Leslie Charteris - The Saint Around the World

“Just like that, on the spur of the moment.”

“The thought of murder may have been in his mind before. It needed only the opportunity, the right circumstance, to send a message down his arm to the trigger. A very carefully planned murder may be good, if it succeeds, but the more elaborately it is prepared, the more risk there is that the preparation may be discovered. A murder on impulse can be just as good, and even harder to prove. But it is still murder. I have thought a lot about these things.”

“But Mademoiselle Zeult told me that Oddington had already made a will in her favor. So killing him would get McGeorge nowhere.”

“Can you swear that McGeorge knew that? If not, the proof remains that he had motive.”

The muscles in the Saint’s jaw flickered under the skin. It was all presumptive, all circumstantial, and yet under the French criminal code which requires the accused to prove his innocence rather than the prosecution to prove his guilt, it could be a wicked case to beat.

“What happens next?” he asked.

“I have telegraphed to Toulon. I do not have the equipment or qualifications to do any more here. In the morning an Inspecteur of the Police Judiciaire will arrive and take charge. If you wish to help your friend, I would suggest that you send for an attorney.”

“I’m not interested in helping anyone,” said the Saint grimly. “I only knew Monsieur Oddington a few hours, but I liked him very much. If he was murdered, I want someone to go to the guillotine for it.”

The gendarme nodded.

“He was perhaps a little eccentric, but I think everyone loved him. And I am employed to serve justice, monsieur .”

Simon doubled his right fist into a tight knot and ground it slowly into the palm of his left hand. The exasperation that found an outlet in that controlled gesture went all the way up his arms into the muscles of his chest. His eyes were narrowed between a crinkle of hard lines.

It was a cut-and-dried case… and yet something was wrong with it. The instinctive understanding of crime which was his special peculiar gift told him so, brushing aside superficial logic. The infuriating frustration came from trying to pinpoint the flaw. It wasn’t a straightforward problem like listening to a musical recording with in expert ear and spotting one or two false notes that had been played. It was more as if one or two whole instruments were micrometrically off key, playing perfectly consistently as units and yet infinitesimally out of tune, so that the entire performance was elusively discordant.

“There are still inconsistencies,” he said, groping. “I heard McGeorge disagree with his uncle quite openly. Once or twice he was almost rude. He made sarcastic remarks that Monsieur Oddington might easily have resented. Would he have risked that if he was so anxious to stay in his uncle’s good graces?… And about Mademoiselle Zeult. A man who is really infatuated is just as likely to fly into a rage with anyone who says derogatory things about his girl as he is to wonder if they might be true. Perhaps more likely. Why would McGeorge risk running her down so openly when he could have been much more subtle?”

“Perhaps because he was stupid.”

“But just now you thought he was rather clever.”

The gendarme lifted his shoulders and arms and opened his hands in the Latin gesture which says everything and commits itself to nothing.

“The investigation will decide which is true, monsieur .”

“Listen,” said the Saint. “You told me you did a lot of thinking about these things. So I imagine that being the village cop in a place like this is not your idea of a life’s career. You may never have a chance like this again. Instead of waiting for the boys from Toulon to investigate and decide everything, suppose you could hand them a case that was all wrapped up and tied with ribbons. Would that help you to get a transfer to some place where you could find some serious detecting to do?”

The gendarme studied him shrewdly.

“Because I am interested in crime, I know who you are, Monsieur le Saint . I will hear what you suggest, so long as it is not against the law.”

“I only want you to let me play a hunch,” Simon said, “and stand by to cash in on it if it pays off.”

A new exhilaration surged into him like a flood as he walked back to Oddington’s villa in the failing dusk. It was a lift of spirit with no more sober foundation than the fact that at last he had stopped being a spectator and had something to do. But there was an energy of wrath in it too, for he could not think of the death of Waldo Oddington as the mere impersonal data in an abstract problem. It is more common in stories that the murder victim is an evil character whom many people have good reason to hate. In real life, it is more often the well-meaning innocent who has the bad luck to stand in the way of some less worthy person’s greed or ambition, and who dies without even realizing that he had an enemy. But if only villains got knocked off, Simon thought savagely, there wouldn’t be much incentive to try to convict murderers.

He went in at the unlocked door of the villa and fumbled for a light switch inside the living room before he remembered that there was no electricity. He took out his lighter and struck it. From a chair near the terrace, Nadine Zeult looked at him unblinkingly.

“There is a lamp on the table,” she said.

He went over to it, raised the glass chimney, and tilted his lighter. Illumination spread out to fill the room as the lamp flame took over and he adjusted the wick.

The girl continued to watch him without expression. She had put on a plain black dress with only a touch of white at the collar. There were no tears on her cheeks, but her eyes were puffy and shadowed.

“Are you all right?” he said. “The gendarme kept me answering so many questions.”

“What could you tell him?”

“I had a job to convince him that I scarcely know McGeorge at all.”

“Why did he do it?” she said, in a dry and aching monotone. “Why?”

The Saint used his lighter again, on a cigarette. There was still one crevice in which a wedge could be started, which could open a split through which anything might fall. He saw nothing to be gained by waiting another moment to strike there. Win or lose, there would be no better time to try it — the test that Waldo Oddington had agreed to, but which had not been made.

“One thing came out,” he said flatly. “It seems that everybody was wrong about Uncle Waldo — just like they were about your grandfather. He wasn’t a rich man at all. It turns out he didn’t have a dime.”

Her eyes stayed on him so fixedly that they seemed hypnotized. And then, faintly and hollowly, she began to laugh.

It was a thin racking laughter, almost soundless, that shook her whole body and yet had nothing to do with mirth.

“So you are just like the others,” she said. “I expect you would believe that I wanted someone to kill him. Perhaps even that I somehow helped to arrange it. I thought better of you. Oh, you fool!” She stood up suddenly, straight and quivering. “Let me show you something.”

She crossed the room to the desk and jerked open a drawer. If she had brought out a gun he would hardly have been surprised, she was shaken with such an intensity of passion, but instead it was only a cheap cardboard file that she spilled out on the top of the desk. The papers scattered under her hands as she skimmed through them, until she found what she wanted. She brought it back and thrust it at him.

“Read that!”

Simon took it. It was on a chastely discreet letterhead that said only “INFINITE ENTERPRISE CORPORATION,” above the address, with the words engraved even smaller in the left-hand corner: “Office of the Chairman.” He read: