Skeleton Dance

by Aaron Elkins

  Émile took it as agreement. "And that," he concluded with the air of a lawyer wrapping up an airtight case before a bedazzled jury, "leaves us with Michel… Georges… Montfort." Voilà.

  Things were getting interesting, Gideon thought, watching the Vézère glide by at his feet, slow, and green, and placid, in no hurry to get anywhere. By himself at lunch time, he had repeated the meal he'd had the day before with Julie—marinated roast beef and sliced tomato on a baguette, with a paper cone of French fries and a bottle of Orangina, all from a streetside crêpe and sandwich stand—and taken them down to the park, to the same riverside bench he'd shared with Julie.

  There, on a pleasant lawn among brilliantly green young willow trees, he slowly ate his sandwich, looking at the river and the terraced fields and white limestone cliffs beyond it, watching the boaters trying to steer their rented, inflatable pink kayaks, listening to the relaxing clicks and murmurs of the men playing pétanque behind him, and mulling over his conversations of the morning.

  Émile alone had been willing to voice his suspicions about Tayac, and although his accusation of Montfort did have at least a certain internal logic, it was hard to know how seriously to take it. Did Émile himself really believe what he was saying, or was he venting his dislike of Montfort, a dislike keener than Gideon had realized… or was he simply playing malicious little mind-games for the fun of it, something Gideon had no trouble imagining him doing?

  Whichever, it was important to remember that, as Émile himself had said, he had no empirical data (otherwise known as hard evidence) to support his views. Still, it was a line of thinking that hadn't previously occurred to Gideon, and, improbable or not, it had now lodged itself under the surface of his mind like a burr.

  He was also finding it difficult to make up his mind about Jacques Beaupierre. Was it really possible, given the circumstances, that anyone, even Jacques, could have actually forgotten the name of the Thibault Museum? Pru's defense of him notwithstanding, it hardly seemed believable. And if he hadn't really forgotten, then clearly, he had chosen not to answer. Why? The obvious reason was that he preferred Gideon not to know just which museum the lynx bones had come from. And the obvious reason for that—the most likely reason, anyway—was that he didn't want Gideon to know that he himself was associated with it. And if you accepted that much, there was only one place to go with it: Beaupierre was afraid that Gideon might leap to the conclusion, the very reasonable conclusion, that Jacques himself, with easy access to the Thibault, had had something to do—something very central to do—with the obtaining of those bones and therefore with the hoax itself.

  In other words, that Jacques Beaupierre had been the one behind it.

  On its own terms it made as much sense as Émile's theory about Montfort, and in the same way. Had the fraud been successful, it would have confirmed Jacques' long-held, often-stated beliefs about Neanderthal culture. Suppose he'd been driven enough to plan the hoax and pull it off, but afraid to risk the fall-out if it were to be exposed? In that case, why not plant it in Carpenter's private dig? That way, with Ely sure to shout about it from the rooftops, the cause would be advanced. But if it were to be found out, as it inevitably, necessarily was found out, it would be Carpenter who would—and did—take the vilification. Was the genial, abstracted Beaupierre capable of that?

  On the other hand, he reminded himself, this was the same man who'd needed reminding on whether he'd had breakfast the other day, the same man who, in Gideon's presence, had once hemmed and hawed and been unable to put his finger on the exact title of a book he himself had written two years earlier. (It was L'Archéologie.) Surely, honestly forgetting the name of the Musée Thibault was within his abilities, as Pru had said. And Émile, who knew the director better than he did, had almost contemptuously dismissed him as the possible perpetrator.

  …as it inevitably, necessarily was found out. The words drifted back through his mind, so distinctly and separately that his lips involuntarily shaped them. Had exposure of the fraud truly been inevitable? If so, then yet another possibility had to be considered: what if everyone had been looking at the hoax the wrong way round? What if its purpose had not been to promote the sensitive-Neanderthal school of thought but to discredit it? Looked at that way, it had been a great success: Ely, Montfort, Jacques, and their brothers-and-sisters-in-arms had come out of it bruised and winded, along with their theories. But for the other side, the Neanderthal-as-hopeless-knucklehead-side, it had been a great shot in the arm; their theoretical stock had soared.

