Leslie Charteris - Prelude for War

Mr Teal thrust himself sizzlingly forward. He signed to his plain-clothes sergeant.

"Take her outside and get her statement," he gritted.

Then he turned back to the Saint. His eyelids drooped as he fought frantically to maintain some vestige of the pose of somnolent boredom which had been his lifelong defence against all calamities.

"And while that's being done, I'd like to hear what you've got to say."

"Say?" repeated the Saint vaguely. He searched for his lighter. "Why, Claud, I can only say that it all looks most mysterious. But I'm sure it'll all turn out all right. With that brilliant detective genius of yours—"

"Never mind that," Teal said pungently. "I want to hear what you've got to say for yourself. I came here and found you standing over the body."

The Saint shrugged.

"Exactly," he said.

"What do you mean — 'exactly'?"

Mr Teal's voice was not quite so monotonous as he wanted it to be. It tended to slide off its note into a kind of squawk. But that was something that the Saint's ineffable sangfroid always did to him. It was something that always brought Mr Teal to the verge of an apoplectic seizure.

"What do you mean?" he squawked.

"My dear ass," said the Saint patiently, in the manner of one who explains a simple point to a small and dull-witted child, "you said it yourself. You came in and found me standing over the body. You know perfectly well that when I murder people you never come in and find me standing over the body. Now, do you?"

Mr Teal's eyes boggled in spite of the effort he made to control them. The hot porridge came back into his larynx.

"Are you trying to tell me you're in the clear because I came in and found you bending over the body?" he yawped. "Well, this is once when you're wrong! Perhaps I haven't done it before. But I've done it now. I've got you, Saint." The superb, delirious conviction grew upon him. "This is the one time you've made a mistake, and I've got you." Chief Inspector Teal drew himself up in the full pride of his magnificent climactic moment. "Simon Templar, I shall take you into custody on a charge of—"

"Wait a minute," said the Saint quietly.

The porridge bubbled underneath Teal's collar stud.

"What for?" he exploded.

"Because," said the Saint kindly, "in spite of all the rude ideas you've got about me, Claud, I like you. And it hurts me to see you going off like a damp squib. Didn't you hear the landlady say that she found the body about half an hour ago?"

"Well?"

"Well, I should think we could safely give her the full half-hour — she could hardly have got to a telephone and got you here with all your stooges in much less than that. And we've been talking for some minutes already. And if I murdered this body, you must give me a few minutes to spare at the other end. Let's be very conservative and say that I could have murdered him forty minutes ago." Simon consulted his watch. "Well, it's now exactly a quarter to three."

"Are you starting to give me another of your alibis?"

"I am," said the Saint. "Because at twelve minutes past one I left the Golden Fleece in Anford, which is ninety-five miles from here. Quite a number of the natives and several disinterested visitors can vouch for that — including a member of the local police whose name, believe it or not, is Reginald. And I know I'm the hell of a driver, but even I can't drive ninety-five miles in fifty-three minutes over the antediluvian cart tracks that pass for roads in this country."

Over Chief Inspector Teal's ruddy features smeared the same expression that must have passed over the face of Sisyphus when, having at last heaved his rock nearly to the top of the hill, it turned round and rolled back again to the bottom. In it was the same chaotic blend of dismay, despair, agonized weariness and sickening incredulity.

He knew that the Saint must be telling the truth. He didn't have to take a step to verify it although that would be done later as a matter of strict routine. But the Saint had never wasted time on an alibi that couldn't be checked to the last comma. How it was done, Teal never knew; if he had been a superstitious man he would have suspected witchcraft. But it was done, and had been done, too often for him not to recognize every brush stroke of the technique. And once again he knew that his insane triumph had been premature — that the Saint was slipping through his fingers for what seemed like the ten thousandth time…

He bent his pathetically weary eyes on the body again, as if that at least might take pity on him and provide him with the inspiration for a comeback. And a sudden dull flare of breathless realization went through him.

"Look!" he almost yelped.

The Saint looked.

"Messy sort of business, isn't it?" he said chattily. "Some of these hoodlums have no respect for the furniture. There ought to be a correspondence course in Good Manners for Murderers."

"That blood," Teal said incoherently. "It's drying…"

He went down clumsily on his knees beside the body, fumbled over it, and peered at the stain on the carpet. Then he got slowly to his feet, and his hot, resentful eyes burned on the Saint with a feverish light.

"This man has been dead for from three, to six hours," he said. "You could have gone to Anford and come back in that time!"

"I'm sorry," said the Saint regretfully.

"What for?"

Teal's voice was a hoarse bark.

Simon smiled.

"Because I spent all the morning in Anford."

"What were you doing there?"

"I was at an inquest."

"Whose inquest?"

"Some poor blighter by the name of John Kennet."

"Do you mean the foreign secretary's son — the man who was killed in that country-house fire?" Teal asked sharply.

Simon regarded him benevolently.

"How you do keep up with the news, Claud," he murmured admiringly. "Sometimes I feel quite hopeful about you. It's not often, but it's so cheering when it happens. A kind of warm glow comes over me—"

"What were you doing at that inquest?" Teal said torridly.

The Saint moved his hands.

"Giving evidence. I was the hero of the proceedings, so I got nicely chewed up by the coroner for a reward. You'll read all about it in the evening papers. I hate to disappoint you, dear old weasel, but I'm afraid I've been pretty well in the public eye since about half-past ten."

Simon struck his lighter and made the delayed kindling of his cigarette.

"So what with one thing and another, Claud," he said, "I'm afraid you're going to have to let me go."

Chief Inspector Teal barred his way. The leaden bitterness of defeat was curdling in his stomach, but there was a sultry smoulder in his eyes that was more relentless and dangerous than his first unimpeded blaze of wrath. He might have suffered ten thousand failures, but he had never given up. And now there was a grim determination in him that tightened his teeth crushingly on his battered scrap of spearmint.

"You still haven't told me what you're doing here," he said stolidly.

Simon Templar trickled smoke through momentarily sober lips.

"I came to see Windlay," he said. "I wanted to see him before somebody else did. Only I was too late. You can believe that or not as you like. But the late John Kennet shared this place with him."

The detective's eyes went curiously opaque. He stood with a wooden stillness.

"What was the verdict at this inquest?"

"Accidental death."

"Do you think there was anything wrong with that?"

Simon's glance travelled again over the disordered room.

"Someone seems to have been looking for something," he said aimlessly. "I wonder if he found what he was after?"

Casually, as if performing some quite idle action, he leaned forward and picked up a crumpled sheet of newspaper from the litter scattered over the floor. It was a French newspaper five days old, and a passage in it had been heavily marked out in blue pencil.