Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 04 - Old Bones

by Old Bones

  "I see many nicks and cuts…"

  "Mice."

  Joly looked up at him in that long, slow way Jack Benny used to eye Rochester or Phil Harris after they’d nailed him with a zinger. Only the inspector had more nose to stare down, which made it all the more effective. "All of them? Every single one but this one alone?"

  "That’s right."

  "But this one alone is from a knife and nothing else."

  Gideon explained about the U-shaped incisors of rodents and the V-shaped cross-section of knives.

  Joly nodded economically, listening with his head tilted to one side, and looked through the lens again. He touched the gouge with a cleanly manicured thumbnail. "Why not another animal? A dog that might have got at the bones, perhaps, or a cat? Or," he said with a smile, "do they too have scoop-shaped incisors?"

  "No, cone-shaped. Or rather the canines are cone-shaped, and since carnivores bite with their canines, they leave a set of cone-shaped holes. Ragged ones, very recognizable. No, this is definitely from a knife. Look." He handed the bone to Joly. "Run your finger along the back of the cut—that is, the part on the inside of the rib. Feel the roughness?"

  Joly did as instructed and nodded.

  "When a knife—or an axe—cuts through bone," Gideon said, "it drives the compact bone before it so that there’s some chipping at the exit. It’s like sawing through a block of wood; you get a splintering at the back."

  Joly fingered the cut again. "All right, let’s say that it was a knife or other sharp instrument—"

  "A knife," Gideon said, then added: "I think." He was beginning to feel a little sorry for the inspector and a little over-pontifical.

  Joly breathed in, then out. "And not an axe, for example? Didn’t you say a moment ago it would affect the bone the same way?"

  "Sure, but there’s no way anything as gross as an axe could have chipped just the top of one rib; there’d be other damage."

  Joly conceded. "Yes, you’re right," he said, and blew out

  smoke. He ran his long-fingered hand lightly across the few fine, short hairs on the top of his head. In his own way he was enjoying himself, Gideon realized, even if he hadn’t won a round so far. After a morning of evasive answers from reluctant interviewees, this string of direct and unconditional responses was probably refreshing.

  "Your conclusions are quite helpful and interesting, Dr. Oliver," he said, not yet willing to throw in the towel, "but I should tell you that I still have a few reservations about them."

  That makes two of us, Gideon thought, but he wasn’t quite ready to admit it yet.

  Joly continued: "For example: I haven’t heard you suggest that there is anything that tells us exactly when the wound was caused."

  "No, there’s no way to know, but why should that make any difference?"

  "Because," Joly said mildly, "if it was made by the pick of one of the workmen who came upon it yesterday, there would be some question about its being the cause of death. No?"

  "Oh, I see what you mean. Well, actually, we can say for sure—"

  With a sigh the policeman interrupted him. "No, let me guess. No doubt, bones that have lain in the ground for some time become discolored, as these have done. And a cut that was made yesterday would show as fresh white against the brown. Am I correct?"

  "You are," Gideon smiled, not unhappy to have Joly finally score a point, "and there’s something else too." He set the rib on the table directly in the path of the slanting light and found the little burr with his finger. Then he handed Joly the lens. "Look there."

  Joly looked, his eyes narrowed against the cigarette smoke. "It appears to be an imperfection of some sort …a little curlicue…"

  "A curlicue of bone; that’s just what it is. Live bone responds to a knife a lot like wood, as I said, so if you carve a thin slice off it, the slice will curl away, like a shaving."

  "And dead bone is different?"

  "Right. You couldn’t carve a curling slice off that rib now any more than you could off a piece of porcelain. What you’re looking at is a place where the blade scraped against the bone when it was living."

  Joly straightened upand put down the lens. "But this is in a different place. What does it have to do with the other cut?"

  "Oh, I think we can pretty safely assume it was also made at the time of death—there’s been no healing of either cut—and that it happened when the knife was pulled back out. The direction and angle of the slice suggest that the knife was probably twisted a little, and—"

  "‘Probably’?" Joly pounced with dry elation on the word and leveled the two fingers in which he held his cigarette at Gideon. " ‘Suggest’?‘Safely assume’? Can you mean you actually admit to some uncertainty? Fallibility, even?"

