The Saint and the Templar Treasure

1

As he looked down at the sprawled figure Simon experienced a disorienting isolation from the surrounding confusion. The excited shouts of the labourers and the thud of their heavy boots on the flagstones drifted into a remote background. He was totally aware of everything that happened yet was apart from it. He stood motionless, numbed by an eerie feeling of déjà vu, as if the events of the preceding seconds were no more than stills from a film he had seen before.

With cool detachment he searched for a reason and found it in the veiled warning that Gaston had delivered a little earlier. The old man’s words returned to jar him back to reality.

“Accidents happen.”

In the instant of his return to his usual alertness Simon realised three things. The first was that Gaston was not fatally injured, for he was already clambering to his knees. The second was that the workmen were turning to him as if for an explanation. And the third was a vibration he could feel beneath his feet.

“Back!”

The urgency in his voice made the others jump to obey even before they appreciated the danger. No sooner had they retreated from the edge than another section of the floor collapsed on the opposite side of the hole from where the Saint stood.

A string of oaths rose with the cloud of dust that followed the cave-in, and the Saint grinned with relief in the assurance that no one capable of such a voluble and coherent attack on the parentage and peculiarities of his would-be rescuers could yet be written off. He knelt down, carefully spreading his weight more evenly, and peered into the gloom below. Gaston was on his feet, brushing the dust and dirt from his clothes and hair with one hand as he massaged the small of his back with the other.

“Are you all right?”

Gaston looked up, clearly surprised to hear the Saint’s voice, and winced at the pain the sudden movement caused him.

“I think so, monsieur,” he replied hesitantly. “At least there are no bones broken.”

“What happened?”

“I was rolling a barrel across the floor when it just gave way. You had best be careful, the supports down here are all rotten. I cannot imagine how they have lasted so long.”

“That’s what they said to Methuselah,” Simon rejoined. “We’ll have you out in a minute. Stay in the centre in case any more of the floor collapses.”

He moved cautiously back from the edge and turned to speak crisply to the men nearest to him.

“You, get some rope and a ladder. You get a flashlight. You go to the château, tell anyone you find there what has happened, and bring back a first-aid box. The rest of you stay outside, we don’t want any more accidents.”

The workmen hurried to carry out his instructions. Simon perched himself on one of the barrels stacked by the door and waited for them to return.

Had it not been for Gaston’s prophetic warning, he would have found nothing very extraordinary in what had happened. He recalled his visit to the chapel the previous day, and Gas-ton’s accident merely confirmed what he had surmised then, that the hill beneath the château was likely to be a warren of cellars and tunnels dating back to the building of the original fortress. Like the rest of the house they would have been extended piecemeal as required with little concern as to how long they would have to last. In such circumstances, subsidences were bound to be occasional events. It would have been satisfying to have found a more sinister explanation for what had happened, but it was evident that Gaston had been alone in the storehouse and the odds against the accident having been engineered were too long to be taken seriously.

The sounds that reached him indicated that Gaston Pichot had no intention of keeping still until he was rescued, and Simon had just decided to find out what he was doing when the labourers began to return.

The Saint tied an end of the rope to one of the two powerful flashlights they had brought and then laid the ladder on the floor and slid it towards the hole. Treading as lightly as possible on the rungs, he carried the rope and the flashlights to the hole.

Gaston was on his hands and knees in the gloom and appeared to be sifting through the debris when the Saint found him with the beam of the second torch.

“I’m lowering a light so that you can see where to guide the ladder,” Simon told him as he began to pay out the rope.

Once he had a clear view of the bottom of the hole, Simon tipped the ladder over the edge, positioning it as near vertically as possible to lessen the strain on the floor. As soon as it was in place he shinned nimbly down with the other lamp.

“There is no need, I can manage,” said Gaston huffily, but Simon ignored him.

Now that he was sure that the overseer was not gravely hurt he was impatient to find out what lay below. Gaston held his light on the bottom of the ladder until the Saint reached it, and then raised the beam to illuminate the room they stood in.

The combined brilliance of their two lamps showed it in detail. It was about twenty feet square and nine feet high. The walls and what was left of the ceiling were made of trimly hewn stone blocks, while the floor consisted only of the smoothed rock of the hill. Jutting from three of the walls seat-high from the ground were boxed-in stone benches that reminded Simon of the tombs of monks he had seen in abbeys, although the general appearance suggested an ante-room rather than a burial chamber.

He took in the lay-out of the room with one sweeping glance until his gaze reached the far wall.

On a low intricately carved plinth stood one of the strangest statues he had ever seen.

It was a life-sized marble sculpture of a woman dressed in a flowing Grecian style costume. Pawing at her dress like lap dogs were a pair of baying wolves which she was affectionately stroking. The Saint had an involuntary shudder as he took in the head. There was no sign of the classical beauty he had half expected: Instead, the sculptor had fashioned not one face but three, each as hideous as the other. The mouths were fixed in tight-lipped snarls that copied the menace of the wolves, and the noses were hooked like scythes. The eyes held no expression at all. They were simply deep black voids. Framing the features was a wild mass of tangled hair that tumbled down the figure’s back and over her breasts like a nest of angry snakes. Between her feet stood a small iron-bound oak casket which seemed to contain a few tiny scraps of brittle yellow parchment.

“Must have been somebody’s dream girl,” the Saint remarked, and was surprised to find himself whispering like a tourist in a cathedral.

He walked around the rubble in the middle of the floor and approached the statue, conscious that wherever he moved the sightless eyes seemed to follow him.

Gaston stayed where he was.

“It is evil, monsieur,” he declared.

The old man was both excited and afraid. He shuffled his feet nervously and glanced anxiously at the ladder as he waited for the Saint.

Simon picked up the casket and inspected it. The wood was splintered where the lid had been levered open and there were bright scratches on the edges of the lock. It carried no clue to its original owner and was too small to contain a hidden compartment. The pieces of parchment were brittle to the touch and blank except for a few faded strokes that might have been the tops of letters. Regretfully he replaced it on the ledge and turned to face Gaston.

“Too bad it’s empty,” he said.

“Yes, yes, it is,” Pichot agreed restlessly. “A great pity.”

Simon promptly turned back to the ladder.

“I’m sorry, Gaston. I was forgetting that you must still be very shaken.”

“I have strained my back,” the other said with a grimace. “But it could have been much worse.”

“Can you climb?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll hold the ladder for you. Take your time.”

The old man began to pull himself up rung by rung. Simon waited until he was at the top and then followed. One of the labourers helped his foreman to safety, and as Gaston sat on a cask to regain his breath the workman Simon had sent to the château returned accompanied by Henri and Norbert.

Briefly Gaston told them what had happened. Henri took a small bottle from his pocket and his uncle gratefully sampled its contents.

