Murder in the Queen's Armes (26 page)

"The Usual Caution, yes, sir."

"All right, then," Frawley said with sulky aggressiveness, "at least I know where I stand."

"I’m not sure you do, Jack," Gideon said. "The Usual Caution is about the same thing as telling you you’re about to be arrested for murder."

On that rather large liberty, he looked surreptitiously at Bagshawe and saw the massive eyebrows lift, but the policeman said nothing. Gideon went ahead: "You’re in a lot of trouble, Jack, believe me. If you haven’t told the truth, you’d better do it now."

Frawley inclined his head. Gideon looked down on bent shoulders and a crown of thinning hair. "Come on, Jack," he said more gently.

Frawley sat up with his eyes still closed. He spoke in a monotone. "When Randy talked to me that morning, he told me… what you said."

"That he and Leon had stolen Pummy and put it there for Nate to find?"

Frawley nodded, his eyes still closed. "I guess he had a change of heart, and he wanted me to intercede for him with Nate. I refused; I told him he’d made his own bed and he had to tell Nate himself."

"But he didn’t?"

"I guess not."

"And you didn’t feel you should tell Nate?"

"No." His eyes popped open and Gideon saw a sullen glimmer in them. "Why should I? Nate made it clear to me enough times my advice wasn’t needed. And if he was so obsessed with his theories that he couldn’t see through a sophomoric trick like that, he deserved to take the consequences."

His speech had brought color to his cheeks, and he looked belligerently about him. "I don’t see that I’ve done anything so terrible."

"That remains to be seen," Bagshawe said sharply. "Did it never occur to you, while you so judiciously withheld your information, that Mr. Alexander’s murder and his part in the hoax might be related?"

"No! I didn’t even know there’d
been
a murder until you told us a couple of days ago. I just thought he’d gotten cold feet and run out." He shrugged. "It didn’t surprise me."

"And
since
you’ve learned there’s been a murder?"

"I…how could I come forward? After not saying anything before? How would I look?"

Bagshawe’s beefy but expressive face told him. "And so you were content to leave us with a fabricated and misleading story that cast suspicion on Professor Marcus. I take an
extremely
dim view of this, sir."

In response, Frawley pouted and muttered under his breath like a chastened child who has capitulated—but not quite. Gideon heard, "…don’t think…done anything so wrong…"

"Be that as it may," Bagshawe said, and consulted his notes. "This meeting, I understand, was to be in the sitting room. What were you doing in the Tudor Room?"

"I already told you. I was just seeing what the place looked like."

"So you just happened to wander into the Tudor Room and just happened to find Leon Hillyer’s body."

"Yes!"

"I think we’ve finished here, Professor Frawley."

"You mean I can go back to my place now?"

"I’d rather you stay here in the Queen’s Armes. If you still need to lie down, tell P. C. Piggott. I’m sure a bed can be found."

"I don’t know about you," Gideon said when Frawley had left, "but I’m a lot more confused than I was an hour ago. I would have bet anything on Leon’s being the murderer."

"And so may he be," Bagshawe replied. "Getting killed oneself is hardly proof of innocence, now is it? No, I rather like your little theory of an hour ago, left-handed mallet-wielder and all."

"But then who killed Leon?"

"Tea?" Bagshawe asked. He leaned comfortably forward, lifted the cozy from the pot, and poured two cups. "Who killed Leon," he mused. "That’s the question, all right. Well, it might have been the gentleman who just left, mightn’t it? He didn’t know, after all, that Leon had already spilled the beans to you, and he might have killed him to keep him from doing so. Do you remember what he said?" He flipped a page to look at his notes. " ‘How could I come forward after not saying anything before? How would I look?’ He could have killed Leon to protect his reputation, such as it is." Bagshawe sucked some tea from his cup and rolled it around his mouth.

Gideon was doubtful. "Maybe. I don’t doubt Frawley’s base motives, you understand, but I have a hard time visualizing him strangling someone or crushing a head with a poker. Now, poison would be something else."

As the inspector grimly smiled his agreement, Constable Piggott ambled by the dining-room entrance. Bagshawe called to him. "Would you give my compliments to Dr. Arbuckle and ask him if he’d be kind enough to step in for a few moments?"

