“Did he say you could play Messalina?”
“No. But it has to be a big part, for what they’re paying. And however it turns out, I’ll get the money, and that’s the most important thing to me.”
The Saint stood up, grinning, and put out a hand to help her to her feet.
“Then we’ve got something to celebrate. Let’s go to the Voile d’Or at St Raphaël and introduce you to Monsieur Saquet’s bourride. It’s only the best on the whole Coast.”
“Yes. I’m starving. You always have the most wonderful ideas.”
As they trudged towards the road he asked: “Do you still have Undine’s car?”
“No. I was glad to return it. Do you know, it’s a Rolls Royce painted exactly like his speedboat, including the big monogram on the side. I took a taxi.”
“In that outfit?”
She laughed.
“I’m afraid I’m not quite emancipated enough for that.” She opened the plastic zipper bag she carried and took out a roll of cloth not much bigger than his fist, which shook out into a one-piece play-suit of some wrinkle-proof synthetic. In five seconds she was what daytime St Tropez would have considered almost overdressed. “See?”
“What won’t they make next,” said the Saint admiringly. “So we can head straight for the fish kettle, without any footling about.”
Thus it was that they made no stop in St Tropez until mid-afternoon, and had no preliminary intimation of the mystery which was going to climax Sir Jasper Undine’s career with its last headlines.
Maureen Herald said she would have to find a travel agency in the town to check on her return flight to London, so the Saint stopped in the parking lot near the Casino and walked with her to the Quai de Suffren. And there they ran into, or more literally were run into by a hustling and vaguely frantic Wilbert.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said brilliantly, when the fact had registered. “Do you know anything about Sir Jasper?”
“Several things,” said the Saint. “And nearly all of them are uncomplimentary. What aspect would you like to hear about?”
“I mean, have you seen him, or anything?”
“I saw him making his usual prowl in the speedboat this morning. But he went off without any passengers. That was about a quarter to eleven. Why, what’s the excitement?”
“Hadn’t you heard?” spluttered the tycoon’s stooge. “Sir Jasper has disappeared!”
Simon raised his eyebrows.
“Theoretically, I’d say that was impossible,” he murmured. “He must be easily the most visible man in this hemisphere. He’s probably even luminous in the dark.”
“But he has! The Chris-Craft was found forty miles out at sea, with nobody in it. I just got a message that a French Navy patrol boat had brought it in.”
“You’re headed the wrong way,” Simon said. “The Navy jetty is on the north side of the port, that-a-way. Let’s go and view the salvage.”
As they went, Wilbert managed to calm down sufficiently to supply some details.
“He had an engagement for lunch with the manager of one of his Italian subsidiaries who was coming specially from Rome, but he never got back for it. I know it was an important meeting and nothing but an accident would have kept him away. Of course, I was a bit surprised that he’d already taken the boat out alone when I arrived at ten-thirty, he’s never done that before-“
“You don’t sleep at the villa?”
“No, I’m staying at a hotel in town.”
“Did he say anything to the servants?”
“They don’t sleep in, either. They come in at two o’clock. Sir Jasper doesn’t like anyone in the house at night, except people he might invite. You know …”
The Saint thought he knew, but he avoided catching Maureen’s eye.
A Naval rating and a police sergeant were jointly standing guard over Sir Jasper’s effulgent sampan when they arrived and Wilbert identified himself. Both representatives of the State promptly produced notebooks and began jabbering at him at once, and Simon had to step in as interpreter. It appeared that the Navy was putting a lien on the boat for the cost of bringing it in, and at the same time considering the possibility of prosecuting the owner for endangering navigation by abandoning it on the high seas, while the Police were convinced that someone should be arrested but were trying to decide who and for what. Simon cheerfully assured them that Wilbert would take full responsibility for everything, and they were finally allowed on board.
In an open runabout of that kind there was not much to examine that could not have been seen from the wharf, but Simon switched on the ignition and pressed the starter buttons one after the other. Each engine turned over vigorously but did not fire, and he saw that the needle of the fuel gauge remained at zero.
“Ran out of gas,” he remarked. “Do you suppose he tried to swim back for some?”
“He could only swim a few strokes,” Wilbert said, “and the boat was forty miles out!”