“It was very fortunate that you were here, Monsieur Templar,” Henri said stiffly. “It seems that once again we are in your debt.”

“I do seem to have a habit of being around when things happen, don’t I?” said the Saint. “But I didn’t really do anything.” He directed Henri back to Gaston, who was again on his feet. “Don’t you think you had better see him home?”

“Of course,” Henri agreed. “Come, Uncle. I have a car outside, and the doctor has been sent for.”

“There is no need for so much fuss,” Gaston grumbled; but he allowed Henri to take his arm and lead him out. Norbert did not follow. He was trying to peer into the hole in the floor, hopping about like an excited bird.

“A hidden chamber — this is really exciting!”

“I thought that’s what you’d be most concerned about,” Simon said dryly. “Here, take a flashlight and go have a look.”

Even though the Saint had become accustomed to Norbert’s excitable nature, the intensity of his reaction when he finally managed to negotiate the descent and saw the statue for the first time was quite a spectacle. The professor gawped at the figure, his face a study of joyous amazement like a child unexpectedly presented with a long-coveted toy.

“Incredible! Quite incredible,” he breathed, and almost tripped over it in his hurry to get a closer look.

Simon had followed more coolly, and was content to leave the professor alone until his examination was completed and his excitement had subsided enough to allow him to answer questions.

Louis Norbert ran his hands over the grotesque figure as gently as if it were made of the finest bone china. He got down on his knees and traced the carving on the plinth. Simon took in the details of the column for the first time and saw that they depicted a tree through whose heavy foliage peered the contorted faces of what were presumably meant to be wood spirits and devils.

Norbert minutely studied each of the wolves in turn before running his hands up the folds of the dress until by stretching on tiptoe he could glide his fingers over the features of the face. All the while the examination was in progress a steady flow of mumbled superlatives told Simon how important the professor believed the statue to be.

“Well?” Simon prompted at last, when both Norbert’s examination and supply of adjectives appeared to be temporarily exhausted.

The professor turned sharply, irritated at having his thoughts disturbed.

“What?”

“That kind of dialogue will get us nowhere,” Simon rebuked him with a smile. However hard he tried, he found it difficult to take the academic’s antics seriously. “What is it?”

“Hecate,” Norbert replied as if exasperated by such basic ignorance.

Simon searched back through the mythology he had picked up in serendipitous reading. Except for the amorous exploits of Zeus and a feeling of kinship with Odysseus and Jason, he admitted that he had never been deeply drawn into the subject.

“Greek goddess?” he hazarded, hoping that it would act as a cue for one of the professor’s instant lectures.

He was not disappointed. Norbert backtracked until he stood by the Saint’s side, but his eyes continued to absorb every detail of the statue as he spoke.

“Originally, yes. A minor deity. Not one of the true Olympians.”

“Poor girl,” said the Saint.

The professor ignored him.

“She was the goddess of ghosts and the creatures of the night. The queen of graveyards and of the spirits of the lost. Later she became the ruler of witches and all who followed the paths of darkness. A hymn to Hecate was part of the necromancer’s ritual.”

“Sounds like a dead-end job,” Simon remarked, but before Norbert could take offence he added: “Why the three faces and the wolves?”

“Wolves were seen as creatures of evil in the Middle Ages. As for the three faces, they represent the triplicity of her nature. She is powerful in heaven, on earth, and in hell. Also she embodies the stages of the moon, waxing, full, and waning. She was believed to haunt crossroads and it was at crossroads that witches were buried,” Norbert explained.

“What do you make of this place?” Simon asked, and for the first time the professor bothered to look away from the statue and consider the rest of the chamber.

“Obviously a part of the original fortress. I would surmise that it might once have been a meeting place.”

“So the Knights would have been responsible for the statue. And hence the anagram of Regina. But I thought they were supposed to be militant Catholics.”

“You do not listen,” Norbert said testily. “I told you that one of the charges made against the Templars was that they practised black magic. Generally it was most certainly a lie; but here, perhaps, it may have been true.”

“Doesn’t anything strike you as odd about this room?” Simon asked, and after a brief glance around Norbert shook his head.

“No. What is wrong?”

“Well,” Simon pointed out, “we are here because the floor of the storehouse and the roof of this chamber collapsed. If you look up, you’ll see that there is the ceiling of this room, then a layer of rock, above which is a few centimetres of soil, and then there are the flagstones which are the floor of the storehouse.”

“So what?”

“So how did anyone get in here in the old days?”

Norbert looked from the Saint to the ceiling, and then turned his flashlight over every wall and corner.

“There is no door!” he exclaimed, when he had finally authenticated the statement.

“For a great scholar, you do catch on fast,” said the Saint mockingly.

The professor glowered, and Simon patted him consolingly on the head.

“Never mind — we can’t all go to the same schools. But now we had better get out of here in case any more of the ceiling falls in.”

“But you don’t realise how important this is! I have work to do,” Norbert protested.

“And you are not going to be able to do it if half a ton of rock lands on your head. You can come back when it’s been shored up.”

The authority in the Saint’s voice brooked no argument, and with a last longing look at the statue Norbert began to climb up the ladder. Simon stayed for one final review, and for the first time his gaze rested on the pile of stones that had once been the floor of the storehouse. What he saw made him bend down for a closer look.

He inspected one stone after another until he had examined all the larger fragments. About half of them were scored and chipped in a way that could never have been caused by their fall. It needed no Sherlock Holmes to deduce how the marks had been caused. Someone had recently been at work on the floor of the storehouse with a pickaxe.

2

That evening he dined alone with Yves Florian and Mimette. Philippe had phoned to say that he would not be home until late, Professor Norbert had pleaded that he wanted to be alone to study the historic implications of the underground chamber, and Henri Pichot and Jeanne Corday were having supper with Gaston at his cottage. As a result the tenseness that had marked the previous night’s meal was absent and the conversation less restricted. After ranging through a wide variety of topics from the state of the franc to the life expectancy of Generalissimo Franco, the talk reverted to the events of the afternoon.

“You must have very extensive cellars here where you store the wine,” said the Saint, when he had a suitable opening, and Yves nodded.

“To tell you the truth even I am not certain where they all begin and end, and I have lived here all my life,” Yves confessed. “My father had new storage facilities built under the courtyard by the chai, and it is there that we store most of the wine we produce. Except for the wine we keep for ourselves, which is kept under the kitchens, the old cellars are not used nowadays. Only Gaston, and perhaps Charles, would know all of them.”

“Yesterday on my way from my room to the salon I got lost and ended up at the chapel. I noticed a door at the foot of the stairs, and I assumed that was the main way in.”

