Old Bones (11 page)

If Joly found this exchange entertaining he didn’t show it. "Dr. Oliver, to speak frankly, it seems to me that you’re going out of your way to be obstructive—"

"Obstructive?" Gideon repeated, offended. "You asked me in to give my opinion, and that’s what I’ve given. If you’ve already made up your mind who that skeleton is, you don’t need—"

"No, no, I’m sorry," Joly said hurriedly. "I didn’t mean it that way. It simply occurred to me that with all the available information pointing to its being Kassel…Well, I find myself wondering if your
modus operandi
perhaps involves a certain skepticism, a need to quarrel with the obvious, to make the simple complex…"

"Every time," John said cheerfully. "That’s his MO, all right. That’s how he got to be the Skeleton Detective of America."

The look that Joly shot him made it icily clear that he knew when he was being put on and it didn’t amuse him. He exhaled smoke through his long nose and ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. "Perhaps we’ll learn more tomorrow," he said curtly. "I’m having the rest of the cellar excavated, of course."

"Of course," John said, and wisely held his peace.

Each with his own thoughts they said no more until Joly swung the blue Renault off the N137 at the St. Malo exit.

   GIDEON was one of those people who could wake up at a set time without an alarm clock, but it was an instinct he never wholly trusted. As a result, he usually set an alarm before going to bed and generally wound up jerking awake ten minutes before it went off, thus allowing him to punch down the button and avoid being shaken out of his sleep by the alarm itself. Thus also losing him ten minutes’ additional sleep that he wanted dearly at the time. It was one of those little problems he had yet to get around to figuring out.

But he was surprised the next morning when the alarm went off while he was still asleep. He slammed the button down twice before he realized it was the telephone. Blindly, he reached for it, his heart racing. He didn’t like telephone calls in the middle of the night; that was the way he’d learned that Nora was dead. As he groped for the receiver he saw the time on the glowing clock dial and relaxed: ten after seven. Not the middle of the night at all.

Still, damn early.

He growled something into the telephone.

"Oh-oh, sounds like he hasn’t been fed yet. I didn’t wake you up, did I?"

"Julie?" He smiled and fell back against the pillows, closing his eyes again, letting her voice flow over him. "I love you."

He’d already called her twice in the five days he’d been in France. They’d talked and laughed for almost an hour each time, like a couple of kids with crushes. He hadn’t yet had the courage to inquire about the bills.

"I love you too. I miss you horribly. When are you coming back?"

"Wednesday. I keep telling you."

"I know, but I like to hear it. Four more days." She sighed. "That’s still a long time."

"Mm, I’m glad you miss me. Are you home now? How did the supervisors’ seminar go?"

"I just got back from Arizona an hour ago. And I know all about effective supervision now. It’s nothing but a matter of providing a climate conducive to the maximization of intra-group cooperation."

"I always thought it had something to do with planning, delegation, that kind of stuff."

"That shows how out of date you are. How’s life in St. Malo? Still pretty dull?"

"Well, no, as a matter of fact. Remember the Guillaume du Rocher I mentioned to you? They’ve found a dismembered skeleton in his basement, and the police have asked me in. What are you laughing at?"

"It’s amazing. This always happens to you, doesn’t it? So tell me about your dismembered skeleton." He could tell from her voice that she was settling herself comfortably.

He went over it with her briefly. "Everybody," he concluded, "is convinced it’s this SS officer Kassel that Guillaume killed in 1942. Even John thinks so. But I’m just as positive it isn’t. Maybe I’ll find out more today."

"What does your friend Guillaume have to say about it?"

"Guillaume’s dead. He drowned Monday, the same day I got here. The funeral was a couple of days ago."

"Oh, I’m sorry, Gideon. I know you liked him." She was quiet a moment. "Doesn’t it strike you that there’s something funny about that?"

His eyes popped open in surprise. "It sure does, but what makes you think so?"

"Well, I was just thinking…It’s an awfully big coincidence; here’s a body lying hidden under the house for forty or fifty years. Then when it finally gets found, it turns out that the person who’s supposed to have done it got buried the day before. How convenient."

