Saint and the Templar Treasure (15 page)

Long afterwards, he would be profoundly impressed by the technical sophistication that was evidenced by the smooth working of the secret mechanism. After so many hundred years, anything made of iron or steel would have been rusted into permanent immovability. Yet bronze was an alloy that had been known even in the great days of the Chateau Ingare, although few engineers of that era seem to have concerned themselves with the problems of corrosion. The Templars who had installed that shrine of Hecate must have been centuries ahead of the thinking of their contemporaries, and what they built had been designed to outlast themselves by tens of generations.

But for those first moments, the Saint was too startled by his own discovery to stop and marvel at the technology which had made it possible. He took a deep breath and exhaled it in a long low whistle as he waited for his pulse rate to slow and a sense of reality to return and shuffle the jumbled sensations of the past seconds into a semblance of order.

That done, he walked over to the opening and peered cautiously in. The light from the bulbs in the crypt reached just far enough into the narrow passage to show that it was cut through the natural rock of the hillside, and the stone blocks of the pivoting secret door were only a few inches thick.

The door had not swung completely open but stood about two feet ajar. A heavy chain was around a toothed wheel at the bottom corner of the door, through the wall and into the base of the statue, where there would have to be another similar wheel. As one turned, so would the other. Simple but perfectly effective, and it still worked.

Two steps into the passage and he blocked his own light, making it impossible to see even inches ahead, and he returned to the chamber to cast around in the vain hope that a torch might have been left there.

Then he heard a movement somewhere above, and moved swiftly back to the statue. The creek of the chain as he turned the figure back to close the stone panel again sounded deafen-ingly loud to him in the confined space.

He need not have worried. Perhaps Louis Norbert was too engrossed in his own thoughts, perhaps he was slightly hard of hearing, or perhaps he was even a superb poker player, but whatever the reason he gave no indication of having heard anything unusual when he stepped from the ladder.

He regarded the Saint with a mixture of irritation and suspicion.

“Monsieur Templar. Were you looking for me?”

Simon uncrossed his legs and rose from the stone bench where he had hastily seated himself. The door had closed so perfectly that had he not known exactly where it was he would never have been able to guess. Even so, he kept his eyes away from the wall as he smiled amiably at the little professor.

“Not specially,” he said. “But it’s a pleasure to see you. You haven’t been very social since this hole was opened.”

“What can I do for you?” Norbert inquired in the politely uninterested tone of a shop assistant.

“I just dropped in to see how you were getting along,” Simon replied pleasantly.

Norbert scratched at the tuft of white hair that stuck out above his left ear. He looked tired and his clothes were crumpled. The collar of his shirt curled at the edges and the front of it was smeared with grime. He had the general appearance of a man who had spent the night on a park bench.

He continued to fix the Saint with an inquisitorial glare. Simon waved a hand towards the marble goddess.

“Has horrible Hecate told you anything yet?” he asked. “Opened up any new avenues of investigation?”

“No. Why should it? It’s just a very interesting work of ancient art,” Norbert said defensively.

“Vraiment?”

The Saint drawled the word so slowly and with such an inflection of cynical reverence that Professor Norbert flinched.

“I am just trying to make my studies,” he stammered, wrenching his gaze away and trying instead to concentrate on opening the carpenter’s rule he took from his pocket. “But trivial distractions make my task so much harder.”

Simon took the rule from his fumbling fingers and opened it out to its full length. He looked from Norbert to the statue and back again, and then proffered the metre of wood to the other’s hand like a general presenting a sword.

“I hope she measures up to your expectations,” he said suggestively; and while Norbert was trying to work out a double entendre Simon patted him encouragingly on the shoulder and leisurely climbed the ladder to the storehouse above.

Which in its own way was as good an exit as the circumstances allowed, he reflected as he made his way back to the chateau. He would have wished for more time to follow up his own discovery, but was sufficiently grateful that the professor’s fortuitous absence had allowed him the time to make it.

The question was, had Norbert long since beaten him to it? And where did that melodramatically hidden doorway lead?