“It used to be, but it has not been used for some years. Originally the staircase went right down to the old dungeons of the castle, but they became unsafe, and so we had to brick up the opening and put a door in. I don’t suppose anyone has been down there for ten years at least.”

Simon finished the last of his Château Ingare Reserve with unconcealed regret.

“A great wine,” he said. “You’re very generous to let me taste your private stock. I’m surprised the Germans allowed you to keep any of it.”

“We have Gaston and Charles to thank for that. They hid the finest vintages away, I don’t know where, and put old labels on all the newest and rawest, and the Boches sat around this very table and praised them to the heavens because he had told them they were so special. But then what can you expect from a nation of beer drinkers?” added Yves with chauvinistic glee.

The Saint wondered what the citizens of Rheinhessen would think of that, but decided not to make the point.

“I suppose Norbert has been pestering Gaston to death about all these closed-off crypts and passages,” he said.

“I have no doubt,” said Yves goodhumouredly. “He is doing no harm, and if he discovers anything of archaeological importance it will be interesting. And Philippe thinks it would do the business no harm to enhance our snobisme ancestral.”

“Not to mention my own,” said the Saint lightly.

Mimette put in: “If you would like to look at our private cellars, you would be most welcome. Just see Charles, there is nothing he enjoys more than showing off his private catacombs.”

The Saint was quick to accept.

“Thank you, I should like that very much indeed.”

The next morning after breakfast he took up the offer, and found the family retainer a willing and knowledgeable guide.

Charles ushered him down a winding flight of stone stairs that led off from a corner of a kitchen that looked big enough to prepare three-course meals for a regiment. He had the air of a curator opening the museum vaults to reveal his rarest and most precious collections. He seemed to blend in perfectly with the long racks of cobwebbed bottles and the close musty vinegar smell.

The cellar itself was unremarkable and from Simon’s viewpoint something of a disappointment. It consisted of a series of wide interconnecting tunnels that spread like the strands of a spider’s web from an open area in the centre, but all the ramifications were ultimately dead ends. The door from the kitchen provided both entrance and exit. At the end of most of the tunnels was a wall of new bricks built to separate the family’s personal wine stocks from the rest of the château’s cellars.

They walked slowly down the narrow aisles between the racks of bottles. Charles eagerly provided a running commentary on the different wines in his charge and enjoyed answering the Saint’s questions in the minutest detail. By the time the tour was completed the Saint’s repertoire of wine lore had been substantially increased; while Charles, finding his audience less inept than he had expected, became less formally distant and more congenial.

“You have been at Ingare for a long time?” Simon asked as they returned to the daylight.

“I have always been at Ingare,” answered Charles. “My father was butler before me, and his father before him. It is so long ago I am not even sure when we first came here.”

As he carefully double-locked the door to the cellar, Simon asked: “What do you think about this treasure of the Templars that everyone is so worked up about?”

“It is not my business,” Charles replied stiffly. “If there is one, it would belong to the Florians.”

He led the way back into the kitchen and it seemed to the Saint that the further they moved into the house the more Charles became the inscrutable servant and less the wine enthusiast chatting to a fellow connoisseur.

“Perhaps the chamber Gaston fell into yesterday might provide a clue,” Simon ventured. “I should think there are a number of underground passages here that no one knows about.”

“It is very possible, monsieur,” Charles agreed politely. “Is there anything else you require?”

There was; but not the kind of domestic service that Charles was offering. The Saint knew when he was being stonewalled and accepted that any further probing would be useless.

That afternoon he visited Gaston. The foreman’s home was a white-walled low-roofed cottage at the foot of the hill looking towards the Ouvèze, which he had learnt was the name of the river in the plain below. The ground floor consisted of a single room simply furnished with locally made furniture. A massive iron stove set into the fireplace served both for heating and for cooking food. The only decorations were an array of shining copper utensils that hung beside the chimney breast and an assortment of framed photographs on the mantelpiece. Despite its spartan appearance, however, the house had a feeling of warmth and security that the château could never project.

Gaston’s bed had been brought downstairs and he was sitting propped up in it reading when the Saint arrived.

“I am embarrassed, m’sieur,” he said. “I have no wounds, but the doctor orders that I must rest for two or three days until the pain in my back is gone.”

The overseer put away his book and the jumble of papers on which he had been scribbling, and for more than an hour they chatted about the harvest weather, about wine-making, about everything and anything but nothing in particular. The only awkward break in the conversation came when Simon brought up the mysterious underground chamber which Gaston had so dramatically and painfully opened up. It was a subject that Gaston gave the impression it would be disloyal or indiscreet of him to discuss.

“That is for the professor to occupy himself with,” he said gruffly.

As the Saint prepared to leave Gaston became suddenly serious.

“You are still staying at Ingare?”

“Mademoiselle Mimette insists, until my car is repaired, so I see no reason to leave.”

“Even after what happened to me yesterday?”

“That was the purest accident, wasn’t it? Nothing sinister about it. Why should that make me go?”

Gaston did not reply at once. Instead he looked searchingly at his visitor.

“Trust no one,” he cautioned at last. “Not even those you think of no account.”

“Precisely who do you have in mind?” Simon asked, but the old man was not to be drawn and merely thanked his guest for the visit and bade him a deferential au revoir.

On his way back to the château the Saint stopped at the tower. The scene was the same as it had been when the seance broke up. The table, the overturned chairs, the circle of cards, and the shattered wine-glass at the foot of the column had not been picked up or moved. He searched for several minutes before finding what he was looking for. The piece of thread was almost hidden in a crack between the flagstones. Simon extracted it with care and slipped it into an envelope in his pocket. He continued on his way to the château, leaving everything else exactly as it had been.

“I must stop reading detective stories,” he told himself.

It is said that before an earthquake you can hear the silence. The animals and birds depart, only the people remain unaware. The Saint, whose instinct for danger was as finely honed as any animal’s, watched the behaviour of his companions with a naturalist’s detachment during the following two days.

The events of the preceding forty-eight hours were treated with well-bred indifference, as if ignoring them would make them go away. In the same manner his presence became accepted, and he realised how Norbert had managed to turn a weekend visit into a six-week stay. Conventional references to the condition of his car were easily and deftly coped with.

Supplied with the morsels of information the Saint had gathered during his brief stay at Château Ingare, any ordinary private investigator would have exhausted himself trying to unravel the spaghetti of riddles that Providence had heaped on his plate, until he and everyone else around was suffering from acute indigestion. The Saint did not. In fact to any observer unfamiliar with his methods he appeared to do nothing at all.

After the excitement generated by Gaston Pichot’s accidental discovery of the underground chamber had subsided, life at the château returned to as near normal as its motley assortment of personalities would allow, and Simon slipped comfortably into the routine of the household. The time-honoured ritual of the harvest continued, and he followed the progress of the grapes from vine to press to fermenting vat with genuine interest. When not in the fields or watching the wine being made, he behaved exactly as any other guest would have done.

