Vic nodded approval and agreement, then touched the Saint’s arm and pointed astern, to their nearer port. Perhaps half a dozen lengths behind was the Candecour; and it was plain to them both that the big boat was gaining on them.
Simon sighed.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to let him past.”
He knew there was no help for it. A couple of minutes after they had inched past the Bellissima, they were in turn overtaken by the Candecour, some fifty yards on their port. The yellow-helmeted figure at the wheel, which must have been Tatenor, raised an arm as they went inexorably and infuriatingly by. He waved, though without any shadow of the gaiety that might have been conveyed by an orthodox reciprocation of the upraised hand. Tatenor’s wave was a single one-shot extension of the arm from an upright to a forward position. It was almost a salute, but with an element of gloating finality in it which seemed in some way chilling.
“Snotty bastard!” Vic snorted with feeling.
But Vic knew, with the same seamanlike feel for the interaction of boat and waves and weather as Simon Templar’s own, that there was nothing to be done. They were skimming over the water as fast as the Privateer could skim in those conditions, in that direction, on that day; and it so happened that the Candecour was travelling faster. In fact, though they hated to admit it, Tatenor’s boat was optimising that difficult equation better — for the moment — than their own.
For the moment... Those, the Saint told himself with set determination, were the operative words. For the moment, the Candecour’s great weight and bulk might suit the conditions, but much as it depressed him to see that yellow stern drawing steadily away in front, the race was a long way from won yet. For the moment, they still had the north coast of the island off their port side. But soon they would clear its western extremity, marked by the Needles, a familiar landmark of jagged rocks that stuck out of the sea like the angular protuberances of some giant sea monster’s submerged body. Beyond this point the boats would encounter a completely different series of currents. Wave amplitude would probably change too, and they would be battling into a still stronger headwind than they already faced. And then... there was more than a chance that the Privateer would come into her own.
Simon glanced around. The Bellissima had fallen steadily farther behind, and the next boat was so far back that it was impossible to hazard even a guess at which one it might be.
The Saint’s mouth set in a grim fighting line as the Needles came into view. This was the stuff of life to Simon Templar: to be thrown on his mettle, to be seemingly outrun, for the moment, but to have reserves and resources of his own as well as all the glorious imponderables of time and chance to rely on.
“We’ll catch him,” he said, with quiet certitude.
And there came a time, not many minutes later, when the Candecour ceased to open up her lead any farther from the four hundred yards it had become. And not many minutes after that, it became apparent that the gap was very slowly but steadily closing.
They were more than an hour into the race now, and with their progress westward the crowds lining the shores on both sides of the water had dwindled until now they were confined to a few loose knots of people on the beaches of the minor holiday resorts in Christchurch Bay to their starboard. Milton on Sea, then Barton with its crumbling rufous cliffs, then Highcliffe, then Mude-ford, guarding the northern side of the narrow entrance to Christchurch Harbour. That entrance was actually invisible from the Saint’s viewpoint, being almost completely closed off by the sandy promontory known as Hengistbury Head, which curled around from the south west like a beckoning finger.
They were about two hundred and fifty yards astern of the Candecour when it happened. They were battling now into a moderate sea, which means a lot of battling for small boats, and as they rose and fell with the waves they frequently lost sight of the Candecour for a few seconds at a time.
It was after one such occlusion that the yellow boat suddenly veered off right and began cutting obliquely across the Privateer’s course.
“What the blue blazes—?” Vic followed up the mild oath with a more fluent and earthy profanity, and they watched in astonishment as the Candecour tore off towards the shore, without any visible slackening of speed.
The Saint was trying to hold a steady line on the boat with his binoculars. He shook his head in puzzlement.
“At that rate she’ll plough straight into the Head... The funny thing is, she’s holding a dead-straight line, yet as far as I can see, there’s no one standing up to steer her. Which is a more than mildly interesting way to tackle a race.”
The Privateer had now passed the other boat’s point of eccentric departure, so that they now had her almost directly to starboard. As far as the needs of continuing to manage the Privateer in that demanding sea allowed, they watched the Candecour, with a fascination that afterwards seemed like foreknowledge of what must inevitably happen.
“Throttle must be jammed open,” said Vic softly. And then, when it seemed certain that big yellow boat must plough into the beach at any second, they made another abrupt turn, or half-turn, to starboard.
“She’s missed the Head,” said the Saint, “but she’s going straight for the rocks.”
The Candecour never did slow down... until those rocks compelled a deceleration as abrupt as it was spectacular. The engine note was terminated by a splintering impact. Then a moment’s suspension of time. Then it came. A white-orange flash, and two or three seconds later the sound of the blast.
After a moment’s thought, Simon Templar eased off the throttle slightly, spun the wheel hard right, and pointed the Privateer at the blazing inferno that had been Charles Tatenor’s boat.
II: How Arabella began a Journey, and Simon went Beachcombing
1
The Coroner cleared his throat sympathetically.
“Mrs Tatenor,” he said tentatively, but with the determined firmness of a Pillar of the Establishment who knows that he must Do his Duty, however painful, “there still seems to be some mystery concerning the identity of your husband’s co-driver.”
Arabella Tatenor nodded. She had already had more than enough of the meticulous, punctilious coroner. Her expression, if it conveyed anything, conveyed mild boredom.
She was dressed befittingly in black; but her skirt and blouse, for all their sombre colour, had clearly been cut without the slightest intention of concealing the shape of what they enclosed. And what they enclosed while draped around Arabella Tatenor had plenty of shape.
As for the shape she was in generally, on taking the stand a few minutes before in the crowded Ryde courtroom she had raised a filmy black veil to reveal features only a shade or two paler than they had been before the events of five days ago.
The Coroner was a large bony man with a well-scrubbed and barbered look. His black hair was shaved to an exaggerated short-back-and-sides respectability that gave him something of the look of an SS officer. He wore a dark-grey pinstriped suit, a white shirt with old-fashioned detachable collar starched and pressed to a celluloid shine, and a spotted tie done up in a tight little knot.