“This is Bertha Noversham, Mr Templar. I’d like you to have a cocktail with me.”
“Well, thank you, but I’m not sure that I—”
“Don’t tell me that you’ve got another engagement, because I’m fairly sure you haven’t. Anyhow, this needn’t take long, and if you’ll come to my room you can be sure you won’t be embarrassed in public. Just tell me what you like to drink, and I’ll order it while you’re getting here.”
“I remember that you liked champagne cocktails,” said the Saint slowly. “Get in a bottle of Bollinger, and I’ll help you with it.”
The Bollinger was on ice when he arrived, but it was no frostier than the self-assurance of her welcome.
“I’m quite sure you didn’t think for a moment that this was just a social invitation,” she said, “so I’ll come to the point as soon as you’ve done the pouring. Please use only half a lump of sugar, and scrape it well on the lemon peel—don’t put the lemon in. That small glass is cognac, in case you have the common American idea that that improves the taste.”
Simon performed the dispensing with imperturbable good humor.
“All right,” he said. “Start shooting.”
“Very well. I find you quite a likeable person, Mr Templar, in spite of some things that everyone knows about you. So I’d like to save you from making a serious mistake.”
“What about?”
“I understand that until yesterday Natalie was amusing herself by letting you think you were showing her the Côte d’Azur. I don’t know how often she’s done it before, but she certainly told the same tale to the man who gave her some of her diamonds. That was last year, when I first met her. I knew him from one of the garden parties at Camford Castle—a nice old duffer, but quite senile of course.”
The Saint’s eyebrows did not go up through his hair-line like rockets through the ionosphere, but that was only because he had spent more time with poker hands than ballistic missiles.
“Now I know why you thought you had to offer me a drink, anyway,” he remarked.
“Bernie Kovar was at Eden Roc today—you remember, I was talking to him at the Casino last night. We had lunch together. His wife left for Rome this morning, to do the shops and the museums for a week or two, while he’s supposed to be reading scripts. Of course she knows perfectly well what the old goat will be up to most of the time—the gossip columns would tell her if nobody else did—but she only brings it up if he dares to say a word about the money she spends. He didn’t waste a minute inviting Natalie to dinner and asking why no one had ever offered her a screen test. It may make you feel a bit better to know that that’s the real reason why she has to shake you off in such a hurry—not because she seriously thinks you might rob her.”
“That does sound considerate.”
“I don’t know what Natalie has told you about her background, but I’ve heard enough contradictory fragments to believe none of them. I think of her simply as an ambitious girl who is determined to get the most out of her undoubted attractions while they last. That is what every woman does who isn’t a ‘career woman,’ God help her. That’s what I was like at her age, and I’m sure you think I haven’t outgrown it. The difference is that Natalie wants to get away with murder and still have everyone loving her. She’s a dear girl, and I’ve done a lot for her, and I may go on doing it.”
“Then why are you telling me all this?”
Mrs Noversham took a very healthy, unequivocal swig at her champagne cocktail, and indicated that Simon should replenish the glass.
“Because I’m just selfish enough to want to protect myself. It’s all very well for Natalie to spare your vanity by pretending she just thinks it’d be safer not to see you again. But she doesn’t even want to take the responsibility for that idea. She had to make you think I put the idea into her head. I didn’t care at first, until it dawned on me how dangerous that could be, with a man like you. You’d be perfectly capable of stealing my jewels, if you could, just to pay me back for a thing like that—wouldn’t you, Mr Templar?”
Simon brought the refill back to her, and lighted a cigarette.
“When you phoned, I was thinking along those lines,” he said candidly.
“I was sure of it. I don’t like being disloyal to Natalie, but there’s a limit to how far I can go to cover up for her. My jewels mean a lot to me, and I don’t want to worry about your intentions for the rest of the season.”
“It’s nice of you not to put it that I’d be the first person you’d remind the police about if anything happened to you again like last night.”
“I’d prefer to keep this conversation entirely on a pleasant plane. And in any case, I can assure you that nobody, including Natalie, would have much chance of persuading me to take another sleeping pill unless my jewels were in a strong-room.”
The Saint released smoke in a very careful ring. He had thought himself beyond being jolted by any magnitude of female duplicity, but he had never personally encountered anything as transcendent as this.
“This makes life rather difficult,” he said. “Because now I’m liable to think about unkind things I might do to Natalie, rather than to you. Perhaps that hadn’t occurred to you when you decided to save me from myself.”
“I thought I’d made it clear that I was only trying to save myself. Or my possessions. To me, you, Natalie Sheridan, Bernie Kovar, and a lot of other people I meet, are all birds of a feather. I think you all deserve anything you do to each other. That’s why I can still be amused by Natalie, in spite of what I know about her. But she shouldn’t have thrown me to the wolves—or wolf, if I may call you that. If she suffers for it, she has only herself to blame.”
“I’d like to put it more bluntly. Suppose she did get robbed—would you feel obliged to tell the police about this conversation?”
She looked him straight in the eye.
