Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 03 - Murder In The Queen's Armes

by Murder In The Queen's Armes

  "But how is that possible? How could you make such an identification?"

  "Not I, but our forensic scientists in London once again, and a first-rate piece of sleuthing it was too. Do you remember Inspector Bagshawe’s idea about the sleeve of Alexander’s leather jacket providing some clue as to the weapon?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Well, it provided more than a clue. In the first place, there was an indentation in the leather, indicating that the weapon had a flat striking surface with a well-defined circular margin—like that of a hammer or a mallet. Now, adhering to the leather itself—embedded in it, actually—they found a ragged scrap of paper."

  "Paper? But it’d been in the water for two weeks. Wouldn’t it rot?"

  "So I should have thought. But, I am instructed, that doesn’t always occur. In this case, the sizing had indeed rotted away, but the paper fiber itself was still there, as was some cement on the back of it, and there was even a ghost of printing on it which, under analysis, turned out to be the lowercase letters a and s. Intriguing, isn’t it? Now what would you guess this mysterious shred of paper to be?"

  Gideon was silent. Even if he’d had any idea, he’d hardly have wanted to spoil Merrill’s enjoyment.

  "Ha." Merrill cleared his throat. "Well, to make a long story short, the paper was an adhesive label of the sort put on objects to identify and price them. What had happened was that the tag had apparently been placed on the mallet carelessly, so that it was draped over an edge of the striking surface, partly on that surface itself, partly on the side of the mallet’s head, where it belonged. Moreover, the part that was on the striking surface had not adhered thoroughly— one corner had gotten folded over, so that the adhesive side of it was facing up. Do you follow me?"

  "I think so, yes. When Randy was hit with the mallet, the glued side of the paper—which was uppermost—must have stuck to his sleeve."

  "That’s it precisely."

  "That would mean, wouldn’t it, that it was the very first time the mallet had been used? The glued paper would surely stick to the first object the mallet struck."

  "Exactly. A brand-new mallet with the price tag still on it."

  "Dr. Merrill, Alexander came in with a brand-new mallet the day I was there. I think he’d just been sent to buy it."

  "Indeed he had, and it turns out to be the very one. But let me tell the story. Our lads did some quick detective work and identified the tag: It was a ‘Texas’ sticker—the ‘as’ was the last part of the name. Texas Homecare, as you may know, is a chain of DIY stores—"

  "DIY?"

  "Do It Yourself. Don’t you use the term on the other side of the Pond?"

  "Oh, yes. Right."

  "Well, they have a branch in Bridport, where they do in fact sell mallets, and did in fact sell one the very day Alexander was last seen. This information was passed on to Inspector Bagshawe—"

  "Who immediately went to Stonebarrow Fell to see if he could find a fairly new ‘Texas’ mallet with part of the price tag torn off."

  "He did indeed, and readily found what he was looking for. Useless for fingerprints, of course, inasmuch as it’s been in use for two weeks. But—and this was confirmed only this morning—the torn edge of the tag on the mallet matched exactly the torn margin of the tag on poor Alexander’s sleeve. A triumph of detection, what? And all done in less than twenty-four hours."

  It was true then. Randy Alexander had been killed by a fellow member of the dig. Until that moment it hadn’t truly sunk in; it had simply been a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that fitted neatly into place. Now it was real. One of them was a murderer: Frawley…Sandra…Barry… Leon. Maybe even Nate. Why not Nate, really? Did any of them seem like a killer? He couldn’t honestly say he liked all of them, but murderers…?

  "Professor," Merrill was saying, "Detective Inspector Bagshawe is here now. Would you like to speak with him?"

  Gideon told Bagshawe briefly about the lagoon and about what Barry had told him. "And since there weren’t any visitors—"

  "The murderer would have to be a member of the Stonebarrow party, wouldn’t he? So it would seem."

  There was a long pause during which Bagshawe’s heavy, unhurried breathing sounded in Gideon’s ear.

  "How is the investigation coming along, Inspector?"

  "Tolerably well, Professor, tolerably well."

  Obviously, information was not going to be readily volunteered from the other end of the line. Gideon made another try.

  "I understand you haven’t told them about Randy yet?"

