Switcheroo (A Gideon Oliver Mystery Book 18)

by Aaron Elkins

  “The manor?” Julie said.

  “My home,” Rafe said with a smile. “Ridiculous, isn’t it, but that’s what everyone calls it—Le Fontant Manor, in honor of the Norman family that built it in the seventeenth century.”

  “Impressive.”

  “No, not really. There are a good two dozen places that go by ‘manor’ on the island. As you’ll see, Le Fontant is one of the smaller, plainer ones. Just an old farmhouse, really, with a few mod cons added over the years. I’ll have a car come round and collect you at your hotel at six Wednesday evening, all right? We’ll have cocktails first.” He turned the key in the ignition. “Well, let us go.”

  And so they drove in comfort out of the parking lot and into a pleasant, rolling countryside of farms and pastureland populated with small, coffee-and-cream-colored cows that seemed even more placid and content than the usual bovines.

  “Are those Jerseys?” Julie asked.

  “Yes, mine as a matter of fact. Pretty things, aren’t they?”

  “Very,” Julie said. “Look at those eyes! And the calves—oh, look at them, they all look like Bambi!”

  The day was warm and sunny, and Rafe had the windows open. For a while they drove in easy silence, taking in the roomy, tranquil landscape and the mixed fragrances of grassland, farm, and barn. They drove down country roads with French (not Jèrriais) names—Avenue de la Reine, La Route de Beaumont—but were reminded that they were on Dominion soil when they turned onto the more stodgily named, solidly British A2, which soon became the even more definitively British Victoria Avenue as it ran beside a sweeping bay edged by a smooth white-sand beach with clumps of sunbathers here and there.

  “Saint Aubin’s Bay,” Rafe told them, and a very few minutes later: “And here we are, our metropolis, Saint Helier. Population, thirty thousand, the largest city on Jersey. Largest city in the Channel Islands, for that matter.”

  “Looks like a nice place,” John said politely as they turned into it.

  That was about right, Gideon thought. Not splendid, not squalid. Not poor, not rich. Clean, modest . . . nice. Not particularly ancient by European standards, nor up-to-the-minute modern.

  On an island just offshore, there was a massive fortress (Elizabeth Castle, according to Rafe, in which Sir Walter Raleigh had lived when he was governor of the island and in which the future Charles II had holed up during the English Civil War). But the town seemed solidly nineteenth century, with many middle-class, two-story Victorian residences, a few graceful Regency crescents, and even fewer late twentieth-century apartment blocks. Anything that went up more than two stories was a rarity.

  There were a very few seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings to be seen as well, and the Revere Hotel, to which Rafe drove them, was one of them. An old coaching inn, from the look of it, Gideon thought, or maybe a post house. It had obviously started out with two stories, but a third floor had been added in the last fifty years, an unfortunate development from an aesthetic point of view. The hotel was on the east side of town, on Kensington Place, a quiet street of guesthouses and restaurants. Like many of the older buildings nearby, it had been stuccoed over in white, but at street level the stucco had been peeled away to show the rough, handsome granite blocks underneath.

  Cozy and charmingly quaint, with wing chairs, fireplace, and library shelves, the lobby area was staffed by Glenda, a bubbly bleached blonde in her fifties, whose fussing and fluttering over Rafe gave the impression that, from the Revere’s point of view, he was a top-of-the-line VIP. But then he would be; in a small, middle-of-the-road hotel like this, how many clients would they have who kept a suite year-round?

  “I imagine this place must have a lot of history,” Julie said, looking around as they checked in.

  “Oh, I should say so!” Glenda enthused. “Loads! The Beatles stayed here once, and so did John Denver! And Sean Connery! Mr. Connery sent us an autographed picture after. And we even have a movie of the Beatles showing when they were here, larking about, right in our pool! And Ringo, all by himself, reading a magazine, sitting right in our lobby, right in that chair there, where that old gentleman is sitting. You could sit in it too if you want to.”

  “Thanks, Glenda, I just might do that. I think I’ll wait till he gets up, though.”

