge that would give the professor plenty of time to get home ahead of them.

The girl sensed his desire for silence and said little more until the Hirondel was parked outside St. Enoch’s and she had directed him to Darslow’s office.

“Is this the end of our day out together?” she pouted.

“I hope not, but you never know. Can I check with you in your rooms towards lunchtime?”

She nodded, and he left her with a light kiss on the cheek.

“Now let’s see what Brother Darslow has to say for himself,” the Saint speculated softly as he opened the professor’s door.

Professor Edwin Darslow looked like a man who has aged ten years in one morning. He sat behind his desk in the small tidy confines of his study and gazed out of the window at the courtyard below without seeing anything. He still wore the country clothes he had been out in. A bottle of whisky stood on the desk blotter with a half-full tumbler beside it. As Simon entered he turned reluctantly to face him.

Simon leant against a bookcase and eyed him coldly. Darslow shifted uneasily and tried to avoid looking directly at him.

“Let’s start with some explanations,” said the Saint. “Like what you were doing this morning.”

Darslow jerked his head.

“I told you, I wanted to sabotage the hunt,” he mumbled, his cheeks tingling with embarrassment at the confession.

“Go on,” Simon commanded.

Darslow’s voice was hoarse and faltering as he continued.

“I don’t hold with fox hunting, or any other blood sport. But a man in my position, well, I can’t take part in activist demonstrations. But I thought I ought to be doing something besides talking. So I thought I’d do this on my own. I left it too late or I would have been gone before the hunt arrived. I just meant to scatter the rags around and lead the hounds astray. It’s the smell of the aniseed mainly, it confuses them.”

He paused and shook his head as if to clear the memories it contained.

“I had no idea what was going to happen. It was horrible, horrible. Poor Colonel Harker. Shot. It’s almost unbelievable.”

His voice trailed away and the Saint allowed him a few moments to pull himself together before asking: “Did you see anyone else? Anyone in the other part of the wood?”

“No, no one. I was too busy with my own work. You have to believe me, I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

The Saint did believe him. His distress was too real to be simulated.

“Didn’t you see who it was?” Darslow asked.

“No. Our sniper was very cool. Whoever he is, he certainly knew what he was doing this morning,” Simon admitted with grudging respect. “He must have hid until I passed and then doubled back, or alternatively just laid low until I’d left altogether.”

“What will I tell the police?” Darslow asked.

“Nothing,” Simon replied crisply. “Why bother? They don’t know you were there. And if you keep quiet they probably won’t find out that I was around either. Tell me what you know about this Colonel Harker, Professor.”

Darslow shrugged.

“There isn’t much I can tell you, Mr. Templar. He has a farm near Bucksberry and he is also head of the family building business. Quite an important man locally, and very rich too, I understand. He is — that is, was the master of the hunt. Really that’s about all I know. We didn’t exactly move in the same circles.”

The professor paused, and his eyes kept shifting with their chronic evasiveness.

“Of course we can’t be sure that he is dead. He might just have been wounded,” he ventured.

The Saint considered the idea and dismissed it almost entirely.

“It’s in the realms of possibility, but I’ve a feeling it’s almost a certainty that our gunman was a sharpshooter, and it looked to me as if the colonel died right there in the saddle.”

The word “sharpshooter” had jolted in his brain as his lips framed the syllables. For the first time since the murder of Colonel Harker he smiled.

Darslow seemed to sense the change that had come over him and glanced towards him expectantly, still without quite meeting his eyes. But if he hoped for some startling revelation, he was to be disappointed.

“I’ll see you later,” was all Simon said as he turned to leave.

“May I ask where you are going, if not to the police?”

The saintly smile broadened.

“To see a man about a lion,” he replied helpfully.

And then he was gone.

7

Simon Templar had a way of disappearing like that when he wished to avoid explaining his actions. His exit line had been flip, but Chantek would have understood it. He felt certain that the key to everything that had happened was hidden somewhere within the college or in the brain of one of its staff. And the same intuition warned him that the events which had embroiled him had not yet completed their mysterious purpose, so the less the elders of St. Enoch’s knew of his plans the more he might discover about theirs.

The porter at the entrance told him where to find a door bearing the name of Denzil Rosco. The Saint knocked, waited for a summons to enter, and, receiving none, went in anyway.

Rosco’s study was a direct contrast to the room he had just left. Darslow’s was tidy to the point of primness, whereas Rosco’s was more of an organised shambles. It was the difference between a solicitor’s office and a student’s den. The law tutor’s shelves had bowed beneath the weight of obese tomes bound in leather. The zoologist’s bookcases were packed with large glossy-covered works and well-thumbed paperbacks, which spilled out into small stacks on the floor, on chairs, and across a table that separated two tall filing cabinets on the opposite side of the room; and what little space they left was littered with bulging files, magazines, and notebooks.

On one side of the door was a large map of the world dotted with different coloured flags so that it resembled a global golf course, but there was no clue to what they indicated. Taking up most of the space on the other side was a display cabinet mounted on a low three-drawer chest, which contained the trophies Chantek had mentioned.

They made an impressive collection, illustrating in silver and bronze their owner’s skill with rifle, shotgun, and, most interestingly, pistol. Lined above the chest were framed photographs of Rosco in various exotic landscapes.

His desk backed onto a high bay window that looked across the east quadrangle directly in line with the spot where Sir Basil Lazentree had been murdered. The Saint sat at the desk and routinely tried the drawers. All were unlocked, but each contained only the miscellaneous stationery that could be expected.

The display cabinet faced the desk, and his attention returned to the array of cups and salvers. Rosco’s marksmanship was, after all, the prime object of his interest.

He rose and crossed the room and opened each drawer in turn. The contents of the first two drawers were unexciting. A telescopic sight in its case, a ramrod, rags and oil for cleaning a rifle, a shoulder sling for carrying same, a cartridge belt minus cartridges, some small paper targets whose groupings of holes testified to the prowess of the man who made them, a canvas pouch of indeterminable use, a pair of binoculars, and some back copies of Shooting Monthly. The bottom drawer was the only one that was locked.

The mechanism was a simple single-bar mortice. It took the Saint precisely one minute to open it, thirty seconds of which were taken up with the bending of a large paper clip into the required angles.

The drawer contained only two items. One was a half-empty box of .22 cartridges. The other was a tooled black leather case about the same size as a canteen of cutlery with the initials D.R. worked into a gold-leaf monogram on the lid.

Simon flicked up the gilt clasp. Inside, the case was lined with purple felt and fitted with small square and rectangular mouldings strategically placed to hold the contents secure. Only the pistol they were designed to protect was missing.

As the Saint and every member of the newspaper-reading populace was aware, it was also a .22 which had terminated the earthly existence of Mr. Stanton Wakeforth.

At which point the average sleuth could have been pardoned for shouting “Eureka” and beating the world sprint record to take his discovery to the nearest police station. Simon Templar, however, considered his find with the cool detachment of a professional.

One .22-calibre bullet looks the same as any other .22-calibre bullet, and only tests carried out by a ballistics expert can determine whether they have both been fired from the same gun. The Saint had no doubt that within a short time the police would have made the comparisons and decided whether the same weapon was used to murder both Stanton Wakeforth and Colonel Harker. Therefore the only new ray of light he could cast on the investigations was to announce that Professor Rosco owned a .22 target pistol, but as British law requires all firearms to be licensed the police would very soon know that too — even if they did not know it already. And there must have been many other .22 guns in Cambridge. Which meant that to tell Superintendent Nutkin what he had found would only result in having to explain what he was doing near Bucksberry that morning, as well as burglarising Rosco’s study. If he had found the pistol things might have been different, as it would then have been possible to discover whether it was used to fire the shots. But the pistol was not there, and neither was Professor Rosco.

He had still not found a connecting link between the three murders, and without that he had no way of guessing whether and where the murderer might strike again.

What little he had discovered had been largely the result of waiting on events and backing an instinct sharpened by many years of adventuring. He decided to keep to the same route.

He wiped off the box of cartridges and the pistol case, replaced them in the drawer, and relocked it. He doubted that the room had any more secrets to reveal, and with a final lingering look around and a rapid polishing of other things he had touched to remove his own fingerprints, he left the study.

He was retracing his steps towards the college gates when he turned a corner and almost collided with the hurrying person of Godfrey Nyall.

The bursar stepped back abruptly with a surprised expression. He looked as if he had dressed hastily that morning. The scuffed shoes, the sag in the knot of his tie, and his rumpled clothes were in contrast to the neatly attired man who had appeared at the hotel the previous morning and later dispensed sherry in the common room.

