Лесли Чартерис - The Saint and the Templar Treasure

The castle-mansion itself dominated the hilltop. The main central building of four storeys had clearly been restored from the old fortress, while the lower newer wings had been built with square sawn blocks of more modern masonry. The Saint guessed that the château had developed from the original keep, and that the remains of the wall that ran straight across the hill in front of it would have served as the last line of defence. Perhaps it was there, he mused, that the Templars had made their final stand. It was the sort of place that made one think of knights and archers and sieges. As they drove past the massive base of the once imposing towers of the gatehouse he would not have been surprised if D’Artagnan had swaggered out to greet them.

Between the remains of the inner wall and the château was a rectangular courtyard. Mimette drove across it and stopped in front of a flight of stone steps that swept up to a pair of high iron-studded double doors. Instead of D’Artagnan, a bent-backed major-domo who looked half as old as the house opened a door for them as they reached the top step. He had the appearance and the manner of someone who had been bowing and opening doors all his life, as impersonal as a portrait, listening to everything and hearing nothing.

“Thank you, Charles. You can bring some whisky to the small salon,” said Mimette, hardly glancing at him.

The butler bowed from the shoulders and shuffled off. The Saint looked around him and observed the simplicity of the hall. It was large and airy but almost bare. The floor was paved in plain white marble and a broad staircase of the same stone rose from the far end to serve a wooden gallery that ran around three sides of the hall. A few paintings of long dead Florians hung in ornately gilded frames, and equally heavy armchairs stood against the walls on each side of the three doors that led off it. With the exception of a long trestle table in the centre and the large porcelain bowl that rested upon it, there was no other furniture.

The only other object of interest was a large rock shaped like a gravestone that stood in a recess by the stairs. It was covered with hieroglyphics that appeared to be some form of writing.

As Simon sauntered towards it, the door on his left opened to admit a small man who would have seemed quite at home keeping Snow White company. He could not have been much more than five feet tall, and his lack of inches was not helped by a pair of rounded shoulders and a toddling kind of gait. His chubby face was as round as a full moon, and apart from a few tufts of white hair above his ears he was completely bald.

The new arrival wavered apologetically between the Saint and Mimette.

“Monsieur Norbert, this is...” She had to appeal to the Saint. “I’m sorry, but you haven’t told me your name.”

The Saint smiled. This, finally, was the moment of truth.

“So I haven’t. And you’re going to find it hard to believe. My name is Templar. Simon Templar.”

What’s in a name? The answer depends on whether you have a nice euphonic one like William Shakespeare or were baptised Aloysius Codpiece. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but life would have been a lot harder for poets had it been called a cabbage.

The Saint considered Simon Templar a very satisfactory name and was always interested in the way others responded to it. The disclosure of his identity had been known to evoke a wide range of emotions, from apprehension among those with something to hide, through hatred among those who had cause to wish he had never been born, to blank indifference on the part of those whose reading of newspapers might be confined to the sports or fashion pages.

But on this unique occasion the reactions had to be something special.

Simon was prepared to enjoy the touch of melodrama which he had inevitably created, and he was not disappointed. Watching Mimette, he saw her stiffen as the name registered. The polite smile froze. Her eyes flashed with anger as her first instinct was to suspect him of making some insolent kind of joke.

“It’s true,” he insisted softly. “Would you like to see my passport?”

The blaze died out of her eyes, but they became hard and guarded as the mask of imperturbability slipped back into place.

“How interesting,” she remarked with calculated indifference.

“Interesting! It is more than interesting,” Norbert exclaimed, and the Saint regarded him with renewed curiosity.

He had not ignored the little man’s reaction and had noticed the drooping shoulders straighten and the new light that sparkled in the prominent fishlike eyes at the word “Templar.”

“Monsieur Norbert is an authority on the Templars,” Mimette stated flatly. “He is professor of medieval history at the Sorbonne and is here to try to decipher the inscription on the stone.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” said the Saint cordially, and held out his hand.

Norbert grasped it between both fleshy palms and shook it as if trying to draw water from a pump.

“And to meet you. I would like to talk with you at length,” he enthused. “Do you know your genealogy? How far back can you trace your family? You have almost no accent, but perhaps an émigré family after the Revolution? Yes?”

The Saint winced and retrieved his hand to readjust the handkerchief wrapping. He appeared to consider the questions seriously for a moment.

“A fellow called Adam on my father’s side and a lady named Eve on my mother’s. We haven’t gone beyond that yet,” he replied brightly.

Mimette stepped between them with the adroitness of a cocktail party hostess disengaging two incompatible guests.

“Monsieur Templar is hurt,” she explained. “I was about to tend to his injury.” She turned back to the Saint. “This way, please.”

She began to climb the stairs and the Saint made to follow her but Norbert grabbed his arm.

“I am sorry. But you touch on my obsession. Another time, perhaps?”

The Saint disengaged his sleeve as deftly as possible. He had an unreasonable prejudice against men with damp clutching hands.

“Certainly,” he acceded pleasantly. “I always wondered how Great-great-grandfather made it to England without his head.”

Before the earnest professor could relaunch his attack the Saint had joined Mimette at the top of the stairs. When he looked back Norbert was kneeling beside the stone, with lines of intense concentration furrowing his brow as he scribbled in a small notebook.

“What a character!” commented the Saint, shaking his head in discreet ambiguity.

“Oh, he’s very harmless,” Mimette said. “Quite sweet really when he isn’t going on about the Templars, which is ninety per cent of the time.”

“Where did you find him?”

“We didn’t. He found us. He was in charge of an archaeological dig at Orange when he heard about the stone. He was so excited that he came over and my father asked him to stay for a few days. He has practically lived here ever since.”

“If he hangs around till Christmas you could always put him on top of the tree,” Simon suggested helpfully, but the smile faded from Mimette’s lips and her eyes clouded over again.

“If we are still here at Christmas,” she said wryly, and then, as if regretting her words, quickened her steps briskly.

Simon followed her in silence around the balcony and along a passage leading off to the right. He wondered how long it would take to qualify as a guide to the château. The old house appeared to have been built to no specific plan, as if the rooms had been added haphazardly when and where they were needed. The result was a confusing obstacle course of corridors and staircases. All he could tell of their destination was that it lay somewhere towards the rear of the château in the east wing. After some abrupt turns and arbitrary changes of level they passed through a vast echoing gallery panelled with more stiffly posed portraits of presumable Florian forebears before descending to ground level again via a more modern flight of wooden stairs. They met no one and heard nothing but the sound of their own footsteps. After the sunlit spaciousness of its outdoors the interior of the château seemed oppressive, almost claustrophobic.