“He could have been picked up by another boat,” Maureen said.
“Then they’d have brought him home before this,” said the Saint. “Or if it was a liner that couldn’t just turn around, they’d have a radio, and he’d ‘ve got through to Wilbert right away.”
“Suppose he was kidnapped?” Wilbert suggested.
Simon rubbed his chin.
“I guess you can suppose it. But who on earth would pay anything to get him back?”
Any fingerprints that might be found on the boat would be hopelessly confused by all the sailors who must have handled it, but there were no immediately visible traces of the salvage operation, or of any unusual behavior on board. In fact, everything was commendably neat and clean, as Simon pointed out.
“I hosed her down and tidied up myself when we came in yesterday,” Wilbert said. “It’s one of my jobs.”
The Saint frowned thoughtfully.
“I suppose he made a lot of mess with those cigars?”
“Yes-ashes everywhere-” The carroty young man caught his breath, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He looked around the boat in a startled way. “Good heavens! You mean-“
“I don’t see any ashes,” said the Saint.
Maureen bit her lip.
“This is fascinating,” she said. “Just like playing detectives … Listen. Sir Jasper was really quite plastered last night. He must have had an awful hangover this morning. That would account for him not being in the mood to pick any girls up. And if his tummy was upset he probably couldn’t stand to light a cigar. Was his cigar alight, Simon?”
“I’m damned if I know,” said the Saint. “He didn’t come in close enough. And who would ‘ve noticed, anyhow?”
Then there was a new commotion on the dock, and they looked up and saw Lee Carozza and Dominique chattering with the guard detail. There was nothing more worth staying on the Chris-Craft for, and Simon and Maureen climbed back up and joined them, with Wilbert following.
“They told us at the Pinčde,” Carozza explained. “We were having the siesta, and they woke us up. But it’s hard to believe he’s been murdered.”
Who said he was?” Simon asked.
“That was the rumor. It is not true?”
Wilbert repeated the facts, very precisely, with the addition of what they had observed and discussed in the boat, like a new member of an undergraduate committee making his first report.
“I am not a criminal expert,” Carozza said at the end, looking very significantly at the Saint, “but how can it be anything but murder? I knew him, and he was not a man who would take a boat forty miles towards Africa by himself, with no one to admire him. He was taken out by someone who killed him and threw him overboard, and escaped in another boat.”
“Why in another boat?” Simon inquired.
“To make a mystery. Like the famous Marie Celeste, the ship from which all the passengers and crew disappeared and left everything in perfect order. This was the work of an artist!”
His wife studied him fixedly.
“You are not often so quick to talk,” she said. “Be careful that someone does not think you are describing yourself.”
She had not given the Saint more than the most perfunctory recognition at the beginning, and she continued to ignore him as calmly as if they had never had anything but the casual introduction of the previous evening. It was hard even for him to believe in the reality of the tempting pressure of her body and the tantalization of her mouth that he had known in between, or the monstrous bargain that she had offered. Indubitably she was an actress with more intelligence than her detractors gave her credit for; and if only as a tribute to that talent he had to nudge her off a hazardous tack.
“If there’s going to be any murder investigation,” he said, “we might all have to look to our alibis.”
“Lee and I could have nothing to do with it,” she said scornfully. “All this morning we were in Nice, at the studio, where I do an interview for the television. And afterward we have lunch with a reporter from France-Soir. And we come back to our hotel, the Pinčde, for the siesta. We have no time for anything else.”
“Simon and I were together,” Maureen said, “from-when was it?-about a quarter to one until we met Mr Wilbert just now.”
“I was at the villa,” Wilbert said weakly. “Doing the petty cash accounts, going through letters, making a few phone calls-“
He was suddenly very helpless and bewildered.
“Alors,” said the police sergeant, who had been trying to regain command for a long while, “there must now be a proper statement from everyone.”
“By all means,” said the Saint. “And let me start with a simple debunking of the whole razzmatazz. Undine was drunk last night, as witnessed by Miss Herald and doubtless many restaurateurs and waiters. This morning he had the gueule de bois. He also had an important business meeting to cope with. He went out for a spin in the speedboat to clear his head. And everyone knows he was a crazy boat driver. He made a turn too fast, and in his condition he lost his balance and fell overboard, and the boat went on without him. And let us all think kindly of him when we eat lobsters.”