“Mr. Templar!” he exclaimed rather breathlessly. “I didn’t know you were in the college.”

Simon had been thinking of seeking out the bursar before leaving St. Enoch’s.

“Actually I was looking for you,” he lied smoothly. “But I couldn’t find your office.”

“It’s near the main entrance,” said Nyall. “You must have passed it when you came in.”

The Saint smiled disarmingly.

“How silly of me. Can you spare a few minutes?”

The bursar hesitated for only a moment and then nodded.

“Of course. I just have to collect something from the common room. Perhaps you would wait for me in my office.”

“Sure,” said the Saint, and strolled away, conscious as he did so that the bursar had not moved and was watching him go.

As Nyall had said, it would have been hard to use the main entrance and miss his office. There were in fact two offices, an outer one with a desk for a secretary and beyond that the bursar’s own sanctum. The typewriter was hooded and the desk top beside it bare, suggesting that the secretary, like the students, was on holiday. Nyall’s office was spacious and imposing in the severe Victorian manner of large mahogany furniture and dark-coloured carpet. Those walls not hidden behind lattice-fronted bookcases were adorned with portraits in carved wooden frames and a few landscape prints in gilt surrounds.

The Saint perched on the edge of the leather-topped desk and glanced at the papers spread across it. They were mainly the heavier dailies plus a scattering of financial publications.

As he had not had a chance to read the morning papers, he selected one at random and began to flick idly through the pages. A column on the front page given over to the murder of Wakeforth and the Santa Claus link with the murder of Lazentree related that there had been no fresh developments. Inside the Saint found little to interest him, but he noted that the contents had certainly been of interest to someone, presumably Nyall.

In both the political and financial sections certain paragraphs, and in some instances whole stories, had been ringed in blue pencil. Political unrest in one of the South American banana — or in this case coffee — republics, news of a drought in West Africa, and conversely of a flood in East Africa, were marked, as were a feature article on the effects of strikes in United States copper mines and a speculative piece on the size of the following year’s cocoa bean harvest.

Simon put the paper down and stood up. As he did so a photograph hanging on the wall near the desk caught his eye, and he walked over and studied it more closely. It showed a dozen soldiers in tropical kit standing and sitting in what appeared to be a jungle clearing. The men had the grim, weary eyes of seasoned soldiers in wartime which overshadowed the smiles they had offered the cameraman. Neither the location nor the date nor the identities of those shown was given but despite the years that had passed since its taking there was no mistaking Godfrey Nyall. He stood in the centre of the group, his slouch hat pushed back off his forehead, leaning on the barrel of his rifle. The soldier was slimmer, straighter, and harder than the man he had grown into, but there was the same strict look about the eyes and the same purposeful chiselling of nose and mouth. Simon looked for signs of his rank and found none. His companions also wore no indication of their status, which made the Saint even more curious. There was an explanation nagging at the back of his memory but refusing to formulate itself.

He was still puzzling over the picture when the door opened and he turned to greet the bursar.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” said Nyall. “Have you found out anything more about the murder of Sir Basil?”

“Only that he was due to meet Stanton Wakeforth at 3:30 p.m. today,” said the Saint, finally deciding that the time had come to make use of the clue he had found in the store tycoon’s diary. “Do you know why?”

Nyall’s brow furrowed and he slowly shook his head.

“He told me nothing about it,” he replied at length. “I didn’t even know they were acquainted. But then unless it had some direct bearing on St. Enoch’s funds there would have been no reason for me to be informed.”

“I take it that you are responsible for the college coffers,” said the Saint.

“Of course, it is my main responsibility,” Nyall answered as he went behind his desk and sat down. “We are not a wealthy college like some others in Cambridge, but there are still substantial amounts involved.”

“Mainly government grants, bequests, donations, that kind of thing?” Simon hazarded.

“Mainly,” Nyall agreed. “But there are investments to be considered as well.”

“Stocks and shares, you mean?”

Nyall’s lips broke in a brief, almost patronising smile.

“Nothing exciting, I’m afraid. Mainly long-dated government bonds, gilts, a small portfolio of some of the blue chip companies,” he said dismissively. “We can’t afford to be gamblers.”

The Saint nodded.

“No, I suppose not. Will Sir Basil’s death affect the finances at all?”

Nyall tidied up the papers and placed them in a pile on one side of the desk while he replied.

“No, I should think not, at least in the short term. Of course, he was a well-known man, and a figurehead always helps to make a college better known generally and so leads to more donations.”

There was a rap on the door and Dr. Burridge entered. He looked uncertainly from Nyall to the Saint.

“Good morning, Mr. Templar. I’m sorry, Godfrey, I didn’t realise you were busy. I’ll return later.”

“Don’t go on my account,” said the Saint, who had glimpsed Chantek crossing the courtyard outside. “I was just about to leave anyway.”

It was nearly the truth and the sight of Chantek had made it so. Within the college walls he felt unnaturally cramped, and although there were still questions he wished to ask he would prefer to put them on his own or neutral ground.

“I was wondering,” he continued pleasantly, “if you gentlemen could have lunch with me. Perhaps you would also invite Professor Darslow and Professor Rosco. Since you invited me to apply myself to the recent goings-on, I’ve had some more thoughts which might be worth kicking around.”

Both men looked at each other as if hoping the other would make the first refusal. The Saint could sense that neither found the invitation over welcome but both appeared at a loss for a plausible excuse. He looked at his watch and saw that it still needed a few minutes to noon.

“Shall we say one o’clock at my hotel?” he asked.

Nyall nodded mutely. Burridge’s voice was strained.

“That is very kind of you.”

“I hope you’ll still think so this afternoon,” said the Saint cordially.

He caught up with Chantek on the far side of the quadrangle.

“What have you been doing?” she asked eagerly.

“Just nosing around,” he said evasively. “I found some circumstantial evidence, which is notoriously unreliable. So I won’t confuse you with it in advance. Meanwhile, you are invited to lunch.”

He explained who would be there, and Chantek looked as uneasy at the prospect as Burridge and Nyall had done. She did not relish the idea of being surrounded by those who had seemed like demigods for most of the year. But the Saint brushed aside her fears and after making her promise not to be late drove back to the University Arms.

He felt as if he had already done a full day’s work, and welcomed the reviving properties of a shower and a change of clothes. He was unhappily contemplating the imminent obligation to select a necktie when the telephone rang.

The voice on the other end of the line was brisk and businesslike.

“Mr. Templar?”

Simon admitted his identity and enquired that of his caller.

“My name is Casden. Brian Casden. I run a company called Happy Time Toys.”

“Sounds like fun,” said the Saint.

Casden ignored the interpolation and continued: “I understand you are investigating the murders of Sir Basil Lazentree and Stanton Wakeforth.”

“You could say I’m slightly involved,” the Saint admitted guardedly. “Why?”

There was a lengthy pause before the question was answered, and then Casden’s voice sounded strained.

“I think I may be next.”

8

Simon Templar frequently found his reputation a hindrance. Fame, he sometimes felt, brought with it more problems than an already overworked outlaw should reasonably be asked to contend with, and he could become wistful for the days when only a small privileged band of fellow adventurers had known his baptismal name, and the world outside heard only of a mysterious figure who passed like an avenging wraith across the paths of the unrighteous.

But notoriety also had its advantages. Fate had obligingly delivered him to the right spot at the correct o’clock, but the aura surrounding his name had done much of the rest. Without it, Superintendent Nutkin might have treated him with less undeserved suspicion and more civility and thereby not invited him to puncture the detective’s pomposity. Without it, Godfrey Nyall would not have approached him and he would not so easily have made the acquaintance of the St. Enoch hierarchy. And without it Brian Casden would not have telephoned and held out a possible solution to the mystery.

With a slow pensive smile the Saint relaxed into a chair and rested his feet on the counterpane of the bed.

“You don’t say?” he drawled. “And why should you consider yourself the next candidate for the hereafter?”

Again several seconds of silence passed while Brian Casden carefully shaped his reply. The businessman’s natural caution vying with personal anxiety, Simon thought. He waited patiently, confident that, having decided to make contact, the other would not hang up now.

“Sir Basil and I were discussing a donation to the college,” Casden said finally. “When he was murdered I didn’t imagine for a moment that it had anything to do with our plans. Stanton Wakeforth was also involved and when he was killed I began to wonder. It seemed like too much of a coincidence. But now that Harker has been murdered...”

