The Saint and the Templar Treasure

1

The gravitational velocity of the Saint’s fall adjusted by his aerodynamic resistance should have deposited him in an ungainly and lifeless heap at the foot of the tower precisely 1.38 seconds after his feet slipped off the ramparts. But speed, as any physicist worthy of his theorems will explain, is relative, and in matters of self-preservation the Saint’s brain functioned in an overdrive that threatened to smash the light barrier.

The stone blocks forming the castellations of the battlements broke outwards, but the Saint dropped straight down with his legs actually brushing the wall. Shock, dismay, fear, were all experienced and controlled in the instant it took for sixty of his seventy-four inches to pass below the level of the walkway.

At the moment of collapse he had instinctively flung his arms out in a vain attempt to maintain his balance, so that as the side of the tower flashed by, his fingers were already spread and bent, raking the air. His hands smacked against the top of the wall and somehow found something solid, and he winced as his shoulders took the sudden strain. His whole body stiffened and jerked outwards. For one giddy instant the earth seemed to tilt to meet him as the tower leant over towards a slanting horizon before he swung back and hit the wall with a jolt that might easily have dislodged his haphazard grip, but his fingers held on as stubbornly as steel grappling hooks.

He hung motionless and waited. His face was pressed against the wall and he was careful not to look down or think of the void below. As the seconds slipped away he was chilled by a new coldness that owed nothing to the freshening breeze.

Whoever had been following him could not have failed to see him fall. Now he was totally defenceless and at the mercy of anyone on the parapet.

Carefully he tested the resistance of the weakened stone by shifting bis weight first on to his left hand and then on to his right. Satisfied that there was a better than even chance of it taking the strain, he began to pull himself slowly up. His feet scraped the wall, seeking extra leverage from the cracks where the mortar had crumbled.

Inch by inch he hoisted his body higher, and as he did so he heard the footsteps again. They had been only a few yards behind when the battlements had collapsed, but now the sound came from farther away and was growing fainter with every step.

The Saint smiled grimly.

“Going to pick up the pieces, are we?” he murmured as his waist came level with the top of the wall. “Well, we’ll see.”

He kicked out, at the same time pushing down on the palms of his hands and throwing himself forward, and tumbled over on to the safety of the parapet.

The dusk was rapidly deepening into night, but the moon and stars were still too low in the sky to help him as he peered into the gloom below. He could just make out a figure nearing the bottom of the stairs, but the darkness and the distance between them made identification impossible.

Crouched low to avoid being silhouetted against the sky, he reached the top of the staircase and went down with the speed and sure-footedness of a mountain cat. He hardly glanced at the steps as he watched the figure reach the floor and begin to walk towards the door.

The Saint increased his speed, and as he gained the final flight he saw the figure stop and look up.

He covered the remaining steps three at a time, jumping the last half dozen, and landed within arm’s length of Louis Nor-bert.

“Bon soir,” said the Saint with rigid politeness, and Norbert reeled back as if he had been struck.

His face was as pale as wax and he stared incredulously at Simon.

“But I thought...”

His voice trailed away as the Saint took a step nearer.

“Yes?” prompted the Saint coldly. “You thought?”

“That... that you had fallen. I saw you. I was going to see... that is... if you were...” Again the words died in Norbert’s throat as he stood and gaped at the Saint.

“If I’d saved you the trouble of pushing me?”

Simon took another pace forward, and Norbert retreated until he felt the column at his back and was forced to stop and continue to face the Saint.

The professor shook his head vigorously and stammered: “No, no, you’re wrong! I wasn’t... why should I... you can’t think that—”

“Why can’t I?” Simon inquired reasonably, and Norbert flinched at the mockery in his voice. “I didn’t see you rushing to the rescue.”

Norbert wiped his hand across a forehead that was suddenly cold and damp.

“But I thought you had fallen. How could I know? You must believe me,” he whined.

“Must I? You took your time getting down.”

“I was confused. Scared. I waited. I did not know what to do. Then I decided I had better come down to see if you were... if there was anything I could do. To get help.”

“Of course, you just happened to be around. You weren’t following me, were you? Until I fell, you probably didn’t even notice me. Right?”

“No. I mean yes — that is, I saw you go into the tower and I came after you. The police want to talk to all of us. I came to tell you. That is all. I swear it. It is the truth. That was the only reason.”

The Saint regarded the twitching scholar without pity. He put out a hand and gently patted the other’s glistening dome, and Norbert cringed as if he had expected a punch.

“I hope so, Professor,” said the Saint softly. “You see, I have this dislike for characters who try to murder me. And I’m not much fonder of people who’d let me have a nasty accident without making any attempt to help me. I’d hate to think that of you, Louis.”

Once again Norbert began to babble his protestations of innocence and good intention, but Simon stopped him.

“You said the police wanted to see us. Well, we had better not keep the good gendarmes waiting.”

With Norbert in tow he cut across the lawn towards the house. Down by the outbuildings a uniformed man was talking to some workers, and he saw that an ambulance had arrived at the chai and a stretcher was being slid into it.

“Where?” asked the Saint as they entered the château, and Norbert mumbled, “The salon.”

The gendarme leaning against the wall outside the salon eyed them disinterestedly as they approached from the main hall. As they drew closer he reluctantly levered himself upright and opened the door. The opening let out Philippe Florian’s indignant voice:

“I object to being questioned as if we had something to hide. I shall...”

The protest tailed off as Philippe realised that he had lost the attention of his audience. The Saint took one step into the room and paused to survey the scene. It made him think of a still displayed outside a cinema.

Yves was standing in front of the fireplace with his hands clasped behind his back. Philippe and Mimette sat at opposite ends of the sofa while Henri stood by the window. Jeanne Corday was lounging with practised poise against the wall beside her fiancé, watching the spiralling smoke from her cigarette with affected boredom.

“So good of you to join us,” said Philippe.

