Old Bones (29 page)

"Find out?" Mathilde replied after a moment of convincingly astonished silence.

"Yeah, when he goes down there in the cellar—Maybe he sees something, finds out something…" Leona’s English or her imagination failed her. "Who knows?" she finished lamely, and fell back against her chair.

Mathilde glanced around the room, then appealed to Gideon. "I have no idea what the woman’s talking about."

"Did Claude go down into the cellar?" René asked mildly. "I didn’t know that."

"He was
going
to go," Leona said, resorting again to French. "To watch what
he
was doing." She indicated Gideon by extending her fluorescent orange lips towards him.

Jules put down his glass with a peevish thump. "I must say, I don’t see why we should have to sit here and listen to this," he said querulously, his soft, babyish cheeks streaked with sullen red. "I mean, here’s this woman, a
guest
in our house, and she has the, the…"

Gideon had stopped listening. A few more of the last remaining odd-shaped pieces that had been rattling disconnectedly around his mind had just dropped into their slots.

"…have to sit here and listen to this," Jules concluded sulkily, back where he’d begun.

Gideon, thoughtful, looked towards the doorway. "Marcel?"

The servant started. "Monsieur?"

"On the day Claude Fougeray died, did you tell him that he could come down to the cellar at ten o’clock to watch me at work?"

Gideon winced, feeling silly. The ponderous question had reverberated like a line out of an old Perry Mason show. The others, John included, stared uncertainly at him. So did Marcel. He spread his hands and shook his head to show he didn’t understand. A quick darting of his eyes at Beatrice, however, indicated that Claude’s name had registered well enough.

Gideon repeated the question in French, trying to make it a little less turgid.

No, Marcel replied defensively, he hadn’t told that to Monsieur Fougeray. Why should he? There was an uneasy, aggressive shifting of his wiry shoulders, another darty glance at Beatrice. He did not like being questioned about Claude Fougeray.

But Gideon had other game in mind. "Jules, didn’t you tell Marcel to give that information to Claude?"

There was a pause while Jules vacuumed up the last of the olives with his lips. "What information?"

"The night before Claude died," Gideon said patiently, "Joly asked you to tell Claude to come down to the cellar the next morning. You said you’d tell Marcel to pass it on."

With his tongue Jules tucked the olive into one cheek, presumably for future attention. "I did tell him."

"He doesn’t seem to remember."

Jules glanced pettishly at Gideon. "Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t have a chance to mention it. There wasn’t much point after Claude died, and he
did
die awfully early the next morning—
ridiculously
early, if I may say so." He crossed one leg over the other, looking pleased with this grotesque attempt at humor.

"Yes," Gideon said, deciding that if there was ever a moment for a denouement, this was it. "You killed him."

The reactions were varied. Predictably, Claire gasped and Ray looked dumbfounded.

Leona examined Jules with frank new interest.

Mathilde slowly opened her mouth.
"Jules?"
she whispered.

"No really?" René murmured to Sophie, sitting nearby. "Do you think that’s true?"

At Gideon’s side John murmured: "I love this part."

Gideon waited for Jules to speak for himself. The young man took the olive from his mouth and placed it in an ashtray, uncrossing his plump thighs to lean forward.

"That’s stupid. Why would I do that?"

"Because at the reading of the will he’d said he didn’t believe Guillaume had really written it. You knew he’d studied to be a doctor, and you were afraid that if he saw the skeleton he’d recognize the rickets and realize
that
was Guillaume."

Jules laughed. "So what? Why should I care?
I
didn’t kill Guillaume, did I?" He glanced with unmistakable meaning at his mother, then held up his empty glass to Marcel.

"You’ve had enough, Jules," Mathilde said icily. Jules glared at her but put down the glass.

"No, you didn’t care about that," Gideon said, "but you cared one hell of a lot about the inheritance. And if anyone found out the guy who wrote that will wasn’t who he said he was, that would have been the end of it. No fabulous inheritance for your parents—or for you not too far down the line. And that was something you weren’t about to let happen."

