Murder in the Queen's Armes (22 page)

"I don’t think so," said Gideon.

"That’s good," she responded sensibly, and went away.

"What do we do now?" Julie asked.

"Eat, I guess, and let Nate enjoy his snooze. I’ll get him back to the Cormorant when we’re done. It’s only a couple of blocks."

Julie thoughtfully sliced into a large pickled onion. "Poor, poor man. Do you still believe he didn’t do it himself? Plant the skull, I mean?"

"Yes, I do. Even though Frawley says he did."

Nate had begun to snore softly. Gideon turned his own chair slightly away from him and cut off a section of cheese. He was extremely hungry. "The Stilton’s good, isn’t it?"

"Mmm, fabulous. I suppose you’re going back up to Stonebarrow Fell after lunch? No country walks today?"

"I think I’d better." He smiled and caressed the back of her hand with his fingertips. "Poor Julie. I’ve been ignoring you, haven’t I?"

"Oh, that’s okay; I know Abe needs you. You know what I’d really like to do, though?"

"Speak," Gideon managed, with his mouth full of roll and chutney, "and it’s yours."

"Do you remember that beautiful meadow on the way to Wootton Fitzpaine, where we sat on a log for a while?"

Gideon nodded. "Dyne Meadow."

"Uh-huh. Well, there’s a full moon tonight. I looked it up; it comes up at seven-oh-four. Wouldn’t it be lovely to go back there, sit on that log, and watch the moonrise? The sky’s clear and it’s not very cold. Am I being silly?"

"I think," Gideon said, "it sounds like a great idea. We’ll have dinner early and take along some brandy and a thermos of coffee."

Julie smiled and fell happily to her chutney.

"Grubwork," Nate announced startlingly, "and Hillyer thinks he’s too damn brilliant to be bothered with it.
That’s
his problem. Archaeology is ninety percent grubwork and ten percent brainwork." He inhaled noisily. "And fifty percent housework. Leon thinks it’s a hundred percent intell… intellectualization."

"Yes," Gideon said. "he told me that the two of you have had a few friendly arguments about that."

"
Friendly arguments?
" Astonished, Nate stared woozily at Julie. "You hear that? Friendly arguments! Ha, ha."

"They weren’t friendly?" Gideon asked.

"
Un
friendly arguments, that’s what they were. I told him last summer, back at Gelden, oh, yeah." He looked accusingly at his glass. "You bet I did."

"Told him what, Nate?"

"Told him," Nate said, "that unless he showed me on this dig that he was at least
trying
to learn how to do the grubwork, I wasn’t going to approve his dissertation, and I was going to recommend that he be fulnk…flunked out. And…and he hasn’t made one goddamn effort—not one. So’s gonna be good-bye, Leon. Ho, ho, ho."

"Wait a minute, Nate. You’re telling me Leon is
flunking?
"

"Damn right. I don’t give a damn how many Grabows he wins. Archaeology is ninety percent grubwork, eighty percent—"

"And he
knows
you’re flunking him?"

"Well… sure…"

"Leon Hillyer!" Gideon whispered fiercely. Why hadn’t it occurred to him before? Nate had practically leveled an accusing finger at Leon ten minutes ago—without knowing it, of course—and it had gone right by Gideon. He jumped up and went to the bar.

"Do you have any candy?"

The man behind the bar gestured to a rack of packaged candies near the cash register. "What’ll it be?"

Gideon pointed. "Those."

He handed over seven pence, took the candy, and went back to the table. Nate was hectoring Julie.

"Grubwork! Grubwork, grubwork, grubwork—"

"Nate," Gideon interrupted, slipping back into his seat, "you found the skull when you were on a walk during the lunch break, right?"

" ’S right."

"Do you usually take the same walk?"

"Sure, why shouldn’t I?" He glared truculently at Gideon. "Eat a sandwich, then circle the fell. Takes ten minutes. So what?"

"And a scrap of paper caught your attention, and then you saw the fragment?"

Nate made a vexed sound deep in his throat. He was getting sleepy. "Already tol’ you, din’ I?"

"And what color was the paper?"

"How the hell would I know? Who gives a—" He turned to Julie. "Par’n me."

"You already told me once," Gideon said. "I just want to hear it again."

Nate squeezed his eyes shut and puffed out his cheeks. "Boo," he said.

"Blue?"

