Saint and the Templar Treasure (7 page)

“Thank you.”

This was the beginning of a new era when the traditional aperitifs had lost ground in fashionable French circles, and whisky had become the snob before-dinner drink among those who aspired to be up to date.

Florian poured for both of them, added soda and ice from an insulated bucket in the cupboard, and said: “Chin.”

“Chin.”

Another Anglo-American importation.

The Saint relaxed in an arm-chair and sipped his drink appreciatively. The Scotch was, as he would have expected, of the finest quality, a twelve-year-old malt.

“I understand you’ve been having a lot of trouble lately,” he said conversationally.

Florian shrugged and spread out his hands in an exaggerated gesture of resignation.

“A few misfortunes, certainly, but one must expect these things in any business. And running a vineyard is a business, even if my brother does not consider it so.”

“I should have thought that people setting fire to buildings and spraying vines with weed-killer were hardly ordinary business hazards,” Simon remarked. Anticipating a question, he added: “Mimette told me about that.”

Florian threw back half his Scotch in one go. He rotated the tumbler between his palms as he glanced furtively at the clock.

“Ah, Mimette. I see.” He made a long pause. “Poor girl, she takes life so seriously for one so young. Since her mother died last year she has had a lot of new responsibilities to cope with. My brother is not the most worldly of men. I think the English refer to such people as ‘one of the old school.’ Mimette has helped to run the chateau and the vineyard, and I’m afraid the strain is telling. She tends to overdramatise things. Sometimes I wonder if it is not becoming an obsession.”

It was a clever speech. Without a single disloyal word, he had managed to praise and raise doubts about his brother and his niece at the same time. Philippe Florian might be pompous but he was certainly shrewd. And he was worried, far more so than Mimette had been earlier that afternoon.

“Better to be obsessed than sit by and watch your family ruined!”

The Saint and Florian turned simultaneously as the girl’s voice cut between them. She stood framed in the doorway, her hair wind-blown from the drive and a red glow flaming her cheeks.

“Ah, vous voici,” Simon exclaimed, springing to his feet. “I was afraid I was going to miss you.”

“I apologise for having to leave you to the company of Uncle Philippe,” she said, “but there has been a lot to do. For those of us who work, that is.”

Mimette turned angrily towards her uncle, but he appeared only tolerantly amused by the barb she had flung at him.

“You’ll be sorry to hear that I’ve managed to get everything we need. Gaston worked wonders as usual. Papa is writing the cheques. He’ll be with us shortly.”

“Now, why should I be sorry, Mimette?” Florian demurred suavely. “You really must stop thinking of me as the wicked uncle in a fairy tale.”

Mimette sank into a chair and took a cigarette from the silver box on the coffee table. She lit it and inhaled deeply, letting out the smoke like a long sigh.

“Wicked half-uncle,” she corrected coldly, and Florian looked pained. “And I only wish you would stop acting like one. Whenever anything goes wrong, there’s good old Philippe lending money and patting everyone on the back and telling them not to worry, and all the time scheming to take control and kick out everyone else.”

“Helping one’s brother, even one’s half-brother as you insist on pointing out, is not something discreditable. And as for scheming, I don’t call making a generous offer to buy Ingare scheming. I call it business. Producing and selling wine is an industry, not a pastime, and if you all realised that then you might still be able to salvage something from the mess you’ve got yourselves into.”

For the first time Simon had proof of the hardness he had always suspected behind Florian’s urbane facade. He sipped his drink and did his best to fade into the background as he listened to the exchange. It was as edifying as any eavesdropping could be.

Philippe’s partial explosion was followed by an oppressive silence like the hush before a thunderstorm, and the Saint waited for the clouds to burst. But the protocols of good breeding and dirty-linen-washing prevailed. Florian downed the dregs of his drink but made no move to replenish his glass. And then the telephone shattered the stillness and the moment was lost.

Mimette jumped up and strode across the room to snatch up the receiver. She listened for a few moments and then gently replaced it in its cradle. She turned to the Saint.

