Leslie Charteris - The Saint in the Sun

"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 flatly. "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 proprietorially 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 holdup 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?"

"That 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. "]e 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 naive, Mr. Templar. I'm sure I don't look like a starry-eyed ingenue 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 inevitably 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—"