"Lady Valerie and I were just talking it over," he said. "She seemed to have an idea that Kennet might have committed suicide."
"Suicide?" boomed General Sangore with gruff authority. "No, no, my dear fellow, that wouldn't do at all. We can't possibly have any sort of scandal. Think what it would mean to the poor chap's father. No. Accidental death is the verdict, eh?"
He spoke as if the matter were all arranged. Fairweather supported him.
"That's the only possible verdict," he said. "We've got to avoid any silly gossip. You know what these beastly newspapers are like — they'd give anything for the chance to make a sensation out of a case like this. Luckily the coroner is a sensible man. He won't stand any nonsense."
"Isn't that splendid?" said the Saint.
They all looked at him at once with a new intentness. The edge in his voice was as fine as a razor, but it cut through the threads of their complacency in a way that left them clammily suspended in an uncharted void. Before that, disarmed by his appearance and accent, they had taken him for granted as a slightly unusual member of a familiar species — their own species. Now they stared at him suspiciously, as they might have stared at an intruding foreigner.
"Are we to understand that you would disagree with that verdict, Mr Templar?" Luker inquired suavely.
He was the only one who had remained immune to that involuntary stiffening. But he had had a chance to measure the Saint before, when, for one intangible moment, they had crossed swords in the garden during the fire.
Simon's gaze sought him out with a sparkle of wicked sapphire.
"Simon Templar is the full name," he said deliberately. "While you were finding out who I was, you should have talked to one of the policemen. He could have refreshed your memory. When you've read about me in the papers, I've usually been called the Saint."