“That was the garage. They say they will not be able to send anyone to look at your car until tomorrow. What is wrong with it?”

“The radiator is holed. Henri was trying to get it fixed for me.”

“I saw him heading for the chai as I drove up. He must have switched the call through to here in case they phoned back while he was out. What will you do now?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t get more than two hundred metres before the engine seized. What’s the hotel situation like around here?”

“A hotel? Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mimette. “We wouldn’t hear of such a thing. Of course, you will stay here.”

“After what you have done for us, that is the least we can offer,” said Philippe warmly.

Simon had to admire the man’s ability to react so quickly to events. The about-face was so complete that a doubt about his assessment even entered the Saint’s suspicious mind.

“But that’s giving you too much trouble,” he protested hypocritically.

“Not at all,” boomed Philippe, as if there had never been any question of an alternative in his mind.

He rang the bell and the major-domo entered so quickly that he must have been standing within feet of the door.

“Charles, please take Monsieur Templar’s valise back to his room. He will be staying to dinner.”

“Oui, m’sieu.”

Once again the Saint handed over his car keys. When Charles had left the salon Simon said: “I’m afraid I’m giving him a lot to do. Is it a problem to get staff so far out in the country?”

“We have only Charles and his wife who live in. There are two others who come in daily.” Mimette sighed. “When I was a little girl we kept a whole army of servants here, but we can no longer afford them.”

“Still longing for the good old days,” scoffed Philippe Florian. To the Saint he said: “I must tidy myself up a little. You will join us again for another drink in, perhaps, three quarters of an hour?” He stalked briskly from the room, and Simon looked at Mimette hopefully.

“Can we continue our talk?”

“There’s not much more to tell,” she replied, and once again he noted the tiredness in her voice.

He felt very sorry for her. In one respect at least he agreed with her uncle. She might well be taking her responsibilities a little too seriously.

She stubbed out her cigarette with a vindictiveness that displayed the depth of her struggle to control her emotions.

“We are in serious financial trouble. Philippe wants to own the chateau, more importantly he wants to own us. He has always been jealous of my father. He hates the fact that Ingare came to my father and not to him. That he is not regarded as a true Florian.”

“But surely he is a fully paid-up member of the family, even if he is only your father’s half-brother?”

“There is more to being a member of a family than just being tied to people by blood,” Mimette retorted fiercely.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

Mimette picked up another cigarette, fiddled with it aimlessly for a moment, and then crushed it in her hand. She brushed the debris from her hands into the empty grate. She looked intently at the Saint, a sarcastic smile curling her lips.

“You are not the only one. Philippe does not understand anything. That some people have long memories. Or that if it were not for my father he would long ago have been a dead man.”

“I give up,” said the Saint, not too patiently. “What’s the answer?”

“Perhaps I will tell you soon—I must have time to think.” Mimette seemed to wonder if she had already said too much, and to be glad of an excuse to back away again. “Now I must get dressed for dinner. Shall I have Charles show you back to your room?”

“I think I can find my own way now,” said the Saint.

“Alors, a tout a l’heure.”

While he changed into the plain dark suit which he assumed would be expected of him, he reviewed the events of the day and came up with practically nothing but riddles.

Mimette’s outburst added another dimension to the picture he had been building up, but it was pointless to try to guess the dark secrets she was hinting at. The episode in the chapel was another mystery: He had great faith in the efficiency of his senses, and whatever the professor might say he knew that he had heard two people talking. And finally there was the sabotage of his car: While Philippe and Pichot had seemed palpably eager to speed him on his way, someone else was trying even harder to keep him there.

A knock at the door put an end to his reverie and brought Charles into the room.

“Monsieur Philippe asked me to show you to the dining-room, m’sieu.”

“Very well,” said the Saint resignedly. “I follow you.”

The dining-room turned out to be at the rear of the house behind the salon. It was furnished with some of the best examples of Empire furniture the Saint had seen outside the captivity of museums. The wall on the garden side was comprised almost completely of glass doors, firmly closed against the refreshing coolness of the night air. Along the centre of the room was a table capable of seating twenty with space to spare. The seven places set around one end looked almost insignificant.

