Monica had finished her calls. The dark richness of her hair tossed like a wave of night as she looked up at him.
“It’s all set,” she said cheerfully. “We’re going with the Kennedys. I didn’t tell them about you. You’ll be a surprise.”
Simon said, “I hope I can make it. Somehow the police seldom see things my way.” He sat down. “There’s been a corpse found, and it seems they want me to identify it. Why anyone should think I might supply the clue is something else again. It isn’t my corpse or yours or Hoppy’s — we know that.”
Her face was only a shade paler — or that might have been a change of lighting on her camellia skin.
“Then — who could it be?”
“As a betting proportion,” said the Saint, “I’ll take three guesses. And Stephen Elliott is not one of them.”
Chapter eight
The last time Simon Templar had seen the man who lay on the morgue slab was in the parlour of Sammy the Leg. Junior’s rat face was as unattractive in death as in life — less so, in view of the small blue-rimmed hole that marred his forehead. As the Saint looked at it, he was conscious of a curious urgency to dematerialise himself, drift like smoke towards the house near Wheaton, and ask Sammy questions.
Lieutenant Alvin Kearney was a very tall, very thin man with protruding brown eyes and a bobbing Adam’s apple. He seemed to be mainly fascinated by the body, in a sort of dull, desperate way.
“Know him?” he asked.