“You make me feel like one of the family,” the Saint replied sweetly.

He strolled composedly across to the collection of bottles and glasses on a side table. Jeanne’s welcome was warmer. She smiled and almost mouthed a kiss as he passed, and the Saint winked back. Henri scowled at both of them.

“Simon, where have you been?” asked Mimette, with puzzled concern in her voice.

He glanced down at himself, and tried to dust off some of the traces of his desperate scramble back to the battlements before pouring himself a stiff measure of malt and perching himself on the edge of the table.

“Just hanging about,” he said lightly. “And where is the local Lecoq? Gone home already, or is he disguised as that sentry at the door?”

“Sergeant Olivet wanted to see my uncle’s cottage. Charles has taken him,” supplied Henri.

The Saint looked inquiringly at Mimette, and the slight shake of her head told him that their visit had not been discussed.

“Exactly where have you been, Monsieur Templar?” Yves asked temperately. “Surely you knew the police would want to see you?”

The Saint smiled.

“The police always want to see me. Actually I went to the tower to admire the view, only I nearly became part of it.”

In clipped undramatic sentences he told them the basics of what had happened.

“The professor was on his way to tell you the good news, but unfortunately I spoiled his moment of glory,” he concluded.

Norbert had stayed by the door but he still could not avoid the Saint’s searching gaze. He squirmed uncomfortably in the focus of the eyes turned towards him.

“A shocking accident — a miraculous escape,” he mumbled. “Really, there should be signs warning people away from some parts of these ancient buildings.”

“Oh, Simon! You could have been killed,” breathed Mimette.

The Saint shrugged deprecatingly. The incident was already fading from his mind, crowded out by more immediate concerns. Risks were part and parcel of his vocation, and he dismissed them as quickly as most men would have forgotten a slight slip on an icy sidewalk.

“What sort of cop is this Sergeant Olivet?” he asked, when the subject of his escape from a squishy death had been briefly exhausted.

“Olivet? He seems efficient enough,” answered Yves neutrally.

Mimette was more forthcoming.

“He is ambitious, I think. I’ve talked to him several times, he has always come himself when we have had any trouble. The last time was just after the fire at the barn.”

Philippe looked at his watch and asked irritably: “What’s keeping the damn man? Does he expect us to sit around here all night?”

Almost as if he had been waiting for his cue, the door opened to admit the subject of Philippe’s annoyance.

He was small for a policeman, scarcely average height, and his khaki uniform was cut to a degree of perfection rarely attained by police tailors. His hair, which was meticulously trimmed, was as black and shiny as his shoes, and the sheen of his belt and the brightness of the buckle would have won applause from any sergeant-major. His face was tanned and smooth but saved from being bland by a pair of piercing black eyes that darted continuously from person to person.

A couple of paces behind the sergeant came Charles and after him the gendarme from the hall, who no longer appeared lethargic as he closed the door and placed himself in front of it, his hand resting on the holster on his belt.

Olivet nodded to Yves but walked towards the Saint. In his left hand he carried his pillbox cap and in his right a small package wrapped in sacking. He placed both carefully on the table before addressing the Saint.

“Monsieur Simon Templar, I am Sergeant Olivet. I am here to make preliminary inquiries into the murder of Gaston Pi-chat.”

His tone was quiet but authoritative, and he appeared very conscious that he was the centre of interest and clearly intended to keep matters that way.

“Good for you,” Simon drawled, sipping his drink.

“I was surprised when I was told that you were a guest at In-gare,” Olivet continued. “It is not the sort of place where one expects to meet the famous Simon Templar.”

“Oh, I get around to the most respectable places,” the Saint replied coolly.

“It is interesting, though,” Olivet mused, and seemed to be talking more to himself than to anyone else, “that a Templar should go out of his way to visit a place once so closely associated with the Templiers. Almost too extraordinary a coincidence, one might say.”

“You might, but I wouldn’t,” the Saint countered. The interview was developing into a verbal fencing match with more hazards than he had anticipated. He had only expected to answer the normal when, where, why, and how type of questions that he was used to being asked in such circumstances.

“Until I came here,” he said, “you could have written everything I knew about the Templars on a postcard and still had room for the stamp. I was driving from Avignon, heading for the Riviera. I picked up a couple of hitch-hikers and gave them a lift here. When we arrived, a couple of hoodlums were setting fire to the barn. I did what I could to help, and Mademoiselle Florian kindly invited me to stay when my car broke down. It’s as simple as that.”

Olivet’s eyes stopped their perpetual motion and bored into the Saint.

“The car that the arsonists used was stolen from Avignon that morning,” he said at last. “It is interesting that you were also in Avignon at the time.”

“Me and a few thousand others. So the idea is that I hired a couple of voyous to burn down the barn, picked up a pair of hitch-hikers as a cover, and arranged to arrive on the scene in the nick of time to prove myself a hero.”

Olivet appeared to consider the possibility.

“It would have been an ingenious plan to ingratiate yourself, worthy of the famous Saint.”

The famous Saint sighed.

“Or a brilliant theory that might get a gendarme promoted? Unfortunately his superiors might have just enough brains to think he’d been out too long in the hot sun.”

Olivet flushed. He said coldly: “I have heard about your attitude to authority, Monsieur Templar. I advise you not to try such tactics with me.”

“And I advise you to stop trying to dream up ridiculous theories and get on with finding Gaston’s murderer. If you want my help you can have it.”

“Help,” Olivet rolled the word meditatively. “Perhaps you can help to identify this.”

Carefully he undid the package he had brought in, to reveal a short poker. It was about ten inches long and topped with an elaborately tooled brass handle. Holding it delicately in a fold of its erstwhile wrapping, he held it up like an exhibit.

The Saint’s eyes narrowed as he inspected it. He needed no one to tell him the origin of the red stickiness on the end of the shaft.

Olivet turned so that the others in the room could see it.

