“I’m sorry, Henri, but that isn’t a unique observation either. You must get another writer. It’s the stock line at the end of Act Three, Scene Two. I’ve seen the play more times than you.”
He put his arm around Mimette and drew her close. His main hope now was to play on Pichot’s nerves until he goaded the lawyer into a mistake, while at the same time building up the girl’s confidence until he could rely on her reactions. As a plan of campaign it was about as watertight as the Titanic but there was no alternative.
Henri gestured towards the tomb.
“Get over there.”
Still holding Mimette, Simon backtracked towards the foot of the sarcophagus until he felt the cold stone behind him. Nor-bert was standing on the other side of the tomb, his eyes switching uncertainly from Henri to the Saint. Pichot spoke without looking at him.
“Search him.”
The professor opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and in the end said nothing. He scuttled around the casket table and patted the Saint’s clothes in the same way he himself had been checked over a short while before. His clumsiness made it impossible for Pichot to keep a steady bead on the Saint, and it would have been ridiculously easy to grab the little man and use him as a shield if it would not have meant leaving Mimette unprotected. Regretfully Simon let the opportunity pass.
Norbert turned to shake his head at Henri and the young lawyer smiled.
“No weapon? How reckless of you,” he observed, with a little more assurance.
Silently the Saint agreed, although he was inclined to place the oversight in the category of criminal negligence rather than mere recklessness. Aloud he said: “I didn’t know it was going to be this kind of party. Anyway, I thought pokers were more in your line.”
He was surprised by the effect his words had on Norbert. As soon as Henri had entered the crypt, Simon had accepted the lawyer’s guilt as a matter of fact and had since been mentally fitting the final pieces of the pattern into place. He knew that Mimette must already have observed the revelation, and in the same way he had assumed the professor to be Henri’s full partner and had not given that association a second thought. Now he realised that his assumption had been wrong.
“Henri! No! You killed Gaston?”
There was no doubting the genuineness of Norbert’s shocked disbelief.
Henri’s lips curled. He was clearly beginning to enjoy his moment in the centre of the stage.
“Why so astonished, Professor?” His tone was bitingly sarcastic. “Scruples? They never bothered you before.”
“But not murder!” Norbert protested vehemently. “You told me—”
“What I thought you would accept. To keep you quiet, while I could use you.”
“But why kill Gaston, Henri?” demanded Mimette fiercely. “What did your uncle ever do to hurt you?”
Simon supplied the answer, working out the details as he spoke them.
“He realised that Henri was trying to ruin the business, but he hesitated to expose his own nephew. He tried to warn me by telling me not to trust anyone, whoever they might be, but I was still thinking about Philippe. I should have realised that Henri was the only one who could have stirred up the workers against me. He was the only one they would have listened to. They were his friends and he’d grown up among them.”
Pichot said tonelessly: “He kept going on about loyalty, about the family. Like all the Pichots he was a serf at heart. He couldn’t understand that the Florians are not royalty and Ingare is not a kingdom. Only I had the will and the brains to outgrow that antiquated mental bondage. He wouldn’t see that we had as much right to the treasure as the Florians, if we found it. He told me he was going to show the map to Yves. I couldn’t let that happen.”
The Saint had always been mildly sceptical about the propensity of story-book villains for unravelling their own mysteries in the final showdown scene, but if Henri was determined to conform to that convenient convention he was not going to discourage him.
“After all,” he prompted, “you’d gone to a lot of trouble to get it.”
“For years I’ve searched for it,” said Pichot forcefully. “Why do you think I kept coming back here, Mimette? So you and your father could patronise me?”
“We should have known better than to expect any gratitude for all we’d done for you,” she retorted scornfully.
Norbert sagged against the side of the tomb. His face was grey and he clutched at the stone to steady himself. The self-satisfaction of a few minutes before was gone as if it had never existed.
“But you said there would be no violence. You promised!” he protested furiously. “Just let Philippe get control of the château, and he would put you in charge and we could look for the treasure openly...”
Pichot’s clipped humourless laugh cut through the professor’s spluttering.
“And you believed me. You’re a fool, Professor. You even thought the seance was for real. Philippe’s interest in buying In-gare was waning. I had to use the treasure as a bait to make him stay. A message from the dead. It was a good idea, but Templar spoiled it, just as he threatened to spoil everything.”
“So when you went prepared to kill Gaston, you also went prepared to frame me for it,” said the Saint. “And when even that didn’t work, you tried to kill Yves by jiggering the brakes on his Mercedes. Which didn’t kill either of us. Not having a great deal of success, are you, Henri?” he concluded with mocking sympathy.
“Success?” Pichot seemed to savour the word. “Perhaps not at first, but it could not have worked out better. I heard you and Mimette talking about exploring the tunnel, and then I saw how I could still get Ingare and dispose of you both as well.”
The nervous tension that he had shown when he pushed Mimette into the crypt was only a shadow behind his eyes. He was confident now of his control of the situation and relishing the power it gave him.
“Do tell us how,” Simon invited.
“You and Mimette will simply disappear. Have you eloped together? No — you have kidnapped her. In a few days the ransom notes begin to arrive. One from Marseille, I think — yes — and the next from Paris. A piece of Mimette’s jewellery with each one. And then, nothing.”
“Except my car left here.”
“Abandoned because it was too conspicuous. When you went to Carpentras, you arranged to be picked up by an accomplice.”
“Very neat.”
“Without his precious daughter, Yves will not have the heart to hold out for long against Philippe, and I will be free to find the treasure. So you see I do win in the end.”
“But I have found the treasure,” Norbert insisted. “I told you.”
Pichot snorted derisively. He pointed with his free hand to the casket, but his gun never wavered from its aim at the Saint’s chest.
“That scroll? You must think me as naive as you are, Professor. But the box, that is valuable, and there will be more like it, with more precious things in them.”
“But the map was a trick, don’t you understand?” pleaded Norbert passionately.
Pichot’s pudgy face set into harder lines, and there was a more dangerous coldness in his eyes.
“It is you who are trying to trick me. You want the treasure for yourself. Be careful, Professor, or perhaps the Saint will shoot you as he kidnaps Mimette.”
For a moment he appeared to be thinking out that possibility, and then slowly he nodded.
“Yes, it might be better that way in any case. I don’t need you any more. I can’t trust you. We shall see. Open the tomb, Professor. It will be a fitting resting place for a Florian and a Templar.”
“I would prefer it to the company of at least one Pichot,” said Mimette disdainfully.