  Gideon laughed. "No, I just didn’t want to seem cocksure."

  Joly looked at him, then emitted what was for him a full-throated laugh: a series of four staccato barks. He dropped his cigarette on the stone paving and ground it out with his heel. "There’s a restaurant you might enjoy in Dinan. What do you say to lunch?"

  ELEVEN

  AFTER the hours in the dingy cellar, Dinan was a welcome change, an old, pretty town surrounded by ancient stone walls almost hidden by gnarled ivy and bright green lichens, and dominated at one end by the handsome, brooding keep of its medieval castle. The town center was straight out of the fifteenth century, all cool, clean, gray-brown stone. The streets were cobbled with it, the ramparts and the crooked, cramped old houses made from big blocks of it. No wood, no stucco, no brick; only stone. But there were enough perky little trees in planters, enough minuscule gardens, enough tiny shops and restaurants to make it all cozy and appealing in a smaller-than-lifesize way, a Disney World rendering of MiddleAgesLand.

  Joly parked the car outside the walls, along the Promenade des Petits-Fosses, and they walked through the old portal, then down twisting alleys, to the Grill-Room Duguesclin just off the Place du Champ-Clos.

  "You’ll like it, I think," Joly said. "Traditional Breton cooking, though it’s run by a family of Iranians, strangely enough."

  The sign outside said "Grillades sur Feu de Bois," and the grill turned out to be a huge, open fireplace of stone that was the centerpiece of the plain dining room, with a lively fire throwing out a campfire aroma that had Gideon salivating before the door closed behind him. On a wide, blackened grate set over the fire, portions of meat and fish sizzled under the teeth-flashing, showy supervision of two lean, brown young men. A radio on the counter behind them softly played Simon and Garfunkel.

  "No," Gideon said, mostly to himself, as they sat at a pleasingly rough and heavy wooden table, "I don’t think so."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Not Iranians. They’re dolichocephalic, all right, but only moderately so, with pretty delicate cranial morphology. And the ossa nasalia are practically flat, which should settle it."

  "Why, yes," said Joly, "that should certainly settle it."

  "Moroccans, maybe, or more likely Algerians."

  "And to think," Joly said, "that yesterday a performance like that would have made me smile."

  "You’re smiling now." Not that it was easy to tell, but by this time Gideon could recognize the slight compression of the lips combined with the barely visible upturning of their corners as a Joly smile. The cool, constantly assessing eyes hardly came into it.

  "Ah," Joly said, "but it’s a different sort of smile. I must confess that even this morning my first reaction to your findings was that you were—" He shrugged. "—well, wishfully extending the implications to be made from rather scant data—a sort of artistic exuberance, quite understandable under the circumstances."

  Gideon laughed. "Inspector, where did you learn your English?"

  Joly bowed his head stiffly, accepting it for the compliment it was.

  Over a first course of palourdes—steamed clams on the half shell, drenched with garlic butter—Gideon explained the rest of his findings. Joly poked single-mindedly away at his clams bu
t nodded with appreciation from time to time.

  "Some of it was artistic exuberance," Gideon admitted. "I think it was a kitchen knife, but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it. And as for the murderer being right-handed—"

  "Ah, yes. The angle of the notch on the rib, I suppose? It suggested that the thrust was delivered from in front of the victim, and since it pierced his left side…"

  "Right. I mean, correct."

  Joly dabbed at his lips with a napkin and sipped from a glass of Muscadet. "Well, I would consider that a fairly reasonable inference, at least until other evidence presents itself." Which was about how Gideon felt about it too, now that his earlier flush of belligerence had passed.

  When the main course came, the conversation lapsed while they dug in. Joly was an enthusiastic eater, and if his grilled trout was as good as Gideon’s flame-charred fresh sardines there was reason for his enthusiasm. By the time the cheese plate was brought, Joly had had a second glass of wine and was loose to the point of actually leaning against the back of his chair. A good time, Gideon thought, to find out what had been going on upstairs while he’d been in the cellar.