“How did you know Colonel Harker was dead?” Simon cut in quickly.

“It was on the radio news. Nothing much, just that a report has been received that he had been shot while hunting.”

The Saint nodded to himself, satisfied with the explanation. The murder had taken place early enough for word of it to have reached the reporters who were already in Cambridge following up the previous killings.

He returned to his original line of questioning.

“What exactly were the four of you planning?”

“Wakeforth and I were to endow a new faculty for business studies.”

“And Colonel Harker?”

“He owns — owned — some land near the college. He was prepared to let St. Enoch’s have it at a nominal price providing his company was given the building contract.”

All of which, Simon judged, made sense. Even if it still did not provide him with the motive he sought, it did at least link the three dead men.

“Have you spoken to the police yet?” he asked.

“No.”

It was too curt an answer to pass unchallenged.

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want to get involved,” said Casden hesitantly. “It wouldn’t be good publicity for a company such as ours. I had read that you were investigating and I thought I would talk to you first. One of the stories in the newspapers mentioned where you were staying.”

Again the Saint was satisfied with the explanation.

“Tell me,” he said thoughtfully. “You say you have been discussing all this with Sir Basil and the other two — for how long?”

“Since October, soon after Sir Basil came to Cambridge. It was all finally agreed last week, and we were due to sign the necessary papers tomorrow.”

“On Christmas Eve? Why the rush?”

“Both my company and Wakeforth’s end our financial years on January 31,” Casden replied. “There were certain tax advantages to be considered regarding the funds we were making available.”

“And who else knew about these plans of yours?”

As he put the question Simon heard other voices in the background and guessed that Casden was no longer alone. The businessman’s sudden vagueness confirmed the impression.

“I can’t go into details now,” he answered abruptly.

“How soon can we meet?” Simon asked.

“Come to my office at six this evening.”

The Saint consulted his watch.

“That gives you five and a quarter hours in which to get yourself killed,” he pointed out.

“I can’t see you before then.”

Casden sounded irritable, and the volume of background noise suggested that his company had increased. Without prompting he continued: “Every year we hold a Christmas party in our canteen for deprived children. It’s this afternoon. I shan’t be free until six, but I also won’t be alone.”

The Saint was unimpressed by the degree of safety such a gathering would provide and sensed that Casden too was more hopeful than confident. But at least he was prepared for danger, which was an advantage none of the others had enjoyed.

“Where is your office?” Simon asked resignedly, convinced by the other’s tone that there would be little point in pressing for an earlier meeting.

Casden told him and the Saint repeated the directions, both to confirm them and to commit them to memory.

The hubbub surrounding his caller had grown so loud that it threatened to drown Casden’s voice completely.

“I must go now,” he said firmly.

The Saint sighed.

“Don’t talk to any strange Santas,” he advised, but the line was dead before he finished speaking.

Simon returned to the adjusting of his tie and thought through what Casden had told him. What interested him most of all was not what had been said but what had not been said. Casden had been unresponsive when asked who else knew what was being planned. If he had thought nobody else was involved he could have said so without giving anything away to those around him. But he had chosen to refuse to talk, which meant that he knew that somebody else knew but didn’t want to reveal who it was. As to whether that person was a suspected murderer or a potential victim he had offered no clue.

The Saint was slipping on his jacket when the telephone buzzed again, but this time it was just to inform him that Chantek had arrived.

He walked down to the lobby, looking in at the private room he had booked an hour before to check that all was as it should be. It was, and so was Chantek. He kissed her lightly on the forehead and smiled at the nervousness in her eyes.

“Don’t worry, they’re not ogres,” he reassured her as he led the way back up the stairs, adding mischievously: “Well, not all of them.”

She pouted.

“It’s all right for you. I have to return to St. Enoch’s in January. You don’t.”

“January is another year,” Simon said airily. “Personally I rarely plan beyond tomorrow. Sufficient unto the day, et cetera. And the day has hardly begun.”

They were taking the first sips of their respective aperitifs, hers a vermouth, his a pink gin, when Darslow arrived. He hovered a step inside the room and eyed them uncertainly.

“Dr. Burridge said I was invited.” He made it sound like an apology.

“And so you are, Edwin, old thing,” Simon confirmed with a grin.

He ordered a large measure of malt to top up the professor’s already high spirit level. Judging by his breath and slightly rolling gait, Darslow must have been drinking steadily since he had left Chantek over an hour earlier.

Darslow cupped the tumbler in both hands and gulped at the contents.

“What’s happened?” he asked in an attempt at a conspiratorial whisper that came out loud enough to be heard in the back row of the stalls.

The Saint smiled.

“If you mean has anything new occurred to affect you in connection with this morning’s shenanigans, then the answer is nothing.”

Darslow looked blank.

“Then why do you want me here?”

Simon patted him encouragingly between the shoulder blades as he guided him towards a chair.

“Because I like you, Edwin,” he responded with a bonhomie that made Darslow peer at him in bleary-eyed suspicion. “I want you to tell me all about codicils and torts and Gintrap v. Gintrap 1929, and fascinating things like that.”

He motioned to the waiter at the side table that was serving as a bar to top up his guest’s glass. Darslow drunk, he decided, might be more interesting than Darslow sober. Without the stimulus of alcohol he was likely to repeat his nervous seat perching silences of the previous evening, whereas once sufficiently lubricated there was always the chance that he might inadvertently contribute something of interest to the debate.

Leaving Chantek to keep him company, the Saint turned to greet the arrival of Dr. Burridge and Godfrey Nyall.

“Good of you to come, gentlemen.”

“Kind of you to invite us, Mr. Templar,” the dean rejoined stiffly.

“Most kind,” echoed Nyall.

“And Professor Rosco?” Simon asked.

“I’m afraid we could not locate him,” said Burridge.

“He hasn’t been in the college all morning,” added Nyall. “We left a message in his study in case he returned.”

If the Saint was disappointed at the non-appearance of the man he most wanted to meet he did not allow it to show.

“Perhaps he may come along later,” he said, and proceeded to introduce the two men to Chantek, whom Nyall admitted to knowing by sight but whom the dean could not recall at all, and then to administer to their liquid needs.

From that moment until most of the meal was consumed the Saint guided the conversation along paths that had nothing to do with the events that had brought them together. He was the perfect host, seeing to the requirements of his guests, listening and chatting and allowing them their silences. Once or twice he caught Chantek’s eye and smiled at her puzzled expression. She had expected some sort of interrogation, not a convivial get-together. But the Saint knew exactly what he was doing.

They talked about student grants, speculated on the likely repercussions of government cuts in the education budget, recalled places they had visited and people they had met, and gradually the atmosphere thawed until by the time the plates were pushed towards the centre of the table the gathering almost resembled that of old friends.

The process was helped by the standard of the cuisine, which was better than the Saint had hoped, and the quality of the wines, which were everything he expected. The fact that Darslow swallowed the vintage Lafite as if it were lager and threatened at any moment to slide from view added to rather than subtracted from the relaxed mood around the table.

Finally, when the cheeseboard was in place and the port circulated, he brought the conversation adroitly around to the subjects that most interested him. He had casually enquired about the process of appointing a new Master for the college, and the dean had explained about the make-up of the committee that would make the decision.

“I expect we shall convene in the New Year,” said Bur-ridge. “It would not do to go too long without a Master.”

“But surely it’s merely an honorary post,” said the Saint. “The college can function from day to day whether there is a Master or not.”

Burridge shook his head and smiled thinly as he leant his elbows on the table and placed his fingertips together in a mannerism Simon had noticed him employ several times during the course of the lunch whenever he wished to emphasise a point.

“To be the Master of St. Enoch’s is an honour of course, but though in some colleges the Master might be just a figurehead, this is not the case at St. Enoch’s,” the dean explained. “The tradition here is that the Master has almost total executive control. It comes down to us from the time when the places of learning were controlled by monks who would unquestionably obey their abbot.”

“You mean that once appointed he can do anything he likes?” Simon asked in mild surprise.

Nyall answered: “Almost, yes. But of course there are limits, even if they are broad ones.”

“Supposing a Master wanted to do something which the other fellows objected to,” suggested the Saint. “Could you get it thrown out or would you have to like it or lump it?”

“Usually a compromise is reached,” Burridge said. “If the Master had all the staff against him, the difficulties that would be put in his way would be such that it is doubtful if he could carry on in the face of their opposition.”

“But if some were for and some against, it would be possible, I suppose,” said the Saint.