The Saint would have to find some more answers for himself, which foreshadowed a possibly sleepless night of further exploring when he would be better equipped for the excursion.

He re-entered the chateau through the kitchens with the intention of going to the library to continue his struggle with the medieval French of the Templar records, but a sound of voices from the dining-room stopped him.

They were raised to that pitch just below shouting which is the key of an argument that is about to crescend into a row. Simon tiptoed noiselessly over and stood with his ear against the door. There was no need to look through the keyhole to identify the contestants, for the more forceful of the two voices could only belong to Jeanne Corday, while the other defiantly apologetic tones were undoubtedly those of Henri Pichot.

“Yes, sir; no, sir! What sort of man are you?” the girl was sneering. “They treat you like a guest, and you treat them as if you were a servant.”

“It is not like that,” Henri whined. “There are ways of doing things. You do not understand them like I do.”

“You mean I don’t curtsy every time they walk into a room.”

“It is not as simple as that,” Henri protested. “I must be careful. I am doing everything I can.”

“If you were half the man Philippe is, everything would be settled by now,” his fiancee countered spitefully. “In two days I am going back to Paris. With or without your cheap ring.”

“But you said …”

“With or without your ring,” Jeanne repeated coldly. “It’s up to you.”

Simon just had time to move back from the door before it was flung open. Jeanne Corday stormed past him without acknowledgement. Henri stood gaping dumbly at her retreating figure.

“A lovers’ tiff?” Simon asked sympathetically, and the lawyer rounded on him with uncharacteristic violence.

“Go to hell,” he snarled, and hurried after his lady love.

Simon found Pascal and Jules on the vineyard slopes, and shared an al fresco worker’s lunch with them before excusing himself for the private siesta which he felt that his constitution required.

Soon after six o’clock, refreshingly bathed and very casually spruced up, he made his way back down towards the chai.

The huddle of outbuildings formed three sides of a rectangle with the fourth side open to a panoramic view of the valley. The party was prepared in the courtyard between the buildings. Two long trestle tables had been loaded with eatables and wooden benches placed against the walls. Empty barrels served as extra tables or chairs as the occasion demanded. A couple of large casks had been set out on stands, and the permanent and seasonal toilers of the vineyard were already busy sampling the wine they had made the year before.

Yves and Mimette strolled from group to group chatting hospitably with anyone. Philippe stood a little apart from the crowd, a slightly condescending smile playing at the corner of his mouth as he sipped his wine. Henri and Jeanne Corday sat together on one of the benches without speaking. It was plain from the stiffness of their poses and the lack of conversation that their tempers had not cooled since the morning. There was no sign of either Gaston or Professor Norbert. The Saint had not expected the professor to leave his work for such frivolity, but he was surprised that the old foreman was not yet present.

As he stood and surveyed the scene, he discovered Pascal and Jules, and was about to walk over and join them when Jeanne Corday rose and hurried across towards him. Henri gazed sullenly after her but made no move to follow.

She was wearing a blouse that was intended to appear two sizes too small. The matching green skirt was equally tight and equally brief. The conversation of the two students might have proved more intelligent, but the Saint was only human. He bestowed his most dazzling smile on her. It was returned with a flash of polar white caps.

“Alors, vous voici,” she greeted him brightly. “Among the peasants.”

“Vous aussi,” Simon responded. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Are you kidding?”

Her eyes flicked shamelessly over him and he returned the compliment with an equally brazen appraisal.

“What’s the matter?”

Jeanne sighed wearily and sipped her drink. It was not the colour of wine, and he suspected that it was stronger.

“I mean, it’s all very nice here, but it’s so quiet, so open, just fields and things. I mean, it’s so …”

“Rural,” suggested the Saint helpfully.

“Ouais, well, something like that,” she agreed with a shrug.

“But you’re going back to the bright lights soon. Paris in two days, isn’t it?”

“Of course, you heard that,” said Jeanne, momentarily disconcerted. She recovered quickly. “I mean, Henri is wonderful, but he acts different down here. In Paris he’s amusing, but around this place he creeps about as if he was a lackey or something. I know the family have been good to him, but—”

“They make him feel inferior? I’m sure they don’t mean to.”

