Saint and the Templar Treasure (16 page)

“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 chateau, 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 chateau.”

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 chateau, 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 chateau 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 chateau 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.

V

How Sergeant Olivet tried to Cope, and Mimette was not altogether Impartial.

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.