"Sir!" said P. C. Piggott, and in a few seconds Arbuckle came hesitantly in, looking shaken. In him this showed itself as a constrained stiffness of manner, a quiet stolidity slightly more pronounced than usual.

"Now, Dr. Arbuckle," Bagshawe said, after he had ceremoniously poured the tea and Arbuckle had taken an apathetic sip, "if you would tell us what you saw, I’d be obliged."

"I was in my room upstairs," Arbuckle said, looking at the table, "and I heard somebody shout; Dr. Frawley, I think. It took me a few moment to—to collect my wits, and then I ran downstairs to the Tudor Room. Everyone was standing in a huddle near the door, not moving." He groped for his cup and drank some more. "In a state of shock, I suppose. It was horrible. He was lying there, all…all…"

"Yes, of course. By ‘everyone’ you refer to…?"

"All of them. Everybody that’s in the sitting room now. Well, except Dr. Marcus, of course." There was a prim little twitch of his lips, and he pushed his glasses up on his nose. "He wasn’t in any condition to come."

"I see," Bagshawe said, writing. "And what happened when you got there?"

"I thought maybe I could do something for the boy. I went to him—I’m afraid I had to push some people out of the way—and did my best. I tried to start his heart, tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but …I don’t think there was anything anybody could do."

"Very commendable, sir," Bagshawe said. "It must have been extremely unpleasant."

"I felt I had to do it," Arbuckle said simply.

"Considering the state of the body," Bagshawe said, "your clothing is remarkably clean."

"It is now, yes. I ran up to my room to wash and change. I got blood all over my shirt, my hands, my…mouth. And it wasn’t only blood….You know, I’ve never seen a violent death before…." For the first time his rigid posture crumbled slightly. He lifted his eyes from the table, and in his darting glance around the room there was horror.

"And the clothes you were wearing at the time?" Bagshawe asked. "Where are they now? I don’t mean to press you."

"It’s all right," Arbuckle said, regaining his tenuous self-control. "I just threw them on the floor, I think."

"I see. It might be necessary for us to take those away. Would you have any objection?"

Arbuckle seemed surprised. "No, but why?"

"Well, it’s always possible that in brushing against the body something important might have adhered to your clothing. One never knows."

"You’re welcome to them." Arbuckle shivered. "God knows I’m never going to wear them again."

There was a light tap at the door and Dr. Merrill looked in, his florid, friendly face arranged into an unnaturally serious mien to fit the occasion.

"Terribly sorry to interrupt, Inspector, but would you have any objection to my sending Miss Mazur along home? She’s on the near edge of hysteria. I’d like to give her a sedative and see that she’s put to bed."

"Damn," Bagshawe said, "I want to talk to them all. You haven’t given her anything yet?"

"No."

"Is she capable of answering a few questions, then?"

"Oh, yes. It’s just that she’s working herself up into a bit of a state. It appears that she and the young man were—"

"Yes, I know. Damn. Well, let me talk to her for five minutes, and then you can have her, all right?"

"Yes, I think so. Only I wouldn’t put too much pressure on her right now."

Merrill left and Bagshawe said, "Dr. Arbuckle, would you mind if we continued this later?"

"Again, you mean? Yes, sure," Arbuckle said unenthusiastically. "Certainly."

   GIDEON was not long in following Arbuckle from the room. He had already noticed on his own that Sandra was uncomfortably close to some sort of emotional histrionics— all bony, exaggerated motions, stiff-fingered smoking, and quavery grimaces—and he had no wish to sit in on her interview. Anyway, he doubted if he’d be much help; he certainly hadn’t contributed to Arbuckle’s interrogation, and had, in fact, felt both extraneous and intrusive. No, he’d be happy to leave the murder investigation to Bagshawe at this point. Besides, he wanted to have a look at the photographs from Randy’s camera and see if that human femur, left, partial was to be found.

Bagshawe accepted his withdrawal with his usual equanimity, and Gideon went into the sitting room with the manila envelope of photographs. This rectangular room had been tacked onto the original structure a few centuries earlier, first to serve as a Methodist school, then as an antique shop, and finally as a second lounge for hotel guests. It was a pleasant, intimate place, much like the living room of a private home, with couches and armchairs, a television set, and cases of books.