“I suppose it would,” Burridge agreed. “But the situation is hardly likely to arise.”

Simon studied the dean’s face as he pursued his questioning and was conscious of the man’s strength. Not in the physical sense, though his frame was wiry enough to make him powerful above the average, but rather his force of will. He might speak slowly and pedantically but the words were underscored by an inner strength and always there was the hint of a fire behind the eyes and a tension in the long-fingered hands which belied his outward calm.

“Last night you mentioned that you objected to some of Sir Basil’s plans for the future of the college,” Simon reminded him. “Couldn’t those plans have led to just such a situation?”

“That question is now, alas, academic,” put in Nyall, but the Saint ignored him and continued to concentrate his attention on the dean.

“But couldn’t they?” he repeated.

“It is possible,” Burridge admitted.

“You didn’t like Sir Basil, did you, Dr. Burridge?”

Simon’s tone was even and the very directness of the question robbed it of offence.

The dean returned the Saint’s stare and for several seconds the two men appraised each other in a silence that grew steadily more tense.

“I had nothing against him personally,” said Burridge at last, and there was a new and harsher edge to his voice. “But I most certainly did not like what he was planning to do to St. Enoch’s.”

Burridge paused and the others round the table waited for him to continue. When he did so the even tenor of his speech was quickly shaken and then broke completely, and what began as an explanation rapidly turned into an impassioned diatribe.

“I have seen his like too many times before. I have seen what they’ve done to other colleges. I didn’t want him here but I was overruled. I feared for the future of St. Enoch’s. Sir Basil and his so-called progressive ideas would have been the ruin of the college, as has happened elsewhere. Once the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford were seats of learning, of intellectual debate and reasoning. We produced scholars of the arts, great philosophers, statesmen, men who shaped and expanded the culture of the world. But not now. Once knowledge was the goal; not now. Now all that matters is the degree, a slip of parchment, a ticket to halfway up the executive ladder. Instead of scholars we produce salesmen. Instead of broadening minds we are narrowing them, channelling them for a specific use, turning out fuel for the furnaces of commerce and industry, all in the hallowed name of progress. Progress to what? That’s a question Sir Basil and his like never stop to consider. Bigger. Better. Newer. That’s all they worry about. Well, it may be all very well for the modern universities to follow the trend. But not Cambridge. That was not why we were founded, that is not why we have survived, and that is not how we are going to continue to survive.”

Throughout his speech the Saint had never taken his eyes off the dean and had felt the heat of the fire that flared in the man’s eyes and the force of emotion behind the unconscious clenching and unclenching of his hands. The silence that followed his tirade was as brittle as glass; even the waiters clearing away the bar had stopped to listen.

Only one man seemed unaffected, and it was he who shattered the quiet. Edwin Darslow giggled.

“Hear, hear,” he chuckled. “Quite right. Don’t want to get a name for turning out economists and people like that, do we? Eh, Nyall?”

The Saint looked quizzically at the bursar, who coloured slightly beneath his gaze.

“I think Professor Darslow has over enjoyed your hospitality, Mr. Templar,” Nyall remarked acidly. “The fact that I have a degree in economics has always been a strange source of amusement to the professor.”

“Always telling other people what to do with their money, but never doing it themselves,” retorted Darslow. “Like racing tipsters. If they were any good they’d back the horses themselves, not tell other people about them.”

Darslow tapped the side of his nose with his finger in an exaggerated gesture of conspiratorial wisdom.

“Physician, heal thyself,” he lisped. “latre, therapeuson seauton.”

His display of erudition was somewhat marred by his enunciation, which phoneticised the transliterated Greek according to the atrocious British academic tradition, and with the accent invariably in the wrong places. Neither St. Luke nor Archbishop Makarios would have had the faintest idea what he was trying to say.

Had Chantek not slipped a restraining arm beneath his shoulder as he began to slip forward he would have crumpled gently to the floor. As she pulled him into a more upright pose he emitted a loud snore.

The dean regarded him with distaste.

“Dreadful. Quite dreadful.”

“I think perhaps we had better get Professor Darslow home,” suggested Nyall.

The Saint nodded sympathetically.

“I think you had,” he agreed.

He was not sorry that the party was breaking up. He had gleaned more than he had originally hoped. He helped Nyall get Darslow downstairs and loaded into a taxi. The dean walked a few paces behind as if trying to dissociate himself from them. They said their goodbyes and thanks on the pavement, and Simon returned upstairs to Chantek.

“Will Professor Darslow be all right?” she asked.

He smiled.

“Fine, but I wouldn’t like to have his head when he wakes up.”

Chantek’s eyes roamed over the remains of the luncheon table.

“I was surprised at Dr. Burridge,” she said. “He was so angry. He almost made me feel afraid.”

“Yes, it was an interesting little revelation, wasn’t it?” he agreed thoughtfully.

“What do we do now?” Chantek asked.

He looked at his watch. It was almost three-thirty, still two and a half hours before his appointment with Brian Casden.

“Let’s get some fresh air. A walk around town to get rid of some of the calories is called for. I may even get around to buying some Christmas presents.”

“Not from a Santa, I hope,” she laughed.

The Saint smiled as he slipped his arm through hers.

“No, definitely not from a Santa,” he agreed.

9

The dashboard clock showed one minute to six when the Hirondel drew up to the gates of the Happy Time Toy Co. The Saint sounded the klaxon and the strident blast brought a figure in blue uniform and peaked cap from a kiosk just the other side of the barrier.

Simon spoke to the man from his driving seat.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Casden.”

“Name?”

Simon told him, and the man checked it against the sheet of paper on his clipboard.

“Drive round to the side of the building over there, Mr. Casden’s office is on the top floor. Can’t miss it.”

The Saint did as he was instructed, driving slowly and taking in the topography as he followed the road around, and braked outside a door marked staff entrance.

The factory and offices of the Happy Time Toy Co. were situated on a new industrial estate on the edge of the city. The factory comprised three linked single storey buildings that reminded him of aircraft hangars. The offices were housed in a three-storey block of concrete and glass tacked onto the end nearest the gates.

A high wire-mesh fence encircled the site, dividing it from the road at the front and similar style factories on either side, and a few rubble-strewn acres at the rear where another factory was being built. It certainly looked secure enough.

He had spent the afternoon with Chantek wandering around the Cambridge shops and finally being fleeced for an afternoon tea of scones and jam in a dimly lit shoppe where the cost was in inverse proportion to the height of the ceiling. They had talked no further of the murders. The Saint had long since cultivated the ability to switch off his problems and relax in the same way that he could sleep at any time like a cat. Now, after the breathing space he had permitted himself, his thoughts were completely back with the matter in hand.

He climbed out of the car and tried the door. It was unlocked. Both factory and offices appeared to be totally deserted. He followed the stairs up to the top-floor landing without meeting anyone. The lack of any form of security, even the most ancient of night watchmen, worried him. In ordinary circumstances he would have expected to be challenged. And these were not ordinary circumstances.

As the guard on the gate had said, it would have been difficult to miss Casden’s office, which stood at the end of the corridor. But there was an additional reason why it could not be overlooked that night.

The watchman lay face down across the closed doorway.

Simon knelt and searched for a pulse. He smiled grimly as his fingers located the tiny beat. It was weak, but not dangerously so. There was no wound to be seen, only a rapidly swelling purple bruise on the side of the man’s neck.

The Saint straightened up and as he did so his fingers slipped under his left cuff and drew out the throwing knife that was strapped along his forearm. He had not brought a gun with him and events had moved too quickly to allow him to return to London to fetch one. He was not unduly concerned. He could do tricks with that six-inch blade that would have won him top billing in any circus. And if a reception committee was waiting for him he was sure that it had a membership of no more than one.

His hand closed on the door handle and stayed there for a moment while he listened for any sound of movement on the other side of the door. Hearing nothing, he turned the handle and went in.

A man who could only have been Brian Casden lay in a similar pose to that of his employee outside, except for the red pool that spread from the left side of his body. This time Simon did not bother to feel for a sign of life. Casden lay a few feet inside his secretary’s office, and the Saint had to step over his body to enter the room beyond. It was empty, and he sheathed his knife.

He stood for a while in the open doorway between the two offices and appraised the scene. It was clear at a glance how the murder had happened. It was the oldest trick in the oldest book since Genesis. Which was probably why it so often worked so well. Casden had heard a noise in the outer office and had gone to investigate. The murderer had waited behind the door, and Casden probably never knew what hit him.

