“Exactly. Because somebody was afraid that when it was taken apart in the lab, some professor or precocious student might notice that there was something wrong with it—something that didn’t gibe with the assigned diagnosis. I suppose that in spite of the anonymity angle, a body would have to go to the lab with some presumed cause of death attached to it, so that the students could be warned about what was normal and what was abnormal?”
“I don’t really know how they handle that here. But—”
“Anyhow, all that matters now is to prevent the trail getting any more confused. The guy in charge in there positively identifies the body he showed us as the one he received from Lake Worth. I have a picture that contradicts him. It shouldn’t be any problem to decide who’s right, with witnesses who knew Cardman, dental charts, maybe even fingerprints—just so long as nothing is messed up. Now, surely you can arrange somehow to get this body put on ice, so to speak, for at least twenty-four hours, till I fill in the holes that the police would pick on.”
“Why don’t you let me take you to the head of the Department—”
“Because it would take too long, and I’d start getting entangled in red tape, which makes me break out in a rash. And if the police clomp into this too soon, with their big boots, they could still louse it up or be too late. Just give me this much leeway, Dr Corrington. Make sure, somehow, that nothing happens to that body. Even if I’m as wrong as anyone can be, it’ll be just as useful a cadaver tomorrow. And what on earth could you be accused of if you merely helped to keep it untouched for one day?”
The Professor Emeritus cogitated this carefully and profoundly, and finally came up with a grin that was as young as the season.
“They’re going to retire me as it is,” he said. “Now they’ll have to accuse me of being a juvenile delinquent.”
When Simon Templar got back to Palm Beach, it was late enough for the telephone to report no reply from Mr Prend’s Funeral Home (as he found it was actually listed) or from Ernest Cardman’s recent number, now maintained by Mrs Yanstead. He was less surprised to learn from the Tradewind Motel that Mr Utterly’s room also did not answer, and did not even bother to try the minor palazzo where Betty Winchester was guesting.
He called Corrington’s home and learned that the body which was not Cardman’s had been set aside pending further developments, and with that reassurance he was able to enjoy a quiet dinner at the Petite Marmite, and go to bed early with a book for company, and sleep for eight hours without a troublesome thought about death, murder, or deceit. Some of which stemmed from a hunch hardening into certainty that he now had all the threads of this incident gathered up and ready to be tied.
At ten o’clock in the morning, which seemed to him a safe and uncomplicating time, he arrived at Prend’s Funeral Home. This was an edifice of modest but calculated dignity, rather suggestive of a miniature White House, located far enough from any cemetery to offer a choice of processional routes to suit all budgets, A touch on the bell button elicited a deep tolling from within, of a cathedral solemnity which could only irreverently have been called a chime, and after a suitable pause the door oozed ponderously open, disclosing the over-extended hair and rabbit features of Mr Prend himself.
Except for the physical shell, however, it was an effort to connect this apparition with the celebrant whom Simon had seen Twisting at the Peppermint Lounge. In vocational costume, instead of a snazzy Madras jacket and light tight pants, Mr Prend wore a suit of dull definitive black and sufficiently antique cut to underline its impregnable propriety. His face was composed into pliable blobs and blanks of potential compassion attention, tolerance, efficiency, sympathy, and a ruthless ability to distinguish the cheapskates from the sincere mourners who would blow the works for a properly expensive casket. Only the red-rimmed eyes behind his semi-invisible bifocals might have caused an initiated cynic to wonder if he had spent another night at the Peppermint Lounge or elsewhere, but to less mundane observers they could still have passed for nothing worse than the penalties of excessive condolence.
“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 had 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 good-looking 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.
“Well, you meddled once too often this time,” she said. “I’ve read enough about you to know how you work. You’re on your own, and you keep everything to yourself till you think it’s all wrapped up. So you can just disappear, and it’ll be months before anyone even wonders where you went.”
“Such is fame,” sighed the Saint.
Mrs Yanstead was no more amused than Queen Victoria. She had come in from the hallway, as had the Saint, but now she indicated a door on the other side of Mr Prend.
“We got to get rid of him now,” she said sternly. “And you’ll be no worse off than you are already.”
She was now addressing Mr Prend, who gulped and swallowed his tonsils, his larynx, and possibly other things.
“But—”
“Go along with it, Al,” Simon advised him, kindly. “Surely you can find room for me in there, in one of your king-sized caskets, alongside some scrawny stiff who’s paid for a cremation. And no one will ever know…Except you might have to marry her, and give up that bleached blonde you’ve been dating in Miami Beach—”
“That’s quite enough,” Mrs Yanstead said, and prodded the Saint with her gun.