  Glenda clapped a hand to her mouth to hold back a giggle. “Oh, aren’t you the funny one!”

  “And what about before the Beatles, Glenda?” Gideon asked. “Anything interesting ever happen here before then?”

  “Not that I ever heard of, sir,” was her thoughtful reply, “and I’ve been here fourteen years.”

  Rafe interjected politely, “Glenda, if the registration’s done, do you suppose you could have the luggage taken up to the suite, please? My friends and I are going to take some refreshment in the bar.”

  This had been agreed to during the drive, and in they trooped to the adjacent hotel bar, a room that seemed little changed in four hundred years, although, judging from its length and narrowness, it had probably been a passageway back then. The plastered walls were lumpy and irregular, the ceiling was supported by adze-carved wooden beams, and along the sidewalls there were stone archways opening into the various little alcoves and niches that these old places had. The four of them sat on a couple of sofas that were set up to face each other over a coffee table, Julie and Gideon across from Rafe and John.

  It wasn’t much after four, and none of them were ready for anything alcoholic, so Rafe asked for an afternoon tea service. From the reaction of the barman who took the order—“Did you want tea sandwiches? Would you care for sweets? Shall I include some scones?”—Gideon could see that afternoon teas were not part of the regular menu, but this being Rafe Carlisle, everything he asked for (which was everything that the barman had suggested) was gracefully accepted as a matter of course. As was his request for coffee instead of tea.

  “Well, now,” he said while they were waiting, “I assume everybody would like to relax for a day or two—find your bearings, see some sights—so why don’t we put off any forensic work on Gideon’s part until . . . well, until you’re ready.”

  “Actually, Rafe, speaking for myself, I’d really rather go ahead and get started—tomorrow, if that’s possible. You’ve gotten me intrigued, and I’m kind of chafing at the bit. I’ll fit in some sightseeing along the way, don’t worry.”

  “And I’m fine doing something on my own,” Julie said. “Is there a local history museum in Saint Helier? I always like to start with that.”

  “There certainly is, a good one, and it’s only a ten-minute walk away. Neanderthals, Celts, Romans, Normans—they’ve all been here, and they’ve left bits behind, many of which you’ll find in the museum. Modern people who lived here too: Victor Hugo, Lillie Langtry—they’ve got her rather amazing toiletries case, which is worth a visit in itself.”

  “But nothing from the Beatles?”

  “Alas, no,” Rafe said. “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Darn. Well, what the heck, I might go anyway.”

  “I’ll probably mostly hang with you, Doc,” John said, “if that’s okay with you.”

  “Sure, it’s okay; I’ll appreciate the company. But you already know what I do; there’s not much to see. Basically, it’s just sitting around, looking at bones and thinking about them.”

  “No, I always like watching you talk to them.” And to Rafe: “That’s not something you see every day.”

  “And do they talk back?” Rafe asked.

  John waggled his hand. “Hard to say.”

  “No,” Gideon said. “They do not talk back. And I don’t talk to them, I talk to myself.”

  “Which, you’ll admit,” Julie said to Rafe, “makes all the difference.”

  “Whatever does the job,” Rafe said.

  The barman returned with a tray holding the coffee things: busy little blue-and-white cups and saucers and a matching porcelain pourer, creamer, and sugar bowl. All very fancy.

  “Ah, the old Wedgwood
s, I see,” Rafe said.

  “Of course,” said the barman, “for you, sir.”

  “Thoughtful of you, Paul, I appreciate it. And now that I think of it, perhaps we’d better have a little sherry to accompany the hors d’oeuvres.”

  “Yes, sir, the Fino?”

  “Mmm . . . perhaps something not quite so dry as that.”

  “Manzanilla?”

  “Perfect.”

  Once Paul had laid out the coffee service and filled the cups, Rafe took the conversation up again.

  “So, Gideon, if you like, we’ll get the bones out for you tomorrow morning. I’m all for it.”

  “Great, where are they? Do the police still have them?”

