Saint and the Templar Treasure (19 page)

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 Confrerie 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 Confrerie 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 Chateau 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 Confrerie,” 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 chateau.”

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 chateau 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 chateau 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 chateau 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 Odeon 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.