But what was even more interesting was the fact that the contents of the personal filing cabinet behind Casden’s desk were scattered across the carpet. The killer had lingered long enough to remove some evidence. And that confirmed the Saint in his belief that Casden had known more than he had said on the telephone.

There were three telephones on the secretary’s desk. At the second attempt he found the one with an outside line and dialled the police. He asked for Superintendent Nutkin.

He grinned as the detective came on the line.

“Hullo, Nutcase,” he murmured. “This is Simon Templar.

I’ve got another body for you.”

“You’ve got a what?” Nutkin almost shouted.

“A body. You know, a corpse, a late-lamented, a cadaver, a dearly departed, a...”

“Who, for God’s sake?” Nutkin’s voice gave the impression that he was being strangled.

“Brian Casden. Late boss man of the Happy Time Toy Co.”

“Templar, if this is some kind of a joke—“

“Oh, it’s hysterically funny,” said the Saint caustically. “Dear old Brian is laughing himself silly, or he would be if someone hadn’t shoved a knife into his back.”

He dropped the handset back into its cradle. Instinct told him that little was likely to be gained by searching the office. But it might be interesting to see if there were any clues to how the killer got in.

Outside, the watchman was still sleeping and Simon did not disturb him. He made his way down to the ground level and walked across to the gate.

“Did Mr. Casden have any visitors before me?” he asked the guard.

The man’s automatic reaction was to be officious. Then he looked at the stern set of the Saint’s features and wisely decided to be cooperative.

“Not since the children left, and that was about half an hour ago.”

“What about the staff?”

“They all had the afternoon off, except for those who volunteered to help with the party.”

“And you saw them all leave?”

“Yes. What’s all this about?”

“You’ll find out very soon,” Simon told him, and turned on his heel to walk briskly along the line of the fence.

He found what he was searching for at the rear of the site: a large hole clipped through the mesh almost at ground level. And he found something else too. Caught on a sharp strand of wire was a tatter of red cloth. The Saint left it alone. It was something that Nutkin would be able to slip into a plastic bag and label as evidence. He would like that.

The Saint strolled back to the office block. So Santa had turned up despite Casden’s belief in his security, had done what he had come to do, and slipped away again. A children’s party must have seemed an irresistible opportunity and he had not missed it.

“But have I missed mine?” Simon asked himself as he re-entered Casden’s office.

He stood and looked down at the murdered man. On impulse he abandoned his previous intention of leaving the body alone and quickly rifled the pockets. In Casden’s jacket was a small leather-bound address book. Wakeforth, Harker, and Sir Basil were among the entries.

“And who else?” wondered the Saint as he slid the book into his own pocket.

And then came the pounding of heavy boots in the corridor, and with a resigned sigh he turned to greet Superintendent Nutkin.

The following hours were little more than a playback of the sequences that had followed the deaths of Lazentree and Wakeforth. Nutkin asked and Simon answered with discretion; Simon asked and Nutkin refused to answer. At the end of it all, the detective knew about Casden’s phone call but nothing about the plan to enlarge the college, he knew about the lunch party but not what had been said, and he knew everything about the finding of the body except for the address book that Simon had taken into his own safekeeping. And the Saint knew absolutely nothing about the detective’s own enquiries — which, he reckoned, made them about even.

The Saint’s own innocence had been established by the watchman, who came to a few minutes after the police arrived only to tell them that he had seen and heard nothing. He had been making a routine tour of the building when he had been hit from behind. All he could be definite about was the time, ten minutes before the Saint passed through the main gate — when, as Simon offered to prove, he had only just left Chantek.

And so, at last, the Saint was allowed to go on his way. But by that time there was nowhere else to go except back to the hotel, where the dining room had closed and the best the night staff could provide in the way of fodder was a round of ham sandwiches.

It had started snowing again midway through the evening, and the Saint lay in bed watching the flakes drift past his window and thinking back over all that had happened. He cursed himself for not having insisted on seeing Casden earlier but was slightly comforted by a hunch that told him that somewhere in everything he had seen and heard was to be found the last piece of the puzzle.

He had long since eliminated Darslow from his list of suspects. Not only could he absolve the professor of Harker’s murder, but he reckoned that Darslow would still have been sleeping off the effects of his drinking spree when Casden had been done in. That left Denzil Rosco, Dr. Burridge, and Godfrey Nyall.

Simon considered each in turn.

Rosco had been unseen for the whole day. He had the ability and the opportunity to kill Harker and Casden. But did he have any motive? He appeared to have liked the shake-up that Sir Basil’s arrival at St. Enoch’s had foreshadowed. So why kill him? On the other hand, it was almost certainly his gun that had despatched two of the victims. And the gun was missing. But then, why not shoot Casden instead of knifing him? Only Rosco could provide any of the answers, and Rosco wasn’t around to do so.

Burridge had shown signs of being a fanatic. And fanatics are always dangerous. His adherence to tradition and hatred of progress were clearly deep-rooted. But strong enough to force him to kill, not once but four times in as many days? He had been in London when Sir Basil and Stanton Wakeforth died, an easier place in which to set up an alibi than Cambridge. What had he been doing that morning and afternoon and could it be checked out? The Saint made a mental memo to give that an early priority.

And then there was Nyall. He appeared to have no axe worth grinding. But there was something about him which still didn’t quite fit. What was it Darslow had said? “Physician, heal thyself... Like a racing tipster.” An interesting comparison. The Saint added another mental note to ask Darslow for clarification.

“But there’s still something I must have overlooked, something so obvious that it’s blinding,” he told himself as he slipped into sleep.

He repeated the thought to Chantek the following midday over sausages and mash at the Crown. The press corps camped in the hotel lobby had become an increasing irritant, and even before the manager tactfully suggested that he might be more comfortable elsewhere he had decided to move. The Crown had been his immediate choice. It was off the main track yet could not have been nearer the college. And if the room and the food did not match the hotel’s standards, at least the management was friendly and he could come and go without subterfuge.

Chantek was idly toying with her knife as she listened to his account of the previous evening’s events. Suddenly he stopped and stared at her.

“Do that again,” he ordered.

She looked blank.

“Do what again?”

“Hold the knife the way you held it just now.”

Chantek obeyed as if preparing to cut off a piece of sausage.

“Now hold it as if you were going to stab me from behind.”

“Why?” Chantek asked in surprise.

“Never mind,” said the Saint. “Just do it.”

She reversed her grip on the handle, so that the blade projected beyond her little finger, raising her hand to head level as if to bring the point slashing downwards.

“Exactly,” Simon said triumphantly.

“Exactly what?” demanded Chantek, growing impatient with the game.

“Exactly the way any amateur would do it. But not the way a professional would do it. Casden was killed by somebody who knew his business. And there aren’t so many people around who know how to use a knife properly.”

“How do you mean, ‘properly’?”

“Your way would come down between the shoulder blades and probably miss any vital organs. An expert holds a knife pointing forward, something like a rapier, with his thumb on the flat of the blade to guide it.” He demonstrated. “Insert between the ribs at the right angle: knife pierces heart, victim dead in seconds.”

Chantek shuddered.

“How horrible!”

“But effective, very effective,” said the Saint. “And that is how Casden was killed. And men who are experts in that particular field usually have some special background in common.”

He stood up directly they had finished their plates. He seemed somehow larger than life, colder and more impersonal than the winter outside. There were still many things he did not understand, but at last he had a positive clue to follow and little doubt that it would lead him to his goal.

With the briefest of apologies for his sudden departure and a promise to call her later, he left Chantek and headed for the college.

In the entrance hallway he met Professor Darslow, who looked at him sheepishly and began to stammer excuses for his behaviour the previous day. Simon cut him short.

“Never mind that now. You said something about Nyall. ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ What were you getting at?”

“I think I remember,” Darslow replied uncertainly. “It was a joke, really. Godfrey is always advising people about shares to buy. It’s just a bit of a joke that if he’s so clever why isn’t he rich? That’s all.”

“Aren’t his tips any good?”

“I don’t really know. I haven’t followed them.”

“Then you don’t actually know that he isn’t rich,” said the Saint provocatively.

He left the professor and hurried to the bursar’s office. It was locked. He was considering picking the lock when another thought came to him. He went back to Darslow.

“Where is Sir Basil’s office?” he asked.

“First floor, almost directly above us. Why?”

“Tell you later,” said the Saint, the words floating over his shoulder as he took the stairs three at a time.

The office of the Master of St. Enoch’s College was unlocked but not empty. Professor Denzil Rosco turned in surprise as Simon swept into the room. “Good afternoon,” said the Saint evenly. “Found anything interesting?”

