Leslie Charteris - Prelude for War

"Tell me why Lady Valerie was frightened of you," he said in a garroted gargle.

"I've no idea why she should have been," said the Saint. "I'd no idea she was. Why don't you ask Algy? He seems to know all about it. And while you're on the job, what about asking him why he came here and what he thought he was going to do?"

Fairweather sniffed into a white silk handkerchief, tucked it back into his breast pocket and planted himself like a minister in Parliament preparing to answer a question from the Opposition.

"I have not visited Mr Templar before," he said, "and I should not expect to do so again. The reason for my call this morning is quite simple. I had a tentative engagement to lunch with Lady Valerie today, and I rang her up not long ago to confirm it. She was not in, and her maid informed me in some agitation that she had apparently not slept at her apartment last night and had left no message to give a clue to her whereabouts. Knowing that this was an extraordinary departure from her normal habits, I puzzled over it with some seriousness and recalled her mentioning that she was in some fear of Mr Templar, as I have told you. I telephoned again later, and could still hear no news of her; and on my way from the club to the Savoy, where we were to have met, I recollected that she had told me that she was dining with Mr Templar last night. My anxieties at once became graver, and since I was at that moment close to this building, on an impulse — which was perhaps rash in conception but which I now feel to have been very sensibly founded — I instructed my chauffeur to stop, and came up with the intention of—"

"Algy," said the Saint, with profound respect, "I don't wonder you got into the Cabinet. With your gift for making a collection of plain goddam lies sound like an archbishop's sermon, the only thing I can't understand is why they didn't make you prime minister."

Conviction hardened on Mr Teal like the new carapace on a moulted lobster. His eyes held on the Saint with dourly triumphant tenacity.

"I'll tell you why Lady Valerie was frightened of you," he said. "I expect she was thinking of what happened to Kennet and Windlay. She knew you were trying to make trouble for Mr Luker and Mr Fairweather, and since she was a friend of theirs—"

"Was Kennet a friend of theirs?" asked the Saint pungently.

Fairweather said, with solemn and unshakable pomposity: "He was a guest in my house. I think that should be sufficient answer."

Teal nodded implacably.

"You've pulled the wool over my eyes often enough, Templar, but you can't do it this time. What's the use of bluffing? There's enough circumstantial evidence already to put you away for a long time. If you want to be smart you won't make things any worse for yourself. Tell me what's happened to Lady Valerie Woodchester, and you may get off with eighteen months."

The Saint looked at him for several seconds. And then he laughed out loud.

"You poor pin-brained boob," he said.

The detective's face did not change.

"That won't—"

"Won't do me any good?" Simon completed the sentence for him. "Well, I'm not interested. I'm not trying to do myself good — I don't have to. I'm trying to do you some. You need it. Have you gone so completely daft that you've lost your memory? Have you ever known me to threaten, beat up, bump off, or otherwise raise hell with women? Have you ever had even the slightest reason to suspect me of it? But because you're too bat-eyed and pigheaded to see any further than the pimples on the end of your own nose you want to believe that I've turned myself into an ogre for Lady Valerie's special benefit. What you need—"

"I don't need any of—

"You need plenty." The Saint was cool, unflurried, but his curt sentences were edged like knives. "According to some ancient law which it doesn't look as if you'd ever heard of, a man in this country is presumed innocent until he can be proved guilty. Why don't you try being just half as credulous with me as you are with Algy? Because he was once a member of His Majesty's immortal government. You pitiful cretin! In other words, he made his living for years out of making lies sound like sententious platitudes. Have you even started to criticize what he's just told you? Lady Valerie wasn't home, and hadn't been home, when he phoned to check up on a lunch date. 'Knowing that this was an extraordinary departure from her normal habits—' "

"I heard what Mr Fairweather said."

"And you gulped it down! This is the guy who knew Lady Valerie well. He didn't just assume that she'd been out on an all-night party and forgotten to come home. He 'puzzled over it with some seriousness.' Well, I don't want to be unkind about the girl, and I don't even ask you to believe me, but I'll bet you five thousand quid to fourpence that if you check back on her record you'll find that she's often done things like that before. Algy never thought of that. His 'anxieties at once became graver' — so grave that he dropped in here to ask me, a comparative stranger, what I thought about it. And while we're on the subject of lunch dates I'll give you something else. Algy tells you that he had this date with Lady Valerie, and naturally you believe him. Well, he's got his ideas mixed. He didn't have this date — I had it. Now would you like to think that over for yourself, or shall I go on helping you?"

There was a candour, an ardent sincerity in the Saint's voice that would have arrested most listeners. Mr Teal was visibly shaken. In spite of himself a new doubt joined the mad saraband that was taking place in his fevered brain. Certainly he found it hard to believe that the Saint had done any harm to Lady Valerie: even he had to admit that such a crime would have been out of character. On the other hand, he found it equally hard to believe that such obviously respectable members of society as Luker and Fairweather could be involved in any sinister motives. If he arrested the Saint after a speech that carried such conviction, experience indicated that he would probably end up by making himself look highly ridiculous; but on the other hand experience also indicated that he usually ended up by looking quite ridiculous enough when he left the Saint at large. It was one of those situations in which Mr Teal habitually felt himself drowning in the turgid waves of an unfathomable Weltschmerz.

He glowered at Simon with a smouldering malevolence which he hoped helped to disguise: the sinking foundations, of his assurance.

"You're wasting your time," he said, but a keen ear could have detected the first loss of dominance in his voice, like the flattening note of a bell that has begun to crack. "Mr Fairweather's suspicions sound quite reasonable to me."

"Suspicions?" The Saint was lethally sardonic. "Why don't you call them certainties and have done with it? That's what they'd look like to anyone who hadn't got such a one-track mind as yours. So Algy had a date with Lady Valerie for lunch. But he hasn't shown any signs of impatience to push along to the Savoy and see if she's waiting for him. He didn't even go there first and see whether she turned up before he came here to see me. And he still doesn't have to wait and make sure she isn't there before he backs up this charge against me. He knows damn well she isn't going to be there! And how do you think he gets so damn sure about that?"

Teal's mouth opened a little. After a moment he turned his head. And for the first time he looked hard and invitingly at Mr Fairweather.

Mr Fairweather's chins wobbled with the working of his Adam's apple like rolls of soft raspberry jelly.

"Really," he stuttered, "Mr Templar's insinuations are so preposterous — I–I— Really, Inspector, you ought to — to do something to — um—"

"I quite understand, sir." Teal was polite and respectful, but his gum was starting on a new and interesting voyage. "At the same time, if you gave me an explanation—"