The Saint in the Sun (8 page)

“Then who was it?”

“Somebody wearing his clothes and flourishing his cigar, padded out to his size with a cushion under the windbreaker. Between those huge sunglasses and the goatee, which could even have been his own hair glued on, at the distance the boat stayed out, it was easy to get away with. Hundreds of people would swear it was Undine they’d seen. But Jasper himself was probably in the bottom of the cockpit with the anchor tied to him, waiting to be dumped overboard out of sight off the cape. Then all the murderer had to do was head the boat out to sea, jump out at a safe distance, and swim back.”

“But why did you-“

“I wouldn’t want anyone to get in trouble for killing Undine. I can’t feel he was any loss to the world.”

They found their seats at last and settled down.

“Anyway,” he said, “I wouldn’t have missed your performance for anything.”

“It’s not much of a part,” she said, “but it’ll help me. And the money was just like Christmas.”

“I’m not talking about the picture,” Simon said. “I’m talking about your performance at St Tropez. Only your material wasn’t quite good enough. I was having a hard time believing that a bastard like Undine had really been put off by your sob story. And then you were in just a little too much of a hurry to explain why there were no cigar ashes in the boat, when that came up. And then I realized that nobody else had a better motive for making it seem that Undine was still alive that morning. Several people had heard him say that your contract wouldn’t arrive until then, and you had to wait to get it and forge his signature. Of course it took plenty of nerve; but I remembered that you’d started out as a nurse, so you wouldn’t panic at the idea of handling a dead body, and I knew how well you could swim.”

She turned her face to him with a kind of quiet pride.

“I didn’t kill him,” she said. “But when it came to the point I couldn’t go through with what he wanted. I was struggling for my life, and he was like a madman-it meant that much to him, to get even for the time he thought I’d snubbed him in Hollywood. And then he suddenly collapsed. A heart attack. But all the rest is true.”

“That makes it all the better,” said the Saint.

He held her hand as the lights dimmed and the credit titles began.

ENGLAND: THE PRODIGAL MISER

Contrary to the belief of many inhabitants of less rugged climes, the sun really does sometimes shine in England, though it is admittedly a fickle phenomenon which imparts a strong element of gambling to the planning of any outdoor activity. But when it shines, perhaps because familiarity never has a chance to breed satiety, it seems to have a special beauty and excitement which is lacking in the places where sunny days are commonplace.

It was on one of those golden days in early autumn that Simon Templar drove out to Marlow, that pleasantly placid village on the Thames made famous by Izaak Walton, the first of all fishing pundits, in The Compleat Angler, to take Mrs Penelope Lynch out to lunch. He had met her only a few days before, in London, at a small and highly informal party to celebrate the seventh anniversary of a couple who have no other part in this story; and when he found out where she lived there had been the inevitable comparing of notes on places of interest in the neighborhood.

“Do you know my old pal Giulio Trapani at Skindle’s?” he asked.

“Of course. We often used to go there. But for a smaller place, with more of a country-pub atmosphere, do you know the King’s Arms at Cookham?”

“No, but I’ve been to the Crown, where they have wonderful home-made pasties.”

“Yes, I’ve had them. But one day you must try the steak-and-kidney pie at the King’s Arms. Mrs Baker makes it herself, and it’s the best I know anywhere-if you like steak-and-kidney pie.”

“I love it.” This was a natural opening that could hardly be passed by. “Would you like to show it to me sometime?”

“Don’t make that too definite, or you might find yourself stuck with it.”

“How about next Sunday?”

“That would be perfect. In fact, since I’m a working girl, it’s about the only day.”

He guessed her age at about 26, and had learned that she was a widow-her husband had been the export manager of a manufacturing firm in Slough, who had taken an overdose of sleeping pills when he learned that he had lung cancer about six months ago. That was all he knew about her, aside from what his eyes told him, which was that she had short chestnut hair and a short nose, a wide brow and a wide mouth that smiled very easily, the ingredients combining into a gay gamin look which formed an intriguing counterpoint to her sensuously modelled figure. To a true connoisseur of feminine attractions, which the Saint candidly confessed himself to be, she had an allure that was far more captivating than most conventional forms of pulchritude, and that was rare enough to demand at least a better acquaintance.