“This was found in Gaston Pichot’s cottage. I believe it to be the murder weapon.”

Mimette looked quickly away, but for the others it appeared to hold a morbid fascination. Olivet returned his attention to the Saint.

“Do you recognise it?”

“Don’t tell me, let me guess. It’s a poker.”

Olivet tensed at the Saint’s flippancy, and his voice took on a harder edge.

“A rather fine one. You see the handle carries the Florian crest encircled by a large spray of daffodils as the base of the motif.”

“Very pretty,” Simon observed impassively. “So what?”

“It seems too good to have been owned by the murdered man, yet it was found in his cottage. How would you explain that?”

“Perhaps the murderer took it with him. I’m told that people who intend to put out other people’s lights quite often like the reassurance of knowing they have the required blunt instrument in hand,” the Saint replied.

Olivet seemed delighted with the suggestion. The Saint decided that if he ever left the gendarmerie he would be a cinch on the stage. He was certainly making a great build-up to his dramatic moment — whatever that was to be.

Olivet turned to Charles, who had been standing near the door with the attentive self-effacement of the perfectly trained servant.

“I believe you recognised it?” he said, and the major-domo nodded slowly.

“It is one of a set.”

“And how many sets like this are there in the château?”

“Only one exactly like that. The crest is on all of them, but the flowers differ according to the room the set was made for.”

Olivet paused theatrically before delivering his apocalyptic question: “And where is this set kept?”

The servant looked directly at the Saint for the first time, and Simon could see the accusing bitterness in his eyes.

“In the room of Monsieur Templar.”

2

Simon Templar made no effort to hide the shock of astonishment that jolted him.

He had not really studied the chasing on the poker’s handle when Olivet displayed it, and even the mention of daffodils had not immediately rung a bell. The symbolic painting on the door of his guest room, and Charles’s explanation of it, were far enough in the past, and far enough removed in context from Gaston’s death and the present situation, for Olivet’s bombshell to catch him completely off his guard.

At that, to a shrewd analyst, the very transparency of his reaction might have been the most convincing evidence of his innocence. But the Saint knew at once that he could not count on that kind of shrewdness. As he looked around the room and watched the significance of the old retainer’s words registering, he realised that it was going to take all his resourcefulness to ride out this one.

It was not utterly astounding that the murderer had attempted to frame him: He was, after all, the ideal candidate. What took him aback was the manner in which the frame had been so subtly thought out and cold-bloodedly accomplished. After the amateurish ransacking of Gaston’s cottage, he had not credited the murderer with the degree of finesse that had just been demonstrated.

In the cold light of a court-room, any competent advocate would have shown Olivet’s find to be blatantly circumstantial. But in the charged atmosphere of Ingare, the Saint was acutely aware that it would take some fast talking for him to remain on the scene long enough to discover the person responsible.

The silence was growing more tense with every second that crawled past, until the dropping of the proverbial pin would have sounded like the detonation of a mine. The Saint seized the initiative by being the one who broke it.

“Well, leaving a great clumsy clue like that doesn’t seem to me like the famous Simon Templar,” he remarked with recovered nonchalance. “I hope it doesn’t make you think silly thoughts about me, Sergeant. I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to bring out the bracelets and wait for the medal if I were you.”

“I don’t think the bracelets, as you call them, would be necessary,” retorted Olivet suavely, and Simon saw the gendarme at the door flip open the top of his holster and rest his hand on the butt of his pistol.

“You can’t be seriously thinking of arresting me?” said the Saint with the utmost incredulity.

“Pas encore, peut-être,” Olivet said, with deliberate emphasis on the second word.

Philippe banged his glass down on the arm of the sofa with a force that sent the liquid inside slopping over the rim.

“Why not?” he bellowed. “If he is a well-known criminal—”

Olivet turned to him and spoke sharply.

“Monsieur Florian, you will kindly let me carry out this investigation in my own way.”

“What the sergeant means,” Simon explained, in the tone a teacher might use to a particularly slow-witted child, “is that he is not yet sure enough of his evidence. And he doesn’t want to end up looking a fool. One fool is enough for any party.”

Philippe pointed to the poker that Olivet still held.

“Not sure of his evidence?” he repeated scornfully. “What do you call that?”

“I call that a frame. What do you call it?” the Saint returned evenly, and before Philippe could renew his protest turned to Charles. “Are the guest rooms in this house locked up when the guests are out?”

The major-domo looked uncertainly at Olivet, and waited until the sergeant indicated that he should answer the question before replying that they were not.

“And there is only yourself and your wife to look after them?”

“Oui.”

“Which means,” Simon continued, turning back to Olivet, “that anyone, including the estimable Charles himself, at almost any time, could have lifted the poker with hardly any risk of being seen.”

“And yet you yourself never noticed that it was missing!”

“Why should I? There’s been no need for a fire lately. More to the point, Charles did not miss it, or is not admitting if he did. And if I had left it at Gaston’s, I could certainly have retrieved it when I went there earlier this evening.”

Olivet was momentarily startled out of the complacent attitude he had adopted.

“You went there? Why?”

“Because when I helped to lift Gaston’s body out of the vat, I could tell that he had been dead for at least six hours. He had been recovering from a fall, resting at the cottage. So that seemed a likely place for him to have been murdered. While we were waiting for you to arrive, Mademoiselle Mimette and I went there to have a look.”

“You did not mention this, mademoiselle,” said Olivet suspiciously.

“I must have forgotten,” she said carelessly.

With a frown, the gendarme turned again to the Saint, inviting him to go on.

“When we got there, the place had been ransacked. The poker may have been there, but as everything was in such a mess I thought it best to leave it as it was until you had seen it. If I’d been stupid enough to leave a murder weapon behind, I could easily have removed it then. But I wasn’t even looking for blunt instruments at the time.”

The Saint saw Philippe start.

“Ransacked? But Gaston had nothing worth stealing.”