"Buh-loo." One eye opened stickily, and then the other. "Or was it gheen?"

"Or both?" Gideon asked. "Like this?" He opened his hand to show the roll of Polos lying on his palm; green and white lettering on a blue background.

Nate stared for so long that Gideon began to think he’d gone to sleep again, this time with his eyes open, but at last, with amazement in his voice, he said, " ’S right. ‘S what it was—Polos. How the hell you know tha’?"

Very far gone now, he fell back in his chair, made a swipe at his empty glass of stout, and knocked that over too. "Don’ feel too great," he said. "Think I'll go home." Then he started snoring again, a little less softly and a lot more wetly.

Julie, who had continued to make progress with her lunch, wrinkled her nose and pushed away her plate. "I guess I’ve had enough. Now will you tell me what this is all about? What’s so important about Polos?"

"If you had a project director," Gideon said, "who took a predictable walk every day, and who was a bug on housekeeping, and you wanted him to ‘accidentally’ find a half-buried skull fragment, what would be easier than planting it in his path and then leaving a crumpled-up, bright-blue candy wrapper right there where it would be sure to catch his eye?"

"And you think that’s what this Leon Hillyer did?"

"Well, he’s popping one of these mints every time you look at him, so he’d sure have a supply of wrappers. And a reason."

"To make Nate look bad, you mean? Maybe get him fired?"

"That’s the idea. Leon might easily do better with another major prof who saw things more his way."

Julie shook her head doubtfully. "It sounds pretty farfetched."

"This whole affair is far-fetched. Anyway, it worked; Nate’s in disrepute, isn’t he? And he’s damn likely to lose his job at Gelden."

"But wait a minute now. Didn’t you tell me that Jack Frawley said that Randy said…whew, I’m getting mixed up… that Randy told him that Nate had planted the skull himself?"

"That’s what he said, all right, and you’re not the only one who’s confused." Gideon pushed his chair back from the table. "I think I ought to go back up the hill and talk with a few people, starting with Leon."

"And leave me," Julie said, her voice rising, "with this"— she pointed at the rhythmically oinking archaeologist—"this
body?
"

"No, I’ll get him back to his place first. You stay and finish your Guinness. See you later, honey." He tapped Nate on the arm. "Ready?"

"Hoo," Nate said, "I feel lousy."

With Gideon’s considerable help, he got to his feet and managed a reasonably steady gait to the door. Once in the street, the fresh air seemed to revive him a little, and they proceeded in stately silence to the Cormorant, a graciously moldering old inn with some elderly potted plants on the sidewalk in front and a proprietorial ale sign swinging gently over the entrance.
Courage,
it said, as if offering solace or guidance.

Unlocking the door to Nate’s room presented certain difficulties, inasmuch as Nate insisted on doing it himself, but finally it was accomplished, and he looked gravely across the threshold at Gideon.

"Who… whom…you think murdered Randy?"

"It beats me, Nate."

"Me, too. You b’lieve I did it?"

"No."

Nate nodded with satisfaction and beckoned Gideon closer with a crooked finger. "Me neither," he whispered. Then he burped, yawned, and gently closed the door.

   IT was apparent that Leon sensed something was wrong the moment Gideon told him he wanted to speak with him. Quietly, he stepped away from the group at the dig and trailed Gideon to the workroom with the anxious air of an eight-year-old following his father out to the woodshed.

"I want to ask you something about the Poundbury skull," Gideon said as soon as they sat down at the table, "and I think you’d better consider very carefully before you answer it."

Leon’s hand darted to his short golden beard, tugging at it under his chin. "The P-P-Poundbury skull?"

Gideon was finally onto something real. It was the first time he’d seen Leon genuinely ruffled. "Did you take the Poundbury calvarium from the Dorchester Museum," he said, sounding to himself very much like Inspector Bagshawe at his most orotund, "bury it here at Stonebarrow Fell, and then lead Nate to it?"

"Lead him to it? What do you m-mean, lead him to it?"

Gideon took the roll of Polos from his jacket pocket and slapped it onto the table. Leon’s left eyelid twitched and then began to quiver, and the color drained from his face as suddenly as if someone had pulled a plug. A muscle leaped at the side of his throat. It was extremely quiet in the shed. The metal walls creaked gently, expanding in the afternoon sunlight. Someone had been gluing pottery not long ago, and the air was sharp with acetone.