  “Not at all, they returned them to my mother when they more or less gave up on the case. In 1970, I think. They’re still in a carton in my garage.”

  Julie looked up from pouring cream into her coffee. “Your father’s bones have been in a box in your garage for over forty years?”

  Rafe laughed, a closed-mouth chuckle. “It does sound rather hard-hearted when put like that, but yes, that’s exactly where they’ve been. I was only an infant at the time they came to us, but Mother was terribly upset with him. The paving company indictments had come as a complete surprise to her, you see. And then, with everything that followed from them—the scandal, the police investigation, George’s murder, the years of waiting without knowing what had happened to him—well, with everything he’d put her through, she was no longer very kindly disposed toward him, shall we say. And when the remains were to be given to her, she couldn’t face the idea of having a funeral for him—or of not having one. And so she put it on hold. And time simply slid by, the way it does. And eventually, she died, without ever having done anything more.”

  He took his first slow, thoughtful sip of coffee. Talking about these long-ago events had sobered him. “For me, from the time that I was a child, that dusty old carton on the top shelf in the garage was just another fixture, no less so than the nineteenth-century farm implements piled on the shelf below or the ancient horses’ yokes on the walls. I have no memory of a time when it wasn’t there.” He spread his hands. “And so, other than my unsuccessful try at testing the DNA, I simply never got around to doing anything about them either. And now that you’re here, I’m glad I didn’t.”

  “So what’s the plan, exactly?” John said.

  “I had the carton taken to our dairy plant in Grouville this morning and asked the plant manager to set up a work space for Gideon in an unused storeroom. It’s not a bad place: modern, clean, well lit. I think you’ll be comfortable there.”

  “And Grouville is where?”

  “Out in some very pleasant countryside, but only a ten-minute drive from here.” He smiled. “But then, ninety percent of Jersey is within a ten-minute drive.” And then, after a beat: “The remainder can be as much as fifteen, if the traffic’s heavy.”

  The barman was back with the rest of their tea, set out on a silver three-level plate holder: crustless, triangular little sandwiches on the bottom level; crumpets and scones, along with jam and clotted cream on the middle plate; and sweets on the top one.

  “Now, doesn’t that look good!” Rafe enthused. “What do we have there, Paul?” He was pointing at the sandwich tray.

  “Cucumber, tomato, sardine, curried chicken, and egg,” the barman rattled off. “Oh, and the ones on dark bread are gravlax and cream cheese—your favorites.”

  “Marvelous. Thank you, Paul, and please express my appreciation to Annie. This should certainly do for us.”

  “For about the next three days,” Julie said with a laugh.

  “Ho ho, I think not,” Rafe said, reaching toward one of the gravlax sandwiches with the tongs provided. But he changed his mind midway and laid them down. “First, a toast,” he said, pouring an ounce or two of sherry all around and lifting his own glass. “To new friends made and old mysteries solved.”

  “New friends made and old mysteries solved,” murmured the others. Glasses were clinked, and sips were taken.

  “And let the chips fall where they may,” added Rafe, his glass still aloft. “Now, Gideon, may I have any tools or equipment gotten for you? Measures? Calipers?”

  “Not at this point, no, and probably not at all. You understand, I’m not going to be doing a full-scale analysis here.”

  “Right. Just a look-see.”

  “Right, see if something jumps out at me. Whoa, crumpets.” It had been a long time since he’d had a real English crumpet, and he took one now, warm and satisfactorily butter drenched, put it on his plate, and toyed a little with it, but then let it sit there. His mind wasn’t really on the tea. “Rafe, there’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

  Rafe looked up expectantly. The tiny sandwich had been a two-bite affair, and having finished it, he dabbed at his lips. “Yes?”

  “How did they establish that the gun that killed George was your father’s?”

  “Oh, they found it. It was weeks later, and only by accident. It was stuck in an overgrown hedge near his house, which is to say, my house now. It’d been brought back from the Great War—the First World War—by my grandfather—that would be Howard Carlisle—and it’d been in the house ever since.”

  “Yes, but I mean, how did they establish that it was the same gun that killed George? Did they find the bullet?”