“You would not know how to feel like that, would you?”

“I’m too stupid,” said the Saint disarmingly, “to be sensitive. But don’t you agree that it makes life more comfortable?”

Jeanne looked uncertain whether she was the butt of some subtle joke, but she did not let it bother her for long.

“I heard you were on your way to Paris when you got stuck here. If you ever make it, you must look me up. We could have some fun,” she added transparently.

Simon gave the idea a few seconds’ serious consideration.

“You know,” he said judiciously, “I do believe we could.”

He had been watching Henri out of the corner of his eye. The young lawyer had not taken his eyes off them. Finally unable to endure the scene any longer, he came over. He ignored the Saint and addressed his fiancee.

“I think we’d better circulate,” he said brusquely.

Jeanne contemplated him with distaste.

“Circulate? What do you think I am—some sort of blood corpuscle?” she jeered, and Henri’s cheeks turned a rich shade of crimson.

Without a word he turned and strode away towards the chateau. Jeanne smiled as she rested a hand on the Saint’s shoulder and moved closer.

“This is boring,” she said silkily. “Why don’t we go pick some grapes on our own?”

Simon felt a very natural temptation to do just that. Whether or not he would have succumbed to it was never to be known, for at that moment one of the workmen rushed from the building behind the Saint and almost bowled him over as he half ran, half staggered across the cobbles shouting for Yves.

“Excuse me,” said the Saint abruptly and went after him.

The man was in a state of shock. His words spilled out in an incoherent babble. He stood with one shaking arm pointing towards the building he had come from.

“Routine check … lifted lid … lying there … Gas-ton …”

Yves Florian was trying bewilderedly to make sense of the words but the Saint preferred action. He spun round and sprinted into the building, more than half dreading what he was going to see.

It was the place used for the first fermentation of the newly pressed wine. Inside were a dozen huge vats, each taller than a man and linked by a narrow catwalk reached by a flight of steps. The heavy lid had been dragged from one of the vats and stood propped against the side. The Saint raced up to the catwalk and made for the open tank. He peered over the rim and looked down into the thick red pulpy liquid. The sightless eyes of Gaston Pichot returned his stare.

4

The Saint turned, to find Philippe the first to arrive beside him, followed by three or four of the chateau workers, while the rest of the harvest party were crowding in on the floor below. Simon spoke to them all.

“C’est vrai,” he said. “Gaston est mort.”

At first, a numbness of shocked disbelief seemed to make them refuse to accept that such a thing could happen there. The silence was stifling in its intensity as the assemblage stood staring, unable to drive their minds past the news they had been given.

Simon looked down again at the limp figure that was half submerged in the blood-coloured wine. He had developed a genuine affection and respect for the old man, but there would be a time for sadness later, just as there would be a time for retribution. It was the unemotional practicalities that had to be dealt with now, and Philippe set the process in motion while Yves was still climbing up to the catwalk.

“Mimette, go with Jeanne to the chateau and telephone the gendarmerie. Someone give me a hand to get Gaston out.”

The sharp authority of his voice re-awakened the others as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown.

The two women hurried out together, relieved that they would not have to watch the grisly scene of the body being moved. Without bothering to remove his jacket, Philippe himself leaned into the vat and grabbed Gaston by the lapels of his coat. Simon gripped his ankles, and together they lifted him out and carried Mm down to the floor, where someone had spread a tarpaulin.

Philippe allowed no flicker of emotion to show on his face and betray his feelings. He gave the impression of knowing what had to be done and getting on with it however distasteful it might be. After putting Gaston down, he simply turned away in search of a rag to dry his hands.

The Saint was well aware of the dictum that nothing should be touched until the police have inspected the scene of the crime, but it was not for him to argue with Philippe’s orders. He was also aware that the local gendarme would be unlikely to have much experience in examining murder victims. Since the body had been moved anyway, he took the further liberty of feeling around its head and testing the stiffness of the joints, and understood what his fingers told him. He looked at the soles of the old man’s boots and at the dirt under his fingernails. At last he folded the ends of the tarpaulin over the body and straightened up.