Yves was standing in front of the fireplace with his hands clasped behind his back. Philippe and Mimette sat at opposite ends of the sofa while Henri stood by the window. Jeanne Corday was lounging with practised poise against the wall beside her fiancé, watching the spiralling smoke from her cigarette with affected boredom.
“So good of you to join us,” said Philippe.
“You make me feel like one of the family,” the Saint replied sweetly.
He strolled composedly across to the collection of bottles and glasses on a side table. Jeanne’s welcome was warmer. She smiled and almost mouthed a kiss as he passed, and the Saint winked back. Henri scowled at both of them.
“Simon, where have you been?” asked Mimette, with puzzled concern in her voice.
He glanced down at himself, and tried to dust off some of the traces of his desperate scramble back to the battlements before pouring himself a stiff measure of malt and perching himself on the edge of the table.
“Just hanging about,” he said lightly. “And where is the local Lecoq? Gone home already, or is he disguised as that sentry at the door?”
“Sergeant Olivet wanted to see my uncle’s cottage. Charles has taken him,” supplied Henri.
The Saint looked inquiringly at Mimette, and the slight shake of her head told him that their visit had not been discussed.
“Exactly where have you been, Monsieur Templar?” Yves asked temperately. “Surely you knew the police would want to see you?”
The Saint smiled.
“The police always want to see me. Actually I went to the tower to admire the view, only I nearly became part of it.”
In clipped undramatic sentences he told them the basics of what had happened.
“The professor was on his way to tell you the good news, but unfortunately I spoiled his moment of glory,” he concluded.
Norbert had stayed by the door but he still could not avoid the Saint’s searching gaze. He squirmed uncomfortably in the focus of the eyes turned towards him.
“A shocking accident — a miraculous escape,” he mumbled. “Really, there should be signs warning people away from some parts of these ancient buildings.”
“Oh, Simon! You could have been killed,” breathed Mimette.
The Saint shrugged deprecatingly. The incident was already fading from his mind, crowded out by more immediate concerns. Risks were part and parcel of his vocation, and he dismissed them as quickly as most men would have forgotten a slight slip on an icy sidewalk.
“What sort of cop is this Sergeant Olivet?” he asked, when the subject of his escape from a squishy death had been briefly exhausted.
“Olivet? He seems efficient enough,” answered Yves neutrally.
Mimette was more forthcoming.
“He is ambitious, I think. I’ve talked to him several times, he has always come himself when we have had any trouble. The last time was just after the fire at the barn.”
Philippe looked at his watch and asked irritably: “What’s keeping the damn man? Does he expect us to sit around here all night?”
Almost as if he had been waiting for his cue, the door opened to admit the subject of Philippe’s annoyance.
He was small for a policeman, scarcely average height, and his khaki uniform was cut to a degree of perfection rarely attained by police tailors. His hair, which was meticulously trimmed, was as black and shiny as his shoes, and the sheen of his belt and the brightness of the buckle would have won applause from any sergeant-major. His face was tanned and smooth but saved from being bland by a pair of piercing black eyes that darted continuously from person to person.
A couple of paces behind the sergeant came Charles and after him the gendarme from the hall, who no longer appeared lethargic as he closed the door and placed himself in front of it, his hand resting on the holster on his belt.
Olivet nodded to Yves but walked towards the Saint. In his left hand he carried his pillbox cap and in his right a small package wrapped in sacking. He placed both carefully on the table before addressing the Saint.
“Monsieur Simon Templar, I am Sergeant Olivet. I am here to make preliminary inquiries into the murder of Gaston Pi-chat.”
His tone was quiet but authoritative, and he appeared very conscious that he was the centre of interest and clearly intended to keep matters that way.
“Good for you,” Simon drawled, sipping his drink.
“I was surprised when I was told that you were a guest at In-gare,” Olivet continued. “It is not the sort of place where one expects to meet the famous Simon Templar.”
“Oh, I get around to the most respectable places,” the Saint replied coolly.
“It is interesting, though,” Olivet mused, and seemed to be talking more to himself than to anyone else, “that a Templar should go out of his way to visit a place once so closely associated with the Templiers. Almost too extraordinary a coincidence, one might say.”
“You might, but I wouldn’t,” the Saint countered. The interview was developing into a verbal fencing match with more hazards than he had anticipated. He had only expected to answer the normal when, where, why, and how type of questions that he was used to being asked in such circumstances.
“Until I came here,” he said, “you could have written everything I knew about the Templars on a postcard and still had room for the stamp. I was driving from Avignon, heading for the Riviera. I picked up a couple of hitch-hikers and gave them a lift here. When we arrived, a couple of hoodlums were setting fire to the barn. I did what I could to help, and Mademoiselle Florian kindly invited me to stay when my car broke down. It’s as simple as that.”
Olivet’s eyes stopped their perpetual motion and bored into the Saint.
“The car that the arsonists used was stolen from Avignon that morning,” he said at last. “It is interesting that you were also in Avignon at the time.”
“Me and a few thousand others. So the idea is that I hired a couple of voyous to burn down the barn, picked up a pair of hitch-hikers as a cover, and arranged to arrive on the scene in the nick of time to prove myself a hero.”
Olivet appeared to consider the possibility.
“It would have been an ingenious plan to ingratiate yourself, worthy of the famous Saint.”
The famous Saint sighed.
“Or a brilliant theory that might get a gendarme promoted? Unfortunately his superiors might have just enough brains to think he’d been out too long in the hot sun.”
Olivet flushed. He said coldly: “I have heard about your attitude to authority, Monsieur Templar. I advise you not to try such tactics with me.”
“And I advise you to stop trying to dream up ridiculous theories and get on with finding Gaston’s murderer. If you want my help you can have it.”
“Help,” Olivet rolled the word meditatively. “Perhaps you can help to identify this.”
Carefully he undid the package he had brought in, to reveal a short poker. It was about ten inches long and topped with an elaborately tooled brass handle. Holding it delicately in a fold of its erstwhile wrapping, he held it up like an exhibit.
The Saint’s eyes narrowed as he inspected it. He needed no one to tell him the origin of the red stickiness on the end of the shaft.
Olivet turned so that the others in the room could see it.
“This was found in Gaston Pichot’s cottage. I believe it to be the murder weapon.”
Mimette looked quickly away, but for the others it appeared to hold a morbid fascination. Olivet returned his attention to the Saint.
“Do you recognise it?”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess. It’s a poker.”
Olivet tensed at the Saint’s flippancy, and his voice took on a harder edge.