Philippe Florian had returned from Avignon and appointed himself to take charge of the Hecate crypt. His archaeological interest was negligible; but his keenness to facilitate Louis Nor-bert’s study of it was very great. Since every able-bodied worker on the domaine was fully occupied with the picking and processing of grapes, he took on the task of securing the safety of the rest of the ceiling himself, revealing unsuspected talents as a practical handy-man. With the professor fluttering around to fetch and carry and lend an unmuscular hand, he brought in planks and timber and did a very competent job of underpinning the floor above. The scraping of his saw and the hammering of wedges reverberated to the outside for hours at a time.

For his part, Simon was unobtrusive to the point of elusiveness. Jeanne Corday’s clothes and poses placed her in the centre of the spotlight he had previously occupied, and he was content to fade into the background and watch and wait.

After dinner on the fourth day following his arrival, all the others excused themselves early for one reason or another, and for the first time in a long while he found himself alone again with Mimette in the salon.

She wasted no time in taking advantage of the opportunity.

“You must have a lot to tell me.”

It was so close to sounding like an imperious challenge that he was amused to treat it with elaborate carelessness.

“Not really-why should I?”

A slight flush tinged the girl’s cheeks.

“You mean you’ve been doing nothing?”

“I can’t say I’ve been a great help with the récolte,” Simon granted. “And Philippe already has an enthusiastic assistant.”

“Which should have left you plenty of time to do something else useful.”

“What would you have proposed?” he teased her lazily. “Should I have brought in a steam shovel and started digging up your foundations until we found a treasure which may not even exist?”

“You know there is something wrong here, and I thought you were going to try to discover it.”

Suddenly she sounded very tired and lonely, and the Saint relented.

“Okay,” he said. “I’d like to show you something. Can we go back to the dining-room?”

Wonderingly, but without hesitation, she moved to the door.

The dining-room, meticulously cleared of all trace of dinner, looked stark and lifeless in the blaze that she switched on. Simon put a match to a single one of the candles in the massive silver candelabrum on the sideboard, and turned off the electricity.

“There, that’s a lot better,” he said. “More atmospheric and misteriose. Now, would you sneak into the nether regions and fetch us a large wine-glass. Empty.”

“But why?”

“I’m going to show you a party trick that I happened to remember.”

When she returned, he had laid out a rough circle of torn pieces of paper at one end of the table top, which he was lightly polishing with a silk handkerchief.

“Of course, Charles keeps this table waxed and shined like a flies’ skating rink,” he remarked, “which makes the trick much easier.” He placed the glass upside down in the center of the paper circle and tested its mobility with a fingertip. “Now, you sit down opposite me—”

“What is this-another séance?”

“With a difference. But we might as well get in the mood.”

As she reluctantly took the chair across from him, he went on:

“I’ve been making use of your library, swotting up on the history of your noble house.”

“And?”

“Your ancestors — and maybe mine — seem to have been a pretty barbaric crowd even for those days. It seems that one of the first Florians, who had rashly promised some characters that they would not be hurt, kept them in the dungeons beneath this very room and simply starved them to death. But every day he had a sumptuous meal prepared and placed outside their cells — just out of reach. ‘They must not be allowed to believe,’ he said, ‘that I am starving them to save money.’ ”

Mimette grimaced. “How horrible!”

“Of course, if you weren’t feeling subtle, there were always the good old fun things to do, like one master of Ingare who used any peasants who complained for crossbow practice.”

“That was a different age, a different world,” she said defensively. “It can’t be blamed on the Florians of today.”

“In another thirty years the Germans will be saying the same about the Nazis. And I suppose they’ll be right, too,” said the Saint philosophically. “All the same, it does make this a place where a spiritualist could expect a good crop of spooks. I wonder how many men have entered Ingare and never left? Just think of the cries of despair and the screams of agony these walls must have heard, the murder and mayhem they must have seen...”

“I don’t want to think about it,” said Mimette obdurately.

She looked at the scraps of paper that he had laid out, and said: “Anyhow, these are all blank, so how is your spook going to communicate?”

“I hope the problem will drive him crazy,” Simon said happily. “Now, let’s see if we can make a contact. Put your finger on the glass.”

The Saint’s voice was quietly authoritative and Mimette obeyed.

In a few moments the glass moved a little.

She looked at him sharply.

“You’re cheating!”

“I am not.”

The movements became more pronounced and erratic.

“According to unbelievers,” Simon said steadily, “one of the players eventually, intentionally or involuntarily, gives the glass a tiny push. The others feel it, and unconsciously resist it or try to change its direction. The conflict of forces leads to stronger and wider movements as the pressures get more unbalanced...”

Even while he was explaining it, the glass began to move more definitely about the table.

The Saint asked no questions as Norbert had done, but simply allowed the glass to go where it seemed to want to. Mimette followed its peregrinations as if mesmerised. The glass moved faster and faster until it was darting to one point after another on the circle of paper scraps.

“Now, are you cheating?” Simon challenged.

As he expected, she snatched her finger indignantly off the glass. The Saint immediately followed suit. But the glass did not stop.

For a few seconds longer it went on moving as if it had a will of its own, until with gathering speed it flew straight off the edge of the table into the surrounding gloom.

“Well,” drawled the Saint, “I guess not finding any letters to spell with did drive our spook of the evening up the wall.”

Mimette had barely stifled a scream. She stared at Simon in wide-eyed disbelief and then ran and switched on the lights. Grinning, the Saint picked up the glass and replaced it on the table before blowing out the candle and collecting his pieces of paper.

Mimette remained standing by the light switch. She was deathly pale and her hands were clasped tightly together to stop them shaking. Despite her efforts at self-control her voice shook.

“It was a trick!” she babbled. “It must have been a trick!”

“It was,” he said cheerfully. “As I told myself when I saw it in the tower. And like most good tricks, so easy once you know how.”

“Please?” she implored. “What did you do?”

On the sideboard there was also an antique silver carrying-stand with a set of small stemless glasses in sockets around its base and a cut crystal decanter in the centre. The decanter held a liquid of encouragingly amber tint. Simon unstoppered it, sniffed the heady aroma of old marc, and poured two generous restorative shots. He handed one to Mimette before continuing.

“It’s all so obvious, really — straight out of the Amateur Sorcerer’s Handbook. First create an atmosphere, which is even easier if you have an old tower once occupied by Satanic knights. Enhance said atmosphere with lack of light. Then make sure everyone is concentrating as hard as possible because when you stare too hard at something for too long you end up not really seeing it at all. That’s why a conjuror always tells you to watch closely — what he wants you to watch. Then it’s easy to perform the required legerdemain.”

