"Good morning, sir," intoned Mr. Prend, with infinite discretion. "Can I help you?"
His voice was as consciously deep as the door-bell, and the Saint was hard put to sustain his own gravity.
He used his Miami Guardian masquerade again to get as far as the reception room, which was furnished in ebony wood and black leather, with a very deep purple carpet and matching velvet drapes, and gray walls on one of which hung a large chromolithograph of the Resurrection.
"There are not many questions I can answer," Mr. Prend warned him. "As far as most details are concerned, I am bound by professional secrecy, just like a doctor or a lawyer."
"As a matter of general principle," Simon said, "how do you handle a body that's been willed to a hospital?"
"No differently from any other, for most of the proceedings. We embalm it and dress it and lay it in a casket for those who may wish to look their last on the remains—"
"Why embalm it, if it's going to be dissected anyway?"
"That makes the preservation even more important. And the institutions prefer us to do it. It is an art which we are highly trained for and experienced in."
"Is the body complete? I mean, with all its innards?"
Mr. Prend winced.
"Of course. Without the internal organs, it would be of much less value for research."
"So then do they have a regular funeral?"
"That is entirely at the option of the relatives. There can be a procession to a church, if they wish, or a ceremony can be performed in the chapel which is attached to most of the better Funeral Homes. If the purpose of your article is to enlighten readers who may be thinking of bequeathing their remains to a research institution, you can assure them that everything can be handled with dignity and as reverently as any other disposal."
"Up to the point where the coffin isn't buried or cremated."
"That is the only difference. The mourners leave, having paid all their respects to the loved one, and as far as they are concerned it is all over. The Funeral Director then takes charge of the remains and delivers them as soon as possible to the designated institution, from whom he obtains a receipt. And that is the end of it."
It was coming to one of those situations where the Saint mentally craved the gesture of lighting a cigarette, but he knew that a genuine reporter from the Miami Guardian would have been too respectful of his surroundings and the pompous side of Mr. Prend to succumb to it.
"In the case of Mr. Cardman, whom you processed recently," he said, "how did that work out?"
"There was a simple service in our chapel, attended only by his immediate kin. And the remains were delivered to the University of Miami, as he wished, the next day."
"So they were here overnight, after any of the relatives saw them."
"Yes."
"The night during which your place was burgled, wasn't it?"
Mr. Prend seemed to make an effort of recollection.
"Yes, it would have been that night."
"Then is it possible," said the Saint, "that the real object of whoever broke in was to switch Cardman's body for another one that you had here?"
"Preposterous!" Prend ejaculated. "What makes you think—"
"The body that you delivered to the University of Miami has already been un-identified: whoever it is, it isn't Cardman."
Mr. Prend stared at him stiffly.
"But why would anyone do that?" he protested mechanically.
"To destroy the evidence of a murder. Someone who knew the ropes realized that if Cardman's body went to the University — which was something they hadn't counted on till that part of the will showed up — somebody in the lab might spot the signs of poisoning in those internal organs. The easy answer was a switch to another coffin that was booked for something final like a crematorium."
Mr. Prend's roseate optics kindled at last like the tail lights of a car whose driver has belatedly trampled the brakes.
"That could explain it!" he gasped. "I never thought of it before. But who? Mr. Cardman's niece was so charming. His nephew was a little difficult. But—"
"Neither of them made the funeral arrangements, did they? Being comparative strangers in town, they'd have had to ask someone who lived here to recommend an undertaker. Someone with previous experience."
"Yes, I suppose so. We rely a great deal on recommendations."
"In Cardman's case, it was probably Mrs. Yanstead."
"Yes — yes, I suppose it was."
"Aloysius," said the Saint chummily, "how much of the take did she cut you in on for shuffling the bodies?"
Mr. Prend remained rigid for so long that Simon wondered briefly whether he had inadvertently become a candidate for his own services. But at last his catalepsy resolved itself into the wrathful indignation which after all was the only plausible form it could have taken.
"How dare you—"
"Aloysius," said the Saint, still more mildly, "according to your own explanation, Cardman's body would have to be switched for another one which wasn't going to be inspected by tender-hearted relatives who might actually look at it and start screaming about the new face you put on Uncle George. Nobody who busted in here out of the blue would know which of the corpses you had in stock would be good for the switch. Only the boss could have handled everything — but also been smart enough to set up some evidence of a bogus burglary to make it look like an outside job, just in case something went sour and he had to answer embarrassing questions. Should I take it that you're all organized and set up and ready to take a murder rap?"
"What gives you the right to talk about a murder?"
"I believe that's called an educated guess. First, you look for a motive. Anyone who expected to inherit his money could have that. And might have had an awful shock when a will turned up that left it all to somebody else. Then we ask, if he was poisoned — and he certainly wasn't shot or stabbed — who had the best chance to do it? At least two people. But who would have been most aware of the risks of poisoning, which have tripped up so many amateurs? Who would have been best placed to mislead the doctor about symptoms? Who would have realized first that Cardman's surprise bequest of his body to the University could upset the whole beautiful applecart, who would know enough about the routines to see how it could still be propped up, who would know the local undertakers and which one would be most likely to go along with a little persuasion—"
"That's all," said a voice behind him.
Simon turned.
It was Velma Yanstead, as his ears had already told him; but his ears could not have told him that she would be holding an automatic in her pudgy hand, levelled at him from a distance at which it would be difficult to miss.
"I thought you were too smooth and goodlooking to be a real reporter," she said libellously. "But you don't talk like a policeman, either. What's your real name and what's your business?"
"Madam," Simon replied courteously, "I'm best known as The Saint. I'm a meddler."
The name registered visibly on both of them, in different ways. Mr. Prend seemed to wilt and deflate as if struck by a dreadful blight, but Mrs. Yanstead seemed to swell and harden in the same proportion. There must have been something after all, Simon reflected with incurable philosophy, in that old adage about the female of the species.