“That’s what I thought-but how do you know?” the Saint inquired, and Philippe suddenly found himself again the centre of attention.

“I don’t,” he said quickly. “But Gaston was only a foreman. How could he have had anything worth killing for?”

“Somebody obviously thought he had,” the Saint pointed out. “I wonder if they found it.”

Olivet was beginning to look uncomfortable. The aura of confident authority that had surrounded him a few minutes earlier was rapidly dissolving. He spoke cautiously, weighing his words.

“I think the rest of this interview should be conducted at the gendarmerie.”

The Saint smiled. To certain other detectives in other spots of the globe that smile in itself would have been sufficient enough warning that the battle they thought they had won was really just beginning.

“The only way I go there with you is if you arrest me,” he said coolly. “And you’re not going to arrest me because there are so many holes in your so-called evidence that you could use it for a colander.”

Olivet was not accustomed to having his invitations so calmly declined, but he recovered quickly.

“Perhaps you do not understand, Monsieur Templar, that in France it is you who are required to prove yourself innocent, not the police who must prove you guilty.”

“I know all about the Code Napoleon,” Simon said imperturbably. “But you still have to present some sort of case, and you don’t have one that would last five minutes in court.”

Olivet fidgeted beneath the ice-blue gaze that was focused on him. When the Saint continued, he was addressing the sergeant for the benefit of everyone present.

“Let’s look at this so-called evidence. You have a murder weapon, lucky you. It’s from my room, unlucky me. But that’s as far as it goes. You haven’t yet had time to test it for fingerprints. You don’t have a professional opinion about when Gaston was killed, so you don’t know whether I have an alibi or not. You don’t even know why he was murdered. In fact the sum total of what you don’t know is staggering.”

Simon paused for a moment, to make his counterpoint more telling.

“What you do know is that if you arrest me tonight, it’ll be front-page news in every paper in Europe tomorrow, and in a few hours there’ll be more reporters around here than vines. You’ll be the big hero for a day. The cop who finally sewed up the Saint. But you also know that if you don’t make it stick you’ll be the laughing stock of every police force from Paris to Pago-Pago, and afterwards you’ll be lucky if your bosses trust you to look for lost dogs.”

For effective punctuation, the Saint took another unhurried sip from his glass. He went on with nerveless precision, taking aim and scoring like a marksman:

“When you stop being dazzled with dreams of glory, you know damn well that I wouldn’t have my reputation if I went about murdering people and leaving clues that a blind man couldn’t help tripping over. The only thing we know for sure is that the killer was someone who’s free to go anywhere in the château — which doesn’t include only me.”

It was an effective enough speech in its own way, he decided, even if it didn’t reach the heights attained in some similar confrontations in the past. But the mixture of contempt and logic was still volatile enough to have had Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal groping for another soothing strip of Wrigley’s or Inspector John Fernack yearning for the freedom of a downtown backroom and a length of rubber hose.

However, the Saint knew the kind of ground he was on. The averagely ignorant foreigner, if he thinks about such matters at all, thinks of all French law officers as “gendarmes,” whereas in fact the gendarmes are the rural constabulary, who operate outside the metropolitan districts which have their own police forces, whose officers are correctly called agents. It was Simon Templar’s business to know things like that; he knew that he was not dealing with a really sophisticated top cop, nor would any such phenomenon materialise to take charge in the instant future. A case at Ingare would have to percolate up through enough echelons of bureaucracy to give time for quite a few developments before it came into summit jurisdiction.

Olivet looked distinctly unhappy. His black eyes probed the Saint uncertainly. As a rural policeman, not a big-city detective, he was not used to prospective prisoners arguing so eloquently and adumbrating pictures of potential disaster that infiltrated his stomach with butterflies.

Philippe was less impressed.

“He’s bluffing,” he told Olivet. “If he isn’t the killer, it would have to be one of us. Which is absurd.”

Simon cocked a sardonic eyebrow.

“How comforting for you,” he murmured.

The sergeant tried to reassert the authority of his office.

“As I have already said, Monsieur Florian, this is only a preliminary inquiry. I am here to make a report on which the department will act, and that is all.”

“And I apologise to Monsieur Templar,” said Mimette, “for any attempt to make him our scapegoat.”

Yves Florian looked intently into the Saint’s face as if seeking some form of reassurance. Finally he said: “Monsieur Templar has helped us a great deal since he arrived here, and I personally have confidence in him. If it would be any help, he can remain here as my guest until your investigations are completed.”

“Et en voilà pour la solidarité de la famille,” said Philippe scathingly.

Olivet was plainly undecided, although Yves’s offer had made a deep impression on him. And then, to the Saint’s surprise, Henri came in on his side.

“I think that offer should be accepted,” he told the sergeant, and continued in the same flat unemotional tone as if addressing a tribunal. “As a lawyer, I must agree with Monsieur Templar that you have insufficient grounds on which to arrest him, certainly not enough to even contemplate going to court. Therefore if he gave an undertaking to remain available for questioning, there need be no sensational publicity. You have said that he is well known, surely that is the one reason why he is unlikely to run away. He would be caught within hours.”

The Saint kept a straight face as he remembered the days when half the police forces of Europe had hunted him across the continent without success, but he did not feel it politic to air his reminiscences at that moment.

Henri added: “I was very fond of my uncle. I want to see his murderer caught. But I also know that he would not have wished the family to be subjected to the publicity that will surely result if Monsieur Templar is arrested.”

Olivet was visibly relieved. He avoided looking at Philippe and spoke directly to Yves.

“Eh bien — we shall continue when I have fingerprints and a medical report. Meanwhile, I shall expect all of you to be at my disposition here.”

“But you can’t leave us like that,” protested Norbert. “None of us will be safe. We still have a murderer in the château!”

“Then you will be most anxious to find him,” Olivet said maliciously. “I don’t think you have anything to fear for the moment, but I shall leave a man here in case.”