"You know, that’s a good point," he said admiringly. "I never thought about that."

"The bones are found," Julie went on, "the victim is identified, the killer is identified, and the case is all wrapped up—all in one day. Only the only person who can confirm it—or argue with it, I bet—just died. And you never thought about that?"

"No."

"You’re slipping, Dr. Oliver. I think marriage has made you soft. When you get back I’m going to have to keep you less contented."

"Just try it," he said, then got himself more comfortably stretched out on his back and got down to the sweet, serious business of telling her just how much he missed her. And how he was going to show it when he got home.

An hour later, while John went lamenting to Professor Wuorinen’s final lecture ("Larval Invasions of Calliphoridae in Unburied Corpses from Two to Four Weeks Old."
Many graphic color slides
), Gideon was picked up at the hotel and driven to the manoir by a sharply dressed, intense young man with red hair and elevator heels, who introduced himself as Sergeant Denis. Ray met them at the thick oak door and politely invited Denis to join them for coffee.

"No, thank you, monsieur," Denis said, as firmly as if Ray had suggested a double brandy. He bobbed a Joly-style bow and went to break the police seal on the cellar door and get the workmen started digging.

"Well, let’s go sit down," Ray said. "I’ve asked Beatrice to bring us some coffee."

With luck Beatrice would not take Ray’s request in too narrow a sense; he was ravenous, although he’d breakfasted in the hotel restaurant at eight. Delicious as the French
petit déjeuner
of croissants, rolls, and
café au lait
was, its staying power was an hour and a half at most. The French, realizing this, often had a second breakfast at midmorning to tide them over until lunch, and if Beatrice were to offer him something along that line, he would not turn it down.

In the window alcove of the salon were the same people he’d met the evening before, as if they’d been there all night, leaving only to change their clothes. Now, however, it was an ample breakfast they were putting away, and Beatrice’s croissants looked a lot better than the ones at the Terminus.

Ray and Gideon walked past the group, which was deep in conversation (except for Jules, who was sucking in croissants as quickly as he could smear them with jam and butter), and headed toward a pair of chairs in the far corner, but René caught their eye with an amiable smile and waved them over. There was no polite escape. With a small shrug between them, they joined the others. This time it was Ben who moved his chair to make room for them.

Beatrice got there at the same time they did, and, happily, she had not forgotten his good appetite. With the steaming pitchers of milk and coffee there were two big baskets; one of croissants and one of rolls, both of them warm and fragrant—altogether the best combination of smells to be found in France. Maybe in the world.

"We’ve solved your mystery for you," René announced, sprightly and pink-cheeked.

"Oh?"

"
Obersturmbannführer
Kassel of the SS. That’s who it is. It must be."

"Yes, I heard something about him." Gideon glanced down to break open a roll. "Tell me, do you remember what he looked like?"

"I’ll never forget." The shadow of a cloud rippled over René’s bland face. "No one could, who was here when the trouble came. Very handsome in the German way; very cold, very Aryan. A blond giant…"

"You know," Ben pointed out, "you might be overstating this‘giant’ thing a little, which maybe could mislead Gideon. You were a kid then, and to a kid every grown-up looks big and strong."

"René was sixteen," Mathilde said. "That was not a child in those days. Besides, I remember the SS man very well too. And I was… somewhat older." After a moment she added: "At that time." Just in case anyone thought it might still be true.

"Well, what about the bones, Gideon?" Sophie asked. "Do they fit the description, or don’t you have enough to go on?"

He hesitated. He had more than enough to go on, and no, they didn’t fit the description, whatever Joly might think. But he was saved from having to hedge by someone making an entrance into the salon. Six pairs of eyes swiveled in the newcomer’s direction with candid hostility. Even Ray, to whom glowers didn’t come easily or often in Gideon’s experience, managed a creditable one.

"Claire’s father," Ray whispered to him. Gideon, whose back was to the doorway, turned out of curiosity.

Claude Fougeray, as Joly had said, was not an endearing man, at least to look at. Short-necked and squat, radiating

belligerence, he stopped at the entrance of the room to return the collective antagonism with a goggling, malevolent stare of his own. Then he muttered an ugly laugh and made his way past them to the empty dining room.