Rosco looked up from the open drawers of the desk by which he was standing.

“I suppose this appears rather suspicious,” he admitted with a wry smile. “Well, the police have just been trying to nail me for murder, so I suppose breaking and entering will be considered small cheese after that.”

The Saint perched himself on the edge of the desk.

“Tell me about it,” he invited.

Rosco obliged. He had spent the day and night before with friends, completely unaware of what had happened until he had returned that morning to find a policeman waiting for him in his rooms. He had been informed that his pistol had been used to kill Lazentree and Wakeforth. The police had searched his study and found it.

The Saint interrupted.

“They found the pistol in your study?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Never mind. Carry on.”

Rosco carried on. He had tried to explain that anyone could have taken it, but Nutkin had not been impressed. Only when his alibi had been checked had the superintendent reluctantly allowed him to leave.

“So what exactly are you doing here?” Simon wanted to know.

“Clutching at straws,” Rosco replied with a sigh. “But I thought it was worth a try.”

“What was?”

“Sir Basil and I became friendly very quickly. We both had similar ideas about St. Enoch’s, which made us both unpopular in certain quarters.”

“What did he tell you?”

Rosco shrugged.

“Not much, but he hinted. Said he’d got the financial backing for his plans. Businessmen, from what I could gather, but he didn’t say who. Said he was planning a fait accompli to present to the others in the New Year. He was very excited about it.”

Rosco paused and seemed less confident of himself when he continued.

“I started thinking about what you said about motive. Could someone have found out about it and killed him to stop it happening? It seemed absurd, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind. If that was possible, then mightn’t Wakeforth be one of the businessmen? Couldn’t Casden and Harker also have been involved? I thought I’d see if there was any sort of clue in Basil’s office.”

The Saint regarded him with respect.

“Professor, you must have your eye on Nutkin’s job,” he said. “But finding out who was backing Basil wouldn’t point to who killed him.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Simon produced Casden’s address book.

“I thought I’d see if they had any other chums in common, which might point to another possible murderer. Then I could watch him until the murderer tries for another killing.” He looked at the young man keenly. “Are you sure Basil never mentioned any names?”

Rosco’s brow furrowed as he thought. At last he said: “Yes, there was someone, but I can’t quite remember. It was someone in the House of Lords who was going to lend his name to whatever Basil was planning. It would add some distinction, he said.”

Simon flicked through the address book. It was hardly Debrett’s. Two Sirs were the best he could find until he came to the G’s.

“Grantchester. Lord Grantchester. How does that sound?”

Rosco nodded.

“That’s it. I’m sure of it. I knew there was a local connection but I couldn’t think what.”

“What’s the betting our noble lord is next on the list?” Simon mused as he lifted the telephone and gave the number from Casden’s book to the operator.

He waited impatiently until she came back to say that the number of unobtainable. Last night’s storm, he was informed, had brought down the overhead lines. Reconnection was not expected until after Christmas holiday.

“By which time Lord Grantchester is likely to be as cold as tomorrow’s turkey,” Simon observed.

“I’ll contact the police,” Rosco was saying as he reached to take over the telephone. But the Saint stopped him.

“Why should we let the superintendent have all the fun? I consider this a very personal party.”

Five minutes later he was pointing the long nose of the Hirondel down the ice coated road towards Grantchester.

10

The weather is the favourite conversational gambit among the English for one simple reason: they are always totally unprepared for it. In summer, a week of what in any Latin country would be regarded as pleasantly warm weather leads to newspaper headlines that cry “Heat Wave” and moves to ration water. In winter, what any Indian worth his monsoon would consider a fairly heavy shower results in radio warnings of bursting river banks and flooded homes. But these pale into insignificance beside the chaos produced by a few inches of snow. Roads are blocked, trains stop, and pipes burst. The populace gazes at the white crystal falling like magic from the sky and wonders at the fact that it is snowing in December, forgetting that they have been singing about dreaming of a white Christmas for most of the month.

So ran the Saint’s thoughts as he grimly forced the Hirondel towards its destination.

The worst of the storm had passed before first light and by midday had subsided to brief flurries not heavy enough to fill a footprint. The volume of traffic had ensured that the town centre streets remained clear, but once the outskirts were reached the going became steadily slower. And if the outskirts were bad the cross-country roads were worse. The main trunk route to London was passable with care, but the lanes leading to the villages it by-passes featured hard-packed ruts alternating with treacherous soft drifts.

The light was failing quickly as the sharp brightness of the afternoon gave way to twilight that hung like a blue-black backdrop against the whiteness of the land. The Hirondel’s powerful headlamps carved a tunnel of brilliance through the gloom, and the Saint drove along it as fast as the conditions allowed, which was not breaking any records.

The broad tread of the Hirondel’s winter tyres hugged the icy surface, giving him better control than most of the other traffic, but still the journey seemed to take an age. It was not so much the snow and ice themselves as the mishaps which had befallen other motorists that delayed him. A lorry loaded with bricks had failed to master an incline and had been abandoned while its driver went for help, causing a long tailback. Once that obstacle had been passed, it was found that a family car had managed to get stuck in a snow bank on the other side of the hill, and again he found himself obliged to join some other compulsory Samaritans in helping to dig it out and clear the blockage. And so it went on.

Grantchester lies just three miles from Cambridge but it was more than half an hour before the church tower came into view. He stopped outside the rectory in the main street and consulted his Ordnance Survey map. Blansdown Court, the country seat of Lord Grantchester, lay three miles farther on into the snow carpeted countryside.

The holdups, although annoying, did give him time to marshal his thoughts.

He was playing a hunch, no more than that. Dr. Burridge had not been around that morning so the questions Simon wanted answers to had remained unasked. And as for Godfrey Nyall, his suspicion was based on only one foundation. Chantek’s playing with her knife had jogged his memory and made him recall the picture he had seen in the bursar’s study. The lack of identifications that had puzzled him were explained. That had been one of the rules of jungle warfare. Small groups working behind enemy lines, against the Japanese in Burma, had worn no badges of rank so that if captured the officers would not be identified. And they knew how to use a knife and were trained in unarmed combat to deliver the sort of blow that had felled Casden’s watchman. But its feasibility alone was not enough. Burridge’s fanatical conservatism was at least a motive of sorts. But outwardly Nyall appeared to have no reason to use any skills he might remember from his army service. Unless the Saint’s other guess was correct. Perhaps Lord Grantchester could suggest the necessary link. But then, there was no real certainty that he was next in line for a requiem. And even if he was, that didn’t mean that the danger was immediate. Reason told Simon that he could well be wasting his time; instinct told him to hurry. He pressed on.

Blansdown Court was as impressive a stately home as any day tripper in search of historical variety could have asked for. It rose from the flat Cambridgeshire farmlands in the centre of a spacious park surrounded on all sides by a crumbling grey brick wall. It was shaped like an E with out the centre bar. The stem of the E was graceful white Georgian with an ornate portico reached by double flights of steps which met in front of it. The east wing, though trying to blend with the central block, appeared to have been built a century later. The west wing was the original Elizabethan manor house, its small red bricks fitted around angled beams as stout as ships’ timbers, its tall chimneys leaning where the roof had sagged. The gateway was mid-Victorian Gothic. The tall iron gates were open. There were no signs of life in the lodges on either side.

The Saint drove through, followed the winding drive up to the house, and parked at the end of a row of half a dozen cars near the main steps.

His ring was answered by an elderly butler. Simon voiced his wish to see Lord Grantchester. No, he was not expected. The butler showed him into a small waiting room, enquired his name, and told him to wait while he checked with his lordship. He shuffled off across the cavernous high-domed hall and Simon followed soundlessly in his wake. He had no intention of hanging around only to be told that his lordship was not available.

The butler entered a room in a corridor leading from the hall. He delivered his message.

A voice said gruffly: “What does he want?”

“A few words,” answered the Saint, walking in as if on cue.

He found himself in a pleasantly comfortable drawing room. Logs blazed in the Adam fireplace and in front of it four people were finishing their afternoon tea. The two eldest were obviously Lord and Lady Grantchester. The younger two looked as if they might be their son and daughter-in-law or vice versa.

“Excuse my abruptness, sir,” said the Saint. “But the matter I have to discuss with you is very urgent.”

His lordship peered at his visitor from beneath bushy white eyebrows that matched his thick white moustache. Simon placed him at around seventy, yet despite his age there was a certain strength and alertness about him. He sat waiting for an explanation, and Simon realised that his surname alone might not have been quite sufficient.