Carefully he rewrapped the poker and picked up his képi. The gendarme at the door fastened his holster and returned to his former pose of stolid indifference. The sergeant bowed himself out with a curtly formal “A bientôt, messieurs-dames.”

Understandably, it was a far from convivial dinner that Charles served, soon afterwards, with impeccable frigidity. The tension across the table was almost tangible. Jeanne and Henri sat in a frosted silence which showed that their quarrel of the afternoon had not been made up. In addition Henri was subjected to a cold shoulder from his employer that must have had him wondering where his next pay cheque was coming from. Norbert stayed as far away from the Saint as the confines of the room allowed, and hurriedly excused himself as soon as the cheese was served. Only Yves and Mimette made a brave pretence of table talk, and that was clearly at the dictation of good manners.

Mimette made one forlorn attempt to lighten the general pall of gloom.

“Sitting here like so many zombies won’t bring Gaston back,” she said. “And I don’t think he would have wanted to be remembered this way.”

“It is hardly amusing,” Philippe said heavily, “to think that even a Florian could be accused of his murder, if suspicion is not confined to others.”

“Sans doute,” retorted Mimette, “every murderer’s family has always felt the same, when one of them turned out to be a bad egg.”

“That is still only a theory from a roman policier,” Yves intervened soothingly. “There may be some other explanation altogether. Until we know, we do not have to think we are all criminals.”

It was an argument that seemed to make little impression. Minutes after the service of coffee, Simon found himself left in the small salon alone with Mimette, who had declined Yves’s discreet offer to see her to her room.

“I’m flattered,” said the Saint, after the door had closed, “that you aren’t terrified to be left at the mercy of a well-known outlaw.”

“Évidemment, je suis idiote,” she said, looking straight at him, “but I would trust you more than anyone here, except my own father.”

He took the liberty of replenishing his snifter of Armagnac.

“What I’d like to know,” he said, “is why Philippe wants me in the Bastille.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Mimette said bitterly.

He shook his head.

“It’s too obvious. That’s what worries me. Naturally if he killed Gaston, he’d be specially keen to see the murder pinned on me. But however you feel about your uncle, you can’t think he’s stupid. I can’t see him being so unsubtle, in a way that would make anyone think what you’re thinking.”

“Well, what else would turn him so much against you?”

Simon paced across the room and back, scowling at the inoffensive walls. His answers themselves came out as questions.

“Because to him the most important thing is to get the whole scandal swept under the carpet, to get anyone arrested who isn’t part of the Florian household, and I’m the most suspectable outsider?... Or because he has quite another guilty secret, which he’s afraid I might stumble on if I’m allowed to stay around here and play detective?... How nice it would be to be a mind-reader!”

He subsided on to the settee beside her. He was exasperated by the passive role that had been thrust upon him, by having to expand theories while waiting for something else to happen, when his own instinct had always been for positive action. But what action was possible?

He wished, suddenly, that he could have found himself there at Ingare with no mystery to cloud the pleasure of discovering his possible remote link with its ancient history — and its present beautiful descendant.

They sat listening to the lulling whisper of the wind through the ivy and watching the moon lay a shifting golden path across the lawn. The breeze carried the subtle smells of the countryside to freshen and clear heads blocked by half-truths and unanswered questions. A few wisps of grey drifted lazily across a sky of purple and diamonds. It was a night created for making love, not thinking about murder or sifting the secrets of the long dead.

Mimette sighed deeply, and the Saint put his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer.

“Simon, when will it end?” she whispered, and he stroked her hair with gently caressing fingers and did not reply at once.

“I wish I knew,” he said at length. “But it can’t be long.”

His hands traced the delicate outline of her profile. He had never seen her look more exciting or more vulnerable. He looked into her eyes and saw stirring in their depths a longing and a frightened urgency that he had never seen before, a plea that he was incapable of refusing.

Her mouth parted at the touch of his lips, and it was a long time before either of them returned to an awareness of their surroundings.

3

Simon Templar’s career made many tiresome demands of him, and the hour at which he finished breakfast the following morning was one of them. He was enjoying his second cup of coffee by the time the rest of the household began to wander downstairs in search of their first.

Mimette was the first to appear. She looked at him uncertainly for a moment. She studiously busied herself with her food, masking any embarrassment with a screen of small talk.

As the Saint had hoped, Yves was the next to enter the dining-room. He held out his hand to greet Simon with the utmost cordiality.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Templar. Vous avez bien dormi?”

It is an immutable tenet of French good manners, often baffling to strangers, that a guest must be greeted every day with a handshake and a query as to whether he slept well. The Saint responded punctiliously, and then came straight to the matter that had brought him out of his bed so early.

“I need to go into Carpentras this morning to see about my car. Have you a car I could borrow?”

Yves regarded him hesitantly, his confidence in his guest wrestling with inevitable suspicion. It was patently an excuse rather than a reason, but he did not ask why the Saint could not simply telephone the garage. Perhaps it was politeness, or more likely because he was just too tired to care.

Philippe, who had arrived just in time to hear the request, had no such inhibition.

“I thought we had all given our word to be at Olivet’s disposition here,” he said.

“I shall be, whenever he wants me,” Simon replied calmly. “I’m not planning to run away. In fact, you’d have to kick me out bodily to get rid of me now, before the great Ingare mystery has been solved.”

Almost as if apologising for his earlier doubts, Yves said: “Yes, of course, you can take my car.”

“But today is the meeting of the Confrérie Vinicole,” Mimette reminded him.

Yves shrugged his shoulders apathetically.

“What does it matter? They can do without me for one week. They will have heard about what has happened. I don’t want to listen to their gossip and answer their questions.”

“But you always go,” Mimette insisted. “He can take my car.”

Yves looked at his daughter with weary eyes. He sat hunched over the table, idly stirring his untasted coffee as if even the task of lifting the cup would require an effort he no longer possessed.

