Salvage for the Saint (5 page)

Simon glanced around. The Bellissima had fallen steadily farther behind, and the next boat was so far back that it was impossible to hazard even a guess at which one it might be.

The Saint’s mouth set in a grim fighting line as the Needles came into view. This was the stuff of life to Simon Templar: to be thrown on his mettle, to be seemingly outrun, for the moment, but to have reserves and resources of his own as well as all the glorious imponderables of time and chance to rely on.

“We’ll catch him,” he said, with quiet certitude.

And there came a time, not many minutes later, when the Candecour ceased to open up her lead any farther from the four hundred yards it had become. And not many minutes after that, it became apparent that the gap was very slowly but steadily closing.

They were more than an hour into the race now, and with their progress westward the crowds lining the shores on both sides of the water had dwindled until now they were confined to a few loose knots of people on the beaches of the minor holiday resorts in Christchurch Bay to their starboard. Milton on Sea, then Barton with its crumbling rufous cliffs, then Highcliffe, then Mude-ford, guarding the northern side of the narrow entrance to Christchurch Harbour. That entrance was actually invisible from the Saint’s viewpoint, being almost completely closed off by the sandy promontory known as Hengistbury Head, which curled around from the south west like a beckoning finger.

They were about two hundred and fifty yards astern of the Candecour when it happened. They were battling now into a moderate sea, which means a lot of battling for small boats, and as they rose and fell with the waves they frequently lost sight of the Candecour for a few seconds at a time.

It was after one such occlusion that the yellow boat suddenly veered off right and began cutting obliquely across the Privateer’s course.

“What the blue blazes—?” Vic followed up the mild oath with a more fluent and earthy profanity, and they watched in astonishment as the Candecour tore off towards the shore, without any visible slackening of speed.

The Saint was trying to hold a steady line on the boat with his binoculars. He shook his head in puzzlement.

“At that rate she’ll plough straight into the Head … The funny thing is, she’s holding a dead-straight line, yet as far as I can see, there’s no one standing up to steer her. Which is a more than mildly interesting way to tackle a race.”

The Privateer had now passed the other boat’s point of eccentric departure, so that they now had her almost directly to starboard. As far as the needs of continuing to manage the Privateer in that demanding sea allowed, they watched the Candecour, with a fascination that afterwards seemed like foreknowledge of what must inevitably happen.

“Throttle must be jammed open,” said Vic softly. And then, when it seemed certain that big yellow boat must plough into the beach at any second, they made another abrupt turn, or half-turn, to starboard.

“She’s missed the Head,” said the Saint, “but she’s going straight for the rocks.”

The Candecour never did slow down … until those rocks compelled a deceleration as abrupt as it was spectacular. The engine note was terminated by a splintering impact. Then a moment’s suspension of time. Then it came. A white-orange flash, and two or three seconds later the sound of the blast.

After a moment’s thought, Simon Templar eased off the throttle slightly, spun the wheel hard right, and pointed the Privateer at the blazing inferno that had been Charles Tatenor’s boat.

II: How Arabella began a Journey, and Simon went Beachcombing.

-1-

The Coroner cleared his throat sympathetically.

“Mrs Tatenor,” he said tentatively, but with the determined firmness of a Pillar of the Establishment who knows that he must Do his Duty, however painful, “there still seems to be some mystery concerning the identity of your husband’s co-driver.”

Arabella Tatenor nodded. She had already had more than enough of the meticulous, punctilious coroner. Her expression, if it conveyed anything, conveyed mild boredom.

She was dressed befittingly in black; but her skirt and blouse, for all their sombre colour, had clearly been cut without the slightest intention of concealing the shape of what they enclosed. And what they enclosed while draped around Arabella Tatenor had plenty of shape.

As for the shape she was in generally, on taking the stand a few minutes before in the crowded Ryde courtroom she had raised a filmy black veil to reveal features only a shade or two paler than they had been before the events of five days ago.

The Coroner was a large bony man with a well-scrubbed and barbered look. His black hair was shaved to an exaggerated short-back-and-sides respectability that gave him something of the look of an SS officer. He wore a dark-grey pinstriped suit, a white shirt with old-fashioned detachable collar starched and pressed to a celluloid shine, and a spotted tie done up in a tight little knot.

“The name you gave the police,” he went on. “Maurice Fournier. No one of that name has been traced. If you could possibly recall something that might—”

“No, there’s nothing,” cut in Arabella rather brusquely. “He said his name was Fournier. That’s all I know.”