“But that glass moved by itself, when we weren’t touching it,” protested Mimette. “So did the one at the séance in the tower.”

“Not quite,” said the Saint.

He held up a single strand of black thread knotted at one end.

“Take a highly polished table and wine-glass, give the rim of the glass a film of oil perhaps, just with a fingertip from your own hair, and the glass will move at the lightest of touches. The pressure it needs is so slight that even the others who have a finger on the glass can’t detect who is starting it. When the glass comes to the edge of the table, slip the thread under the rim and the knot will keep it there. In semi-darkness it’s as good as invisible. When the time is right give the thread a quick tug and the glass flies off the table. Like I said, so simple when you know.”

“But who would go to all that trouble? And why?” she puzzled, and Simon shrugged.

“Who is easy. It’s the why that baffles me.”

“Who, then?”

“If you remember, the glass left the table and hit the pillar I was standing behind. Norbert was sitting at one end of the table and Philippe was facing me. That only leaves one person who was in exactly the right place.”

3

Mimette’s brow furrowed as she worked out the solution. She gave a short and uncertain laugh.

“Henri? Don’t be silly!”

Simon was unmoved.

“The limitation of that trick is that you can only move the glass towards you, or a little to one side, as you pull the thread under the edge of the table. Henri was the only one in a position to send it the way it went.”

She seemed to make an effort to remain sceptical.

“But why should Henri go to all that trouble?”

“That, as Hamlet always said, is the question,” Simon shrugged. “Perhaps he’s a secret practical joker.”

“Not Henri.”

“I didn’t think so. If the glass hadn’t smashed against the column, and brought me into the act, we might have found out. He couldn’t have known that I was standing there, so it was pure bad luck that I broke up the proceedings just as you made your appearance.”

“What are we going to do about it?” demanded Mimette.

The Saint lifted one free hand and shoulder.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing!”

“It’s no crime to fake a séance,” he contended.

“But no one would do it without a dishonest reason.”

“Did I have a dishonest reason just now?”

“No, but you — oh! You... you—”

She was almost spluttering with feminine exasperation at the idiocy of masculine logic.

The Saint was wise enough not to try to score any more intellectual points.

“All we have at the moment is a good reason to keep an eye on Henri,” he said quietly. “And we’ll have a much better chance of spotting something more if he doesn’t know he’s being watched. So just for now, will you keep my little demonstration private, between the two of us?”

Mimette frowned.

“Excusez-moi.” The words were difficult for her to say. “I have no right to speak to you as if I had hired you. It’s only because, since you came here, I’ve been hoping so much—”

“And believe me, Mimette,” he said steadily, “I’m hoping I won’t let you down.”

She looked up at him uncertainly, desperately wanting to believe. Simon Templar looked down into her dark troubled eyes and put down his glass. Before she realized what was happening, his lips were against hers. Her eyes opened wide in astonishment for a moment, but only for a moment. Slowly they closed as the tension dissolved, and she relaxed gratefully into the security of his arms.

As usual the following morning Simon breakfasted alone. Those with work to do were busy doing it, while Jeanne Cor-day’s ideas on the proper time for reveille were even more sybaritic than his own. Today, however, he knew that there would be a surfeit of conviviality to make up for it later. The last of the grapes would be brought in that afternoon, and in the evening there would be the traditional party for all who had worked on the harvest.

He was looking forward to the festivities. Not simply because they would be enjoyable in themselves, but because it would be his first opportunity to observe all the Florian clan and their cohorts in the informal bustle of a sociable free-for-all, which might provide an interesting floor show.

A stroll around the château grounds after breakfast had become something of a ritual, and that morning his route rook him first towards the chai and its dependent storehouse. In the cobbled courtyard which they partly enclosed he found Gaston Pichot leaning on a stout stick and watching a mound of laden baskets being carried in from the truck.

“These are the Petit Syrah,” Gaston explained. “Blended in our own proportion with the usual Cabernet grapes, they are what give the wines of Ingare their unique flavor.”

“I’m glad to see you’re on the job again,” said the Saint sincerely. “And feeling a lot better?”

“I could have felt so much worse,” said the indomitable old man. “But I was born in a good year. My vintage has outlasted many younger ones, and it will outlast many more. We have a proverb in Provencale: Vau miès pourta lou dou que lou linçou — it is better to wear the mourning than the coffin.”

“I shall adopt that as my motto,” Simon laughed. “A bien-tôt, mon ami.”

He sauntered on, around to the storehouse where Gaston had literally stumbled into one of the long-lost secrets of the château.

The floor was now securely pit-propped and the ladder had been solidly braced so that it practically became a steep flight of stairs. The debris had been removed, and a cable run from the generator in the adjoining pressing house supplied power for a couple of light bulbs.

Unexpectedly, the underground chamber was temporarily deserted. Since its discovery Norbert had virtually lived there, leaving it reluctantly only for hurried meals and snatched sleep. Reasoning that even professors are subject to the dictates of nature, Simon decided to wait for Norbert to return.

The statue looked somehow less sinister in the unglamorous glare of three hundred watts than it had in the wavering candle-power of flashlights. As he stood beside it facing the chilling emptiness of its eyes, he saw that it was not set flush against the wall as he had originally supposed. Only the plinth was attached to the wall, but the figure centred on it was well clear. A fetishist, if so inclined, could have put his arms around its horrors and embraced it.

The Saint did almost that, but with the purely idle object of testing whether the statue was integrated with its base or merely planted on it.

And the statue moved, with an ease quite disproportionate to the effort he had applied with respect to its presumable weight. In fact, so smoothly that he was momentarily thrown off balance. It was as if the statue had responded by coming to life in weird co-operation. And to add to the eeriness of the effect, a ghostly squeak and clink of chain whined through the chamber, while he had a visual hallucination of a part of the wall within his field of vision moving away from him.

As he regained his footing, both physically and intelligently, he realised that the wall actually had moved. In fact, a whole section of masonry had turned, in perfect synchronisation with the turning of the statue, opening a door into a passageway that instantly lost itself in total darkness.

Long afterwards, he would be profoundly impressed by the technical sophistication that was evidenced by the smooth working of the secret mechanism. After so many hundred years, anything made of iron or steel would have been rusted into permanent immovability. Yet bronze was an alloy that had been known even in the great days of the Château Ingare, although few engineers of that era seem to have concerned themselves with the problems of corrosion. The Templars who had installed that shrine of Hecate must have been centuries ahead of the thinking of their contemporaries, and what they built had been designed to outlast themselves by tens of generations.

But for those first moments, the Saint was too startled by his own discovery to stop and marvel at the technology which had made it possible. He took a deep breath and exhaled it in a long low whistle as he waited for his pulse rate to slow and a sense of reality to return and shuffle the jumbled sensations of the past seconds into a semblance of order.