  “Yes. Oh, Lord, did they find it! It was lodged in George’s hip, near the base of his spine. They matched it to the gun, however it is that they do that sort of thing. Grooves and such, what?”

  John pondered for a few seconds. “Rafe, this crag they said he was shot from—how far away was it, do you know?”

  “The distance the bullet had to travel, is that what you’re after? Fifteen meters, I should say. Call it fifty feet.”

  “And would you happen to know what kind of gun it was?”

  “Yes, I do. Certainly. It was a . . . oh, dear, a Something 1895—an Avant, or a Gavilan, or . . . damn it, it’s on the tip of my tongue . . . made in Belgium or Luxem—”

  “A Nagant 1895?”

  “That’s it, yes, very good! Oh, but of course. FBI! You know all about ballistics, don’t you?”

  “Not even close to ‘all about,’ but, yeah, I do know a little about Nagants: seven-shot Belgian revolvers, used by the Russians up into the Second World War. Not produced since then, and never too popular because the emptied cartridges don’t get expelled when you fire. You have to take them out by hand.”

  The chicken salad triangle he’d selected a moment ago was now put down on his plate without his having taken a bite. And he was leaning intently forward. “Look, tell me what else you remember about the gun, will you?”

  He was onto something, Gideon could see, but what, he didn’t know.

  John’s intensity put a dent in Rafe’s self-confidence. “Well, you have to understand, I know next to nothing about guns myself, but I do remember that when they found it, only one of the cartridges was empty, indicating, so they said, that only a single bullet had been fired.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

  “The cartridges,” John said. “Do you know what caliber they were?”

  “Mmm.” He shook his head slowly. “It was something unusual, nothing I’d ever heard of. Not simply .32 or .45, or anything like that. More complicated.”

  “How about 7.62 by 38 mm, that sound right?”

  “Why, yes, I believe so.”

  “That should be it. It was the Nagant’s original ammo, and extremely unusual. Also no longer produced. Now—”

  “John, where are we going with this?” Gideon inquired.

  “Hey, do I rush you when you’re taking a million years to get to the point?”

  “Yes, all the time.”

  “Okay, well, now you know what it’s like being on the other end. Rafe, was your father any kind of a marksman?”

  “Roddy Carlisle a marksman? Not at all. He hated guns. They made him nervo
us. Mother told me he didn’t even want that one in the house. It was there only at her insistence. She was always a bit, er, paranoid, you see, and she wanted to have it there for protection when he was away overnight, in a little table by the front door. Not that she would have known what to do with it, you understand.”

  Now John sat back, finally popped the sandwich into his mouth, chewed for about two seconds, swallowed it down, and rubbed his hands together. “O-kay,” he said with satisfaction. “The cops said the shot came from up on the rocks, right?”

  Nod.

  “Well, if that’s true, then I’ll tell you right now there’s no way in hell your father fired it.”

  Rafe blinked and opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

  “How can you be so sure?” Julie asked. She refilled the coffee all around.

  John helped himself to some of it and to another sandwich before explaining. “Okay. The fact that you had to take the cartridges out by hand wasn’t the only reason the Nagant went out of favor. The sights were nothing to brag about, and it had a real heavy trigger pull. I’ve fired those puppies, and I can tell you, it ain’t easy; you really have to squeeze. Put those two things together, and it’s not going to be the most accurate gun in the world. Rafe, you happen to know whether it was single action or double action?”

  “Single action, I believe is what they said, but I’m afraid I don’t know what that means.”

  “Doesn’t matter, except that it makes the gun even harder to aim right and harder to use. I’d say anything farther than ten feet away, it better be the size of a barn if you want to hit it. So then, what’s the chance of anybody, especially a guy like your father—afraid of guns, no experience with them—killing someone with one shot, a single, perfect shot on the first try, right through the heart, from on top of a rock fifty feet away, or whatever? And using dicey, fifty-year-old ammo, besides? I’d say zero. I’m surprised the propellant even ignited. Doc, you agree with me?”