The atmosphere was anything but intimate when he entered. Frawley was sitting in one of the armchairs, chewing his lip and looking wretched. Barry sat in the chair next to him, with an open magazine on his lap, staring nervously into space, no doubt anticipating his turn in the dining room. Arbuckle was in a third chair, near the silent television set, occasionally and inattentively turning a page of a large picture book in his lap:
A History of Dorset.
Near him Nate sprawled, propped upright against the back of a couch like a board, his skinny legs out straight before him and his hands thrust into his pockets. He looked less intoxicated but more ill than when Gideon had seen him last, and Gideon suspected he’d been happier before the administration of the guggle-muggle.

On the other couch, Abe and Julie sat together, talking quietly. On the fringes of the room, Andy Hinshore was bustling nervously about, straightening things, brushing off spotless tabletops, and generally fussing. A tray of tea things and several bottles of beer were on one of the tables, untouched. Gideon pulled a chair up to Julie and Abe, sat down, and opened the manila envelope.

"These are Randy’s photographs," he explained.

They both looked uncomprehendingly at him.

"It was your idea, Abe. The photographs that were in Randy’s camera—we wanted to see if that femur turned up in them."

"Oh," Abe said, and Julie smiled blankly, just with her lips. Gideon couldn’t blame them for their scant interest. An inconsistency on a find card didn’t seem terribly important at the moment.

They were large black-and-white photographs, about eight inches by twelve, and Gideon began to go slowly through them. It took him a little while to figure out what he was looking at, because the backgrounds seemed unfamiliar. But he soon realized that they were pictures not of the wedge-shaped trenches, but of the square test pit that had been dug near the shed and then abandoned. If he remembered correctly, it had been sunk near the beginning of the month, so at least the timing was right; Leon’s find card had been dated November 1.

In the twelfth photograph he found what he was looking for. The four pictures that followed showed different perspectives of the same object, but there was no mistaking what it was: the head, neck, and a little of the greater trochanter of a human left femur, lying
in situ
in the pit.

He handed it to Abe.

"What do you know?" Abe’s interest perked up at once. "So it’s real. And a steatite carving it’s definitely not, which means Leon was lying about it."

"It looks like it." Gideon turned in his chair. "Paul," he called, "didn’t you say you visited the site around the beginning of the month?"

"What?" Arbuckle surfaced vaguely from his book. "Yes, that’s right; on an audit."

"Do you remember anyone turning up a human femur?" He waved the photographs at him.

Arbuckle shook his head. "I was only there a couple of hours."

Gideon returned to the photographs. Something about the look of that bone was vaguely bothersome, but what? It was human, all right, and yet… what was wrong with it? It was a little too heavy, a little too—

The thought shook him like a jolt of electricity. This was from the test pit—
the test pit!
Not the Bronze Age barrow but the test pit, with its Riss glacial layer sixteen inches below the surface! This bone had been found at twenty-five inches, so it was probably two hundred thousand years old or even more; from the very dawn of Homo sapiens, the obscure, Middle Pleistocene dawn over which anthropologists still quarreled—and from which nothing but some artifacts and a few scattered, fragmentary cranial remains had ever been recovered; never— until now—a leg bone.

"Good God!" he exclaimed without meaning to.

"What is it?" Julie said, her hand at her throat. "What’s the matter?"

"It’s nothing," Gideon said quickly. "That is, nothing about the murders. But this bone—it’s fantastic! It’s a Second Interglacial femur!"

"Is that important?"

"Important?" Gideon couldn’t keep from laughing. "We hardly know anything about those people—we don’t even know if they were people, properly speaking, or the last of Homo erectus. We don’t know…"

He turned again to Arbuckle. "Paul! Did you hear what I’ve been saying? We’ve got a Mindel-Riss femur at Stonebarrow—a new Middle Pleistocene site!"

"That’s great, Gideon," Arbuckle said, and bent dully to his
History of Dorset.
He was in a very deep funk indeed, if news like this couldn’t bring him out of it.

Hinshore had glided noiselessly up behind Gideon to look overhis shoulder at what was causing all the excitement.

"Oh," he said, "A fossil, eh? Yes, I’ve seen that one before."

Gideon sat perfectly still, replaying the words. Then he looked up at Hinshore. "You’ve seen this before?"