“This morning. I came down on the sleeper from Paris. Henri collected me from Avignon and here I am.”
“Where is the lucky man?”
She sighed with affected boredom. “Off playing the peasant somewhere, I suppose, and leaving me all alone to amuse myself. What does one do all day in a place like this?”
“I’m not sure,” the saint admitted. “But I’m going to go and join the peasants. Fancy a walk? It’s only a kilometre or so to the battlefields.”
“Walk!” the girl grimaced in disgust. “Do you mind?”
“Not in the least. See you later, then.”
She scowled as if he had insulted her. She was obviously unaccustomed to being rejected so easily but said nothing as he left her.
The Saint sauntered leisurely out of the château grounds following the track he had been driven along the previous day. It was a beautiful morning with a light breeze tempering the heat of the sun. The fields bordering the path were full of workers picking the grapes and piling them into huge wicker baskets. The air hummed with their chatter and the rattle of the handcarts as they were trundled up the hill towards the cluster of buildings below the château. Everything around him seemed light-years away from long-dead knights, family curses, saboteurs, and seances, and it was an effort to think about such things.
But the idea of hidden treasure intrigued him, and certainly seemed to provide the basis of a motive for Philippe’s interest in buying the château and even for trying to ruin the business so that Yves Florian would be forced into selling. But he was also a successful businessman and such men do not become rich by chasing legends. Norbert’s position was easier to understand. The professor was concerned with the historic importance of the treasure as well as its possible financial value. The kudos he could earn as its finder would be as sweet as any material reward he might claim. Only Henri’s role was vague, and the arrival of his fiancée made it even cloudier. To attract such a woman he must have more to offer than the average undistinguished lawyer.
The Saint was so absorbed in his thoughts as he climbed the second hill towards the barn that he did not immediately recognise an approaching figure, but as they drew closer he waved a greeting and the other stopped and waited for him.
“Bonjour, Gaston,” Simon said heartily. “I’m afraid I’m not very early. Is Mimette around?”
“Yes, she is at the barn. Is your car repaired yet?”
“No. It needs a new radiator, and the mechanic says he won’t be able to get hold of one for some days,” the Saint replied, glibly combining fact and fiction.
His answer seemed to distress the old man. Gaston shuffled his feet nervously and looked back up the path as if he was afraid of being followed.
“What is the matter?” Simon asked.
For a while the foreman said nothing but simply stared searchingly at the Saint. When he finally spoke there was no mistaking the earnestness behind his words.
“Do not wait for your car, Monsieur Templar. Go now. Go while you still can.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Simon demanded.
“I cannot explain but I hope you will listen,” Gaston pleaded. “Go now, or you may not leave Ingare alive.”
3
At any other time such a melodramatic prognostication might have made the Saint laugh, but he did not even smile as he realised the change that had come over Gaston Pichot in the twelve hours since they had chatted so casually together at dinner. Then the old overseer had been eager to begin the harvest, and his greatest worry had been the quality and quantity of the coming vintage. Now he seemed bowed by cares he was not used to bearing and he was afraid. It was the fear in the old man’s eyes which the Saint found so hard to understand and which made him appreciate the seriousness of the warning. The Saint’s survival had often depended on his ability to judge a man’s character on the briefest of encounters, and he knew that Gaston Pichot was not usually given to displays of dramatics or of fear. Men who jump at shadows do not survive five years in the Resistance.
Gaston seemed to read the answer to his advice in the Saint’s face. He sighed deeply and shook his head.
“But you will not leave,” he stated flatly. “I knew that you wouldn’t, but it was my duty to warn, perhaps, an old comrade.”
He started to walk away but the Saint stopped him.
“Warn me of what, Gaston? Who is going to do me in?”
“Would it make any difference if I told you?”
The Saint smiled.
“Probably not, but it might save me from coming to an untimely end.”
Gaston waved a hand towards the slopes where the grapes were being gathered.
“The men have heard what happened at the séance last night. I don’t know how. I did not know about it myself until one of them told me. It was a foolish thing to do. They are very superstitious and the tale has grown with the telling. They are saying that the Templar curse is coming true and that your arrival is linked with it. The burning of the barn has worried them. If anything else happens I am afraid of what they might do.”
Despite the other’s obvious sincerity, the Saint found it hard to take that threat seriously.
“What are you suggesting? A lynch mob?”
“With a mob, you never know,” Gaston replied gravely. “But I do not think it is only them you have to fear.”
“Who, then?” Simon persisted. “Philippe?”
Gaston shook off his detaining hand.
“I have said enough already. Perhaps too much. I could be wrong.”
Again he began to walk away, and this time the Saint did not try to stop him. He knew instinctively that however hard he pressed his questions he would find out nothing more. He stood and watched the overseer trudge stolidly up the hill towards the château before he continued his own journey.
He played back the conversation in his mind as he walked, analysing every word and gesture in an attempt to understand what could have prompted Gaston’s action. He only half believed the story of unrest among labourers in the vineyard. Superstitious they might be, but he doubted that their fears would be translated into any action that could endanger him. If Gaston had used their threat as a blind, then there was only one plausible alternative: that he was trying to protect someone else, not from what they had done, but from what they might do.
The smoke-blackened ruin of the chai was the centre of activity. The inside had been cleared, and the debris of the fire piled against the walls. Mimette stood beside the truck, supervising its loading as the labourers humped their baskets of grapes from the surrounding fields and emptied them into the rows of bins lined up by the tail-board.
“How’s it going?” Simon asked cheerily.
“Very well,” she replied, wiping her forehead with the sleeve of her blouse. “It should be a bumper crop this year. God knows we need one.”
He slipped off his jacket and began rolling up his sleeves.
“Where shall I start?”
“Start?” Mimette repeated blankly.
“Yes, start. You know — begin, commence, proceed, get down to it, et cetera.”
“You mean you want to help with the harvest?”
“But of course,” he said indignantly. “If I can’t sing for my supper I’ll pick for it.”
“You’re not exactly dressed for work,” she protested, and he admitted to himself that most vineyard workers do not clock on wearing silk shirts and Savile Row trousers.
He lowered his voice confidentially.
“My tailors would have coronaries, but if you don’t tell them I won’t.”
Mimette handed him a basket. She led him to a row of vines and briefly instructed him in the correct method of clipping the bunches.