“Mr Templar, if I were sure that as of now you had no grudge against me, I should think it much wiser to mind my own business. It isn’t as if Natalie’s loss would be irreparable. Bernie will give her plenty more jewels, if she plays her cards right”
“I wish I met more people who were so broadminded.”
“However, it won’t be easy,” Mrs Noversham said briskly. “Since what happened last night, she swears she’ll put all her valuables in the hotel safe the minute she walks into the lobby, each and every time she comes home. There’d have to be a hold-up outside, or somewhere like Bernie’s suite AA1 in the new wing of the Hôtel du Cap, where he’s sure to have her reading scenes after dinner.”
“It would be a rather dramatic interruption.”
“I didn’t hear you, Mr Templar. But since you were obviously going to dine alone, you can take me with you to this Chez Francis place, where I have heard the chef turns himself inside out for you. Afterwards we can come back here and play Bézique for as long or as short a time as you can stand it.”
“I’ll make myself a little more presentable,” said the Saint, “and pick you up at eight.”
When he returned he was very presentable indeed, by conventional standards, having changed into a double-breasted dinner jacket of impeccably inconspicuous style and blackness, and she looked him over with visible surprise.
“Don’t think I’m overdoing it,” he said. “This just happens to be the most anonymous costume I know, in a place like this, for stick-ups and such jobs. With an old nylon stocking over the head, it gives nobody anything worth a damn to describe.”
“You needn’t have told me that,” she retorted. “You almost had me believing that there could be some basis for the legend of the gentleman crook.”
Otherwise they spent quite a civilized and sometimes even amusing two and a half hours, and nothing so crude as crime was mentioned again even when the Saint returned her to her sitting-room, played one hand of Bézique with her, and then asked with deliberate expressionlessness if he might call it a night.
“I shall be up for a long time yet,” she said flatl
y. “Probably playing Patience, since you won’t finish this game.”
Simon took shameless advantage of this when he returned to his own room some time after midnight and found the unfriendly inspector of the Police Judiciaire already ensconced proprietarily in the most comfortable armchair, and polluting the atmosphere with a cigar which some countries would have classified as a secret weapon.
“Alors, Monsieur Templar. Let us continue. There is a hold-up reported from Cap d’Antibes. The man is tall, slender but well-built, his features disguised with a stocking, but wearing a smoking like yourself—”
“And like a few thousand other dopes who’ve settled for the idea that women must change their styles every season, but men have now achieved the ultimate costume which they must expect to wear from here to eternity, or until civilization comes to its glorious radioactive end.”
“I am not here to discuss the philosophy of clothing,” said the inspector. “I would like to finish this business and go to bed.”
He was a small dark man with beady eyes and an impatient manner, as if he was perpetually exasperated by people who gratuitously wasted his time by pretending to be innocent.
“I understand your eagerness,” said the Saint mildly. “But isn’t it stretching things a bit for you to be waiting here even before I get home from this alleged caper?”
“This is very easy to explain. Your victims would not have waited two seconds to report the robbery. The gendarmerie at Cap d’Antibes immediately notified me, as is their duty. And electricity travels on telephone wires much faster than you could drive here, especially at this time of the season. While I only had three blocks to walk.”
“Okay,” said the Saint. “I’ll try to finish this even faster. If you’ll permit me…”
He picked up the telephone and asked for Mrs Noversham’s suite by number. She answered so promptly that she might have been waiting for the call.
“This is Simon Templar,” he said. “Would you be amused to hear that I’ve already got a policeman in my room accusing me of a stick-up out at Cap d’Antibes?”
“Does he have any evidence?”
“None that I know of. But it’s the same character who gave me such a bad time this morning. I think he’s just decided to blame me for everything that happens around here, on general principles.”
“How ridiculous,” she said. “Have you told him that you only left me a few minutes ago, after playing Bézique with me all evening?”
“I was wondering if you’d mind telling him yourself.”
She arrived in a few minutes, an overwhelming figure in her war-paint and jangling jewels, and gave Simon an alibi that was a classic of unblushing perjury, even adorning it with details of some of the hands they had played and waving a piece of paper which she said carried the complete scores for the session. In addition, her phraseology left no doubt of her majestic contempt for the intelligence of the police, and of one policeman in particular.
“Alors, mon vieux,” the Saint said to him finally. “You were anxious to get home, I believe. What else is keeping you?”
The inspector stood up, looking somewhat crushed.
“It is only my job,” he mumbled. “Je m’excuse—”
“Je vous en prie,” said the Saint, with exaggerated courtesy, accompanying him to the small vestibule. “Et dormez bien.”
He closed the outer door and returned to the room where Bertha Noversham still stood looking somewhat Wagnerian.
“I don’t know how I should thank you,” he began, and she cut him off unceremoniously.
“Don’t bother. Just hand over those jewels of Natalie’s. I think I can get as good a price for them as you can, and you’ll get your share eventually, but I’ll do the divvying.”
He stared at her frozenly.
“It was nice of you to help me out,” he said, “but I didn’t think you were planning to make a career of it.”
“I can scarcely believe that you’re so naïve, Mr Templar. I’m sure I don’t look like a starry-eyed ingénue who’d do something like this for love. I didn’t even do it for love for Danny Tench.”