That done, he walked over to the opening and peered cautiously in. The light from the bulbs in the crypt reached just far enough into the narrow passage to show that it was cut through the natural rock of the hillside, and the stone blocks of the pivoting secret door were only a few inches thick.

The door had not swung completely open but stood about two feet ajar. A heavy chain was around a toothed wheel at the bottom corner of the door, through the wall and into the base of the statue, where there would have to be another similar wheel. As one turned, so would the other. Simple but perfectly effective, and it still worked.

Two steps into the passage and he blocked his own light, making it impossible to see even inches ahead, and he returned to the chamber to cast around in the vain hope that a torch might have been left there.

Then he heard a movement somewhere above, and moved swiftly back to the statue. The creek of the chain as he turned the figure back to close the stone panel again sounded deafen-ingly loud to him in the confined space.

He need not have worried. Perhaps Louis Norbert was too engrossed in his own thoughts, perhaps he was slightly hard of hearing, or perhaps he was even a superb poker player, but whatever the reason he gave no indication of having heard anything unusual when he stepped from the ladder.

He regarded the Saint with a mixture of irritation and suspicion.

“Monsieur Templar. Were you looking for me?”

Simon uncrossed his legs and rose from the stone bench where he had hastily seated himself. The door had closed so perfectly that had he not known exactly where it was he would never have been able to guess. Even so, he kept his eyes away from the wall as he smiled amiably at the little professor.

“Not specially,” he said. “But it’s a pleasure to see you. You haven’t been very social since this hole was opened.”

“What can I do for you?” Norbert inquired in the politely uninterested tone of a shop assistant.

“I just dropped in to see how you were getting along,” Simon replied pleasantly.

Norbert scratched at the tuft of white hair that stuck out above his left ear. He looked tired and his clothes were crumpled. The collar of his shirt curled at the edges and the front of it was smeared with grime. He had the general appearance of a man who had spent the night on a park bench.

He continued to fix the Saint with an inquisitorial glare. Simon waved a hand towards the marble goddess.

“Has horrible Hecate told you anything yet?” he asked. “Opened up any new avenues of investigation?”

“No. Why should it? It’s just a very interesting work of ancient art,” Norbert said defensively.

“Vraiment?”

The Saint drawled the word so slowly and with such an inflection of cynical reverence that Professor Norbert flinched.

“I am just trying to make my studies,” he stammered, wrenching his gaze away and trying instead to concentrate on opening the carpenter’s rule he took from his pocket. “But trivial distractions make my task so much harder.”

Simon took the rule from his fumbling fingers and opened it out to its full length. He looked from Norbert to the statue and back again, and then proffered the metre of wood to the other’s hand like a general presenting a sword.

“I hope she measures up to your expectations,” he said suggestively; and while Norbert was trying to work out a double entendre Simon patted him encouragingly on the shoulder and leisurely climbed the ladder to the storehouse above.

Which in its own way was as good an exit as the circumstances allowed, he reflected as he made his way back to the château. He would have wished for more time to follow up his own discovery, but was sufficiently grateful that the professor’s fortuitous absence had allowed him the time to make it.

The question was, had Norbert long since beaten him to it? And where did that melodramatically hidden doorway lead?

The Saint would have to find some more answers for himself, which foreshadowed a possibly sleepless night of further exploring when he would be better equipped for the excursion.

He re-entered the château through the kitchens with the intention of going to the library to continue his struggle with the medieval French of the Templar records, but a sound of voices from the dining-room stopped him.

They were raised to that pitch just below shouting which is the key of an argument that is about to crescend into a row. Simon tiptoed noiselessly over and stood with his ear against the door. There was no need to look through the keyhole to identify the contestants, for the more forceful of the two voices could only belong to Jeanne Corday, while the other defiantly apologetic tones were undoubtedly those of Henri Pichot.

“Yes, sir; no, sir! What sort of man are you?” the girl was sneering. “They treat you like a guest, and you treat them as if you were a servant.”

“It is not like that,” Henri whined. “There are ways of doing things. You do not understand them like I do.”

“You mean I don’t curtsy every time they walk into a room.”

“It is not as simple as that,” Henri protested. “I must be careful. I am doing everything I can.”

“If you were half the man Philippe is, everything would be settled by now,” his fiancée countered spitefully. “In two days I am going back to Paris. With or without your cheap ring.”

“But you said...”

“With or without your ring,” Jeanne repeated coldly. “It’s up to you.”

Simon just had time to move back from the door before it was flung open. Jeanne Corday stormed past him without acknowledgement. Henri stood gaping dumbly at her retreating figure.

“A lovers’ tiff?” Simon asked sympathetically, and the lawyer rounded on him with uncharacteristic violence.

“Go to hell,” he snarled, and hurried after his lady love.

Simon found Pascal and Jules on the vineyard slopes, and shared an al fresco worker’s lunch with them before excusing himself for the private siesta which he felt that his constitution required.

Soon after six o’clock, refreshingly bathed and very casually spruced up, he made his way back down towards the chai.

The huddle of outbuildings formed three sides of a rectangle with the fourth side open to a panoramic view of the valley. The party was prepared in the courtyard between the buildings. Two long trestle tables had been loaded with eatables and wooden benches placed against the walls. Empty barrels served as extra tables or chairs as the occasion demanded. A couple of large casks had been set out on stands, and the permanent and seasonal toilers of the vineyard were already busy sampling the wine they had made the year before.

Yves and Mimette strolled from group to group chatting hospitably with anyone. Philippe stood a little apart from the crowd, a slightly condescending smile playing at the corner of his mouth as he sipped his wine. Henri and Jeanne Corday sat together on one of the benches without speaking. It was plain from the stiffness of their poses and the lack of conversation that their tempers had not cooled since the morning. There was no sign of either Gaston or Professor Norbert. The Saint had not expected the professor to leave his work for such frivolity, but he was surprised that the old foreman was not yet present.

As he stood and surveyed the scene, he discovered Pascal and Jules, and was about to walk over and join them when Jeanne Corday rose and hurried across towards him. Henri gazed sullenly after her but made no move to follow.

She was wearing a blouse that was intended to appear two sizes too small. The matching green skirt was equally tight and equally brief. The conversation of the two students might have proved more intelligent, but the Saint was only human. He bestowed his most dazzling smile on her. It was returned with a flash of polar white caps.

“Alors, vous voici,” she greeted him brightly. “Among the peasants.”

“Vous aussi,” Simon responded. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Are you kidding?”

Her eyes flicked shamelessly over him and he returned the compliment with an equally brazen appraisal.

“What’s the matter?”

Jeanne sighed wearily and sipped her drink. It was not the colour of wine, and he suspected that it was stronger.

