“Absolutely. He went to a good school, where he didn’t get into any particular trouble. Then he became an actor. He never made any hit, but he managed to make a living. He didn’t care much what he did as long as it was something theatrical. He got married the first time when he was twenty-five. He and his wife were both in the chorus of some revue. Later on they joined up with one of those troupes that used to play on the piers at the seaside in the summer. He was about thirty when she got drowned in a boating accident.”
“Why did he wait that long?”
“It wasn’t so long after she’d inherited some money from an uncle in Australia, and right on top of that they’d taken out mutual insurance policies.”
“So then he became a capitalist.”
“He still wasn’t so awfully rich, but he moved up a notch. He helped to produce some shows in London, which were mostly flops. But he always got other people to invest with him, so his own money lasted longer than you’d think. He was getting a bit short, though, when he married his second wife.”
“The American?”
“Yes. That was after the war, when the tourists started coming over again. He married her, and they went to America together — after taking out insurance policies for each other. Six months later she was electrocuted. She was lying in the bath listening to a small radio, apparently, and it fell in.”
“Just doing his bit to improve Britain’s dollar balance,” Simon remarked.
“Then it was the same story all over again — a night club, plays, a film company that never produced anything, and some other business schemes. Never anything crooked that you could put your finger on, except that his partners somehow always lost more money than he did. And about a year ago he married the present Mrs Clarron.”
“He sounds like a real cagey operator. At least, until that shooting accident misfired — if we should use the expression.”
She nodded.
“That was when the Southshire Insurance Company got very interested, as I told you. Being stuck three times in a row was a bit too much. Of course it could all be coincidence, but it had to be looked into.”
Simon regarded her appreciatively.
“They’re not so stupid. I’d have taken a long time to spot you as a detective.”
“It’s a new discovery,” she said spiritedly. “They found out that investigators could do a lot more if they didn’t look like investigators, and somebody told them that a woman with brains isn’t obliged to look like a hippopotamus.”
He grinned.
“I must tell Teal that the same could apply to policemen,” he said.
“What does he think about you butting in — or doesn’t he know?”
“Oh, he knows all right, and he disapproves strongly. But there’s nothing he can do about it. I told him that the insurance company stood to lose ten thousand pounds if Clarron managed to get away with killing another wife, and they couldn’t afford to bet that much on Scotland Yard being smart enough to stop him.”
Simon chuckled aloud.
“I’m beginning to think of you as a soul-mate. But you still haven’t told me how you visualize me in this set-up.”
“In rather the same way,” she said seriously. “I know it’ll sound ridiculous, but I’ve always been your wildest fan. I started reading about you in my teens, and idolizing you in a silly way. I can’t have altogether grown out of it. When I heard you asking about Clarron in Skindle’s, and heard your name, it just hit me like a mad flash of inspiration. I’d give anything to get even with Teal for the patronizing way he’s talked to me, and I knew you’d sympathize with that, and besides, this case would be a great big feather in my cap. That is — if we could get together…”
The Saint finished his plate and leaned back. The tranquil glow that he felt was fueled by more subtle calories than a good meal satisfyingly washed down. For his luck, it seemed, was as unchangingly blessed as ever. He had been in England only a few hours, and already the old merry-go-round was rolling at full throttle in his honor. A problem, a pretty girl, and Chief Inspector Teal to bedevil. What more had he ever asked? It was as if he had never been away.
“You just got yourself soul-hitched, darling,” he said. “Now what’s the music you think we might make together?”
“I’ve told you everything I know, for a start. But what do you know?”
“Not another thing. The worthy watchdogs of the Yard undoubtedly spotted my name in a routine check for incoming undesirables, and Teal came huffing out to the airport to warn me to keep my nose clean. I knew that Teal had to be working on some case, even if he is retiring, and whatever it was, I figured I could do a memorable job of lousing it up for him.”
“You mean you didn’t know about Clarron before?”
“Teal took it for granted that I did, and let out the name. Then I needled him some more, and he mentioned Maidenhead. That was plenty for me to start on.”
She stared at him with sober brown eyes, and bit her lip.
“That’s rather disappointing.”
“I’ve done plenty with less, in my time,” he said cheerfully. “But you’re still holding something back. What was that about you being the next victim?”
“Oh. Yes. You see, I’ve got to know him quite well. He thinks I’m a young widow with money.”
“And that you might be available if only he were free?”
“That’s right. That’s why I talked the insurance company into letting me rent this cottage, to make it easy. It’s right next door to his house.”
The Saint raised his eyebrows over the cigarette he was lighting.
He got up and stood at the window. Looking out at an angle, he still could not see the other house, and he recalled that when they arrived at the cottage he had not clearly seen an adjoining house, since the front of the cottage was well screened with trees; but in the back only a low hedge separated the lawns that went down to the river.
“I’ve done more than that,” Adrienne said. “Once I got him over here, and pretended to be a bit tight, and more than hinted that when my imaginary husband was ill with pneumonia I’d helped to make sure that he didn’t get over it.”
“The soul-mate approach again?”
“It was a trick I read about in a mystery story. But it didn’t work on him. He’s too — what did you call it? — cagey, even to fall for that.”
A man had come into sight on the next lawn, at first inspecting a stretch of hedge with the diagnostic eye of an amateur gardener, then turning and looking back over it towards the cottage. Then he walked down a little farther and came through an opening in it.
“We’d better hurry up and think of a new approach that includes me,” said the Saint. “Lover Boy is coming to call.”
4
Mr Reginald Clarron’s failure to achieve any notable success on the stage was only due, he would always be convinced, to the cloddish stupidity of the public. About his own outstanding talents he had no doubt whatsoever. Where lesser thespians played their parts for a couple of hours behind the footlights, he could sustain his for twenty-four hours a day, with no help from a script, and sell them to an audience that did not have to be pre-conditioned by the atmosphere of a theater. He prided himself on having every flicker of expression and every inflection of voice under conscious control at every moment. It would be trite to observe that he would have made a formidable poker player: he already was.
He was a passably good-looking face without a single distinctive feature, but like a good showman he applied distinction to it with the full cut of his artistically long but carefully brushed gray hair and a pair of glasses with extra heavy black frames, so that a recognizable caricature might have been made of those two items alone with no face shown at all. His figure, at least as far as it was ever displayed to the public, was most commendable for a man of fifty-five, and only a certain fleshiness around the chin betrayed a tendency to embonpoint which skilful tailoring was able to conceal elsewhere.