Free The Saint in the Sun by Leslie Charteris Page A

monotonous. Undine wouldn’t have just one hideous outfit, he’d ‘ve had dozens, and he’d ‘ve loved to knock your eye out with a different one every day. Therefore the man I saw in the boat on the second day wasn’t Undine.”
    “Then who was it?”
    “Somebody wearing his clothes and flourishing his cigar, padded out to his size with a cushion under the windbreaker. Between those huge sunglasses and the goatee, which could even have been his own hair glued on, at the distance the boat stayed out, it was easy to get away with. Hundreds of people would swear it was Undine they’d seen. But Jasper himself was probably in the bottom of the cockpit with the anchor tied to him, waiting to be dumped overboard out of sight off the cape. Then all the murderer had to do was head the boat out to sea, jump out at a safe distance, and swim back.”
    “But why did you-“
    “I wouldn’t want anyone to get in trouble for killing Undine. I can’t feel he was any loss to the world.”
    They found their seats at last and settled down.
    “Anyway,” he said, “I wouldn’t have missed your performance for anything.”
    “It’s not much of a part,” she said, “but it’ll help me. And the money was just like Christmas.”
    “I’m not talking about the picture,” Simon said. “I’m talking about your performance at St Tropez. Only your material wasn’t quite good enough. I was having a hard time believing that a bastard like Undine had really been put off by your sob story. And then you were in just a little too much of a hurry to explain why there were no cigar ashes in the boat, when that came up. And then I realized that nobody else had a better motive for making it seem that Undine was still alive that morning. Several people had heard him say that your contract wouldn’t arrive until then, and you had to wait to get it and forge his signature. Of course it took plenty of nerve; but I remembered that you’d started out as a nurse, so you wouldn’t panic at the idea of handling a dead body, and I knew how well you could swim.”
    She turned her face to him with a kind of quiet pride.
    “I didn’t kill him,” she said. “But when it came to the point I couldn’t go through with what he wanted. I was struggling for my life, and he was like a madman-it meant that much to him, to get even for the time he thought I’d snubbed him in Hollywood. And then he suddenly collapsed. A heart attack. But all the rest is true.”
    “That makes it all the better,” said the Saint.
    He held her hand as the lights dimmed and the credit titles began.
    ENGLAND: THE PRODIGAL MISER
    Contrary to the belief of many inhabitants of less rugged climes, the sun really does sometimes shine in England, though it is admittedly a fickle phenomenon which imparts a strong element of gambling to the planning of any outdoor activity. But when it shines, perhaps because familiarity never has a chance to breed satiety, it seems to have a special beauty and excitement which is lacking in the places where sunny days are commonplace.
    It was on one of those golden days in early autumn that Simon Templar drove out to Marlow, that pleasantly placid village on the Thames made famous by Izaak Walton, the first of all fishing pundits, in The Compleat Angler, to take Mrs Penelope Lynch out to lunch. He had met her only a few days before, in London, at a small and highly informal party to celebrate the seventh anniversary of a couple who have no other part in this story; and when he found out where she lived there had been the inevitable comparing of notes on places of interest in the neighborhood.
    “Do you know my old pal Giulio Trapani at Skindle’s?” he asked.
    “Of course. We often used to go there. But for a smaller place, with more of a country-pub atmosphere, do you know the King’s Arms at Cookham?”
    “No, but I’ve been to the Crown, where they have wonderful home-made pasties.”
    “Yes, I’ve had them. But one day you must try