“You possibly were not here when the event occurred. I have already questioned the hotel guests who were in their rooms, just afterwards, but naturally when I saw one of the names of the Saint on the register...”
He shrugged, showing that he felt there was no necessity for further explanation. The Saint agreed with an understanding nod.
“I’m sorry I can’t oblige you,” he said, “but I haven’t murdered anybody for days.”
The inspector seemed not entirely satisfied with the answer.
“Just for the sake of thoroughness, would you allow me to visit your room?” he asked.
“A sociable thought,” said the Saint agreeably. “It would seem downright caddish of me to refuse.”
He gestured towards the nearby elevators, and his two companions preceded him to the now open doors. A few moments later they stepped out and walked a short distance down a corridor to room 614. Simon tried to catch Vicky’s eye, if for no other reason than to try to judge her emotional temperature and the likelihood of her bursting into choruses of confession at the first real pressure from Inspector Edval. But Vicky kept her thoughts to herself and her eyes on the wine-coloured carpet.
“Here we are, Inspector,” said Simon, hospitably swinging open his door. “I’m not quite sure what sort of traces a man leaves behind when he jumps out of a window, but you’re welcome to try to find them if it’ll relieve your mind.”
Edval nodded and grunted his thanks. He first stood in the doorway and peered around the chambers from that vantage point like a respectably attired fox checking out a water hole before risking a direct approach. Simon observed, before closing the door, that a uniformed policeman had happened along the hall at just that moment and decided to pause in his promenade a few yards away. He gave the gendarme a jaunty wave before closing him out and turning back to the inspector.
“Good hunting?” he asked, with benevolent interest.
Edval began to nod repetitively at some agreeable thought of his own, and to shuffle towards the high window at the opposite side of the room. It was a wide window, and the only one in Simon’s quarters. It was, of course, the one through which Curt Jaeger had made his spectacular exit from this vale of tears — the one through which he had so kindly aspired to help the Saint make a similar escape.
The window was closed now. Inspector Edval noted the fact with an intense interest possible only to an investigator who is still undecided whether he is on the right track or not.
“Your Mr Jaeger must be a real magician if he went out by this window,” Simon remarked. “He closed and latched it behind him.”
The inspector scrutinized the window at close range and then opened it.
“But it would not have been a great magic trick for anyone who might have thrown him out,” he said stolidly.
He did not look accusingly at Simon as he spoke. He was leaning cautiously out, staring down through space along the approximate trajectory that Curt Jaeger’s body could have described through the air.
“Why would anybody have wanted to throw him out?” the Saint inquired, with a sidewise look at Vicky, who still refused to notice him. “Was he selling forged football tickets or something?”
Inspector Edval stepped back from the window and faced him.
“He may have been selling watches, according to his credentials,” he said humourlessly. “But I am now having a quick check on his identification made.” He took a deep breath, like a man bolstering his lungs before an unpleasant task. “In the meantime, I must look around this room for signs of a struggle — and I must also ask if I may search you for any signs of having been in a fight. You would have no objection to such a search, I hope?”
For the first time since they had met the inspector, Vicky looked up from the vicinity of her toes and darted a calculative glance at the Saint.
“That’s rather an odd request,” Simon said. “It sounds almost like an accusation.”
“I intend no offence,” Edval said politely. “But neither the concierge nor the doorman are quite sure whether you went out before or after Jaeger fell.”
Now it was Vicky Kinian’s turn to take a deep breath — a breath such as the Sphinx might have taken just before breaking its immemorial silence.
“I think I can help you with that, Inspector,” she said.
V: How Vicky’s Inheritance was revealed, and Boris Uzdanov identified himself.
1
The Saint could stop a man’s fist with comparative ease, but the problem of stopping a woman’s tongue was another matter, beside which the raising of the Tower of Babel to stratospheric levels would have seemed a casual recreation.
His face, however, betrayed none of the unhappy thoughts which flashfired through his brain when Vicky announced to Inspector Edval her intention of making a statement. He looked at her with the mild resignation of a disinterested teacher to some weakwitted pupil.
Then someone knocked at the door.
“Party-crashers,” Simon said with very genuine cheerfulness.
He went to the door and opened it, revealing an excited-looking policeman — not the one he had first seen, who was still standing guard nearby — with a folded piece of paper in his hand.
“A message on the car radio, Inspector!” he said in rapid French. “It concerns the identification of the dead man.”
The policeman knew the message, and as he handed the paper to Inspector Edval he babbled a resume of its contents. Vicky, who did not understand French, looked blank, while the Saint felt — if he did not actually look — positively beatified.
“Would you mind letting us foreigners in on the secret, Inspector?” Simon asked with halting humility. “After all, you’re using my rather expensive room for your festivities.”
Edval thought for a few seconds before answering. It was already obvious from a scorching glare he had shot at his uniformed subordinate that he had no faith whatever in the Saint’s supposed lack of linguistic ability.
“Jaeger is not Jaeger,” he said, seeming to take an unofficial poetic pleasure in the lilt of the words. Perhaps he was the sort of man who read Baudelaire secretly in bed. “Or perhaps I should say, he was both Jaeger and someone else — a former Gestapo agent named Norden who operated secretly in this country during the ’39 war. We have rather complete files on such people, including dental charts and scars.”
A transformation was taking place in Vicky’s expression that was subtle but movingly complete. She met the police inspector’s probing eyes directly as he turned to her.
“But you were about to tell me something, mademoiselle,” he said. “And this further identification of the victim certainly does not decrease the chance that he might have been pushed out of a window.”
“I can tell you that he wasn’t pushed out of this window,” Vicky replied in a completely confident voice. “At least not by Mr Templar. Mr Templar and I went out together, and there certainly wasn’t any sign then that anybody had fallen anywhere.”
“And when was that, mademoiselle?” Edval inquired.
“About a quarter to eight,” Simon answered helpfully.
“I would prefer that the lady answer my questions,” Edval said.
“About a quarter to eight,” said Vicky.
Edval sighed.
“May I see your passport, please?”
Vicky opened her purse and produced the booklet. Edval bowed slightly as he took it. He looked at each page closely before speaking again.
“Very good, Mademoiselle Kinian. I suppose you are a good friend of Monsieur Templar?”