There was a sequel to this rambling anecdote almost a year later, when a production entitled Messalina, in Colossoscope and Kaleidocolor, was world-premiered with all the standard fanfares at the Caracalla auditorium in Rome, Italy, with simultaneous openings in six other towns called Rome in the United States.
Simon Templar, who was by nature attracted to such functions as irresistibly as he would have been drawn to a cholera epidemic, was a notable guest; and one of the first personages that he encountered was a ginger-haired bat-eared apparition upon whom a white tie and tails conferred an appallingly pasteboard dignity.
“I gather that you were able to satisfy the flics about the loose joints in your alibi,” Simon greeted him genially.
“Of course, they had to accept it eventually.” Wilbert inevitably reddened. “They could hardly get around the various people I’d talked to on the phone, which wouldn’t have given me time to get far away from the villa. But it was rather awkward when it came out that Sir Jasper had made me the trustee of his will, and it was so loosely worded that I could do almost anything I liked.”
“What did he leave his money to?”
“Most of it to found a motion picture museum, with the provision that one whole section has to be devoted to relics of himself and his productions.”
“Modest to the last,” murmured the Saint. “Well, you certainly gave him service while he was alive. But what I liked best was the way you cleaned up his boat the last time. If you hadn’t been so conscientious, we wouldn’t have had the cigar-ash clue.”
“That didn’t make a lot of difference, did it?”
“It helped, Wilbert. It helped.”
Dominique Rousse was posing for photographers while her husband stood a little apart, watching with his usual introspective detachment.
“Good evening, Mr Thomas,” he said ironically, as Simon came towards him. “I suppose you couldn’t wait to see how the picture turned out.”
“I do feel a sort of personal interest,” Simon confessed.
“I think you’ll like what I did with Maureen Herald’s part. It is big enough to justify her co-starring, without upsetting the balance of the play.”
“Or upsetting Dominique, no doubt,” said the Saint. “You don’t need me to tell you you’re a good writer. But you ought to be more careful of your own dialog.”
“In what way?”
“You must know that one of the stock routines for a character to trip himself up in a detective story is to talk about a murder before he’s been told that there’s been one. If that police sergeant had understood English and been on the ball when you dropped that clanger, you might have had to finish your script in the pokey.”
One of the photographers recognized the Saint, grabbed him unceremoniously, and dragged him over to Dominique.
With her sullen beauty, and a rope of diamonds twined in her red-blonde hair, and her stupendous figure revealed by a skintight green silk sheath cut low enough to prove to everyone that her world-famous bosom owed nothing to artificial enrichment, it took no effort at all to visualize her as a queen who could have had a pagan mob at her feet, even though she had demonstrated the moral instincts of a cat.
“Pretend to be pointing a gun at her,” urged the photographer. “No, that’s no good. Put a judo hold on her.”
Simon took her by the wrist and twisted her arm gently behind her in such a way that she was pressed against him face to face.
“You could have done this long ago,” she said in a whisper that scarcely moved her lips. “I told you I do not break my promise. Why have you not come to claim it?”
He smiled into her eyes.
“Some day I may,” he said. “When I can make myself unscrupulous enough.”
Finally he was able to rejoin Maureen Herald as another group of photographers tired of her.
“It was nice of you to come all this way to put up with this sort of thing,” she said, taking his arm. “But I felt you ought to be here. After all, if you hadn’t come up with the explanation of the Undine business, any of us might have been in an awkward spot.”
“Somebody certainly owes me something,” he admitted, “for helping to hide a murder.”
They were moving into the theater, but she stopped to stare at him.
“You mean you’ve changed your mind since?”
“I always did think it was murder.” He got her moving again. “It wasn’t just the cigar-ash business, though that started me thinking. When Wilbert let out that Undine never took the boat out alone, I tried to fit that in. Then I remembered the clothes Undine was wearing, and that was the clincher. Undine’s taste in color schemes was ghastly, but it wasn’t monotonous. Undine wouldn’t have just one hideous outfit, he’d ‘ve had dozens, and he’d ‘ve loved to knock your eye out with a different one every day. Therefore the man I saw in the boat on the second day wasn’t Undine.”