  And looking at it from that angle, Gideon thought, tipping the bottle up to get the last cool, sweet swallow out of it, meant that Audrey, Émile, and Pru might have had the very same motive as anyone else in planting those doctored bones for the luckless Ely to find and to crow about—namely, giving a leg up to their side in the theoretical wars when the truth came out.

  Wonderful, he thought with a shake of his head and a wry smile, this was real progress. When he'd started off this morning he didn't have a single suspect, beyond Ely himself, on whom to hang the Old Man of Tayac. Now there wasn't anyone who wasn't a suspect.

  It just went to show what the scientific method could accomplish when properly employed.

  Yawning, he reached for the cone of frites, saved for his dessert, and stood up. Carpenter was on his mind too as he started back up the path. Pru and Jacques had both jumped defensively, almost angrily, to his support. Ely had been "the very model of integrity"… "a really, really neat guy." But had he, really? When Gideon had known him three years before, he'd found him competent and likeable, with an entertaining flair for the dramatic, but at the same time there had been something about him—unexpected gaps in his erudition, a surprising unevenness in his knowledge—that had made Gideon wonder. Once, when Gideon had made a passing reference to Paranthropus robustus, he'd been shocked to see that Ely hadn't had any idea what he was talking about, although he'd done a good job of covering it. Of course, that alone didn't—-

  "Ah, it's a pleasure to see a man that deep in thought. Dare I interrupt?"

  It was Audrey Godwin-Pope, striding stoutly along at his side—all hundred-and-ten pounds and five-feet-two of her—in her swaying tweed skirt, gray cardigan, and crepe-soled, lace-up shoes, with her sturdy tortoise-shell glasses hanging from a lanyard around her neck and a pencil sticking out of the gray bun at the back of her head (in the past, he'd seen as many as three at a time).

  "Oh, hi, Audrey, sorry I didn't get to you this morning; I ran a little late."

  "Not to worry. So what is it that's furrowing that manly brow, or shouldn't I ask?"

  "I was thinking about Ely Carpenter, as a matter of fact." He slowed his pace to let her keep up more easily and held out the paper cone. "Frites?"

  She reared back. "Do you have any idea what they fry those things in around here? Thinking about Ely along what lines?"

  "Oh, his background, his education; wondering what kind of a person he was, really."

  "A one-of-a-kind," she said warmly. "A really splendid man. The usual male hang-ups, of course, but in his case—"

  "What do you mean, a one-of-a-kind?"

  "Just that." She smiled and shook her head. "There'll never be another Ely Carpenter, Gideon. I'm sure you know about his amazing past—-grew up out West, parents divorced, got into trouble early, spent a couple of years on a juvenile detention ranch in Montana, learned about cowboying, got onto the professional rodeo circuit at seventeen—"

  "No, I had no idea about any of that. Really?"

  "Really. And what's more he was good. I've seen the cups and the ribbons: bull-riding, calf-roping—"

  "When did he go into archaeology?"

  "Oh, much later. After he got tired of falling off bucking broncos he spent some time in the Air Force as a mechanic, then did the same thing for another dozen or so years with a commercial air transport company. And then, of course, he won the lottery. Well, you know, perhaps I will try one of those frites. How much harm can one d
o?"

  "They're all yours," he said, passing her the cone, which she didn't refuse. "Won the lottery in what way?"

  "In the real way, the way that counts. State of Connecticut, almost a million dollars. Whereupon he decided that, more than anything else in the world he wanted to be an archaeologist. Quit his job, went back to school with a vengeance—here's this forty-six-year-old airplane mechanic, not even a high-school graduate, mind you, but in less than five years he had his M.A. Wrote a letter to his hero—Michel Montfort—declaring his passionate interest in the Middle Paleolithic and his admiration for Michel's work, and begging for the chance to study under him. Michel said come ahead, three years later he had his doctorate… and the rest is history."