  "How’d your investigation go this morning?"

  Joly nodded silently, as if that were an answer, and went on trying to cut his way through a rocklike wedge of Cantal.

  "Making progress?"

  Shrug. Noncommittal grunt.

  "Not solved yet, I take it?"

  "Not yet." Coherent speech this time. A distinct improvement.

  "Suspects?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Well, it certainly is fascinating getting all this information right from the horse’s mouth." He bit into a roll spread with soft, tart Banon.

  Joly smiled. "Everyone in the manoir is a legitimate suspect." He hesitated, then apparently decided to trust Gideon after all. "The wine carafe was placed on the sideboard by Marcel at about ten o’clock last night, when Claude took the previous one up to his room. Between then and nine o’clock in the morning, everyone had ample opportunity to drop a few hundred milligrams of cyanide into it. With or without fingerprints."

  "So much for opportunity. Any leads on why he was killed?"

  Joly had succeeded in separating a hard crescent of cheese from the wedge and using his fork to place it on his bread. He looked up at Gideon without raising his head, so that his eyebrows were lifted and his forehead wrinkled. Unexpectedly, he burst into his machine-gun laugh; a real one, the kind in which his eyes participated.

  "In my long and distinguished career, Dr. Oliver, I have rarely seen so many credible motives." He put down his fork and leaned forward. "In less than a week, Claude Fougeray has antagonized everyone within reach." He began to count on his fingers. "He held Jules du Rocher up to ridicule as a braying and cowardly fool, which he no doubt is; he brought the docile Marcel Lupis to white-faced and violent rage by insulting Madame Lupis; he disparaged Ben Butts’ honor; he—Now, what have I forgotten?" His right forefinger paused over the fourth finger of his left hand and came down. "Oh, of course he’s devoted a lifetime to bullying and mortifying his wife and daughter. And Leona Fougeray, who makes no bones about her delight that he’s dead, is not a woman I would care to provoke."

  Joly gave up counting and slowly twirled his wineglass by the stem, staring into the dregs. "Ah, and in what must have been a memorable scene at the reading of Guillaume’s will, he implied strongly that he would challenge it; this in front of a roomful of people who benefited substantially from its provisions."

  Gideon listened with increasing respect as Joly went on to elaborate. A lot had been uncovered in a very few hours. "Are people usually this forthcoming?" he asked.

  "About each other, yes." Joly smiled. "Especially about their relatives. If it’s damning evidence you want, I often say, talk to your suspect’s family."

  Gideon smiled too. It sounded like something Ben’s Uncle Beau Will’m might say.

  Joly continued to rotate his glass thoughtfully, then drained the little left in it. "But you know, I can’t say that I put much faith in Claude’s being murdered as revenge for offended dignity or impugned honor. Or even to avoid the bother of divorce. It simply doesn’t happen very often."

  "Which leaves the will. You think somebody killed him to keep him from contesting it?"

  Joly squirmed a little. He didn’t like being pinned down. "Not exactly. The possibility of a successful challenge was small to the point of absurdity. There were simply no grounds. The lawyer Bonfante carefully explained that to everyone after the reading. Why should someone risk murder in such a case?"

  "What did you mean,‘not exactly’?" He poured himself and Joly some wine from the half-bottle of new Beaujolais they’d ordered to go with the cheese; the policeman held up his hand when the glass was a quarter full.

  "Well, I think there’s something else going on beneath the surface—something that they haven’t been so forthcoming about. Claude Fougeray, it seems, declared loudly and at every opportunity that the reason Guillaume had called them all together was to announce a new will he was going to prepare; presumably with Claude himself as the major beneficiary."

  "Do you think it might be true?"

  The inspector swirled the wine in his glass thoughtfully. "Not really. So far I’ve found nothing to suggest it was anything more than wishful thinking. And Bonfante says Guillaume hadn’t mentioned his will in years."

  "But you’re not completely sure about it?"

  "I wonder about it, yes."