“What use is the Confrérie when there is no vin?” he asked wryly.

“I don’t understand,” said Mimette.

“Don’t you?” Yves sighed. “It is really very simple. We needed a good harvest this year—”

“And we had one.”

“Yes, Mimette. But Gaston’s murder...” Yves shivered. “When the news is reported—”

“What your father means,” Philippe said quite brutally, “is that when it becomes known that bodies are found floating in vats at Château Ingare, nobody is going to rush out and buy our wine, however much of it there is or however good it may be.”

“I’m afraid you must expect the headlines,” said the Saint more gently. “It’s the sort of story news editors dream about. FAITHFUL RETAINER FOUND DEAD IN CHATEAU RIDDLE, et cetera. That’s why the murderer went to all the trouble of moving Gaston’s body from the cottage. Whoever wants you out is prepared to go to any lengths to help you on your way.”

“But I thought that Gaston was killed because—”

“Yes, of course,” Simon interrupted quickly. The last thing he wanted at that moment was to involve Yves in speculations about the treasure. “But somebody also saw it as an opportunity to hurt the business, and he made the most of it.”

“And it is more important for me to be thinking how we are going to cope with that, than to attend a luncheon meeting of the Confrérie,” Yves concluded. “So, Mimette, when you have finished, will you please show Monsieur Templar where to find my car.”

“Merci infiniment” said the Saint sincerely. “I shall try to take good care of it.”

When he left the dining-room with Mimette soon afterwards, the gendarme whom Olivet had left as a watchdog was standing in the hall, looking very official and determined, if perhaps a little vague as to what he was supposed to be determined about.

Not knowing what the gendarme’s instructions might be, Simon gave him a cheerful and confident good day, and added, while giving Mimette’s arm a warning squeeze: “Monsieur Florian will see you as soon as he has finished breakfast.”

They went on out to the forecourt, and the man made no move to detain or follow them.

Mimette guided the Saint around the house to where a stable block had been converted into a row of garages. She unlocked the one at the far end, and he helped her to drag back the double doors. His eyes widened in amazement and delight at the gleaming white Mercedes inside.

“A German car?”

Mimette smiled.

“It was the staff car of the local commandant. When the soldiers pulled out it was left behind, and my father kept it as part payment for their use of the château.”

It was a late thirties model, a four-door open limousine of majestic proportions with the rear seat raised to add to the stature and prestige of its former owner.

Simon slid behind the wheel and was silent for a few minutes while he familiarised himself with the controls. He started the engine and rolled the big car out into the courtyard.

“Why couldn’t you just phone the garage?” Mimette asked suddenly.

The Saint shook his head.

“The Hirondel is like my baby. I want to see for myself what they’re doing to it.”

“When will you be back?”

“Some time after lunch,” he said. “I promise.”

She stepped aside and he let in the clutch again. The Mercedes leapt forward, and he spun the wheel and accelerated, to disappear through the gateway of the courtyard with an impudent squeal of rubber which from any ordinary driver would have raised doubts about the seriousness of his pledge to treat the car with great care.

Despite its age, the Merc handled magnificently and had obviously been meticulously maintained. The Saint settled back into the soft leather of the seat and revelled in the feel of the rushing wind on his face. His hands caressed the wheel as he steered the car out of the lane which served the château on to the main road and turned the gun-sight radiator emblem towards Carpentras.

He allowed the problems of the Florians to fade temporarily from his mind as the château was reduced to a miniature on the hilltop behind and then disappeared completely. He felt glad to be away from the tension for a while, and gave himself up wholeheartedly to enjoying the drive.

Gradually the vine-covered slopes were left behind to be replaced by small fruit farms and market gardens. In the distance, the sharply sculptured peaks of the Dentelles de Montmirail made a picture in the rear-view mirror. He drove at speed not because he was in any hurry to reach the town but simply for the pleasure it gave him and the exhilarating sensation of freedom that pumped from the engine’s eight cylinders.

Simon Templar’s life had been saved in many strange ways and by a weird assortment of people whom his ever watchful guardian angel had caused to be in the right place at the appointed time, but never before had he had cause to thank a cat. He was passing a small row of cottages on the outskirts of Aubignan when the animal darted across his path in a blur of black and white fur that had him stamping on the brake instinctively. His foot drove the pedal to the floor, but the speedometer needle only registered the effect of taking his foot off the accelerator.

He swung the wheel, deducting one of the animal’s nine lives, and pulled on the handbrake. The lever rose with sickening ease and the car continued to hurtle on.

The Saint crashed down through the gears with a violence that had the engine screaming in protest, but the braking result was then too late for any possibility of taking the sharp curve that loomed suddenly ahead, with a tidily spaced border of shade trees ruling out any chance of shunting on to soft shoulder.

In a matter of microseconds, his brain worked out equations of distance, speed, and centrifugal force. Like a galvanized jack-in-the-box, he jumped from his seat on to the door, braced a foot against the windshield pillar, and launched himself out and backwards, giving the maximum neutralization to his inherent momentum. If he got it right, he should be able to hit a gap between the tree trunks.

4

He landed with legs flexing to take the first shock, and rolled like a parachutist. His left arm and shoulder curled into the impact, and the reflex action that relaxed the rest of his body saved him from injury as he somersaulted across the verge and cannoned into the base of the hedge beyond. As he finally came to rest, he heard the sickening crunch of tortured metal and shattering glass which told him that the car too had finished its journey.

He lay still for a moment while he regained his breath, and then climbed to his feet and walked towards the wreck.

The Mercedes lay upside down beside the road. His final spin of the wheel had caused it to skid off the bend, and it had hit a tree broadside, rebounded, and overturned. One rear wheel was still forlornly turning as he reached it.