The Coroner hesitated.

“But he was a guest in your house for a week or more.”

“He was my husband’s guest. I’d never met him before. And when I did meet him I took an instant dislike to him.”

The Coroner pursed his lips and brought two sets of five fingertips carefully together.

“Well, perhaps you can assist us by saying whether you formed the impression that Fournier was his true name?”

“No, I formed no impression about that. I had no reason to question whether it was his true name.”

“And what is your impression in retrospect, in view of the fact that the French authorities say that no Maurice Fournier is known to them?”

Arabella shrugged, making no particular effort to hide her impatience.

“Authorities can be wrong,” she told him. “And anyway he could easily have been Swiss or Belgian or something. But I really don’t see that his name matters. He, and my husband, are both dead.”

The Coroner winced visibly at the nakedness of her words, as if he would have liked to substitute something more bland and bloodless like “passed on” or “deceased”. Simon Templar, who was also in court, smiled at the thought of the interior battle that the Coroner must have been waging with himself at that juncture—a battle between, on the one hand, the legal ego, which hates to let anyone get away with robbing it of the initiative in argument as she had just done, and on the other the well-brought-up conservative gentleman whose sympathy for a newly widowed woman makes him a bottomless fount of indulgent tolerance.

The gentleman won on points, even if his fount did emerge as unmistakably non-bottomless. Its visible bottom took the form of a restrained concession to the legal ego; the Coroner swallowed hard—a species of exertion that caused his protuberant Adam’s apple to twitch the knot of the spotted tie— and said with forced pleasantness:

“You must allow me to be the judge of what matters in this case, Mrs Tatenor. But I realise how distressing all this must be for you. I am sure you have the sympathy and good wishes of everyone present in the court, and I hope we shall now be able to conclude this inquiry quickly. You may stand down now.”

She made a movement that just barely feinted at being a hint of a half-bow that she’d thought better of, and went back to her seat, which was next to the Saint’s in the second row of the block reserved for witnesses and members of the public.

In the front row of the same block sat the press-men, taking up their full allocation; on the Saint’s other hand sat Vic Cullen, and every other seat in the small Ryde courtroom was occupied too. Among the assembled faces Simon recognised at least half a dozen of the other race drivers; the rest were mostly holidaymakers who happened to be on the island at the time and who for reasons of their own considered a Coroner’s Inquest a good afternoon’s entertainment.

The Saint had half-turned in his seat to survey the spectators with casual interest, and his gaze had just stopped thoughtfully at two vaguely familiar-looking men whom he couldn’t for the moment place in either the boat-racing or the holidaymaking group—both were overdressed and one was unusually fat, with a drooping moustache— when the Coroner spoke again.

“Mr Simon Templar—will you take the stand now, please?”

The Saint stood up, took the stand, and went through the usual initiation ritual.

The Coroner eyed him with evident distrust. The Saint resisted the urge to stick his tongue out, and contented himself with returning the Coroner’s cold stare in kind.

“You are the man they call the Saint?” asked the Coroner.

“The same.”

The Coroner sniffed, and made a nervous adjustment to the knot of the spotted tie which left it in exactly the same position as before.

“Mr Templar, your reputation is well known. You have often been described as a common criminal, and I have to say that you are by no means the sort of witness with whom I should have preferred to have to deal in this court.”

The Saint smiled. He didn’t intend losing sight of the seriousness of the occasion, but the opportunity was too good to miss.

“That’s quite all right,” he replied generously. “To be frank, you’re by no means my favourite type of coroner, either.”

There was a brief eruption of laughter, started by a couple of reporters. The Coroner glared at them and went three shades pinker. The Adam’s apple and spotted tie wiggled as he struggled to get control of himself.

“However,” he went on, heroically abstaining from comment on the Saint’s riposte, “I am told that your knowledge of power-boating matters is sound, Mr Templar, and I understand that you and vour co-driver Mr … ah … Cullen were the first on the scene after the explosion.”

“That is correct,” agreed the Saint in a businesslike tone.

“I have here your eyewitness report, taken by the police at the time.” The Coroner indicated the document in front of him. “Perhaps you will help us by expanding on one or two points.”

“If I can,” said the Saint.

“One thing puzzles me in particular. Mr Tatenor’s boat suddenly changed course and began heading for the beach at …”—the Coroner peered at the papers— “… Hengistbury Head. You and Mr Cullen could hardly help being aware of this sudden turn, since the boat cut right across your own course.”