  "You think the attorney might be lying?"

  "Georges Bonfante? No, no, I’ve known him for years. And if you’re thinking he himself might make an interesting suspect, I’m afraid he won’t. He hasn’t been near the manoir since the reading. Neither have any other outsiders, I might add. So our suspects, if not our motives, are finite and well-defined. A nice, old-fashioned mystery."

  Gideon tried some of the ash-impregnated Montrachet on a piece of roll, scraping off most of the grit and doing his best not to think about the horrifying lesions he’d seen in the teeth of prehistoric peoples who’d consumed ash with their food as a matter of course. But taking care of your teeth was an everyday concern. How often did you meet up with a really first-rate Montrachet?

  "What was the reason Guillaume got them all together?" he asked.

  "Ah, your mind runs like mine," Joly said; clearly a compliment. "According to Jules it was to discuss the selling of the manoir to a hotel chain."

  "According to Jules?"

  "Jules was the only one he told, apparently. He was the old man’s great favorite, it appears; they were very close."

  "Jules?" Gideon said with surprise, remembering the soft young man who had slavered over the thought of severed heads and hands.

  Joly smiled wryly at his expression. "Yes, it seems an inexplicable lapse in judgment by a man otherwise well-known for his discernment. How is that Montrachet?"

  "It’s delicious, but I hope your teeth have thick enamel."

  He offered the wine bottle again but Joly declined. "Thank you, no. I’ve already had too much. I generally limit myself to a single glass at lunch."

  "Look, Inspector," Gideon said, pouring a little for himself, "I’m confused. Let’s say Guillaume had been planning a new will—"

  "I don’t think it’s likely. Claude was given to deluding himself."

  "But let’s say he had, and the estate was going to go to Claude instead of the others…Well, Guillaume died five days ago, right? Without making a new will. It was over and done; what connection could there be to Claude’s murder?"

  Joly swallowed a small piece of bread and cheese and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin. "Yes, that’s true."

  "Well—" Gideon put down his glass. "Hey, are you saying that you think there was something fishy about Guillaume’s death after all?"

  This was dismissed with a wave of the hand and a sour expression. "I hope that wasn’t a pun. Why do you persist in returning to this? What reason would anyone h
ave to kill Guillaume?"

  "For the money in the will," Gideon said. "A lot of people must have been champing at the bit to get their hands on their shares."

  "Surely they could wait another year or so."

  "Another year?"

  "You didn’t know? That’s all he was given to live by Dr. Loti, and that was some months ago."

  Gideon very nearly blurted: "I’m sorry to hear that," which would have been pretty peculiar under the circumstances. "No," he said instead, "I didn’t know."

  "Well, it’s common knowledge. Dr. Loti’s a good physician, but he isn’t the man to have if you want to keep secrets. Now, does that satisfy you?"

  "I suppose so," Gideon said doubtfully. But with or without a plausible motive, Guillaume’s death just didn’t sit right. Not that he expected to convince Joly.

  "‘I suppose so,’ " Joly repeated with a smile. "A man who doesn’t give up easily. Still you’re right in a way. There is, as you say, something fishy here somewhere; something they know but they’re not telling me, something not quite…" He searched for a word and came up, surprisingly, with: "…kosher. Something in the past, I think. I’ve begun to wonder if it might not have something to do with the SS man’s murder."

  "Maybe, but—I hate to keep bringing this up, but that isn’t Helmut Kassel down there with the notch in his rib."

  "Perhaps not, perhaps not." Joly nodded abstractedly; his attention was wandering. "Do you mind if we don’t stay for coffee? I think I should be getting back."

  Gideon lifted his wine to finish it, but for the second time he checked it in midair and put it back on the table. "Something in the past, did you say? Inspector, didn’t anyone tell you about Alain du Rocher? About how Claude was responsible for his murder?"

  Joly’s expression made it amply clear that nobody had. Head down, he listened, scowling, to Gideon’s explanation, not pleased that the information had failed to surface during his interviews. And also, Gideon thought, not too thrilled about having to get it from the Skeleton Detective of America.