This was one of the most foolish things she ever did. Not because Simon was unduly stuffy or ticklish about being prodded, but because the touch of the gun enabled him to locate its position exactly without telegraphing any hint of his intention by glancing at it. His hands moved together like striking snakes, his left hand catching her wrist, his right hand striking the gun and bending her hand backwards with it. The one shot she fired shook the room like a thunderclap, but the muzzle of the automatic was already deflected before she could react and pull the trigger.
Simon Templar sat down in Mr Aloysius Prend’s place at the desk, using the same gun to cover the two of them, and picked up the telephone.
“We can deny all of this,” Mrs Yanstead said to her accomplice, who was now visibly trembling with a subtle but definite vibration that might have started a new wave at the Peppermint Lounge if it could only have been demonstrated there. “It’s only his word against ours, and there are two of us—”
“I wouldn’t bet too much on that,” said the Saint dishearteningly. “I didn’t wear a jacket on a warm day like this just to look like the correct respectable costume for visiting Funeral Homes. I wanted a place to hang a microphone and carry a miniature tape recorder, because I know how skeptical some authorities are about my unsupported testimony.” He opened his coat and showed them. “Wonderful things, these transistors. I wonder what Sherlock Holmes would have done with them—I must ask a friend of mine. Now would you like to give me the police number or have I got to ask the operator?”
LUCERNE: THE RUSSIAN
“Excuse me. You are the Saint. You must help me.”
By that time Simon Templar thought he must have heard all the approaches, all the elegant variations. Some were amusing, some were insulting, some were unusual, most were routine, a few tried self-consciously to be original and attention-getting. He had, regrettably, become as accustomed to them as any Arthurian knight-errant must eventually have become. After all, how many breeds of dragons were there? And how many different shapes and colorations of damsels in distress?
This one would have about chalked up her first quarter-century, and would have weighed in at about five pounds per annum—not the high-fashion model’s ratio, but more carnally interesting. She had prominent cheek-bones to build shadow frames around blindingly light blue eyes, and flax-white hair that really looked as if it had been born with her and not processed later. She was beautiful like some kind of mythological ice-maiden.
And she had the distinction of having condensed a sequence of inescapable clichés to a quintessence which could only have been surpassed by a chemical formula.
“Do sit down,” Simon said calmly. “I’m sure your problem is desperate, or you wouldn’t be bringing it to a perfect stranger—but have you heard of an old English duck called Drake? When they told him the Spanish Armada was coming, he insisted on finishing his game of bowls before he’d go out to cope with it. I’ve got a rather nice bowl here myself, and it would be a shame to leave it.”
He carefully fixed a cube of coarse farmhouse bread on the small tines of his long-shafted fork, and dipped it in the luscious goo that barely bubbled in the chafing dish before him. When it was soaked and coated to its maximum burthen, he transferred it neatly to his mouth. Far from being an ostentatious
vulgarity, this was a display of epicurean technique and respect, for he was eating fondue—perhaps the most truly national of Swiss delectables, that ambrosial blend of melted cheese perfumed with kirsch and other things, which is made nowhere better, than at the Old Swiss House in Lucerne, where he was lunching.
“I like that,” she said.
He pushed the bread plate towards her and offered a fork, hospitably.
“Have some.”
“No, thank you. I meant that I like the story about Drake. And I like it that you are the same—a man who is so sure of himself that he does not have to get excited. I have already had lunch. I was inside, and I could see you through the window. Some people at the next table recognized you and were talking about you. I heard the name, and it was like winning a big prize which I had not even hoped for.”
She spoke excellent English, quickly, but in a rather stilted way that seemed to have been learned from books or vocal drill rather than light conversation, with an accent which he could not place immediately.
“A glass of wine, then? Or a liqueur?”
“A Benedictine, if you like. And some coffee, may I?”
He beckoned a waitress who happened to come out, and gave the order.
“You seem to know something about me,” he said, spearing another piece of bread. “Is one supposed to know something about you, or are you a Mystery Woman?”
“I am Irina Jorovitch.”
“Good for you. It doesn’t have to be your real name, but at least it gives me something to call you.” He speared another chunk of bread. “Now, you tell me your trouble. It’s tedious, but we have to go through this in most of my stories, because I’m only a second-rate mind reader.”
“I am Russian, originally,” she said. “My family are from the part of Finland where the two countries meet, but since 1940 it has been all Soviet. My father is Karel Jorovitch, and he was named for the district we came from. He is a scientist.”
“Any particular science, or just a genius?”
“I don’t know. He is a professor at the University of Leningrad. Of physics, I think. I do not remember seeing him except in pictures. During the war, my mother was separated from him, and she escaped with me to Sweden.”
The Saint in the Sun (The Saint Series) Page 15