"Yes," Leon said, so faintly that the whispered, sibilant
s
was all that could be heard.

Gideon was surprised. He didn’t quite know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t a flat admission.

"To make Nate look bad?" he asked quietly. "To get him out of your hair?"

"Yes," Leon said again, more audibly this time. His eyelid still trembled slightly, and now it drooped stubbornly halfway over the eye. He tilted his head slightly back to look out from under it. "W-what are you going to do?"

"Leon, there’s only one thing to do. Everyone concerned in this has to be told."

Leon lunged forward in his chair, his clenched fists coming down hard on the table. "Gideon,
please!
I n-n-never meant to go this far—I’m begging you…!"

"It’s got to be done, Leon."

"But what w-will happen to me?"

"I don’t know. When we’re done here, I’m going to go down and see Nate. I want him to know first, and we’ll see where he wants to take it from there." Assuming, of course, that he was sober enough to make any sense of it.

Leon dropped his head and massaged his eyes hard. "Oh, God," he whispered, "I can’t believe this is happening."

Paradoxically, Gideon was sorry for this intelligent, articulate, advantaged young man, now reduced to twitching and stuttering, who had cold-bloodedly and deceitfully tried to ruin his gullible professor. Nate’s career, it now seemed, might be salvaged, but Leon, with all his bright promise, was through in anthropology. An episode like this would never be forgiven. Nor should it, Gideon reminded himself sternly.

"Who else was in on this?" he asked on a hunch. Professor Hall-Waddington had mentioned an American student "slouching about" Pummy’s case, and that didn’t sound like the quick, graceful Leon.

"What?" Leon asked dully, his face still pale, his eyelid still drooping.

"Was anyone else involved?"

Leon sighed again. "Uh… no."

"I understand the ‘no.’ What does the ‘uh’ mean?"

Leon said nothing.

"Come on, Leon. Who else?"

Leon finally had his eyelid under control. "Randy Alexander," he said, not looking at Gideon.

Randy. Gideon didn’t know if he was surprised or not, or if it made sense or not. On the whole, he thought it did. If nothing else, it forged that missing link, that connection Abe had foreseen, between the Poundbury affair and the murder. But beyond that, Gideon was almost as much in the dark as ever. Just what
was
the connection? Had Randy been killed because he’d threatened to expose the hoax?
Had
he in fact threatened to expose it? Had he gotten cold feet, and then tried to lie his way out of it before he got into trouble, first with Frawley and then with Gideon?

Gideon made a slight head-shaking motion. The more he found out, the less clear—if that were possible— everything became. "Why was Randy in on it?" he asked. "The same reason you were?"

"Randy? No, he just did it for a lark, for the fun of it. I talked him into it. It was easy."

That fit in with what Gideon knew about Randy. "Leon," he said, "this throws a new light on Randy’s murder."

"His
murder!
I don’t—you don’t th-th-think I had anything to do with that? Jesus…" His voice petered out in a plaintive squeak.

"I’m not sure. Did you?"

"No!"
Leon said. "I swear! I’m telling you the truth. How can y-y-y-you th-th-th…" In his frustration, he hammered on the table with his fist. This was no simple, frightened stammer, Gideon saw, but a profound speech impediment, hidden before, but now surfacing under pressure.

"All right, Leon, all right, but there’s a connection; I’m sure of that. Whether you know what it is I don’t know."

"I
don’t.
You’ve got to buh-buh-believe me!"

"Okay, calm down. That’s up to the inspector to look into, anyway."

"You have to tell him about it?"

"You better believe it."

Leon twisted restlessly in his chair, then jumped up and walked to the other end of the table, picking up a couple of as-yet-unglued pottery shards and aimlessly pressing them together while he stared out the window. Gideon could see he was trying to pull himself together as well, and he let him take his time. Leon’s surprising collapse into stuttering panic had unnerved Gideon, had made him feel unaccustomedly mean.

After a long time Leon spoke in a subdued, calm voice. "I’d like to be the one Nate hears it from."

Gideon hesitated, but the idea appealed to his sense of justice, or possibly of poetic justice. "All right. But I want to be there."

"Can I do it tomorrow morning?"

"No, I think it had better be today. This evening," he amended. That would give Nate a chance to sober up. "And the others are going to have to be told too. We’ll call a meeting after dinner, say seven o’clock, and get Nate there. You can tell everyone at once."