The offside wing had been all but ripped away, and the rest of that coachwork stove in. The headlights, front fender, and most of the other external attachments had been torn off. The Saint snaked a hand under the dashboard and killed the engine. The air was heavy with the stench of petrol, and he was surprised that the tank had not exploded on impact. The steering column was embedded in the back of the driver’s seat, and he did not care to dwell on what his fate would have been if he had stayed there.

He breathed silent thanks to the impetuous feline whose sudden appearance had saved him. If he had not been forced to brake so sharply when he did, he would have drifted into the corner at full speed and by then it would have been of purely academic interest. He thought back over the drive and realised that it was only because of the negligible traffic that the braking systems had not been put under pressure before.

One brake failure may be an accident; two brakes failing simultaneously is almost certainly attempted murder. Simon did not bother to investigate the wreckage to prove his hypothesis but scanned the surrounding terrain for signs of a telephone or transport.

His predicament was so obvious that the first truck that came along stopped at once. Fortunately the driver’s home base was Carpentras, and he sympathetically took the Saint all the way to the garage he had set out to look for.

The Hirondel stood in a bay next to the entrance, where passers-by could not fail to notice it, as proof of the establishment’s quality of clientele. The paintwork had been waxed until it blazed, and the light sparkled along the recently polished chrome trimmings. It shamed the production-line boxes around it like a peacock amid a flock of barnyard hens. He glanced inside at the dashboard but bore no grudge when the tripmeter showed that it had already been given a lengthy and unauthorised road test.

He was starting to open the front to check the radiator when a voice behind him suggested forcefully that he should desist and depart. The words chosen to convey the message have no place in a narrative that may be read by minors, maiden aunts, or deacons of the Faith. The Saint turned, and the unfriendly expression on the mechanic’s grease-smeared countenance turned to one of welcome and contrition. He offered a thousand apologies for not having recognised the Saint, and Simon accepted one.

“Is she ready?” he asked.

The mechanic beamed.

“What a beautiful car!”

Simon smiled tolerantly.

“Yes, I know, but is she ready?”

The mechanic admitted that she was, and went on to explain how in addition to replacing the radiator he had tuned the carburettor, balanced the wheels, repaired a small hole in the silencer of which the Saint was unaware, and given the entire vehicle a complete lubrication.

“Now I have another job for you,” said the Saint, when the garagiste had finished the account of his labours.

He recited the essentials of his accident and gave its location.

“Bring it in as soon as you can and see if it’s good for anything but the scrap-heap. I’ll be back for the bad news after lunch.”

He asked directions for the post office, which had always been his second destination. It was near the centre of the old town, facing the Palais de Justice across the pleasant open square in front of the five-hundred-year-old cathedral of St.-Siffrein. He wrote the Paris phone number he wanted on a slip of paper and handed it in at the counter. It was, he reflected, a roundabout way to make a simple telephone call, but the chances of being overheard at the château had left him no choice, and it was actually the main reason for his trip to Carpentras.

He had absorbed most of the information on the official notices that lined the walls by the time the clerk announced that his call was ready and he went into one of the booths to take it. He heard the operator check the number, and then the gentle voice that brought the memories of a darker and more violent era flooding back.

“Do you still stock the works of Francois Villon?” the Saint inquired, and smiled to himself as he pictured Antoine Louvois in his small bookshop near the Odéon reacting to that simple question.

He could see the tall greying figure, the keen alert eyes, and the slender hands that held the receiver. And he remembered another day when those same artistic hands had grasped the plunger of a detonator and sent a score of Nazis instantly into the heaven of the Herrenvolk.

There was an appreciable pause before the answer he was expecting crackled along the line.

“We do not have much demand for those old works today.”

“Mais où sont les nelges d’antan?” sighed the Saint.

There was another pause before the other requested him to repeat his words.

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?” Simon quoted again, and laughed softly. “Do you forget so easily?”

“Simon! Where are you?”

“In Provence, in Carpentras, and it would take too long to explain why, but I’m going to bother you again.”

“It is so good to hear from you. You are coming to Paris?”

“Not right now, Antoine. But I need some information and you may be able to help me.”

“Tu n’as qu’à demander, cher ami.”

“I want you to think back to the war, to the Occupation. Does the name Florian mean anything to you? Philippe Florian?”

Again there was a pause and the Saint added: “Dark, stockily built, about forty-five. Apparently had links with the black market in Paris.”

Louvois chuckled.

“Ah, you mean Le Caméléon.”

The sobriquet seemed particularly inappropriate. Somehow the Saint could not imagine the portly figure of Philippe Florian merging into any background, but he remembered that members of the Resistance had used many strange nicknames to protect themselves. Louvois himself had been known as Colonel Eglantine.

“Alors?” Simon prompted.

“A brave and useful man,” said Louvois seriously. “He was big in the black market, it is true, but that was a good cover. The Germans thought he was a collaborator, so they tolerated his activities, but the information he gained he passed on to the Resistance. His connections helped us in many ways.”

“Then why did he run when the Allies took Paris?”

“He was in the middle. Not many people knew of his work. He had to go to ground until his name was cleared. Only a few collaborators ever got to trial,” Louvois added pointedly.

“You don’t know anything about what he has been doing since the war ended, I suppose,” asked the Saint hopefully.

“A wealthy man, I believe,” Louvois replied. “I think he has several successful businesses, but I could find out more if you like.”

“I’d be very grateful. Can I phone you again after lunch? Also anything on his assistant, Henri Pichot.”

“Bien volontiers. I will see what I can do.”

The Saint emerged from the gloom of the post office and went in search of sustenance. A stroll down the Rue de la Republique brought him to the only restaurant listed in his edition of the Guide Michelin, the Univers, a modest but comfortable hostelry overlooking the Place Aristide Briand, on the perimeter of the old town. He enjoyed an eminently satisfying meal of pâté maison followed by a robustly garlicked preparation of tripes for which he had an uninhibited affection, but in the interests of dental hygiene eschewed a toffee-flavoured dessert which paid tribute to the town’s traditional product. He took his time to finish the bottle of ice-cold rose which he had ordered at the beginning of the repast, until he estimated that it was not too soon for a leisured return to the Place d’Inguimbert and his second call to Antoine Louvois.