Five people turned to greet him. All except one he had already met and the fifth could only be the half-brother of Philippe Florian. Mimette introduced him as her father, Yves.

At sixty the master of Ingare looked older than Simon had expected, but age had not bowed him even if it had left its mark on his face. He matched the Saint for height, and unlike his brother carried no excess weight. Simon could see where Mimette had inherited her looks, and reckoned that Florian had been more than averagely handsome in his youth. Now his face was deeply lined around tired eyes, and what had once been a lean face had become gaunt, but his handshake was strong and his smile was unquestionably genuine as he welcomed his guest.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Templar. I have heard everything you did for us. I am very grateful.”

“It was very little, and the damage to my car was not your fault,” Simon disclaimed.

Yves Florian offered a drink from the row of bottles on the sideboard, and Mimette told him: “I think Monsieur Templar should stay for a few days. I’m sure he would be interested to watch the start of the wine-making.”

“I should be delighted,” Yves responded cordially.

Philippe turned quickly away and poured himself another Scotch from the bottle beside him.

Yves indicated the others in the room.

“I understand you have already met Henri Pichot. May I present his uncle, Gaston Pichot. Gaston is our overseer, taster, chief blender, and hardest worker, and without him Ingare would crumble overnight.”

The old man coloured slightly at his employer’s praise. He stepped forward and shook the Saint’s hand. He seemed as ill at ease in his carefully pressed black suit as he had been comfortable in his working clothes in the fields that afternoon.

“It’s nice to see you again,” said the Saint. “We met at the barn this afternoon.”

Over the sideboard hung a full-length portrait of a tall handsome man dressed in the extravagant frippery of the late eighteenth century. There was a quality about the rakish features and insolent hand-on-hilt stance that appealed to the Saint. Still groping for any sort of information, he used it as a cue to remark: “He must be another Florian—I can see a family resemblance.”

“That was the Baron Robut,” Gaston informed him, with reflected pride.

“It’s a striking portrait.”

“And a striking man, though his contemporaries would not have agreed,” Philippe put in. “They thought him a traitor for supporting the Revolution.”

“And keeping his head when all his friends were losing theirs,” added Mimette cynically. “Not only did he survive the Terror but Napoleon made him a general.”

“How long has Ingare been in your family?” was the natural question.

“Since soon after the Templars left,” Yves replied. “I have read that in 1305 a certain Esquiu de Floyran of Beziers offered to betray ‘the secrets of the Templars,’ whatever they may have been, first to James the Second of Aragon, and then to King Philip of France. To force the Pope’s hand, Philip was able to denounce the Templars to the Inquisition, since the Grand Inquisitor was his personal confessor and protege. In 1307 the arrest of the Templars began. It is thought that Floyran may have received Ingare as part of his reward, and that the name ‘Florian’ was derived from his.”

“One sees the family resemblance to Baron Robut,” observed Mimette acidly.

“Who knows what reasons people may have had, so many centuries ago?” said Yves goodhumouredly.

Charles came in to announce that dinner was ready, and there was a move towards the dining table.

Yves Florian took the head of it, and seated the Saint on his right and Mimette on his left. Philippe was placed next to Mimette, Gaston and Henri next to the Saint. As he unfolded his serviette, Yves looked at the empty seat beside Philippe and frowned.

“And where is our worthy professor this evening?” he wondered.

“Still prospecting, I suppose,” said Mimette and the others laughed at what was clearly a standing joke.

As Mrs. Charles, as Simon had dubbed the major-domo’s wife, wheeled in a trolley with a large serving platter of truites amandine and hot plates which she proceeded to distribute, Norbert entered. He apologised for his lateness and sat down.

“Any luck today?” Mimette asked pleasantly.

The professor regarded her as he might have regarded an impudent student.

“It is not a question of luck but of knowledge and application,” he said primly.