“I mean, it’s all very nice here, but it’s so quiet, so open, just fields and things. I mean, it’s so...”

“Rural,” suggested the Saint helpfully.

“Ouais, well, something like that,” she agreed with a shrug.

“But you’re going back to the bright lights soon. Paris in two days, isn’t it?”

“Of course, you heard that,” said Jeanne, momentarily disconcerted. She recovered quickly. “I mean, Henri is wonderful, but he acts different down here. In Paris he’s amusing, but around this place he creeps about as if he was a lackey or something. I know the family have been good to him, but—”

“They make him feel inferior? I’m sure they don’t mean to.”

“You would not know how to feel like that, would you?”

“I’m too stupid,” said the Saint disarmingly, “to be sensitive. But don’t you agree that it makes life more comfortable?”

Jeanne looked uncertain whether she was the butt of some subtle joke, but she did not let it bother her for long.

“I heard you were on your way to Paris when you got stuck here. If you ever make it, you must look me up. We could have some fun,” she added transparently.

Simon gave the idea a few seconds’ serious consideration.

“You know,” he said judiciously, “I do believe we could.”

He had been watching Henri out of the corner of his eye. The young lawyer had not taken his eyes off them. Finally unable to endure the scene any longer, he came over. He ignored the Saint and addressed his fiancée.

“I think we’d better circulate,” he said brusquely.

Jeanne contemplated him with distaste.

“Circulate? What do you think I am — some sort of blood corpuscle?” she jeered, and Henri’s cheeks turned a rich shade of crimson.

Without a word he turned and strode away towards the château. Jeanne smiled as she rested a hand on the Saint’s shoulder and moved closer.

“This is boring,” she said silkily. “Why don’t we go pick some grapes on our own?”

Simon felt a very natural temptation to do just that. Whether or not he would have succumbed to it was never to be known, for at that moment one of the workmen rushed from the building behind the Saint and almost bowled him over as he half ran, half staggered across the cobbles shouting for Yves.

“Excuse me,” said the Saint abruptly and went after him.

The man was in a state of shock. His words spilled out in an incoherent babble. He stood with one shaking arm pointing towards the building he had come from.

“Routine check... lifted lid... lying there... Gaston...”

Yves Florian was trying bewilderedly to make sense of the words but the Saint preferred action. He spun round and sprinted into the building, more than half dreading what he was going to see.

It was the place used for the first fermentation of the newly pressed wine. Inside were a dozen huge vats, each taller than a man and linked by a narrow catwalk reached by a flight of steps. The heavy lid had been dragged from one of the vats and stood propped against the side. The Saint raced up to the catwalk and made for the open tank. He peered over the rim and looked down into the thick red pulpy liquid. The sightless eyes of Gaston Pichot returned his stare.

4

The Saint turned, to find Philippe the first to arrive beside him, followed by three or four of the château workers, while the rest of the harvest party were crowding in on the floor below. Simon spoke to them all.

“C’est vrai,” he said. “Gaston est mort.”

At first, a numbness of shocked disbelief seemed to make them refuse to accept that such a thing could happen there. The silence was stifling in its intensity as the assemblage stood staring, unable to drive their minds past the news they had been given.

Simon looked down again at the limp figure that was half submerged in the blood-coloured wine. He had developed a genuine affection and respect for the old man, but there would be a time for sadness later, just as there would be a time for retribution. It was the unemotional practicalities that had to be dealt with now, and Philippe set the process in motion while Yves was still climbing up to the catwalk.

“Mimette, go with Jeanne to the château and telephone the gendarmerie. Someone give me a hand to get Gaston out.”

The sharp authority of his voice re-awakened the others as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown.

The two women hurried out together, relieved that they would not have to watch the grisly scene of the body being moved. Without bothering to remove his jacket, Philippe himself leaned into the vat and grabbed Gaston by the lapels of his coat. Simon gripped his ankles, and together they lifted him out and carried Mm down to the floor, where someone had spread a tarpaulin.

Philippe allowed no flicker of emotion to show on his face and betray his feelings. He gave the impression of knowing what had to be done and getting on with it however distasteful it might be. After putting Gaston down, he simply turned away in search of a rag to dry his hands.

The Saint was well aware of the dictum that nothing should be touched until the police have inspected the scene of the crime, but it was not for him to argue with Philippe’s orders. He was also aware that the local gendarme would be unlikely to have much experience in examining murder victims. Since the body had been moved anyway, he took the further liberty of feeling around its head and testing the stiffness of the joints, and understood what his fingers told him. He looked at the soles of the old man’s boots and at the dirt under his fingernails. At last he folded the ends of the tarpaulin over the body and straightened up.

“Pauvre Gaston!” Yves was muttering, literally wringing his hands. “How could it have happened? If he slipped and fell in—”

“He wouldn’t have drowned so peacefully,” said the Saint.

“Perhaps a heart attack?”

“Caused by a clout on the head,” Simon said grimly. “There’s a dent in his skull you could stick your thumb into.”

Yves’s face was white and his lips trembled as he gazed at the makeshift shroud.

“But who would do that?” he asked brokenly.

“We’ll find out,” said the Saint, injecting his voice with an assurance that made it a promise. “But there’s nothing more I can do here for the moment. Will you excuse me for a few minutes?”

Without waiting for formal permission, he eased his way out of the building through the throng of employees, who had now split into small groups and were chattering excitedly in hushed tones.

Heading back towards the château, he met Mimette returning towards the chai.

“Jeanne is waiting to meet the police,” she told him before he had time to ask.

“Good. I was scheming to get you away. Come with me.”

“Where to?”

“Gaston’s house.”

They took Mimette’s Renault. The Saint drove, throwing the car down the rutted track towards the foreman’s cottage as if he begrudged every second’s delay.

“Why Gaston’s?” shouted Mimette, trying to make her voice heard above the roar of the engine as she clung to the edge of the door to save being hurled clear as they bounced over the washboard road.

“Because that was where Gaston was probably murdered,” Simon answered.

“But it was some accident,” Mimette protested uncertainly.

The Saint shook his head. He pulled the car to a skidding stop outside the cottage and jumped out.

“He was dead long before he was dumped into the vat,” he said brutally. “Someone hit him very hard on the back of the head with what the police like to call a blunt instrument. It was meant to look like an accident, but very crudely done. I hate amateur murderers — they are an insult to the craft.”

The door was unlocked, and the Saint pushed it wide with his foot while holding Mimette back.

It was not booby-trapped, but the room was a shambles. The mattress and cushions from the bed had been ripped open and their stuffings scattered across the floor; even the stove had been emptied and the ashes sifted through. While Mimette stood in the doorway and surveyed the chaos, Simon went around the room checking on the details.