Good God, if that was Claire’s father, no wonder her eyes had that haunted look.

In the salon the conversation had stopped, so that the clink of carafe against wineglass in the other room was audible, then the hollow gurgle of liquid being poured, and even the three wolfish gulps that followed. There was another muttered, contemptuous laugh, and the process was repeated: clink, gurgle, glug, glug, glug. And again the clink…Gideon shuddered. It was 9:15 a.m.

"Tell me, René," Sophie said, her voice brighter and louder than before, "what will you and Mathilde do? Will you give up your job in Germany and come and live at the manoir?"

"Well," René said, "we haven’t really—"

"Of course we will," said Mathilde. "It may take a few weeks to put things in order, however. It’s quite difficult at the moment without an automobile to get about in. Guillaume’s Citroën is still in the car park at Mont St. Michel, you know. I was hoping, Raymond, that you might go there and drive it back."

"The car? Yes, of course. But how would I get there?"

"Take someone else’s car, of course."

"But no one else
has
a car, my dear," René said. "Marcel picked everyone up at the airport or the train station in Dinan."

Mathilde shrugged crossly. She was not interested in details. "You can take a taxi to the train station, I suppose, and go from there, or perhaps you can rent a car. It’s all
very
annoying. I can’t imagine why Guillaume kept only the one car here. In Frankfurt we have—"

"Ha!"
Behind Gideon, Claude had returned to the entrance to the salon. No one looked in his direction.

"—three automobiles and could easily do with another. It sounds ostentatious, I suppose, but—"

"Ha!"

Even Mathilde faltered. "—but as a matter of fact…as a matter of fact…"

"Ha!"
There was a startlingly loud crash.

Gideon spun around in time to see Claude’s half-filled wineglass drop to the thinly carpeted stone floor and smash a few inches from where the carafe had splintered a moment before.

"Jesus Christ!" Ben Butts cried hoarsely. "What is it? Claude…!"

Claude’s body was rigid, arms spread, fingers clawing convulsively at the air.
"Ha!"
he cried.
"Caah!"
From one corner of his stretched lips a fine white froth seeped, as if his mouth were full of soap. His bulging eyes heaved.

"Oh, my God," Sophie murmured. "He can’t breathe!"

"Do something!" Mathilde commanded all-inclusively. "He’s having a heart attack!"
And,
her tone implied,
on my Aubusson carpet.

Gideon, as paralyzed as the rest of them, finally pulled himself out of his chair and moved toward the stricken man. Before he got there Claude jerked as if an electrical current had pulsed through him, grunted through clenched teeth, then abruptly threw himself down on the floor, onto his back, like a circus performer who would momentarily spring unaided to his feet, all in one movement.

He didn’t spring to his feet, of course. He didn’t move at all, except for his outflung arms, which settled gently to the floor at his side in a quiet motion of terrible finality. His eyelids were lowered halfway over glazed and unfocused eyes. When his mouth fell open a moment later, a gob of foam welled from it and slid down his cheek toward his ear.

   HEAD down, hands clasped behind his back, Joly listened to Gideon’s brief description of what had happened. When it was done he nodded once and stepped from the vestibule back into the salon to address the assembled household, who sat, edgy and subdued, in the alcove. Only Leona and Claire, in seclusion in their rooms, were absent.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said matter-of-factly, "I shall want to speak with each of you in the next few hours. After that, I expect to ask for your cooperation in remaining in the vicinity for the next several days."

"But we’re supposed to fly to the States tonight," Ben said.

Others began to protest too, but Joly cut them off. "If any of you find it an extreme inconvenience to remain until—let’s say Tuesday, three days—please inform me when we speak privately. But I hope that won’t be the case. It would create annoying and time-consuming difficulties for me and for yourselves. Madame," he said to Mathilde, "is there a room in which it would be convenient for me to hold interviews?"

"I suppose so," Mathilde said grudgingly. "Guillaume’s study is right across the hall."

"And someplace other than here where people might wait comfortably? I’m afraid I must ask all of you not to return to your rooms for the moment."