  "No, that’s true. Thought it would be best to pursue a few other inquiries before I gave them the news, but I’m on my way there now." He paused, seeming to turn something over in his mind. "You know, this makes things a bit problematical."

  "What does?"

  "The mallet… the piece of business about the lagoon… all of it pointing to an inside job."

  "Why problematical?"

  "Because, Professor, among the several interesting facts I gathered on Stonebarrow Fell was this: They’re right-handed to a man—to a woman, when you include Miss Mazur. Not a left-hander among them."

  "You’re sure? Whoever it is may have been trying to hide it." He realized with a small shock of surprise that at least a little part of him had been hoping that Frawley was going to turn out to be a southpaw.

  "Yes, Professor," Bagshawe said patiently. "I’m quite sure. If he was killed by a dig worker, he was killed by a right-hander. It looks like this is one of those one-out-often cases the good doctor was talking about."

  Gideon didn’t quite believe it. His experience had apparently been different from Merrill’s. From what he’d seen, a nightstick fracture could always be used to predict the handedness of an attacker. People didn’t go around wielding bone-smashing clubs—a mallet in this case— backhanded or in their weaker hand. "Either that, or we’re wrong about assuming the killer’s one of the crew."

  "And do you think we are?"

  "No," Gideon said after a moment. "I think we’re right."

  "Well," Bagshawe said, "that’s that, then, isn’t it? I assure you, they’re all dyed-in-the-wool right-handers. My guess is that there was a scuffle sometime that afternoon— Alexander was last seen at three o’clock—right there in the fog, near the edge of the cliff, and the killer grabbed the mallet any way he could—perhaps it had already been knocked out of his right hand—and wound up picking it up with his left hand. You see," he said generously, "I don’t doubt your conclusions about a left-handed blow—only about a left-handed attacker."

  "I guess you’re right," Gideon allowed, but it still didn’t sit right. "Anyway, where does the identification of the hammer lead us?"

  The "us" was an accidental admission; Gideon was more involved than he thought.

  Bagshawe, possibly realizing this, effectively ended the conversation. "A very good question, sir," he said pleasantly, "and I’m most grateful to you for all the help you’ve given us. I’m sure you understand, by the way, that all our little hypotheses and findings are between us; to be kept in the family, so to speak."

  "Of course,"

  "Well, that’s all right then. A very good day to you, Professor."

  Gideon replaced the receiver and leaned back in the armchair, hands behind his head, staring absently out the window. Their room, one flight up, overlooked the ancient, rock-walled back garden of the Queen’s Armes. In the distance, about half a mile away, was the profile of the hillside that swept smoothly up to Stonebarrow Fell, lush and pearly green against a threatening, shifting sky of blacks and grays.

  He and Julie had breakfasted early with Abe, Robyn, and Arbuckle. Afterward, Robyn and Arbuckle had retired to the sitting room and Abe had whispered to Gideon that he was going to the Cormorant to try to talk some sense into Nate.

  Now Gideon heard a soft tap at the door behind him, and then the sounds of Abe and Julie talking. He got up and went to them.

  "How’d you do with Nate?"

  "N
o luck. Everything he said, he stands by." Abe shook his head disgustedly. "Every foolish thing. Already he’s planning a press conference after the inquiry—so the whole world can learn his wonderful secret from his own lips." More slowly this time, he shook his head again. "It’s not the way a scholar should act. It’s not what I taught him, Gideon."

  "What did he say about Randy?" Julie asked.

  "What about his mysterious find?" asked Gideon. "Would he tell you what it is?"

  "Not a word. Only that it’s going to ‘blow my mind.’ Feh, where did he learn to talk like this?"

  "Abe," Gideon said, "do you suppose it’s possible that he’s really got something—"

  "To prove what?" Abe flared up peevishly. "That Agamemnon invaded Charmouth? In what, a floating wooden horse? Don’t be ridiculous. What did they teach you in archaeology?"

  "All right, all right," Gideon said hastily. "I’m not an archaeologist, remember?"