“Correct.”

The Coroner leaned forward.

“But having changed course in that abrupt manner, the boat then continued in the new direction, still heading straight for the shore, for a distance of approximately half a mile?”

“As you say—approximately.”

“Does that not seem to you a little odd, Mr Templar?”

It seemed to the Saint decidedly odd, but he hadn’t the slightest conscience about pretending otherwise to the Coroner.

“Not in the least odd,” he said in a tone of conviction.

“But how would you explain it?”

“What seems to me the most likely explanation,” Simon lied, picking his words with care, “is that the boat hit a big wave, and that as a result both men lost their footing, hit their heads and were knocked cold.”

“Leaving no one at the wheel?”

“That’s right. It could easily happen. It was a very choppy sea.”

“But with nobody at the wheel,” persisted the Coroner, “wouldn’t you have expected the boat to follow a rather erratic course, instead of travelling a good half mile or more in a straight line?”

It was a question the Saint had expected and one that had, somehow, to be answered. He took a deep breath.

“I suggest,” he said with a magnificent airy confidence that made everything seem much simpler than it was in his real thoughts on the matter, “that one of those unconscious bodies became slumped or wedged against the wheel just after they hit the big wave. The rudder would probably have found its approximate straight-ahead position very quickly in any case, on the principle of least resistance, and the wheel would have gone back with it, rather like the wheels of a car straighten up and take the steering wheel back after you round a bend. If one of the two men then fell against the Candecour’s wheel, as I think must have happened, that would have kept the boat on a roughly straight-ahead course.”

“Thank you, Mr Templar.”

There was a begrudging note in the Coroner’s voice but he continued to nod sagely as if to imply that of course he had seen all this for himself and now had come to the really difficult question. He posed it triumphantly.

“Yet, just before the impact, according to your evidence, the boat made another abrupt turn, and then once again straightened up.” The Coroner paused for effect. “You’re not seriously suggesting, Mr Templar, that the whole exact and rather unusual sequence of events which you have postulated was repeated?”

“No,” said the Saint with patient civility, “I’m not suggesting that. The explanation’s far simpler. When the Candecour got near the head, she hit the rip tide—that’s all.”

“Ah, the rip tide,” said the Coroner, little enlightened.

“At the right time,” the Saint explained with a briskly authoritative note in his voice, “which means during about the first two hours of the ebb, there’s a very sharply demarcated rip tide off the Head, moving almost parallel to the coast at up to twenty-five knots. I think it’s pretty clear that the rip was enough to deflect the Candecour and turn her through maybe another thirty or forty degrees, but not to stop her. So she hit the rocks farther along.”

On this specific point Simon Templar’s confidence was genuine. The rip tide was fact—the Privateer herself having had to battle obliquely across it to get to the blazing wreckage—and he was as sure as he could reasonably be that the Candecour’s final turn had been consistent with the rip tide’s likely effect on her runaway progress.

Otherwise, however, he was sure of nothing except that, somewhere, things were not entirely as they seemed … After the searing inferno that had been the Candecour had more or less burned itself out, two big lumps of something resembling charcoal had been recovered from the drifting debris. Each had the vestigial metal frame of a crash helmet all but fused to its charred skull. It was fortunate, from the Saint’s angle, that the Press had observed their normal reticence in the matter of giving specific details of the bodies. In particular they had said nothing about the crash helmets. Nor, it seemed, had the Coroner been reminded of them by anything in the papers. Simon’s own original eyewitness statement had foresightedly avoided direct reference to them—because even then he had been thinking ahead to the inquest. For when Simon Templar was on a project—and he regarded himself as still very much on this project, even if its terms of reference had altered somewhat since Arabella’s nocturnal visit—the last thing he wanted was great flat-footed policemen stamping about the scene of the crime, or interesting questions to cramp his own style. Therefore he had kept the crash helmets out of the discussion. If they had been brought into it they might have made the Coroner and jury just that important shade more likely to doubt his airy explanation of the crash. For two men to be knocked cold at the same time is by no means beyond the bounds of credibility, especially when the proposition is put by someone as blandly authoritative and seemingly convinced by it as he had taken care to appear. But a double knock-out when both men’s heads were protected by purpose-made helmets? Any reasonable member of the jury, and certainly the critical Coroner, might have balked at that … if the facts had been brought together in that way, which they had not.