"Dr. Oliver," Mathilde announced in her most imperious contralto, "I cannot have you—"

"Be quiet, Mathilde," Sophie interrupted curtly. "Let’s get it sorted out once and for all, for God’s sake."

Gideon could almost see the tiny gears whizzing behind Jules’ little eyes. "I see your point," he said with strained reasonableness, "but why pick on me? I’m not the only one here who knew about the fraud, am I?" He permitted his gaze to rest once again on his mother. A dew of sweat had formed on his upper lip.

"What a miserable little shit," John muttered out of the side of his mouth.

Gideon agreed. Whatever discomfort he’d felt about brow-beating the slug-like Jules was rapidly disappearing.

"That’s right," he said. "Two people knew; you and your mother. But only one person knew Claude was going to see the bones the next day. And that’s you."

"You’re out of your mind. That inspector told me about it while we were all having drinks.
Anybody
could have heard."

"No, the rest had gone in to dinner. There were just you, me, and John."

Jules licked his lips, beginning to look concerned. He’d already as much as accused his mother. Was he going to accuse John now?

"I must have mentioned it to—to someone else. I’m
sure
I told Marcel. Marcel, didn’t—"

"And of course that’s why you tried to kill me too; to keep me from figuring out it was Guillaume down there."

More gasps. He’d forgotten that none of them knew about the letter-bomb. This was turning into quite an evening for them all.

"This is ridiculous!" Jules said with abrupt heat. The red streaks had reappeared in his downy, round cheeks. "I’m not going to sit here—"

"And Alain as well. That’s why you saw to it he drowned in the bay."

Jules’ slack-jawed blink of amazement was so transparently sincere that for a moment Gideon thought he might have it wrong, but he realized that what he was seeing was simply Jules’ astonishment that anyone had even caught on to the fact that the murder had occurred. And it
had
been a clever thing; for that much Gideon gave him credit, if you could call it credit. It had been sheer luck, nothing else, that had uncovered it.

Jules shut his mouth so hard his puppy’s teeth clicked. "I’m not going to sit here and take this—this abuse—from someone who—who wasn’t even
invited
…"

"But why?" Sophie said. "Why kill Alain after so many years?"

Gideon answered. "Because Alain was going to admit who he really was. That’s what the council was going to be about. Jules was the only one who knew, and he couldn’t let it happen. Right, Jules?" He hoped he sounded confident; the further he went, the deeper into guesswork he got. Peculiar, the situations he found himself in.

"No! Wrong!" Jules was shouting now; the martinis were starting to show in his eyes, his speech. His bow-shaped baby’s mouth had curled into a pout. "It was to tell us he was selling this place to a hotel!"

"Selling his house to a hotel is‘a matter of singular family importance’?"

"How do I know what the old fart meant?" Jules spread his arms, beseeching the others. "He
told
me what it was about!"

"Yes, I know he did. You were the only one who knew."

He lowered his arms. "That’s
right,
" he said suspiciously.

"That’s what started me wondering why you were lying about it, and the answer wasn’t too hard to come up with." Gideon was beginning to tire, wishing that Joly would come, or that Jules would just give up and admit it.

He didn’t. "
You’re
lying!" he shouted.

"No, Jules," Gideon said, and would up for what he hoped was the knockout punch. "He wasn’t selling Rochebonne to a hotel chain. If he were, there wouldn’t be much sense in enlarging the kitchen garden, would there?" He held his breath. He was up to his elbows in speculative inference here. It was conceivable that a deal with the chain was contingent on a bigger garden going in, or that they were paying for it, or a dozen other possibilities.

But no, he’d guessed right. Jules’ forehead was suddenly glossy with sweat. The area under his eyes and around his mouth seemed to sink and turn a shiny gray.

"I," he said with a wretched, sodden try at dignity, "am leaving now." When he stood up crumbs rolled from his lap.

"No," John said pleasantly, "you’re not. You’re staying right there."

Jules spun angrily on him. "You can’t—"

"I sure can. Consider it a citizen’s arrest."

"You—you’re not even a
citizen!
"

"All the same," John said, his arms folded easily on his chest, "if I were you I’d just sit back down and wait till Joly gets here."