Beside the bed, in a sea of papers, photographs, and torn books, lay an upturned trunk. Simon picked up a handful of papers and glanced through them. They were the ephemera of a long life — a discharge certificate from the first war and a ration book from the second, letters and greeting cards from relatives and friends, an insurance policy that had long since lapsed.

Mimette took a few hesitant steps into the room and stood watching him.

“What are you looking for?”

Simon tossed the papers back on to the floor.

“I’m not quite sure, but I think it’s what detectives call a clue.” He regarded his surroundings wryly. “But I think our villain has been too thorough, messy but effective.”

Mimette nodded towards the fireplace. In the bottom right-hand corner four bricks had been removed. In the grate lay a small leather sachet.

“Even Gaston’s cubbyhole,” she sighed, and picked up the wallet.

She gasped as she lifted the flap, and the Saint reached over and took it from her. Inside were bundles of notes, many so old that they were no longer legal tender.

“How did you know where Gaston hid his money?” he asked.

“I didn’t, at least I didn’t know it was money he kept there. Once, when I was a child, I ran in and he was putting the sachet into that hole. He was very cross that I’d seen him. He said it was a secret place, and made me swear never to tell anyone.”

“And did you?”

Mimette sighed.

“Oh, I don’t remember. It was so long ago. I’d forgotten all about it until now. Don’t you think it’s strange that the murderer should have left the money behind?”

“It just means that not only is he an amateur but he’s a very amateurish amateur,” Simon replied as he replaced the wallet in the grate. “If he’d had any sense he would have at least made it look like a robbery.”

She waved her hand over the litter around them.

“But if he wasn’t looking for money, what did he want?”

Simon was about to turn away from the fireplace when a scrap of yellow among the grey ashes caught his eye. He brushed them aside and retrieved a tiny piece of parchment.

“I should think,” he said slowly, “that he wanted the rest of this.”

It was made from the same material as the scraps he had seen in the casket under the statue of Hecate. Its triangular shape suggested that it had once been a corner of a page. On it were drawn two vertical, parallel lines behind which was a circle. A third line zigzagged beneath them.

Mimette peered over his shoulder as he studied his find.

“But what is it?” she asked.

“It’s why Gaston was killed,” he answered, and forestalled the inevitable questions by heading for the car. “I’ll explain on the way back to the château.”

Their return was undertaken at a speed more suited to the state of the road and the limitations of the car, and as they drove he told her what had happened after Gaston had fallen into the chamber under the storehouse.

“I heard him moving about and when I got down there I found that the box under the statue had recently been broken open. Everything but the lid of the box was covered in dust and the scratches on the lock were new. I was sure Gaston must have opened it; but if he’d taken something out, short of searching him there wasn’t anything I could do. I thought then that it might have been some sort of document, and now I’m sure of it.”

“And that’s what the murderer wanted?”

“It must have been.”

“But how did he know Gaston had it?”

“By making the same deduction that I made, from the evidence in the crypt. And the only reason he’d be prepared to kill for it would be if it was very valuable or the key to something valuable...”

“The treasure!”

“Right in one. I don’t know how this bit was torn off. It could have happened during a struggle or when it was pulled out of its hiding place.”

“But if the murderer has the rest of the parchment he will find the treasure,” said Mimette despairingly.

“Maybe, maybe not,” said the Saint. “It depends whether he understands it. Even if he does, he won’t be able to just pick up the loot and walk away. At any rate, it doesn’t seem as if Gaston could have.”

There was a few seconds’ pause, and then she said: “Why do you think Gaston was keeping this to himself?”

“That,” said the Saint dourly, “is one question I wish we didn’t have to think about.”

As a temporary evasion, he took the scrap of parchment from his pocket and handed it to her.

“Does this mean anything to you?”

Mimette shook her head as she studied it, turning it this way and that.

“Not a thing. I suppose those two upright lines could represent a building, but I can’t think what the squiggly line or the circle could mean.” She handed it back with a shrug of apology. “I’m sorry.”

The shadows were lengthening, casting the hillside into a purple twilight as the sun sank behind the other side of the ridge, but it was not artistic appreciation of the sunset that sparked an idea in Simon’s mind. When they stopped in the shade of the château, it had crystallised.

“How about this for a guess,” he suggested. “If the two vertical lines could represent a building, then the circle could represent the sun.”

“But what would that mean?” asked his bemused companion.

“It identifies the building. The sun is behind it, so it’s either setting or rising. The building must be in either the west or the east. Now, the west wing of the château is the most modern part and there’s nothing there that this could represent. But on the east side—”

“There’s the tower!” Mimette finished for him excitedly. But her elation lasted only a moment. “It still doesn’t tell us anything.”

“It’s a starting point, anyhow,” said the Saint.

He had a sudden glimpse of a police car swinging off the main driveway to brake in front of the house with an impressive squeal of tyres, and slid lower in his seat.

“The law has arrived,” he said. “You’d better go meet them. I’ll be along in a minute — there’s just something I’d like to check on first.”

As she started to get out of the car he reached across and squeezed her arm reassuringly.

“Don’t tell anybody where we’ve been. This is our party and we don’t want the gendarmes gatecrashing it. Okay?”

“Si vous y tenez,” replied Mimette hesitantly.

“I do. And trust me. Everything is going to be all right.”

“I hope so,” said the girl fervently.

Simon waited until the forecourt was deserted before leaving the car and heading directly for the tower.

He inspected the walls and floor carefully before beginning to climb the stairs to the battlements. Halfway up he rested and glanced down. As far as he was able to judge he was standing on what would once have been the landing of the second storey. He stood on a level with the top of the column and noticed that protruding from the top of it were three buttresses intricately carved with gargoyles whose fearsomeness had been smoothed away by the wind and rain of centuries. As a trio, they reflected the symbolic faces of Hecate, the Regina of Ingare.

He stood on the narrow ledge that circled the inside of the walls and looked out over the battlements. From his vantage point he could look down on every part of the château and its grounds, and across the plain below to the steely ribbon of the Ouveze. He rested his elbows on the top of the wall and idly wondered how much the view had changed since the last sentry of the Knights Templar had stood in the same spot so many hundreds of years before.

Somewhere within his purview must be the place that the rest of that piece of parchment had been intended to pinpoint. But what real chance was there of locating it from the fragment in his possession.

He was abruptly snapped out of his own thoughts by the sound of footsteps reaching the top of the stairway. Startled from his reverie, he turned sharply and in doing so pressed his weight against the wall. Cracked by the frosts of six hundred winters the stone blocks were no longer up to the sudden strain. With a sound like the rumble of distant thunder they crashed outwards.

For one giddy instant the Saint stood poised on the edge of nothing before his feet slipped from the crumbling edge and he pitched down into space.