“My name is Simon Templar. You may have heard of me. I’m sometimes called the Saint.”

The gathering had indeed heard of him as their expressions revealed. The subdued hostility that Lord Grantchester had shown to his presumptuous entrance seemed to give way to curiosity.

“You’re the feller that’s been involved in all these murders,” he said.

Simon nodded.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

“Me?” said his lordship in surprise.

“You,” confirmed the Saint.

He looked at the puzzled faces of the others and saw no sense in alarming them.

“Just a brief private talk,” he amplified.

Lord Grantchester considered the request for a moment and then shrugged.

“Very well, but it will have to be brief. We hold a fancy-dress ball every Christmas Eve and there’s still a lot to be done.”

As he crossed the room towards the Saint he glanced out at the snow.

“If they can all get here,” he added, more to himself than his visitor. “Damn phone’s out of order. Don’t know who’s coming and who ain’t. Little bit of snow and the whole country grinds to a halt.”

He led the way into the library and shut the door. They sat on either side of a fireless grate. The Saint explained his theory about the murders and then came to the reason for his visit.

“Were you the fourth person involved in Sir Basil’s plans for the new faculty?”

Lord Grantchester nodded.

“Sir Basil knew I was a former student at St. Enoch’s. He was quite honest about it. Said that a lord would attract the people whose money he was after.” Lord Grant-Chester chuckled to himself. “I’m a director on the board of half a dozen companies and I’m not even sure what they do. People like to have a title on their letterheads.”

He became serious again.

“This was a bit different, though. You see, there’s a family trust. It was set up some years ago so that the blasted tax man wouldn’t get everything when the head of the family snuffed it. The family draws salaries from the trust just as if it was a company. There’s also a provision for donations to charities. Certain tax advantages, you understand. The idea was that St. Enoch’s would put up thirty per cent of the money from its own resources. Sir Basil told me he was tapping three businessmen for twenty per cent each, and the Grantchester Trust would contribute the final ten per cent.”

“But Sir Basil didn’t say who those businessmen were?”

“I left it to him to find ’em. If their credit references were okay, they were okay with me. This was all way back in the autumn. I’ve been abroad since then. Can’t stand the cold these days. Only come back for Christmas. Sir Basil wrote to me a couple of weeks ago saying everything was arranged. Could we all meet on Christmas Eve to sign the papers? Seemed in a bit of a hurry but I said it sounded fine. Subject to the audit, of course.”

The Saint pounced on the word.

“Audit? What audit?”

Lord Grantchester chuckled again.

“See you’re not a businessman, young feller,” he said. “This may be charity but it’s also business. We’re not talking about a few quid, you know. By the time it was finished the whole thing was going to cost getting on for half a million.”

The Saint whistled softly. He hadn’t realised that so much money was involved.

Lord Grantchester continued: “Of course there would have to be an audit of the college’s books. They were putting up the biggest single slice. Otherwise everyone else could have put up their money and then found the college couldn’t meet its obligations. Then what? Damn easy to give money away, damn hard to get it back, especially when it’s been turned into bricks and mortar.”

The last segment of the puzzle slotted neatly into place.

“I think you should know,” said the Saint deliberately, “that these murders you’ve been hearing about just happen to have eliminated Sir Basil’s backers. With one remaining exception, so far as I’ve been able to find out.”

His lordship might have been regarded by many as a stuffed shirt, but there was no doubt that it was a stuffing of excellent quality. He eyed the Saint with a calmly speculative expression.

“So you think this maniac who’s murdered the others will have a go at me too?” he said at length.

“I’m sure of it,” Simon replied firmly. “I’d like your permission to search the house, and to hang around for a while.”

Lord Grantchester pondered the request.

“Damn inconvenient,” he muttered. “The family are here already and the first guests will be arriving soon. Don’t want to alarm people.”

“I promise not to alarm people,” Simon told him. “But I do think that it’s necessary. This man isn’t a maniac. He’s a cold calculating killer, and a fancy-dress ball would give him a perfect opening.”

Lord Grantchester recognised the strength of the Saint’s argument. He stood up.

“Very well. But please be as discreet as you can.” He stopped at the door. “I’ll tell the staff you’re a surveyor.”

“A surveyor?” the Saint repeated rather blankly.

“That’s right. From the insurance company. The west wing is practically falling down. Been locked up for years because it’s unsafe. Got to do something about it.”

Simon smiled and promised to pose as a surveyor. What a surveyor would be doing working so late on Christmas Eve might be a difficult question to answer if he was challenged, but with luck it wouldn’t be asked.

So the west wing, the oldest part of the house, was unsafe. So it was probably the best place for a break-in. So nobody went there any more, so it was safe as a hiding place. So he would start in the west wing. He told Lord Grantchester his intention and was given directions.

As he traversed the house towards the west wing he tried to put himself in the murderer’s place. Would he break in early, hide, and wait for the fancy-dress ball to start, and then mingle with the guests until he saw an opportunity to strike? Or would he arrive among other guests, in costume, and hope to sneak in unchallenged?

The Saint decided that, since the weather might drastically reduce the numbers present, he’d opt for the first choice. If necessary, he could still hide and get at his victim when the household had gone to sleep.

He entered the west wing by a door on the ground floor, the only one, Lord Grantchester had told him, that was not kept locked.

In the manner of houses of its period, the ground floor was served by one long corridor that ran between all the rooms until it reached the far end of the wing. In the centre it spread out into a square-shaped hall with a flight of wooden stairs leading straight up to a balustraded gallery.

What little furniture remained in the rooms was shrouded in dust sheets which in the half-light looked like slumbering ghosts. The air was heavy with the smell of mould and damp and rotting woodwork. The Saint refrained from announcing his presence by switching on the lights or using his torch and made do with the moonlight that was helped by being reflected from the snow outside.

He checked all the downstairs rooms and returned to the hall. He climbed to the landing at the top of the stairs and considered his next move. From the gallery ran two passages, one towards the centre of the house, the other to the opposite end. He flipped a mental coin and came down in favour of the latter.

Here the corridor ran between other rooms and was so dark that he had no alternative but to switch on his flashlight. It was the shape and size of a fountain pen, with the small beam further restricted by silver foil pasted over the lens. It emitted only a pencil-thin ray, but his night vision was as keen as any cat’s and it was enough.

He moved slowly and cautiously along the passage, his ears straining to pick up any sound that might betray the presence of another intruder. He checked the rooms as he passed them without finding anyone. Of course there was no certainty that the killer was yet on the premises. And then the creak of a floorboard made him freeze.

He waited for what seemed minutes but was in reality no more than a few seconds. The sound came again, louder this time. His ears guided his eyes to the far end of the corridor where it formed a T junction with a similar passage leading towards the rear of the house, and in the deep gloom down there a hooded figure moved.

11

Simon smiled blissfully as he watched the dim shape of a Santa Claus disappear around the corner. And then he followed. Making less sound than a scavenging mouse, he reached the junction in time to see the figure enter a room a few yards to his right.

He edged along the wall towards the door, passing another as he did so, keeping close to the wall where the boards were less likely to creak.

Standing outside the door which he had seen the Santa Claus use, he listened to try and pinpoint whereabouts in the room the man was. By the time he heard the sound behind him it was already too late.

He felt the cold bluntness of a gun barrel against his neck.

“Inside,” said a voice in his ear.

The Saint opened the door and stepped into the room. He had been caught bending in the past but he would have been prepared to admit that he had never been quite as doubled up as then.

He glanced around the room and saw that it had two doors, the one he had just come through and another a few feet away which he had ignored in his haste to reach the door the Santa had used. It made the most beautifully simple setup for an ambush, and he was sportsman enough to acknowledge it.

“Very, very clever,” he said as he turned slowly to face his captor, being careful to make no sudden movement that might precipitate a bullet.

The Santa Claus was standing beside the now closed door. He reached out and switched on the light. He wore a full Santa Claus mask, from bushy white eyebrows to ruddy cheeks to white moustache and beard, but the Saint was not deceived.

“Merry Christmas, Godfrey,” he said.

Nyall’s eyes blinked through the holes in his mask. In his hand was a .38 revolver and it was levelled unwaveringly at the Saint’s abdomen.

Simon looked at the gun with polite interest.

“A war souvenir?” he enquired pleasantly.

“That’s right,” said Nyall in an equally matter-of-fact tone. “Not as accurate as Denzil’s match pistol, but good enough at this distance.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Simon said.