  "That you don’t got to tell me," Abe snapped. Then he patted the back of Gideon’s hand. "So why am I mad at you? Nathan’s the one who’s making a fool of himself." He looked at his watch. "Come on, it’s after nine. Let’s get the others and go. It’s a big hill, and my arthritis is bothering me. Nathan will meet us there. Good-bye, Julie," he said, and turned dejectedly to leave. "I wish I wasn’t here. Who asked me to come?"

  Gideon raised his eyes bleakly to Julie as he began to follow Abe out the door.

  She stood on tiptoe to place a quick kiss on his cheek. "Be careful. Both of you seem to keep forgetting there’s a murderer up there."

  TWELVE

  A murderer? Try five. He’d been telling himself none of them looked like killers, but now the whole crew looked guilty as hell.

  Gideon and Abe, flanked by Robyn and Arbuckle, had found Nate Marcus in the shed, seated at the cleaned-off worktable with his staff. All the dig members looked up, blinking into the daylight when the door was opened, and Gideon was afforded a frozen, snapshot glance. They might have been a cast assembled by a film director and told to look as edgy and disreputable as they possibly could.

  Sandra Mazur was posturing exaggeratedly as she smoked a cigarette, holding it out in front of her between two rigidly stiffened fingers and theatrically sucking in her gaunt cheeks as she pulled in great lungfuls of smoke.

  Next to her, Leon Hillyer picked nervously at his golden beard and smiled an unconvincing welcome to Gideon.

  Jack Frawley’s face looked like soggy, gray plaster of Paris, sunken in on itself and flabby-jowled. His basset’s eyes slid and shifted like beads of mercury, from the blank tabletop to Nate, to the newcomers, and back to the tabletop.

  Even the ingenuous Barry Fusco, with all his farm-boy freshness, looked shifty, his all-American grin a nervous parody. And Nate was the most blatantly agitated of all. He was literally chewing on the knuckles of his left hand, and when the door opened, he jumped to his feet, wiping his hand on the side of his pants. His face was greenish, and his eyes were sunken, as glazed as a couple of four-minute eggs.

  It was obvious that Bagshawe had indeed come and told them about the murder, and Nate’s first words confirmed it. "Sorry, meant to meet you at the gate," he said, sounding short of breath, "but the police just left, and we’ve been talking about …what they told us. It looks like they’ve found my missing student. He’s been, uh… killed."

  Gideon could feel him flinch away from the word murdered, but the archaeologist recovered himself as he spoke. Brusquely brushing aside Robyn’s and Arbuckle’s startled ejaculations and Abe’s cluck of sympathy, he continued more firmly, even aggressively; Nate never went very long without taking the offensive. "The cops are down on the beach poking around, but they’re coming back, so let’s get on with it."

  As Gideon trooped back out with the others into the gray morning, he found Stonebarrow Fell, which had seemed so lovely two weeks before, ugly and sinister. The hacked-out trenches with their stark, vertical sides and their dew-concealed piles of gray dirt looked raw and naked, and somehow shocking, like open graves. Far below, beyond the fell’s sharp edge, the sea was mole gray, the same color as the sky, and sullen-looking whitecaps scudded on the water’s surface. As they walked in a solemn file over the broad crown of the hill, the wind lowed forlornly around them, driving long, shuddering ripples through the dense grass.

  He really was depressed. Since when did digs remind him of graves? He realized as he plodded on that it was more than the weather, more than even the murder, that was making him so gloomy and apprehensive …something entirely different. For an idea was taking unwelcome root, an unsettling idea that he knew exactly what Nate’s "astonishing and sensational" discovery was. And he wished to hell it had popped up before this, when he might have done something about it.

  They stopped at a small rectangular canvas-draped pit a hundred feet from the main trenches, in a rough area of bushes, vines, and chalky rock. Nate began at once.

  "As all of you know," he said in a shrill, rapid monotone, "the Wessex culture has long been viewed as a manifestation of the pan-European trade and travel of the Bronze Age, and is believed to have arrived in Britain in slow stages from Britany—this notwithstanding the three hundred-year difference in radiocarbon dates between Breton and Wessex graves. But be that as it may…"

  It was evident that Nate had prepared this speech—he didn’t talk like this naturally—and that he was hardly listening to himself. Gideon studied him; unless he was shamming—and his brash, outspoken personality didn’t lend itself to pretense—he was genuinely upset. Although he’d spoken rather harshly of Randy’s lackadaisical ways, it was apparent that the news of his death had stunned him.