Again he wrote down the number and waited until the clerk announced that despite the efforts of the French telephone system his call had been connected.

“Any luck?” Simon asked as soon as he was put through.

This time he did not have to identify himself.

“A little,” Louvois replied guardedly. “Florian owns a couple of factories, light engineering. He started after the war with a small government contract and never looked back. Recently bought into a chain of American-style snack bars, they’re doing well too.”

“Quelle horreur!” said the Saint, with feeling. “But does anything shady seem to be involved?”

“Nothing you could be definite about. There was talk that his government contracts were payment for something someone didn’t want made public, probably to do with the war. And I’m told that some of his financial dealings have been pretty close to the borderline. He got into the snack business after a couple of fires almost bankrupted the company. There is always gossip when things like that happen.”

“And Pichot?”

“Apparently he handles the legal side for Florian. Very sharp and very ambitious, so I’m told. Lives well, too. An apartment near the Étoile, likes his nights out in the best places, and has a petite amie with expensive tastes.”

The Saint thought of Jeanne Corday and smiled.

“Thanks, that’s enough for now. Antoine, you have been a great help.”

“Are you in trouble, Simon?”

Simon laughed.

“Nothing I can’t handle, mon pôte. Next time I’m in Paris I’ll tell you all about it.”

“I shall look forward to it.”

“Moi aussi.”

He walked back to the garage with a new lightness in his step. The information he had gleaned was nothing substantial but it had been just enough to brush away some of the cobwebs of theories that had hampered him. He was in no hurry to return to Ingare. His next move was already decided upon, and that was not scheduled until later in the day.

The Mercedes was in the workshop, a pathetically crumpled appendage to the crane on the breakdown truck. After a long silent survey, the Saint was able to make his own painful prognosis.

“Maybe we could sell it to some art gallery as a piece of modern sculpture,” he said.

“It could perhaps be completely rebuilt,” the garagiste told him hopefully.

“You had better keep it until Monsieur Florian decides what is to be done with it,” said the Saint.

He paid his bill and added a generous tip, and pointed the Hirondel back towards Château Ingare.

His return journey was undertaken at a conservative pace, and the first shades of evening were spreading across the hillside by the time he retraced the rough road by which he had first entered the domaine. A group of workmen were standing talking beside the burnt-out barn, but as the Saint passed their conversation ceased abruptly, and they watched him in sullen silence as he drove on to the château.

Mimette was talking to the watchdog gendarme at the top of the steps outside the front door as Simon braked to a halt, which happily solved a couple of potential problems. She smoothly suppressed any visible surprise at his return in a different car, as if in any case his day-long absence was nothing remarkable, and went in with him through the hall to the salon.

Only there did she say: “You have a lot to tell me.”

The Saint helped himself to a Scotch of the generous proportions that he felt his day had earned him.

“It’s going to be a bit harder,” he said, “to tell your father about his precious Merc.”

As he undramatically related the day’s events, the revelation of Philippe’s wartime activities shook her only slightly less than the sabotaging of the car.

“You could have been killed,” she said.

“I almost was. And your father certainly would have been.”

“You saved his life.”

“Pas du tout. I wrecked his car.”

She bowed her head with a barely perceptible shudder.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said at last. “Why should anyone want to kill my father?”

“No Yves, no Ingare,” Simon answered succinctly. “Whoever did it knew that your father always went to that Confrérie lunch on the same day every week. The fact that he didn’t go today, and I borrowed the car, was unfortunate — for them.”

“And Philippe, why did he not tell his own family what he had done? Why did he allow us to think he was a collaborator?”

“Perhaps you never gave him the chance,” suggested the Saint. “I’m not as surprised as you. The way he helped me get Gaston out of the vat made me think that he’d dealt with death before. In my experience, collaborators don’t usually have such strong stomachs.”

“But if Philippe isn’t — what I thought he was... then it must be someone else who’s behind all the trouble we’ve been having here.”

He shook his head slowly.

“Au contraire. Unhappily, even a war hero isn’t necessarily an angel. What I wanted to check on was what Philippe might have on his conscience that would make him so very eager to get me out of the picture. And it seems that since he was able to return to Paris his operations have been on the sharp side, to say the least. Exactly how sharp, we don’t know. But the report I got seems to show that he could still be a double-dealer. So instead of being ruled out, he’s still very much ruled in.”

“Then what can we do now?” she asked despondently.

Simon consulted his watch, and finished his drink. He stood up and stretched himself catlike.

“Personally, I’m going to do a little exploring before dinner,” he told her cheerfully, and made a quick exit before she could press him further.

Back in his room, he changed quickly into the trousers which had been expendably damaged on his arrival, changed also into a pair of light but sturdy sneakers, and slipped into his hip pocket the flashlight which was as indispensable a part of his travelling necessities as the ordinary man’s razor.

He left the château by the front door, with a nonchalantly affable wave to the gendarme standing there, who by this time seemed to have graduated from bewilderment to boredom with his comings and goings and changes of vehicle and costume. He headed around the side and downhill to the outbuilding where the late Gaston Pichot had fallen into the Hecate crypt.

The labourers whom he had seen at the barn were lounging outside. They appeared to ignore him as he passed, but continued to talk heatedly among themselves in hoarse patois, pitched too low for him to distinguish any words. Whatever the argument was about, there was evidently a clash of strongly held opinions.

It was almost dark inside the storehouse and the Saint switched on his flashlight and allowed the beam to roam along the tiers of barrels stacked against the walls before turning it down into the hole that Gaston’s fall had made. The underground chamber was empty — the professor had either finished for the day or was busy elsewhere. He was not expecting any trouble at that stage, and the sounds of movement behind him did not register as a threat until it was almost too late.