“That is still only a theory from a roman policier,” Yves intervened soothingly. “There may be some other explanation altogether. Until we know, we do not have to think we are all criminals.”
It was an argument that seemed to make little impression. Minutes after the service of coffee, Simon found himself left in the small salon alone with Mimette, who had declined Yves’s discreet offer to see her to her room.
“I’m flattered,” said the Saint, after the door had closed, “that you aren’t terrified to be left at the mercy of a well-known outlaw.”
“Évidemment, je suis idiote,” she said, looking straight at him, “but I would trust you more than anyone here, except my own father.”
He took the liberty of replenishing his snifter of Armagnac.
“What I’d like to know,” he said, “is why Philippe wants me in the Bastille.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Mimette said bitterly.
He shook his head.
“It’s too obvious. That’s what worries me. Naturally if he killed Gaston, he’d be specially keen to see the murder pinned on me. But however you feel about your uncle, you can’t think he’s stupid. I can’t see him being so unsubtle, in a way that would make anyone think what you’re thinking.”
“Well, what else would turn him so much against you?”
Simon paced across the room and back, scowling at the inoffensive walls. His answers themselves came out as questions.
“Because to him the most important thing is to get the whole scandal swept under the carpet, to get anyone arrested who isn’t part of the Florian household, and I’m the most suspectable outsider?... Or because he has quite another guilty secret, which he’s afraid I might stumble on if I’m allowed to stay around here and play detective?... How nice it would be to be a mind-reader!”
He subsided on to the settee beside her. He was exasperated by the passive role that had been thrust upon him, by having to expand theories while waiting for something else to happen, when his own instinct had always been for positive action. But what action was possible?
He wished, suddenly, that he could have found himself there at Ingare with no mystery to cloud the pleasure of discovering his possible remote link with its ancient history — and its present beautiful descendant.
They sat listening to the lulling whisper of the wind through the ivy and watching the moon lay a shifting golden path across the lawn. The breeze carried the subtle smells of the countryside to freshen and clear heads blocked by half-truths and unanswered questions. A few wisps of grey drifted lazily across a sky of purple and diamonds. It was a night created for making love, not thinking about murder or sifting the secrets of the long dead.
Mimette sighed deeply, and the Saint put his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer.
“Simon, when will it end?” she whispered, and he stroked her hair with gently caressing fingers and did not reply at once.
“I wish I knew,” he said at length. “But it can’t be long.”
His hands traced the delicate outline of her profile. He had never seen her look more exciting or more vulnerable. He looked into her eyes and saw stirring in their depths a longing and a frightened urgency that he had never seen before, a plea that he was incapable of refusing.
Her mouth parted at the touch of his lips, and it was a long time before either of them returned to an awareness of their surroundings.
3
Simon Templar’s career made many tiresome demands of him, and the hour at which he finished breakfast the following morning was one of them. He was enjoying his second cup of coffee by the time the rest of the household began to wander downstairs in search of their first.
Mimette was the first to appear. She looked at him uncertainly for a moment. She studiously busied herself with her food, masking any embarrassment with a screen of small talk.
As the Saint had hoped, Yves was the next to enter the dining-room. He held out his hand to greet Simon with the utmost cordiality.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Templar. Vous avez bien dormi?”
It is an immutable tenet of French good manners, often baffling to strangers, that a guest must be greeted every day with a handshake and a query as to whether he slept well. The Saint responded punctiliously, and then came straight to the matter that had brought him out of his bed so early.
“I need to go into Carpentras this morning to see about my car. Have you a car I could borrow?”
Yves regarded him hesitantly, his confidence in his guest wrestling with inevitable suspicion. It was patently an excuse rather than a reason, but he did not ask why the Saint could not simply telephone the garage. Perhaps it was politeness, or more likely because he was just too tired to care.
Philippe, who had arrived just in time to hear the request, had no such inhibition.
“I thought we had all given our word to be at Olivet’s disposition here,” he said.
“I shall be, whenever he wants me,” Simon replied calmly. “I’m not planning to run away. In fact, you’d have to kick me out bodily to get rid of me now, before the great Ingare mystery has been solved.”
Almost as if apologising for his earlier doubts, Yves said: “Yes, of course, you can take my car.”
“But today is the meeting of the Confrérie Vinicole,” Mimette reminded him.
Yves shrugged his shoulders apathetically.
“What does it matter? They can do without me for one week. They will have heard about what has happened. I don’t want to listen to their gossip and answer their questions.”
“But you always go,” Mimette insisted. “He can take my car.”
Yves looked at his daughter with weary eyes. He sat hunched over the table, idly stirring his untasted coffee as if even the task of lifting the cup would require an effort he no longer possessed.
“What use is the Confrérie when there is no vin?” he asked wryly.
“I don’t understand,” said Mimette.
“Don’t you?” Yves sighed. “It is really very simple. We needed a good harvest this year—”
“And we had one.”
“Yes, Mimette. But Gaston’s murder...” Yves shivered. “When the news is reported—”
“What your father means,” Philippe said quite brutally, “is that when it becomes known that bodies are found floating in vats at Château Ingare, nobody is going to rush out and buy our wine, however much of it there is or however good it may be.”
“I’m afraid you must expect the headlines,” said the Saint more gently. “It’s the sort of story news editors dream about. FAITHFUL RETAINER FOUND DEAD IN CHATEAU RIDDLE, et cetera. That’s why the murderer went to all the trouble of moving Gaston’s body from the cottage. Whoever wants you out is prepared to go to any lengths to help you on your way.”
“But I thought that Gaston was killed because—”
“Yes, of course,” Simon interrupted quickly. The last thing he wanted at that moment was to involve Yves in speculations about the treasure. “But somebody also saw it as an opportunity to hurt the business, and he made the most of it.”
“And it is more important for me to be thinking how we are going to cope with that, than to attend a luncheon meeting of the Confrérie,” Yves concluded. “So, Mimette, when you have finished, will you please show Monsieur Templar where to find my car.”
“Merci infiniment” said the Saint sincerely. “I shall try to take good care of it.”
When he left the dining-room with Mimette soon afterwards, the gendarme whom Olivet had left as a watchdog was standing in the hall, looking very official and determined, if perhaps a little vague as to what he was supposed to be determined about.