She was ready when he arrived, in a tweed skirt and a cardigan over a simple blouse, and sensible suede shoes, and she said: “I’m glad you’re early, because it’ll give us time to walk over instead of driving. That is, if you won’t think that’s too frighteningly hearty. It’s only about four miles.”

“I’m glad to know you’re so healthy,” he grinned. “Most girls these days would think a fellow was an unchivalrous cad if he suggested walking around the block. But it’s such a beautiful day, it ‘d be a shame not to take advantage of it.”

Her house was near the southern end of the village, a tiled and half-timbered doll’s-house with a walled garden that needed tidying but was still a carnival of color. They walked down a lane to the main road and across the bridge, then took a secondary fork to the end of the flat land, hairpinned up through Quarry Wood, and then branched off the pavement altogether to follow a well-worn footpath that rambled along the side of the slope around Winter Hill. The leaves which had fallen into a carpet underfoot had left myriad lacy openings in the canopy overhead through which the light came with fragmented brilliance, and the air was delicately perfumed with the damp scents of bark and foliage.

“Thank you for doing this,” she said, after a while during which their flimsy acquaintance had been warming and easing through the exchange of trivialities not worth recording and the sense of companionship in sharing an uncomplicated pleasure. “I can see from your tan that you must be out of doors so much that you don’t have to think about it, but it means a lot to me after being cooped up in an office all week.”

“What sort of work do you do?”

“You’d never guess.”

“Then I won’t try.”

“I’m secretary to a sort of horse-racing tipster. Or a kind of horse-playing service.”

“That’s certainly a bit out of the ordinary. How does it operate?”

“People give this man money to bet with, like an investment, and he sends them dividends from his profits.”

“He really does?”

“Oh, yes. Every month.”

And suddenly, in a flash, the pleasure of the walk was no longer uncomplicated. The air was the same, the loveliness of the leaf-tones and the dappled light were the same, but something else had intruded that was as out of place there as a neon bulb.

“It sounds interesting,” said the Saint cautiously. “Where do you do this?”

“In Maidenhead, which is quite convenient. Much better than having to go into London. And it came along just in time. When my husband died”-he liked the way she didn’t hesitate before the word, or after it-“I was left practically broke, except for the cottage with the usual mortgage. He made a good salary, but we’d had a good time with it and hardly saved anything. And no insurance. It was when he went to take out a policy that they found out he had cancer. I thought I was going to have to sell the cottage and move into a little flat in town and look for a job there, which I’d ‘ve hated, so this was almost like a miracle.”

“People always will believe in miracles, I suppose.”

“Well, perhaps I’m exaggerating. It wasn’t quite the same as hearing that I’d inherited a couple of million from some distant relative that I’d never heard of.”

“Or winning the Irish Sweep, or one of those fabulous football pools. I guess those are the simplest fantasies that most people who aren’t millionaires have played with at one time or another. What would rank after that? Messing about with an old bureau and finding a secret compartment full of jewels? Stumbling over a suitcase full of cash that some bank robbers had dropped during their getaway? But that wouldn’t be so easy to be dishonest about as you might think, unless you were fairly well heeled already: somebody might get curious about how you became so rich overnight. No, I suppose some fast scheme to beat the stock market, the casinos, or the bookies, would be the next most popular get-rich-quick gimmick.”

They walked on for a while in silence.

“What you’re trying to say,” she accused him at last, rather stiffly, “is that you think I’m in something crooked.”

“I don’t say that you’re an accomplice,” he replied calmly. “But I’d want a lot of convincing that some day the police aren’t going to be looking for your boss.”

“That’s what I’ve been afraid of,” she said. “That’s why I made Anne and Hilton promise to introduce us as soon as you came to England, when they happened to mention that they knew you.”

He looked at her admiringly.

“A conniving female!” he said. “And I liked you so much because you never asked any of the usual silly questions about my life as the Saint and so forth.”