  That explained a lot, it seemed to Gideon. Ely had essentially been a self-made man, starting school in middle age and then immediately plunging into a narrow, obscure, and difficult subject area. It was an admirable course to follow—people had done a lot worse with lottery winnings—and it had a lot of things going for it, but breadth of education and systematic scholarship weren't among them. Certainly, it explained the gaps in his knowledge. Possibly, it also explained why he'd been so easily taken in over the Tayac hoax—assuming, of course, that he was the victim and not the perpetrator.

  "Fantastic story," he murmured. "Actually won the lottery."

  "Yes, but, you know, he really had no interest in the money. He had a retarded, grown daughter, did you know that?"

  They were coming to the turn-off in the path that led up to the mairie, the town hall, where Gideon would be filing his report on the previous day's attack, and his mind was turning to that. "Yes, I heard," he said a little absently. "Back in the States."

  "Yes, and I think most of it went to take care of her," Audrey continued, lost in recollection. "But then, apart from his airplane, Ely didn't have any use for a lot of money. He wasn't a fancy dresser or a high-liver. He drove an old clunker." She finished the frites and absently wiped her fingers on her sweater. "Aside from flying and shooting, archaeology was his whole life. Two or three times a year he'd take a few days to fly off to one of his air-rifle competitions in Lisbon or Barcelona, and that was it. Other than that…" She drifted pensively off.

  "Well, I head up this way," Gideon said. "Thanks for—" He stopped in his tracks and stared at her, dumbfounded.

  "One of his WHAT?"

  Chapter 15

  "Air rifle competitions," Joly mused with one of his less scrutable expressions. "So Ely Carpenter owned an air rifle." If anything he seemed pleased.

  "Yes, at least one. Audrey said she'd seen his favorite. He showed it off to her when it came. I guess it was something special."

  "She wouldn't know what kind it was?"

  "No, just that it was made in Korea. She didn't really pay that much attention."

  "Well, well." Yes, definitely, Gideon thought; that little tremor at the corners of his mouth was Joly's version of a cat-that-gobbled the-canary smile.

  They were in the snack room of the mairie—a modest, utilitarian space with a hulking red Coke machine, an old refrigerator, coffee fixings (a simmering glass pot of water on a warmer and a crusted jar of Nescafé), and three small, round plastic tables with two plastic chairs each. Making his statement for the police had taken only twenty minutes with Joly's assistance, and doing his best to help put together a composite sketch of "Roussillot" hadn't taken much longer. (Unfortunately, the result, like most composite sketches, had more in common with composite sketches in general than it did with any recognizable human being.)

  Afterward, he and Joly had been shown to the snack room to wait until the statement was typed up for his signature. Gideon had gotten a Coke from the machine; Joly had chosen only to smoke. While they waited Gideon had started filling him in on the highlights of his interviews. The inspector had sat quietly, seemingly not very attentive, and not stirring until the rifle was mentioned.

  "You don't sound all that surprised about it," Gideon said.

  "No. I've been devoting quite a bit of thought to Professor Carpenter, as a matter of fact."

  "You don't mean as a murder suspect?"

  Joly gave one of his whole-body shrugs.

  "Lucien, the fact that he owned an air rifle doesn't mean it was the same one that killed that guy. Other people own air rifles."

  "I have the report from ballistics," was Joly's answer. "Listen." He removed a slim wallet from the inside pocket of his suit coat, slipped a folded sheet of paper from it, set a pair of reading glasses on the prominent, angular bridge of his nose, shook out the paper, and read aloud, translating into English as he went.

  "'The projectile, though deformed, is identifiable as a wasp-waisted .22 caliber, 34-grain ultra-magnum lead alloy air-rifle pellet. This projectile, which is among the world's heaviest commercially available .22-caliber lead pellets, is manufactured especially for the South-Korean-produced"—a ponderously meaningful look at Gideon—"Cobra Magnum F-16 five-shot repeating air rifle, an expensive, compressed-air-powered, high-velocity sporting/hunting weapon charged with pre-compressed air from a standard 3,000 psi diving tank and capable of generating a muzzle velocity of almost 400 meters per second when used in conjunction with this pellet. It is the opinion of the examiner that such a projectile, fired within a range of five meters, could well have caused the injuries previously described.'"

