Then he heard a movement somewhere above, and moved swiftly back to the statue. The creek of the chain as he turned the figure back to close the stone panel again sounded deafen-ingly loud to him in the confined space.
He need not have worried. Perhaps Louis Norbert was too engrossed in his own thoughts, perhaps he was slightly hard of hearing, or perhaps he was even a superb poker player, but whatever the reason he gave no indication of having heard anything unusual when he stepped from the ladder.
He regarded the Saint with a mixture of irritation and suspicion.
“Monsieur Templar. Were you looking for me?”
Simon uncrossed his legs and rose from the stone bench where he had hastily seated himself. The door had closed so perfectly that had he not known exactly where it was he would never have been able to guess. Even so, he kept his eyes away from the wall as he smiled amiably at the little professor.
“Not specially,” he said. “But it’s a pleasure to see you. You haven’t been very social since this hole was opened.”
“What can I do for you?” Norbert inquired in the politely uninterested tone of a shop assistant.
“I just dropped in to see how you were getting along,” Simon replied pleasantly.
Norbert scratched at the tuft of white hair that stuck out above his left ear. He looked tired and his clothes were crumpled. The collar of his shirt curled at the edges and the front of it was smeared with grime. He had the general appearance of a man who had spent the night on a park bench.
He continued to fix the Saint with an inquisitorial glare. Simon waved a hand towards the marble goddess.
“Has horrible Hecate told you anything yet?” he asked. “Opened up any new avenues of investigation?”
“No. Why should it? It’s just a very interesting work of ancient art,” Norbert said defensively.
“Vraiment?”
The Saint drawled the word so slowly and with such an inflection of cynical reverence that Professor Norbert flinched.
“I am just trying to make my studies,” he stammered, wrenching his gaze away and trying instead to concentrate on opening the carpenter’s rule he took from his pocket. “But trivial distractions make my task so much harder.”
Simon took the rule from his fumbling fingers and opened it out to its full length. He looked from Norbert to the statue and back again, and then proffered the metre of wood to the other’s hand like a general presenting a sword.
“I hope she measures up to your expectations,” he said suggestively; and while Norbert was trying to work out a double entendre Simon patted him encouragingly on the shoulder and leisurely climbed the ladder to the storehouse above.
Which in its own way was as good an exit as the circumstances allowed, he reflected as he made his way back to the château. He would have wished for more time to follow up his own discovery, but was sufficiently grateful that the professor’s fortuitous absence had allowed him the time to make it.
The question was, had Norbert long since beaten him to it? And where did that melodramatically hidden doorway lead?
The Saint would have to find some more answers for himself, which foreshadowed a possibly sleepless night of further exploring when he would be better equipped for the excursion.
He re-entered the château through the kitchens with the intention of going to the library to continue his struggle with the medieval French of the Templar records, but a sound of voices from the dining-room stopped him.
They were raised to that pitch just below shouting which is the key of an argument that is about to crescend into a row. Simon tiptoed noiselessly over and stood with his ear against the door. There was no need to look through the keyhole to identify the contestants, for the more forceful of the two voices could only belong to Jeanne Corday, while the other defiantly apologetic tones were undoubtedly those of Henri Pichot.
“Yes, sir; no, sir! What sort of man are you?” the girl was sneering. “They treat you like a guest, and you treat them as if you were a servant.”
“It is not like that,” Henri whined. “There are ways of doing things. You do not understand them like I do.”
“You mean I don’t curtsy every time they walk into a room.”
“It is not as simple as that,” Henri protested. “I must be careful. I am doing everything I can.”
“If you were half the man Philippe is, everything would be settled by now,” his fiancée countered spitefully. “In two days I am going back to Paris. With or without your cheap ring.”
“But you said...”
“With or without your ring,” Jeanne repeated coldly. “It’s up to you.”
Simon just had time to move back from the door before it was flung open. Jeanne Corday stormed past him without acknowledgement. Henri stood gaping dumbly at her retreating figure.
“A lovers’ tiff?” Simon asked sympathetically, and the lawyer rounded on him with uncharacteristic violence.
“Go to hell,” he snarled, and hurried after his lady love.
Simon found Pascal and Jules on the vineyard slopes, and shared an al fresco worker’s lunch with them before excusing himself for the private siesta which he felt that his constitution required.
Soon after six o’clock, refreshingly bathed and very casually spruced up, he made his way back down towards the chai.
The huddle of outbuildings formed three sides of a rectangle with the fourth side open to a panoramic view of the valley. The party was prepared in the courtyard between the buildings. Two long trestle tables had been loaded with eatables and wooden benches placed against the walls. Empty barrels served as extra tables or chairs as the occasion demanded. A couple of large casks had been set out on stands, and the permanent and seasonal toilers of the vineyard were already busy sampling the wine they had made the year before.
Yves and Mimette strolled from group to group chatting hospitably with anyone. Philippe stood a little apart from the crowd, a slightly condescending smile playing at the corner of his mouth as he sipped his wine. Henri and Jeanne Corday sat together on one of the benches without speaking. It was plain from the stiffness of their poses and the lack of conversation that their tempers had not cooled since the morning. There was no sign of either Gaston or Professor Norbert. The Saint had not expected the professor to leave his work for such frivolity, but he was surprised that the old foreman was not yet present.
As he stood and surveyed the scene, he discovered Pascal and Jules, and was about to walk over and join them when Jeanne Corday rose and hurried across towards him. Henri gazed sullenly after her but made no move to follow.
She was wearing a blouse that was intended to appear two sizes too small. The matching green skirt was equally tight and equally brief. The conversation of the two students might have proved more intelligent, but the Saint was only human. He bestowed his most dazzling smile on her. It was returned with a flash of polar white caps.
“Alors, vous voici,” she greeted him brightly. “Among the peasants.”
“Vous aussi,” Simon responded. “Enjoying yourself?”
“Are you kidding?”
Her eyes flicked shamelessly over him and he returned the compliment with an equally brazen appraisal.
“What’s the matter?”
Jeanne sighed wearily and sipped her drink. It was not the colour of wine, and he suspected that it was stronger.
“I mean, it’s all very nice here, but it’s so quiet, so open, just fields and things. I mean, it’s so...”
“Rural,” suggested the Saint helpfully.