“I was afraid if I did you’d be too leary of letting me get you alone.”

“So you had this date all planned before you let me think I thought of it.”

“Worse than that. I might have tried to drag you out on this walk even if it ‘d been pouring with rain.”

The path had come down again from under the trees to curve inside the bend of the river. Ahead and to one side there were three green mounds that must have been ancient tumuli, and farther off yet the ridge of a railway embankment cut across a marshy stretch of lowland. From the place where Penelope Lynch stopped, pointing through a chance gap in an intervening coppice, could be seen close up against the embankment a wooden shack with a tar-paper roof, a rectangular box perhaps ten feet long which might once have been built to shelter a maintenance crew or their tools, with a door at one end and a single small window in one side. It was occupied, Simon realized from a thin wisp of smoke that curled up from a stovepipe projecting through the roof; and as he gazed at it puzzledly, wondering why Penelope was showing it to him, a man came out with a bucket.

He wore a brown pullover and dark trousers loosely tucked into rubber knee-boots. He was broad-shouldered and a little paunchy, and he moved with the plodding deliberation of a farm laborer rather than a construction worker. At that distance, even the Saint’s keen eyes could not make out much more than that he had plentiful gray hair and a ruddy complexion. He carried the pail a few yards from the hut, emptied it on the ground, and plodded back inside.

“My boss,” Penelope said.

Simon had to hold back the stereotyped “You’re kidding!” because it was perfectly obvious from her expression that she wasn’t. Instead, he said with determined nonchalance: “It’s nice to see a man who hasn’t been spoiled by success, still living the simple life.”

“He used to be our gardener,” Penelope said.

The Saint clung doggedly to his composure.

“Democracy is a wonderful thing,” he remarked, as they resumed their walk. “And you may get a medal from some bleeding-heart committee for being so cheerful about changing places. But not for your story-telling technique. I’ve heard of quite nice girls getting their pretty heads bashed in with blunt instruments because they tantalized someone a lot less than you’ve already done to me.”

“All right,” she said. “If you’ll forgive me for trapping you like this. But I couldn’t think of any other way to do it. It’s such a fantastic story …”

It was.

It began when she told the gardener, whose name was Tom Gull, that she couldn’t afford to keep him on any longer, and that in any case she was going to have to put the house on the market and move away.

This was nothing like casting a faithful old retainer out to starve, for he only came one day a week, and served five other houses within a few miles’ radius on the same basis. She had known nothing else about him except that he had knocked on the door one morning and announced that the garden looked as if it needed attention and he had a day to spare. He was unkempt and unshaven and smelled strongly of beer, but in those days gardeners were as hard to find as any other household help, and after a trial she had let him become a weekly fixture. He was not exactly an artist at his craft, nor did he ever risk injuring himself from over-exertion, but he was better than nothing, and both she and her husband were glad to be relieved of some chores for which neither of them happened to have any inclination.

He took his dismissal phlegmatically, but at the end of the day he came back with a proposition.

“I’ve got somethink ‘ere, ma’m,” he said, extracting a grubby and much-folded piece of paper from his pocket. “It needs correcting my spelling an’ putting in good English, an’ typing out neat an’ proper. I know you’ve got a typewriter, ‘cos I’ve ‘eard you using it. Do you think you could ‘elp me out?”

“Of course, I’ll be glad to,” she said, feeling some kind of obligation because of the employment she had just taken away from him.

“I wouldn’t ask you to do it for nothink,” he said. “You fix it up for me, an’ I’ll give you a bit more work in the garden.”

She had protested that that wasn’t necessary, but after she had done the job she was not so sure. As deciphered and edited by her, the document finally ran:

YOU CAN BEAT THE BOOKIES!

But not by studying the form book! The professionals who set the handicaps are much better at that than you, and in theory they should make every race end in a dead heat, but how often do they do it?

And not by following “information”! Who knows what secret plans have been made for every horse in a race?

The only method which can show a steady profit in the long run is a coldly mechanical mathematical method which will scientifically eliminate the element of chance. In other words, A SYSTEM.