The two men considered each other warily. The Saint had no illusions about the danger he faced, but the smile never left his lips even if it had left his eyes. Godfrey Nyall was the tenser of the two. He would obviously have to kill the Saint but his curiosity needed to be satisfied.

“You must be as clever as they say you are,” he said. “How did you guess it was me?”

“I am even cleverer than they say I am,” Simon replied. “I had my suspicions when I remembered that photo in your office and thought about how Casden had been killed. Then I thought it strange that the police should find the pistol in Rosco’s room. It wasn’t there when I looked, but of course you were going to replace it when I bumped into you in the corridor.”

He paused. Nyall said nothing but continued to blink steadily at him. The Saint went on:

“I still couldn’t find a motive. But there was Darslow’s crack about economists. And that made me think back to those papers on your desk and the stories that had been ringed. Gilts and blue chip shares, you’d said. But those stories would have affected commodities, and they’re too risky for a college to speculate in. Doing some dabbling on your own? Then his lordship mentioned an upcoming audit, and suddenly I saw the light.”

Nyall continued to stare without speaking at the Saint, who, conscious that his one hope lay in playing for time, said: “Commodities are dangerous things. Buy or sell at a fixed price now for payment and delivery in a few months. If the price goes the way you’re betting, you make a packet. But if it doesn’t...”

“I was unlucky,” Nyall broke in.

“So you borrowed from the college funds to make up the difference,” said the Saint. “Easy enough for someone in your position. Until you heard about Sir Basil’s plans and the audit.”

“I had no alternative,” said Nyall defensively. “It would have meant ruin, prison. There was only one way out.”

“Good scheme, dressing as Father Christmas to kill them all,” Simon said. “But then I showed up and it began to go wrong.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” the bursar wanted to know.

“Because I needed some kind of proof, more than just the sort of clever theory that wraps up a storybook whodunit. The best way seemed to be to catch you red-handed on your next job. Which is what I’ve done.”

“And much good it’ll do you,” Nyall said, now very coldly.

The Saint watched him deliberately raise the revolver to heart level.

“That thing makes quite a noise when it goes off,” he ventured to remark.

“Nothing that’s likely to be heard from this part of the house, through these walls,” Nyall said.

Simon Templar stared death in the face and seemed to find it amusing. He brought his left hand up unhurriedly, his right hand pushing back his left cuff as if to give him a sight of his wrist watch. At the same time the fingers of his right hand slid into the sleeve to find the chased ivory hilt of the knife sheathed against his left forearm.

“I wonder if that fortune teller was right about the exact time I’d get it,” he murmured.

Nyall’s knuckle whitened on the trigger, and in that split instant the Saint dived aside. His knife flashed through the air in the same second as the pistol cracked.

He felt the bullet pass his ear as he went down. He hit the deck and rolled over, conscious only that he was still alive, that the gamble had paid off.

He heard Nyall curse and the gun thud to the floor. As he rolled over he could see why. The razor-sharp blade had slashed the tendons at the base of the bursar’s fingers. Which was not bad throwing, Simon told himself.

Nyall stared for a second at the blood that was dripping from his hand. And then he went after the gun. But that breathing spell had been all that the Saint needed. He flung himself across the floor and his fingertips touched the butt of the revolver first. Nyall, realising he could never pick it up before the Saint, did the only thing he could. He kicked out wildly. His toe caught the trigger guard, and the gun spun through the air to fall in the far corner of the room.

The Saint twisted around and his other hand cupped behind Nyall’s ankle and pulled. Nyall tottered for a moment, his arms flailing as he tried to keep his balance, before he fell backwards. Simon maintained his grip and began to rise, but Nyall lashed out with his other foot and the heel of his shoe caught the Saint on the side of the head.

The stark lighting of the room was suddenly enhanced by a shower of tumbling golden stars. But the Saint was the only one who saw them. Involuntarily his hold weakened, and Nyall tore his other ankle free.

With a reflex action the Saint threw himself in the direction of the revolver, trying desperately to clear his head and brush away the sparks that still danced before his eyes as he prepared to meet a follow-up attack. But the attack never came.

Perhaps Nyall panicked. Perhaps his spirit was broken by having one hand made useless. Perhaps he remembered what he had heard about the Saint and realised he would ultimately have no chance against him anyway in single unarmed combat. Perhaps it was a combination of all three. All he positively knew was that Nyall hesitated and then turned and fled.

Simon pulled himself upright, the action dispelling the worst of the kick’s after effects. Nyall had been unlucky. It had been a powerful blow but a glancing one. A few degrees different and the Saint might not have known what happened next.

He quickly gathered up the revolver and his knife before going out into the corridor.

Nyall had reached the far end. He turned, a grotesque silhouette in his costume against the light from a high arched window that ran from the floor almost to the ceiling at the end of the passage, and looked from the gun to the grim-set face of the man who held it.

“There’s no way out, Godfrey,” said the Saint softly.

Nyall shook his head slowly, making his false beard wag in an outlandish parody of the character whose disguise he had adopted.

“There’s always a way out,” he pronounced calmly and distinctly.

And before anyone could have stopped him, he turned and hurled himself at the glass.

Simon ran to the window and looked down. The red-coated figure of Santa Claus, sometime bursar of St. Enoch’s College, Cambridge, lay spread-eagled in the thin carpet of snow beside the house like a broken toy.

“You silly twit,” said the Saint. “You should have used the chimney.”

12

It might have been a scene straight out of a Hollywood production of A Christmas Carol. A bright, cloudless sky shivered to the ringing of a thousand bells from a hundred towers and spires. A glistening white shroud of freshly fallen snow lay across rooftops and streets. Along the pavements, overcoated and muffled in scarves, people trudged home from church.

The picture-postcard perfection of his surroundings failed to move Simon Templar as he steered the Hirondel slowly through Cambridge. After the events of the past week he felt a strong desire to leave both Cambridge and Christmas far behind. His imagination drifted towards a palm-fringed beach and a warm sea, and he found the prospect of overstuffed turkey and stodgy plum pudding distinctly unappealing. But when Chantek had offered to cook him a Christmas dinner, saying that otherwise she would have to spend the day all alone, he had not had the heart to refuse in the face of her almost childish eagerness.

His tiredness contributed to his mood. It had been another long night.

Godfrey Nyall had died before the ambulance arrived, without regaining consciousness. Had it been an attempt to escape, a last desperate gamble, or suicide? The Saint would never know. And Superintendent Nutkin would be content to let a coroner’s jury decide the answer.

Lord Grantchester’s title and personality had awed the police into doing what they had to do so discreetly and unobtrusively that his guests would be quite unaware of what had happened until they read about it in their morning papers. He had insisted that the Saint must stay for the party, kitted out as an Arab in robes easily improvised from a couple of bed sheets, and welcome to shelter behind any alias he chose.

“Damn decent of you to take all that trouble to save my life, as if it had more than just a few more years to go anyway.”

It would be untrue to say that the Saint had not enjoyed his privileged anonymity, but he had slipped away before midnight when it had been announced that all true identities must be disclosed.

Now as he eased the Hirondel into a parking space at his destination and cut the engine, he wondered if this afternoon dinner à deux would be an anticlimax or perhaps only a relaxing but banal denouement.

He was wrong in both guesses.

Chantek answered his knock, and his pessimism began to be undermined by her artless delight at seeing him. She was wearing a sarong patterned with pink and blue flowers, and a pearl necklace glowed against the gold of her skin.

“Slamat datang,” she said.

“Slamat, chantek,” he said, using her name as the compliment that she deserved.

There was nothing Dickensian about her perfume, which harmonised perfectly with the exotic cooking smells that came to his nostrils.

She ushered him into a large living room where the white walls were hung with brightly coloured paintings. On the table in small bowls and platters was set out a fascinating variety of mysterious preparations.

He turned to her and smiled.

“This is Christmas dinner?” he said.

Chantek returned his smile.

“That’s right,” she replied. “My kind of Christmas dinner. I hope you like rijsttafel.”

Her costume and the spicy aroma of the feast she had prepared matched his recent thoughts of warmer, lazier climes so perfectly that for a moment he was speechless. She looked at him anxiously, worried that he might be disappointed by the surprise.

The Saint’s smile broadened. He picked up a glass of wine from the table and raised it in a toast.

“Darling,” he said, “it’s the crowning touch to one Christmas I’ll never forget. Someday they’ll write a song about it. I can almost hear it — ‘Some En-Chantekd Evening...’ ”