  "It is also well known that the Bretons were and are a race of round-heads," Nate droned on. "Of brachycephals, as Dr. Oliver would say." At the sound of his name, Gideon snapped to attention. "And for that matter, the immediate predecessors of the Wessex people, the Beakers, were also notably brachycephalic. Thus, we have always assumed the

  Wessex also to be round-headed. Also so they are, in the later Wessex sites.

  "But here," Nate said, and now the old, challenging electricity crackled in his speech; his eyes came up from the canvas-covered pit to engage those of the others. "Here at Stonebarrow Fell we’ve got the earliest known Wessex site—maybe the very first. What would you say if we found someone here who wasn’t brachycephalic at all, but long-headed—dolichocephalic—just like the Mycenaeans of 1700 b.c.?"

  Gideon’s heart seemed to flop and plummet. Now there wasn’t any question about where Nate was leading, incredible as it seemed. The excavation crew fidgeted in subdued excitement. All, that was, except Frawley, who, with his head down and his hands clasped very much like a grave-side mourner’s, chewed somberly on his cheek. Abe and Arbuckle stood there looking stoic and patient, and Robyn’s sole reaction appeared to be the raising by one millimeter of his left eyebrow.

  "What would you say," Nate went on, seemingly made more contentious by the lack of response, "if the guy buried here wasn’t just long-headed, but was so long-headed that was outside the range of every—every— known Beaker or Breton skull, but easily within the range of the Mycenaeans?"

  Without waiting for a reply, he reached down, pulled up the canvas, and flung it away from him. It sailed directly into Barry, who grabbed it, snickered nervously, blushed, and stood there holding it.

  "There," Nate said throatily.

  Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the two-by-three-foot pit. Nate, seemingly unable to stand the momentary silence, burst into a low, agitated babble. "Would you believe that was sticking right out of the ground—part of it anyway? Huh? Abe? Gideon? Englishmen have been walking over it for a hundred years, probably, and nobody ever noticed it!" Here there was a lancing, triumphant glance at Robyn. "The ground around it was weathered away, and you could barely see it. I almost didn’t see it myself; I just stumbled onto it…."

  The skull fragment was in the precise middle of the rectangle. The rounded emi
nence of the right parietal, Gideon could see, would indeed have projected a fraction of an inch above the surface of the ground, but no one—except perhaps a particularly alert anthropologist—would have taken it for anything but a rock. It had been dug—dissected out, really—with the scrupulous care typical of Nate Marcus, so that it lay partially embedded in a two-inch-high shelf of earth, like the museum exhibit it had once been.

  It was Pummy, all right.

  Gideon couldn’t think of any way to say it other than to say it. "Nate, that’s the Poundbury calvarium… the skull fragment missing from the Dorchester Museum."

  Nate’s expression went from self-satisfied to blank to furious in two seconds. The flesh around his lips grayed and seemed to sink into his face. Gideon observed this transparently genuine reaction of astonishment and indignation with relief. Nate was as honestly surprised as everyone else.

  "Bullshit!" he shouted, as soon as he could speak. "You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!" He turned on Gideon, his fists clenched at his side, his body tightened as if he was going to spring at him. Gideon, used to Nate’s irritating habit of automatically hitting out when challenged, didn’t take offense.

  "It’s Poundbury, without a doubt—" Gideon began.

  "Bullshit, bullshit—"

  Abe reached over and patted Nate on the shoulder. "Now, Nathan," he said mildly.

  Robyn’s voice cut icily through. "Professor Marcus, will you kindly keep your observations, cogent as they are, to yourself for just a few moments? Oliver, are you quite positive?"

  "Completely."

  Nevertheless, Gideon stepped into the trench and knelt to look more closely at the fragment. He blew away a thin layer of chalky dust. "You can see that it’s been placed here recently," he said. "Look at the color: that same amber tone all over. If a part of it had actually been sticking out, exposed to the elements, it would have been darker than the rest, wouldn’t it? More weathered, too."

  "You’re nuts," Nate said. "What are you talking about? I don’t believe this."