  Joly removed his glasses—he wouldn't wear them a fraction of a second longer than he absolutely had to—and slipped the report back into his wallet. "Now, it may be that I'm leaping to conclusions," he said. "It may be that there are many expensive, high-velocity Cobra Magnum F-16 air rifles firing wasp-waisted .34-grain magnum rounds here in Les Eyzies to choose from; one in every stone cottage, for all we know."

  "Well… okay," Gideon said, "but even if it is the same rifle, that hardly means it was Carpenter who did the killing. Look, what if you found a window broken with a Mesolithic hand chopper, would that mean it had to have been a Neanderthal that did it?"

  Joly studied him. "Am I mistaken, or are we a little defensive this afternoon?"

  "No, it's just that—Lucien, are you actually, seriously considering the possibility that Ely Carpenter himself committed that murder?"

  "Why should I not?"

  "Well, because… "

  Because what? What was he supposed to say, that distinguished archeologists, directors of respected scholarly institutions, didn't go around bumping off people who annoyed them? Maybe they didn't, but they also didn't go around getting themselves involved right up to their eyeballs in outrageous frauds either, did they? So where did that leave him? Of course it might have been Ely. Joly had every right to consider the possibility.

  He had, when it came right down to it, more than he knew. "There's something else you need to know," Gideon said reluctantly. "I just hated to… oh, hell, it's just that…"

  Joly watched him attentively, his eyes narrowed against the cigarette smoke curling from both nostrils and drifting up his cheeks.

  "Remember when I told you Ely had gotten pretty paranoid after the hoax broke? Well, it was worse than I realized. Audrey told me he took to keeping a weapon near him whenever he was off in the boondocks working on one of his sites."

  "Oh?" said Joly, his interest quickening.

  "And the weapon she remembered seeing was… well…"

  "His favorite Korean air rifle."

  Gideon nodded.

  "So," said Joly with evident satisfaction, and then, after a pause: "I have a little news for you too. I've been in touch with the aviation authorities about Carpenter's death." He looked levelly at Gideon. "It seems there are some rather dubious aspects to it."

  Gideon frowned. "I don't follow you."

  "Frankly, I'm not convinced that Carpenter's dead."

  "What?" The Coke can smacked down on the table, spattering Gideon's hand with fizz. "That's crazy."

  "Consider the hard facts," said Joly. "Or rather the lack of them: no corpse, no wreckage—"<
br />
  "What? But I thought—"

  "So did I… because that is what you told me." He smiled sweetly. "But the plane, having apparently gone down, not on land but in several hundred meters of water—"

  "What? But—"

  Joly exhaled twin jets of smoke. "Gideon, are you going to permit me—"

  "But he did go down over land," Gideon said hotly. "Over Brittany. That's what everybody said."

  But if that was what everybody said, then everybody was wrong. Carpenter's plane, a single-engine Cessna 185, had gone down off Brittany, or so the authorities had concluded. He had taken off at night from the small airport at Bassilac, near Périgueux, heading north along the French coast to Brest, some 320 miles away. Not long afterward, however, he put in an emergency call to the air route traffic control center at Lorient, saying that his engine was faltering, his gauges were malfunctioning, and he was rapidly losing altitude over the Bay of Biscay. A brief, hurried communication, cut off in mid-sentence, ensued, and Ely Carpenter was never seen or heard from again. A search for his plane produced no results. The reasonable inference—and the official verdict—was that he had plunged into the great bay in darkness, somewhere near the sparsely inhabited Isles de Glénan, about sixty miles short of his destination.

  "…reasonable inference…" Gideon echoed. "I had no idea… I was sure… "

  "So you can see," Joly said, "there's plenty of room for doubt. How can we know that he didn't merely pretend to crash his airplane into the sea and then continue, in darkness, to some isolated farmer's field along the coast at which, with a little advance preparation, he might easily have landed so small a craft in secret?"

  Gideon got up and went thoughtfully to the window, leaning on the sill and looking over the town square and the main street, directly on the other side of which the cliffs loomed in the slanting sunlight, white and pocked with shadowed abris for the first few hundred feet, then darkening to gray-brown and curving outward into their picturesque, protective overhang. Little wonder all those Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons had found this temperate valley such a comfortable place to live.