"Joly is already here," said the familiar crisp voice from the doorway. He strode into the room and stood stiffly in front of Jules. "Monsieur du Rocher, please consider yourself under the provisions of the
garde à vue
from this moment. You will be detained—"

Jules looked wildly at Mathilde. "
Maman
—"

She stared blazingly at him. "You killed Alain," she said in a voice like cracking ice. "Your own father."

This time Gideon was part of the stunned silence too. It took René to break it.

"His father?" he said, as wide-eyed as the rest of them. "Do you mean Jules isn’t my son?"

Had it not been for the sorry circumstances, Gideon might almost have thought it was said with relief.

   "WANT some more coffee?" Julie asked.

"Sure," Gideon said, starting to rise.

"I’ll make it." She jumped up and headed for the kitchen.

"I thought you were going to be keeping me less contented."

"I figure almost getting yourself killed entitles you to one day of being spoiled. Tomorrow things change, pal."

They were having a late breakfast in the living room. Gideon leaned back, hands behind his neck, and stretched out his legs, wallowing in the satisfaction of being back home, back with Julie. Through the big window he could look down the hill and see the Coho ferry from Victoria just rounding Ediz Hook and easing its way through the morning fog into Port Angeles Harbor. In the kitchen Julie made domestic noises and whistled happily.

"I’m a lucky man," he told her.

"You better believe it," she called back. "What’s the bagel situation in there?"

"Plenty. Lox and cream cheese too."

He had arrived at a little before ten the night before. Julie had met him at Sea-Tac and for most of the long drive to Port Angeles—a slow, stately ferry across Puget Sound and then seventy miles of blackly forested highway on the Olympic Peninsula—he had told her how things had worked out at Rochebonne. When they’d reached home they’d opened a bottle of cognac he’d brought from France and their talk and attention had turned to more intimate and enjoyable things. It had been three in the morning before they’d finally drifted off to sleep, and they hadn’t awakened until nine-thirty.

"Did you hear any creepy noises last night?" he called.

"I did hear some pretty strange ones now that you mention it, yes."

He laughed. "I mean
after
we fell asleep."

She came in with a tray. "No, not after," she said, smiling, and then made a face. "Gideon, you’re not really going to be wearing those things, are you?"

He looked down and wiggled his toes. "You don’t like my shoes? Wait till you see my new sweatshirt."

"Oh, it’s not that I don’t like them. I think chartreuse canvas is extremely handsome, and that casual baggy look is very attractive, very with-it. I just like some of your others better."

"Well, I can’t find my gray running shoes. Do you know if I took them?"

Laughing, she sat down beside him and poured coffee for them. "Do you know you never take a trip without leaving something behind? Someday you’re going to come home without me, and then wander around the house muttering to yourself and wondering what it is that seems to be missing."

"When one has a perplexing case to think about," he said magisterially, "one cannot be bothered with the immediate trivialities of the moment. How about passing me a bagel?"

She did and absentmindedly nibbled on one herself. "I still think my cyanide theory was a good one."

"About it being a symbolic revenge weapon? It
was
a good one. It just didn’t turn out to be true, that’s all; a minor problem. It happens all the time to the finest theories, take it from me."

"I suppose so…"

Gideon looked up from lathering cream cheese on half a bagel. "Something bothering you?"

"Kind of. Look, you said that Jules didn’t buy the poison in Brittany, right? He brought it with him from Germany."

"True."

"Well, why? If he didn’t decide to kill Claude until after the skeleton turned up, why would he buy it ahead of time and bring it with him?"

"Ah, good question. John and I had that figured wrong." He returned to the bagel, putting a couple of thin, moist layers of smoked salmon on the cheese and topping it with the other half. "He brought the cyanide with him to kill Alain."

She shook her head. "Huh?"

"He was going to poison Alain, but when the chance came up to do him in a lot more subtly by way of the tide schedule, he jumped at it. That left him with some perfectly good cyanide to put to use when poor Claude blustered into his way."

"Charming. A wonderful family, all in all. Do you want to eat in peace, or can I ask some more questions?"