“A rather fine one. You see the handle carries the Florian crest encircled by a large spray of daffodils as the base of the motif.”
“Very pretty,” Simon observed impassively. “So what?”
“It seems too good to have been owned by the murdered man, yet it was found in his cottage. How would you explain that?”
“Perhaps the murderer took it with him. I’m told that people who intend to put out other people’s lights quite often like the reassurance of knowing they have the required blunt instrument in hand,” the Saint replied.
Olivet seemed delighted with the suggestion. The Saint decided that if he ever left the gendarmerie he would be a cinch on the stage. He was certainly making a great build-up to his dramatic moment — whatever that was to be.
Olivet turned to Charles, who had been standing near the door with the attentive self-effacement of the perfectly trained servant.
“I believe you recognised it?” he said, and the major-domo nodded slowly.
“It is one of a set.”
“And how many sets like this are there in the château?”
“Only one exactly like that. The crest is on all of them, but the flowers differ according to the room the set was made for.”
Olivet paused theatrically before delivering his apocalyptic question: “And where is this set kept?”
The servant looked directly at the Saint for the first time, and Simon could see the accusing bitterness in his eyes.
“In the room of Monsieur Templar.”
2
Simon Templar made no effort to hide the shock of astonishment that jolted him.
He had not really studied the chasing on the poker’s handle when Olivet displayed it, and even the mention of daffodils had not immediately rung a bell. The symbolic painting on the door of his guest room, and Charles’s explanation of it, were far enough in the past, and far enough removed in context from Gaston’s death and the present situation, for Olivet’s bombshell to catch him completely off his guard.
At that, to a shrewd analyst, the very transparency of his reaction might have been the most convincing evidence of his innocence. But the Saint knew at once that he could not count on that kind of shrewdness. As he looked around the room and watched the significance of the old retainer’s words registering, he realised that it was going to take all his resourcefulness to ride out this one.
It was not utterly astounding that the murderer had attempted to frame him: He was, after all, the ideal candidate. What took him aback was the manner in which the frame had been so subtly thought out and cold-bloodedly accomplished. After the amateurish ransacking of Gaston’s cottage, he had not credited the murderer with the degree of finesse that had just been demonstrated.
In the cold light of a court-room, any competent advocate would have shown Olivet’s find to be blatantly circumstantial. But in the charged atmosphere of Ingare, the Saint was acutely aware that it would take some fast talking for him to remain on the scene long enough to discover the person responsible.
The silence was growing more tense with every second that crawled past, until the dropping of the proverbial pin would have sounded like the detonation of a mine. The Saint seized the initiative by being the one who broke it.
“Well, leaving a great clumsy clue like that doesn’t seem to me like the famous Simon Templar,” he remarked with recovered nonchalance. “I hope it doesn’t make you think silly thoughts about me, Sergeant. I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to bring out the bracelets and wait for the medal if I were you.”
“I don’t think the bracelets, as you call them, would be necessary,” retorted Olivet suavely, and Simon saw the gendarme at the door flip open the top of his holster and rest his hand on the butt of his pistol.
“You can’t be seriously thinking of arresting me?” said the Saint with the utmost incredulity.
“Pas encore, peut-être,” Olivet said, with deliberate emphasis on the second word.
Philippe banged his glass down on the arm of the sofa with a force that sent the liquid inside slopping over the rim.
“Why not?” he bellowed. “If he is a well-known criminal—”
Olivet turned to him and spoke sharply.
“Monsieur Florian, you will kindly let me carry out this investigation in my own way.”
“What the sergeant means,” Simon explained, in the tone a teacher might use to a particularly slow-witted child, “is that he is not yet sure enough of his evidence. And he doesn’t want to end up looking a fool. One fool is enough for any party.”
Philippe pointed to the poker that Olivet still held.
“Not sure of his evidence?” he repeated scornfully. “What do you call that?”
“I call that a frame. What do you call it?” the Saint returned evenly, and before Philippe could renew his protest turned to Charles. “Are the guest rooms in this house locked up when the guests are out?”
The major-domo looked uncertainly at Olivet, and waited until the sergeant indicated that he should answer the question before replying that they were not.
“And there is only yourself and your wife to look after them?”
“Oui.”
“Which means,” Simon continued, turning back to Olivet, “that anyone, including the estimable Charles himself, at almost any time, could have lifted the poker with hardly any risk of being seen.”
“And yet you yourself never noticed that it was missing!”
“Why should I? There’s been no need for a fire lately. More to the point, Charles did not miss it, or is not admitting if he did. And if I had left it at Gaston’s, I could certainly have retrieved it when I went there earlier this evening.”
Olivet was momentarily startled out of the complacent attitude he had adopted.
“You went there? Why?”
“Because when I helped to lift Gaston’s body out of the vat, I could tell that he had been dead for at least six hours. He had been recovering from a fall, resting at the cottage. So that seemed a likely place for him to have been murdered. While we were waiting for you to arrive, Mademoiselle Mimette and I went there to have a look.”
“You did not mention this, mademoiselle,” said Olivet suspiciously.
“I must have forgotten,” she said carelessly.
With a frown, the gendarme turned again to the Saint, inviting him to go on.
“When we got there, the place had been ransacked. The poker may have been there, but as everything was in such a mess I thought it best to leave it as it was until you had seen it. If I’d been stupid enough to leave a murder weapon behind, I could easily have removed it then. But I wasn’t even looking for blunt instruments at the time.”
The Saint saw Philippe start.
“Ransacked? But Gaston had nothing worth stealing.”
“That’s what I thought-but how do you know?” the Saint inquired, and Philippe suddenly found himself again the centre of attention.
“I don’t,” he said quickly. “But Gaston was only a foreman. How could he have had anything worth killing for?”
“Somebody obviously thought he had,” the Saint pointed out. “I wonder if they found it.”
Olivet was beginning to look uncomfortable. The aura of confident authority that had surrounded him a few minutes earlier was rapidly dissolving. He spoke cautiously, weighing his words.
“I think the rest of this interview should be conducted at the gendarmerie.”
The Saint smiled. To certain other detectives in other spots of the globe that smile in itself would have been sufficient enough warning that the battle they thought they had won was really just beginning.