“You mean—the man who—”
“My husband. Legally, too, though I never used his name—it sounded too frightfully common.”
“But he had your jewels on him when he fell,” said the Saint slowly. “No, wait a second—I get it. After the yacht job at Ajaccio, and the Métropole at Monte Carlo before that, and God knows how many others before those two, it would have begun to look suspicious if you were always around but never got robbed yourself.”
She nodded.
“It’s pretty easy for a gabby middle-aged frump like me to make friends with a lot of stupid women, and in no time at all we’re comparing jewels and telling each other where we hide them. Danny couldn’t have done half as well without me, and he was the first to admit it. But when he slipped last night—and it would never have happened if he hadn’t had that clever idea of planting something in your room—I made up my mind I still wasn’t going to give up on Natalie’s diamonds, and you were the man to swipe them for me.”
“So you actually did talk her into distrusting me.”
“And I had to be pretty clever about it, too. And it was even more of a job to set up that date with Bernie Kovar. But she really is quite a babe in the woods, if that does anything for your ego. I never set eyes on her before I found her on the Blue Train a few weeks ago, of course…And now,” Mrs Noversham said coldly, “are you going to hand over those sparklers, or shall I have to tell that police inspector what you did to force me to back up your story?”
Simon turned rather sadly towards the little vestibule, at the inevitable identical instant when the inspector made his return entrance from it, on the inevitably unmistakable cue.
He was followed by two agents in uniform, one with a notebook and one carrying a small tape recorder, and both of them trying not to look as if they had strayed out of the Tales of Hoffman.
Without any need to speak, they all watched Mrs Noversham’s face whiten and sag under the crust of make-up which suddenly did not seem to fit any more.
“Now don’t jump to any conclusions,” she said at last, with a desperate attempt to keep the old brassy dominance in her voice. “If you had anyone listening in when he phoned me, you know that I asked if you had any evidence, and he said no, it was only suspicion. So I thought that if I pretended to give him an alibi, and made him believe I was as big a crook as he is, I’d get a confession out of him that you could use. And he was just ready for it when you busted in and spoiled it all. But you can’t guillotine me for trying to help you do the job the taxpayers pay you for. If you even had the gumption to search him right now, he’s probably still got those jewels on him—”
“I’m sorry, Bertha,” Simon said. “But there never was any hold-up. I only asked the Inspector to act as if there had been one, and I promised him that you would do the confessing. He took quite a lot of convincing, and I hate to think what he’d’ve done if you’d let me down.”
Mrs Noversham had one succinct response to that, and she squeezed it through her teeth with all the venom of a professional.
“Stool pigeon!”
“It was rather against my principles,” said the Saint, and he meant it. “In some ways I’d rather have stolen your jewels and called it quits. But you and Danny-boy started the routine by trying to get me in trouble, and then I wanted to get the record straight for Natalie.”
The little inspector cleared his throat irritably.
“Madame, this is not a performance at the Comédie Française. You understand that you will have to accompany us?”
“Only too well, Alphonse,” said Bertha Noversham insultingly.
She started regally towards the door, but as the two agents nervously made way for her she turned back.
“Mr Templar,” she said almost humbly, “why?”
“To use a phrase of your own,” said the Saint, “you shouldn’t have thrown Natalie
to the wolves—or wolf. You made her out to be such an outrageous all-time phony that after I got over the first shock I started to think that if any woman could be such a colossal barefaced liar, so could any other. But I’d never caught Natalie in the smallest dishonesty, myself, whereas I always knew that there’s no such person as the Duke of Camford. And once the question of credibility had come up, there was no doubt about which of you had done the hottest job of selling me the idea of robbing the other…There are several morals in this, Bertha, but I’d say the best one is that before you start beating a path to the door of a man who makes better mousetraps, you should be sure that you’re not a mouse.”
“Madame,” said the inspector impatiently, “one cannot wait for you all night.”
However, he had the grace to pause, albeit restively, before following his cohorts and their evidence and his prize.
“I am indebted for your assistance, Monsieur le Saint, and if perhaps some day I can—”
“I knew you’d think of that, Alphonse,” Simon took him up cheerily, and the little man winced. “Mrs Sheridan may be home already, or she should be at any moment, and I’m sure you won’t mind waiting to vouch for the true story of the last twenty-four hours. There’ll be so many other nights when you can go to bed early, and sleep like a cherub, once you know I’ve got something better to do than climb in and out of windows, at my age.”
ST TROPEZ: THE UGLY IMPRESARIO
“That,” observed Simon Templar, “is quite a sight, even for these parts.”
“And that,” said Maureen Herald, “is what I’ve got to talk to.”
They lay on the dazzling sands of Pampelonne, which are the beaches of St Tropez, gazing out at the sun-drenched Mediterranean where a few white-sailed skiffs criss-crossed on lazy tacks, an assortment of speedboats with water-skiers in tow traced evanescent arabesques among them, and, much closer in, the object of Simon’s comment cruised southwards along the shore line where its occupants could comfortably observe and be observed by the heliophiles on the strand.
The Saint in the Sun (The Saint Series) Page 3
